Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Some folks are racists. For them, Asians are Asians are Asians. No distinctions made, no distinctions necessary. But in that part of the world historically distinctions were often made. And the consequences could be deadly.

Here there are the Japanese, the Chinese and the Chinese who collaborated with the Japanese during the war.

The story is said to be “loosely” based on actual events that unfolded during the time the Japanese had occupied Shanghai. And, as is often the case in turbulent times, there are those who act out their proper roles and those who do whatever it takes to convince everyone that they are too. In actuality though everything is calculated from a point of view that revolves around expediencey. Whatever works. Either to just stay alive or [for some] even to prosper. And, for particular women, being young and beautiful can have its own unique advantages. Better able, for example, to become a spy. Or even an assassin.

But first, a lover.

What’s incredible is the transformation that can unfold in the life of someone who is caught up in the midst of these great upheavals. The shy, self-effacing Wong Chia-chi we meet in 1938 is hardly recognizable at all as the worldly Mrs. Mai 4 years later.

The tricky part here [for most of us] is in choosing sides. Given the fact that Japan was a part of the Axis alliance in WWII, it seems easy enough: the Chinese. But what is it they reflect by way of a political agenda? For example, were they Reds? No way. That was still farther down the road for folks like these. It revolves instead around nationalism…and national sovereignty. Here though the foucus is on the personal…and in how the political can twist it all out of shape. Or be twisted all out of shape in turn. With lust, things can get complicated. So take caution. And even more so with love.

Why did she do it? How in the world would I know?


Lust, Caution [Se, Jei]

Kuang: The other day I ran into a guy Tsao from my hometown. He used to hang around with my brother at school. I heard he’s working for a collaborator…a top agent of Wang Jingwei, goes by the name of Yee who’s hiding out in Hong Kong. Wang Jingwei and his so-called “Peace Movement”. They’re just traitors. Running dogs for the Japanese. Yee is recruiting for them in Hong Kong. I was lucky to bump into Tsao. What a chance for us.
Auyang: A chance for what?
Kuang: I’m not talking about theater. Wrenching tears and shouts from an audience can’t compare with eliminating a flesh and blood traitor.

Any running dogs here, he wondered?

Mai/Wong [to Yee]: Having a man is fine, as long as he is never home.

The general consensus here as it turned out.

Mai: You men have so much to say to each other, but with women you just make small talk.
Yee: Small talk like this…to me…is a rare treat. The people I deal with are high officials talking about important matters of state…the destiny of our nation. But no matter what words come out of their mouths I see only one thing in their eyes.
Mai: What?
Yee: Fear.

And what will soon become the equivalent of that here when the Orange Man is back in power.

Mai: When he calls again, then he’ll be serious. I’ll have him hooked. I’ll be his mistress. And then… have you thought through what we’re going to do?
Friend: Would you know what to do? With a man?
Mai: So you’ve already discussed it. Which one?
Friend: Liang is the only one experienced.
Mai: With whores.

So, they have to teach her how to…copulate.

Kuang: You never knew, did you? In Hong Kong we were being watched. The night you left they came to us. They cleaned up the mess and smuggled us out.
Mai: Who were they?
Kuang: The resistance. They’ve been behind the assassination of all kinds of collaborators. The mayor of Shanghai, the chief of the public concession were all their work. Now you know how childish we were. How absurd.
Mai: Especially me. I was so naive.
Kuang: It was my fault.
Mai: We’ve all paid a price.

Some considerably more than others.

Kuang: I have a mission. The job we started is still unfinished. Yee is now in charge of Wang Jingwei’s secret service. He’s officially in charge of the police, but of course he’s a watchdog for the Japanese. He murders judges, journalists, anyone who supports the resistance…and our agents. We missed our chance three years ago. Now it’s impossible to get past his security. We can’t touch him.

But she can.

Old Wu: I trust Kuang has already briefed you? Sit. Can we get straight to the point? First things first. But also the last.
[he hands her a capsule – a suicide capsule]
Old Wu: Before you begin, sew this into your clothes. In case you’re exposed. Just in case. It won’t be painful, but you must move fast. Before anyone can get to your hands, understand?

They should sell those things, he thought.

Mai: What if I told you…I hate you.
Yee: I would believe you.
[he kneads her breast]
Yee: They weren’t like this three years ago.
Mai: I hate you.
Yee: I said I believed you. And I haven’t believed anyone in a long time.

Now what, Mai?

Old Wu: Wong Chia Chi is a precious lead, which we must exploit fully.
Kuang: But she is not a trained spy. She can’t take the pressure.
Old Wu: You underestimate her. Wong Chia Chi carries herself every bit like Mak Tai Tai, and not an agent. She’s come this far, that’s no small feat. Our superiors are very impressed. We’ve sent two other superbly trained women to try to snare him. But he sniffed them out. They were killed after giving up their entire cells.
Kuang: You don’t care about her safety. She’s gotten Yee hooked like she was supposed to. Now we should take over!
Old Wu: Don’t tell me what to do! You listen to me! Yee murdered my wife and both my children. But I could still eat with him at the same table! That’s what an agent must be able to do! I’d like nothing better than to kill him with my own hands. But if letting him live another few days is valuable, then we must! Keep him hooked, and keep me informed. Don’t do anything without my order!

Any secret agents here?
I mean aside from me.

Old Wu: Remember… For an agent there is only one thing… Loyalty. To the party, to our leader, to our country. Understand?!

Indeed. That’s why I’d make a really, really shitty agent.

Mai: What trap are you talking about? My body? What do you take him for? He knows better than you how to put on an act. He not only gets inside me…he worms his way into my heart like a snake. Deeper. All the way in. I take him in like a slave. I play my part faithfully…so I, too, can get to his heart. Every time he hurts me until I bleed…and scream. Then he is satisfied. Then he feels alive. In the dark only he knows it’s all real.
Old Wu: That’s enough.
Mai: That’s why…That’s why I can torture him until he can’t stand it any longer…and still I go on until we collapse from exhaustion.
Old Wu: Enough!
Mai: And when he finally comes inside me, I think maybe this is it. Maybe this is when you’ll rush in and shoot him in the back of the head…and his blood and brains will cover me!
Old Wu: Shut up!

In other words, secret agents theoretically and secret agents "for all practical purposes".

Mrs. Yee: What’s going on? Your assistant and two men from the ministry came by and took away her things. And some things from your study.
Yee: Say nothing. If anyone asks, Mak Tai Tai had an emergency and went back to Hong Kong.
Mrs. Yee: What happened?
Yee: Go downstairs. Keep playing.

We know what that means.

[iambiguous]

Ottessa Moshfegh from My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Family time can put a strain on the mentally deranged. She clucked her tongue as though out of pity.

Or make them mentally deranged?

Soon, I'd be home again. Soon, God willing, I'd be asleep.

Amen!

I got sloppy and lazy at work, emptier, less there. This pleased me, but having to do things became very problematic. When people spoke, I had to repeat what they'd said in my mind before understanding it.

Or, as likely as not, misunderstand it.

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you’d feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.

Twice, in fact.

My mother used to say that if I couldn’t sleep I should count something that matters, anything but sheep. Count stars. Count Mercedes-Benzes. Count U.S. presidents. Count the years you have left to live. I might jump out the window, I thought, if I couldn’t sleep. I pulled the blanket up to my chest. I counted state capitals. I counted different kinds of flowers. I counted shades of blue. Cerulean. Cadet. Electric. Teal. Tiffany. Egyptian. Persian. Oxford. I didn’t sleep. I wouldn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I counted as many kinds of birds as I could think of. I counted TV shows from the eighties. I counted movies set in New York City. I counted famous people who committed suicide: Diane Arbus, the Hemingways, Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Plath, van Gogh, Virginia Woolf. Poor Kurt Cobain. I counted the times I’d cried since my parents died. I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen.

Anyway, what works for you?

He and I agreed that people looked stupid when they were "having a good time."

Maybe, but most will just take their chances.

[iambiguous]

What’s it about? Well, that’s close enough.

Try this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460829/fa ... =tt_faq_sm

It’s almost like shooting a whole bunch of short [loosely connected] films and then splicing them all together. Only then do you try to come up with something in the way of a “narrative”. A film within a film within a film within a dream within a dream within a dream. Which makes for an identity within an identity within an identity. Who are you in reality? When are you acting and when are you not? And is it enough to believe something is true in order to justify what you think it means?

Who knows, maybe this is how it was for Brad and Angelina.

And then from the perspective of, say, rabbits. With a laughtrack so you’ll know when it’s funny.

And that’s just for starters. Next up: The Enigmatic Neighbor.

As with all the rest of them you are drawn in as much by what you see as by what you hear. The words are just a way to enchance the subjunctive atmostsphere conveyed by the images that seem to float in and out of a space/time continuance all its own. Most “scenes” veritably dripping an ominous and forboding sense of doom and gloom. A good enough way as any to make sense out of the lives we live. At least from my own perspective.

It’s strange what love does: https://youtu.be/o4N48d9eLsI?si=2MZ9kK7F2GKFajXg

In some respects this makes Lost Highway seem like reciting the alphabet. All some can do is hope that Lynch has at least one more full-lenght film in him. It doesn’t look good though.

During a conversation between David Lynch and Laura Dern, Dern mentioned that her husband was from the Inland Empire (an area east of Los Angeles County, including Riverside and San Bernadino County). Lynch confesses he stopped listening to what she was saying because he loved the sound of the words “Inland Empire”, and finally decided on these words as the title of his movie because “I like the word inland. And I like the word empire.”

In an interview with Joe Huang at the AFI Dallas Film Festival, David Lynch stated that “Inland Empire” wasn’t originally intended to be a feature film. He would simply come up with an idea and - utilizing the versatility and ease of using DV cameras - would film it, creating a series of seemingly unrelated scenes; the first scene filmed was Laura Dern’s monologue to the silent psychiatrist. As time progressed, he began to see how the stories were connected, and continued filming scenes for it until he had what we see now. Rumors that Lynch began filming without a script are more or less incorrect, as he would write a short scene and film it, without having the intention of making feature length film.

Stars Laura Dern and Justin Theroux have both said they have no idea what the film is about.

Marketing executives were so puzzled by the film that they did not know how to promote it. They eventually chose the tagline “a woman in trouble”, based on David Lynch’s sole explanation of the film as a mystery about a woman in trouble.


Inland Empire

Neighbor: Hmmm. A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door, he saw the world. As he passed through the doorway, he caused a reflection. Evil was born. Evil was born, and followed the boy.
Nikki: I’m sorry, what is that?
Neighbor: An old tale, and a variation. A little girl went out to play. Lost in the marketplace, as if half-born. Then, not through the marketplace - you see that, don’t you? - but through the alley behind the marketplace. This is the way to the palace. But it isn’t something you remember. Forgetfullness…it happens to us all. And me…I’m the worst one. Now, where was I?

Let's move on...

Neighbor: Is there a murder in your film?
Nikki: Uh, no. It’s not part of the story.
Neighbor: No, I think you are wrong about that.
Nikki: No.
Neighbor: Brutal fucking murder!
Nikki: I don’t like this kind of talk; the things you’ve been saying. I think you should go now.

Fat chance, let's say.

Neighbor: Yes. Me, I… I can’t seem to remember if it’s today, two days from now, or yesterday. I suppose if it was 9:45, I’d think it was after midnight! For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn’t even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. Actions do have consequences. And yet, there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, you would be sitting over there.
[Neighbor points to Nikki’s couch across the room]
Neighbor: Do you see?

From the look on Nikki’s face: nope.

Devon: If you’re looking for shock value, Marilyn, I suggest you look in the mirror.

You first.

Nikki: Are you enjoying yourself, Freddie?
Freddie: Well… There is a vast network, right? An ocean of possibilities. I like dogs. I used to raise rabbits. I’ve always loved animals. Their nature. How they think. I have seen dogs reason their way out of problems. Watched them think through the trickiest situations. Do you have a couple of bucks I could borrow? I’ve got this damn landlord.

Of course, that could happen to almost anyone in Inland Empire.

Piotrek [to Devon]: There are consequences to one’s actions. And there certainly would be consequences to wrong actions. Dark they would be, and inescapable.

You know, just in general.

Nikki [playing Susan]: Something’s happened. I think my husband knows about you…about us. He’ll kill you…and me. Damn! This sounds like a dialogue from our script!
Kingsley: Cut it. Cut. What’s going on?
Nikki [bewildered]: What?
Kingsley: What in bloody hell is going on?

About fucking time he asked, right?

Nikki: This is a story that happened yesterday. But I know it’s tomorrow.

Of course, that was years ago.

Nikki [to a shrink]: Some men change. Well, they don’t change -- they reveal. They reveal themselves over time, you know?

Or, rather, here, I reveal things for them.

Nikki: Bam! I seen what this fucker was up to. I kicked him straight in the balls so hard they go crawling into his brain for refuge - he went down like a two dollar whore.

Next up: the English translation.

Nikki [after she gouged the eye out of a rapist and got him in the nuts]: When the ambulance guys came they asked what happened, I told them “He’s reaping what he’s been sowing, that’s what.” They said “Fucker been sowing some pretty heavy shit.”

They still are, of course.

Nikki [to shrink]: The thing is, I don’t know what was before or after. I don’t know what happened first…and it’s kind of laid a mind-fuck on me…I figured one day I’d just wake up and find out what the fuck it is all about. I’m not too keen on thinkin’ about tomorrow. And today’s slipping by.

They still are, of course.

Lori: There’s always a chance with tits like yours, Kari.
Kari: Thanks.

Next up: tits like yours.

[iambiguous]

This has got to be one of the raunchiest movies ever made. But it’s all done with words. The language is, well, filthy. I mean really, really filthy. But no one can deny it’s not funny. I mean really, really funny. Unless, of course, you are offend by really, really filthy language.

Then there’s the part about the lesbian who becomes involved with a man. After all, there are folks who insist that is all it really takes. Just as there are men who insist that they would be the one to bring them around. But it’s really a lot more sophisticated than that. At least I think it is.

Here are a couple of reactions: https://www.cinemaqueer.com/review%20pa ... 20amy.html
And another: https://queeringthecloset.blogspot.com/ ... -1997.html

Did I mention the debauched language? But this is one of those films whereby if you are “one of them” it is okay to use certain words…words such that if you are not one of them you can catch all I kinds of hell for using. Well, aside from the few deemed worthy enough to be granted something analogous to a dispensation from the proper authorities.


Chasing Amy

Fan: I love these guys! You know what? They’re like Bill and Ted meet…Cheech and Chong!
Holden: Yeah. I-I kinda like to think of them as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet Vladamir and Estragon.
Fan: Yes!
[pause]
Fan: Who?

Of course, most of us would react much the same.

Banky (signing the comic): I ink it and I’m also the colorist. The guy next to me draws it. But we both came up with the characters.
Collector: What’s that mean - you ‘ink it’!
Banky: Well. It means that Holden draws the pictures in pencil, and then he gives it to me to go over in ink.
Collector: So you just trace!
Banky: It’s not tracing. I add depth and shading to give the image mere definition. Only then does the drawing really take shape.
Collector: You go over what he draws with a pen - that’s tracing.
Banky: Not really.
Collector [to kid in line]: Hey man. If somebody draws something and then you draw the same thing right on top of it, not going out-side the designated original art what do call that!
Kid (shrugging): I don’t know. Tracing?

Let's pin down the equivalent of that here.

Hooper: For years in this industry, whenever an African American character, hero or villain, was introduced - usually by white artists and writers - they got slapped with racist names that singled them out as Negroes. Now, my book, “White-Hatin’ Coon,” don’t have none of that bullshit. The hero’s name is Maleekwa, and he’s a descendant from the black tribe that established the first society on the planet, while all you European motherfuckers were still hiding in caves and shit, all terrified of the sun. He’s a strong role model that a young black reader can look up to. ‘Cause I’m here to tell you, the chickens is coming home to roost, y’all. The black man’s no longer gonna play the minstrel in the medium of comics and sci-fi fantasy. We keepin’ it real, and we gonna get respect by any means necessary.
Holden: Ah, come on, that’s a bunch of horse shit! Lando Calrissian was a black guy. You know. He got to fly the Millennium Falcon, what’s the matter with you?
Hooper: Who said that?
Holden: I did! Lando Calrissian is a positive role-model in the realm of science-fiction/fantasy.
Hooper: Fuck Lando Calrissian! Uncle Tom n*****!

Next up...

Hooper: Always some white boy gotta invoke the holy trilogy. Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!
Banky: What’s a Nubian?
Hooper: Shut the fuck up! Now…Vader, he’s a spiritual brother, y’know, down with the force and all that good shit. Then this cracker, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he’s gonna run the fuckin’ universe; gets a whole clan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader’s hood, the Death Star. Now what the fuck do you call that?
Banky: Intergalactic civil war?
Hooper: Gentrification! They gon’ drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi’s the most insulting installment! Because Vader’s beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin’ to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!
Banky: Well, isn’t that true?
[Hooper pulls out his gun, “shoots” Banky]

Relax. They're both in on it. As I recall.

Hooper: I need to sell the image to sell the book. I mean, would the audience still buy the whole black rage angle if they found out the book was written by a… you know…
Banky: Faggot?
Hooper: When you say it, it sounds so sexy.
[kisses Banky]

See how it works?

Banky: Archie and the Riverdale gang were a pure and fun- lovin’ bunch. You can’t find dysfunction in those comics, because they were just flat out wholesome.
Hooper: Archie and Jughead were lovers.
Banky: Shut the fuck up.
Hooper: It’s true. Archie was the bitch and Jughead was the butch - that’s why Jughead wears that crown-looking hat all the time: he the king, of queen Archie’s world.

I knew it!

Hooper: Wait, wait. There’s something you should know.
Holden: She’s got a boyfriend?
Hooper: Well, no.
Holden: Then what’s to know, my friend? What’s to know?

Take a wild guess.

Banky [to Hooper]: There’s a lot of chicks in this place.

Take a wild guess.

Banky [to Holden watching Alyssa and Kim kiss]: Now that was a shared moment.

Well, scripted, anyway.

Note: I'll skip the really, really raunchy language here, okay? Not that it still isn't really, really funny.

Alyssa: So, you’ve never been curious about men?
Holden: Curious about men? Well, I always wondered why my father watched Hee Haw.

Uh, for the music?

Holden: Virginity is lost through penetration.
Alyssa: Physical penetration or emotional?
Holden: Emotional?
Alyssa: Well, I fell in love hard with Caitlin Bree when we were in high school.
Holden: Physical penetration.
Alyssa: We had sex.
Holden: Yeah, but not real sex.
Alyssa: I move to have that remark stricken from the record. On account of it makes you come off as completely naive and infantile.
Holden: Well where’s the penetration in lesbian sex?
Holden [after Alyssa holds up her hand]: A finger? Come on. I’ve had my finger in my ass but I wouldn’t say I’ve had anal sex.

Come on, that's only sort of raunchy.

Banky: Alright, now see this? This is a four-way road, okay? And dead in the center is a crisp, new, hundred dollar bill. Now, at the end of each of these streets are four people, okay? You following?
Holden: Yeah.
Banky: Good. Over here, we have a male-affectionate, easy to get along with, non-political agenda lesbian. Down here, we have a man-hating, angry as fuck, agenda of rage, bitter dyke. Over here, we got Santa Claus, and up here the Easter Bunny. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first?
Holden: What is this supposed to prove?
Banky: No, I’m serious. This is a serious exercise. It’s like an SAT question. Which one is going to get to the hundred dollar bill first? The male-friendly lesbian, the man-hating dyke, Santa Claus, or the Easter bunny?
Holden: The man-hating dyke.
Banky: Good. Why?
Holden: I don’t know.
Banky [shouting]: Because the other three are figments of your fucking imagination!!

Not bad for a tracer.

Holden: I think you should let this one go.
Banky: No, what would you say? Would you trash twenty years of fucking friendship because you got some idiotic notion that this chick would even let you sniff her panties, let alone fuck her?
Holden: Look fucking asshole, I’m telling you, okay, let it go!
Banky: What the fuck, man! What the fuck makes this bitch all that important?
Holden: 'Cause I’m fucking in love with her, man, okay?!

Okay.

Holden: It’s unfair that I’m in love with you?
Alyssa: No, it’s unfortunate that you’re in love with me. It’s unfair that you felt the fucking need to unburden your soul about it. Do you remember for a fucking second who I am?
Holden: So? People change.
Alyssa: Oh, it’s that simple? You fall in love with me and want a romantic relationship, nothing changes for you with the exception of feeling hunky- dorey all the time. But what about- me? It’s not that simple, is it? I can’t just get into a relationship with you without throwing my whole fucking world into upheaval!
Holden: But that’s every relationship! There’s always going to be a period of adjustment.
Ayssa: Period of adjustment?!?
(she starts to hit him)
Alyssa: THERE’S NO ‘PERIOD OF ADJUSTMENT’ HOLDEN! I’M FUCKING GAY! THAT’S WHO I AM! AND YOU ASSUME I CAN TURN THAT AROUND JUST BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT A CRUSH?!?

Well, maybe she can.

Dalia: Why are you playing the pronoun game?
Alyssa: What? What are you talking about? I’m not even.
Dalia: You are. “I met someone.” "We have a great time. “They’re from my home town.” Doesn’t this tube of wonderful have a name!
Alyssa [after a pause]: Holden.
Jane: Oh, Alyssa - no. Not you!
Tory: Another one bites the dust.

Bites the dust? That can't be good.

Holden: Why me? Why now? I’m a guy. You’re attracted to girls.
Alyssa: I’ve given that a lot of thought, you know? I mean, now that I’m being ostracized by my friends, I’ve had a lot of time to think about all of this. And what I’ve come up with is really simple: I came to this on my terms. I didn’t just heed what I was taught, you know? Men and women should be together, it’s the natural way - that kind of thing. I’m not with you because of what family, society, life tried to instill in me from day one. The way the world is - how seldom you meet that one person who gets you… it’s so rare. My parents didn’t really have it. There was no example set for me in the world of male/female relation ships. And to cut oneself off from finding that person - to immediately half your options by eliminating the possibility of finding that one person within your own gender… that just seemed stupid. So I didn’t. And by leaving my options open, I was branded ‘gay’, which to me was no big deal - labels are labels, you know? They define what you do, not who you are, I guess. But then you come along. You - the one least likely; I mean, you were a guy.
Holden: Still am.
Alyssa: And while I was falling for you, I put a ceiling on that, because you were a guy. Until I remembered why I opened the door to women in the first place - to not limit the likelihood of finding that one person who’d compliment me so completely. And so here we are, I was thorough when I looked for you, and I feel justified lying in your arms - because I got here on my terms, and have no question that there was someplace I didn’t look. And that makes all the difference.

Makes sense. But not to those embedded in the politics of it all.

Holden [to Alyssa]: What’s, uh, what’s with “finger cuffs”?

He wouldn't let it alone.

Holden: There’s a world of fucking difference between typical high school sex and two guys at once! They fucking used you?
Alyssa: No! I used them! You don’t think I would’ve let it happen if I hadn’t’ve wanted to? Do you? I was an experimental girl for Christ sake! Maybe you knew early on that your track was from point A to B, but unlike you I was not given a fucking map at birth, so I tried it all! That is until we, that’s you and I, got together and suddenly I was sated! Can’t you take some fucking comfort in that? You turned out to be all I was ever looking for - the missing piece in the big fucking puzzle!

I tried it all myself. Well, not that maybe.

Alyssa: Do you mean to tell me that - while you have zero problem with me sleeping with half the women in New York City - you have some sort of half-assed, mealy-mouthed objection to pubescent antics, that took place almost ten years ago? What the fuck is your problem?!?

Should we start with nature or nurture?

Jay [to Holden]: Holy fucking shit! Finger Cuffs? You’re dating Finger Cuffs, you silly son of a bitch?

Next up: Silent Bob.

Alyssa: Fuck you.
Banky: Not even if you let me video tape it.

Besides...

Alyssa [after Holden asks her to have sex with him and Banky]: Oh Holden. That time is over for me. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. And I didn’t find what I was looking for in any of it. I found that in you - in us. Doing this won’t help you forget about the things you’re hung up on. It’ll create more. Maybe you’ll see me differently from then on - maybe you’ll despise me for going along with it, once you’re in the moment. Maybe I’ll moan differently and then you’ll resent Banky, and become suspicious of us. Or you’ll alienate him because of it, and then grow to blame and hate me for the deterioration of your friendship. Or what if- I sincerely doubt it, but what if - I saw something in Banky that I never saw before, and fell in love with him and left you. I’ve been down roads like this before; many times. I know you feel doing this will broaden your horizons and give you experience. But I’ve had those experiences on my own. I can’t accompany you on your’s. I’m past that now. Or maybe I just love you too much. And I feel hurt and let down that you’d want to share me with anyone. Because I never wanted to share you. Regardless I can’t be a part of this. Or you. Not anymore. I love you. I always will. Know that.
[she then slaps him in the face]
Alyssa: But I’m not your fucking whore.

This is really much closer to the truth for most of us: It’s always never nothing. Something will come along and it all starts unraveling.

Alyssa [to Banky]: He’s yours again.

If you get her drift.

[iambiguous]

In order to have a better understanding of the man, you have to have a better understanding of the child growing into one. Works that way for women too. In fact it works that way for everyone.

The more famous you become though the more others want to know the real you. But unless you are that person how closely are you ever likely to come? So folks watch films like this hoping to at least get nearer to it. Especially when the man is someone you have come to truly admire. If only from your own perspective. They never take you in anywhere near as far as you want to go. Let alone think you need to go.

This particular film takes us back to the beginning of John Lennon’s transformation into adulthood. The years before the Beatles. Down into the parts that made the Beatles what they became. And I say that because, as far as I am concerned, John Lennon was the Beatles. The others were just along for the ride. The mystery seems to revolve around Julia. Where would John be without her? And why wasn’t John with her all the time? You can’t really sort these things out though. Not neatly. If nothing else, this film shows that.

Always recognizing of course the manner in which I construe him [or her] will become as idealized as so many others. He is who I wanted him to be because in so many ways I never became who I wanted me to be. It’s just a goddamn shame his Mum had to die before all the rest of it came to pass.

Although the film is about John Lennon, best known for being the founding member of The Beatles, the film doesn’t mention the bands name throughout the whole film. IMDb

It does come close once though.


Nowhere Boy

Headmaster: At this rate you’ll be lucky to find a job on the docks, because at the moment, you’re going nowhere. Nowhere.
John: Is “nowhere” full of geniuses, sir? Because then I probably do belong there.

Reminds you of Howard Roark being booted out of the Stanton Institute of Technology, doesn't it?

Julia: Do you know what it means…rock and roll?
[John shakes his head]
Julia: Sex.

Though occasionally it's the music.

John: Why couldn’t God make me Elvis?
Julia: 'Cause he was saving you for John Lennon!

Someday he'll get it.

Mimi: No! This may be your life, one big common mess, but it is not going to be his life. Are you aware that he has been suspended?
Julia: Yes.
Mimi: Let’s go, John. I mean it!
[John looks at Julia, then shakes his head]
Julia: Get out of my house, Mimi!
[she hugs John]
Julia: My boy!

More or less, let's say.

John: Why do you know so much? I mean you don’t seem like the rock and roll kind of guy
Paul: What you mean because I don’t go around smashing things up?
[gulps]
Paul: Acting like a dick?
John: Yea.
Paul: No. It’s the music. That’s it, just music. Simple.

Not only that but he could tune the guitars.

Julia [to Paul]: It’s not not fair. Your Mum being taken away from you.
John [to Julia]: She had cancer. What’s your excuse?

Of course, "half of what he said was meaningless".

John: More talking? Wow. You see, me and Mum have had a bit of a heart to heart. Yes, she told me things about, oh, what’s his name? Alf. And about you, funnily enough. Yeah, she said you stole me. What do you reckon, Mimi, did you?
Julia: I never said that.
John: She said, quote, “She” as in you Mimi, “never gave you back.” Now when I don’t give things back, I’ve got to admit I’m usually stealing.
Mimi: What on earth have you been telling him, Julia?
[to John]
Mimi [to John]: Did she say why I stole you?
John: Well, there she is. Ask her yourself.
Mimi: Did she mention having another man’s child to deal with? Another daughter?
Julia: Mimi, please!
Mimi: What, stop? Do you think we can stop now?
John: What daughter?

And on and on and on. It’s a pretty harrowing tale. But I can’t help but side with Julia because she is so much more free-spirited and radical than Mimi. But without Mimi John, might have ended up somewhere in New Zealand with “Alf”.

John [to Mimi about Julia]: There’s just no point hating someone you love. I mean, really love.

We know what comes next though.

[Paul strums Banjo softy]
John: What is this? Fucking group practice? I don’t think so.
Pete: John it’s your mum’s!
John: She’s fucking dead!
[headbutts Pete and storms out]

Let's run this by the Kantians here.

John [being held by Paul]: I was just getting to know her.
Paul: I know.
John: She’s never coming back!
Paul: No, no she’s not.

Of course, now they are both in Heaven.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“What man seeks, to the point of anguish, in his Gods, in his art, in his science, is meaning. He cannot bear the void. He pours meaning on events like salt on his food.” Francois Jacob

See, didn't I tell you? And objective meaning to boot.

“How will people remember you when you are gone? And for how long until they forget? Were you selfish or selfless? A gossip or a patient listener? Did you add value to the world, or did you simply take from it? Did you add value to the lives of others, or did you take the value out of someone's life? Were you a plus or negative? Meaningful or meaningless? Do you live to take or live to give?” Suzy Kassem

Next up: the right answers and the wrong answers.

“If you ask today what art is, what its function is, what the meaning of art is and why one should create art, the answer given oftentimes by Western philosophers of art and those who special- ize in modern aesthetics is ‘‘art for art’s sake.’’ The modern response is that you just create art for the sake of art; but this was never the answer of traditional civilizations where one created art for both the sake of attainment of inner perfection and for human need in the deepest sense—because the needs of man are not only physical, they are also spiritual. We are as much in need of beauty as of the air that we breathe.” Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Or, here, perhaps, bullshit for bullshit's sake.

“We are all footnotes...all of us in an unrelenting and desperate struggle for our lives, for the life of a footnote." Dubravka Ugrešić

You know, eventually. Though some of us will never even make it that far.

"A fate is not a punishment.” Albert Camus

Though for some, of course, that's all it is. Or it sure as shit seems to be.

“Is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about? ... Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.” Milan Kundera

And what were the odds of that?

[iambiguous]

This one gets tricky. Director Werner Herzog makes the claim this is not a remake of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 film Bad Lieutenant. But, hey, come on, it sure comes awful close at times. And while many consider this the superior product, it will probably always be too close to call for me. Just the part in the original where the Bad Lieutenant is betting on the World Series makes that one a gem.

And Nicolas Cage here is no Harvey Keitel there. In my own opinion of course.

It’s all about the dope. And the dopes that push it. And the dopes that wage war on it.

Here’s a cop going after the scum of the earth. But in so many ways he’s scum too. He’s corrupt through and through but he’s also genuinely appalled at the sheer barbarity of the thuggery he has to witness. He really does want to bring something akin to justice to the families of the victims. So you are rooting for him and disgusted with him at the same time. As always: Sometimes Harry’s dirty, sometimes he’s not. It depends on who he is with.

And this is New Orleans. Post Katrina. Lots and lots of folks are “fucked up” here. But not many of them are interested in exploring the irony of it all…or in the idea of a double entendre.

In a June 2008 interview with The Guardian, Abel Ferrara, who directed and co-wrote the original Bad Lieutenant, said that finding out his movie was being remade was “a horrible feeling”, “like when you get robbed”, and that those involved in this remake “should all die in hell”. He also wondered how Nicolas Cage “can even have the nerve to play Harvey Keitel”, and called screenwriter William M. Finkelstein an idiot. Herzog responded that he had never seen the original and had never heard of Ferrara.

Although being promoted as a remake of Bad Lieutenant during its early production, director Werner Herzog claims that this is not a remake. He says he has never seen the original and therefore does not consider this movie a remake. Additionally, producers seemed to have added “Bad Lieutenant” to the title in order to get a better marketing. Whether remake, re-imagining, follow-up or none of the aforementioned, both movies are clearly connected by the basic plot of following a drug addicted, violent cop during his encounters with crime and sex.

Nicolas Cage claims that he was never under the influence of anything throughout filming, in contrast to Leaving Las Vegas in which he got genuinely drunk to play an alcoholic. IMDb



Bad lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Doctor: Well the good news, Terrence is, I’ll okay you to return to full duty. The bad news is in an all likelihood, you’ll be experiencing moderate to severe back pain.
Terence: How severe?
Doctor: You want to be taking something for it. I’m going to write you a prescription for Vicodin.
Terence: For how long?
Doctor: From now on.
Terence: No. For how long am I going to get pain? You mean for the rest of my life?
Doctor: Probably.

Trust me: That changes everything.

Terence [to an honest cop]: Isn’t this the same police department my father was in?

Shades of The Big Easy?

Terence: Everything I take is prescription --- except for the heroin.

Good to know?

Terence [hallucinating from the dope]: What are these fuckin’ iguanas doing on my coffee table.
Stevie: There ain’t no iguana.
Terence: …Yeah, there are.
Stevie: There ain’t no iguana.
Terence: What the fuck is that?
[taps it]
Terence: Fuckin’ iguana.

I thought so too.

Frankie: Just get me my money.
Justin: I usually pay when I’m done.
Terence: Done smacking her around?
Justin: It’s erotic shit, man. I didn’t hurt her.
Terence [throws him against the wall]: Just like I’m not hurting you.
Justin: Did I hurt you?
Frankie: Terence, let’s just go.
Terence: We don’t hit women down South.

Must be the other South.

Terence: Where’s your grandson, Bennie?
Grandmother: I don’t have to tell you anything.
Terence: Yeah, you do.
Grandmother: I haven’t done anything. My grandson haven’t done anything. If he don’t want to be witness, he doesn’t have to be a witness.
Terence: This is bigger than “want to”. This was a massacre. Children were executed.

Christ, down there that's almost in the vicinity of "need to".

Terence: Right now, I walk on about an hour and a half of sleep over the past 3 days. And I’m still trying to remain calm. I’m beginning to think though that that’s getting in the way of being effective.
[he takes out Antoinette’s breathing tube]
Grandmother: What are you doing?!
Terence: I want to know where Daryl is.
Grandmother: My God!
Terence: Nobody saw me coming. Nobody knows I’m here. This old woman is going to run out of air. And you’re going to have a tough time convincing people that It wasn’t you who did it to her. And even if…even if you convinced them that you didn’t kill her on purpose, you’re still going to have a tough time selling them that you took care of her worth a fuck. Now, listen to me. Where the fuck is he? I said where the fuck is he?
Grandmother: He’s on an aeroplane. Miss Antoinette had bought him a ticket. She sent him to live with her family in England.
[he puts the breathing tube back in]
Terence: It’s okay. There we go, that’s it. That’s a good girl. Let’s breathe.
[then he explodes]
Terence: You drop dead you selfish ****! You ever think about your kids? Your grandkids? Sucking up their inheritance through that oxygen tube? And Bennie’s fucking intensive care. I hate you, I hate you both.
[he pulls his gun on them]
Terence: Right now, I should’ve fucking kill you. You’re the fucking reason this country going down to drain.

You try to sort out the morality of this exchange.

Terence: You owe me 15,000. I’ll take 25% of the dope uncut.
Big Fate: That means you’re getting my price.
Terence: That’s one way of looking at it. The other is you get to keep 75%, and not go to prison for the rest of your life.

Too close to call?

Terence: Shoot them again!
Little person: What for?
Terence: Their souls are still dancing!
[he laughs hysterically]

Classic Nic Cage.

Genevieve [watching Terence stash his dope]: You don’t have to hide it from me. We’re birds of a feather.

Right, like dope never changes that.

Terence [to Chavez]: Do fish have dreams?

Well, they were in a fucking aquarium.

[iambiguous]

Human identity.

As some well know, this fascinates me more than any other topic of discussion here. Philosophically, psychologically, demographically, circumstantially or otherwise. How [why] do we come to think of ourselves one way rather than another? And is there a way this can be understood wholly? Or will it always just come down to conflicting points of view?

I posit “dasein”. This seems the most reasonable manner in which to understand identity as a fabrication, an ever-evolving existential narrative rooted in nature and nurture, in history and culture and personal experience. In language. In political economy. In contingency chance and change. In being and nothingness.

This is a film about identity. But in some respects, I cannot quite wrap my head around the narrative. I’m just not sure what to make of it. I don’t know if I agree or disagree with the premise because I’m just not really sure I “get it”. Here are two brothers who marvel at how much alike they look. Only one is a black man and the other is white. They look absolutely nothing alike. But the whole point of the film revolves around everyone else thinking that they do. Or, as Roger Ebert notes, “[a]t this point, a critic for a quarterly magazine might slide comfortably into phrases about the slippery essence of human identity…”

I’m reasonably sure though the import of the “message” is not really what I am getting at at all. Perhaps even the opposite: that there is always a part of our identity that can neither be taken away nor duplicated. Our "personality. But my own inquiries are oriented more toward the values we acquire out in a world where conflicted values are reconcilable with conflicting goods.

Of course, identity in the modern world is always [sooner or later] about money. Whoever you think you are and however you came to think that way it always helps if there is lots of it around. Then there are all the things we will do to others [and others to us] to keep it that way.



Suture

Narrator: How is it that we know who we are? We might wake up in the night disoriented and wonder where we are. We may have forgotten where the window or the door or the bathroom is…or who is sleeping beside us. We may think perhaps that we have lived through what we have just dreamed…or we may wonder if we are now still dreaming. But we never wonder who we are. However confused we might be about the particulars of our existence, we always know that it is us, that we are now who we have always been. We never wake up and wonder, “who am I?” Because our knowledge of who we are is mediated by what we doctors of the mind call our self-schemata, the richest, most complex and most stable memory structures we have. They are the structures which connect us to our past and allow us to imagine our futures. To lose those connections would be a sign of pathology, a pathology called amnesia.

Then there's my own take on all this, of course. The even scarier part, let's call it.

Vincent: Crime isn’t so much a problem here. It’s just a fact. Each man has his own jungle. It’s just a matter of understanding it and knowing where one fits in.

Then there's my own take on all this, of course. The even scarier part, let's call it.

Vincent [on phone]: Clay, Im sorry.
Clay: What?
Vincent: I was trapped. There was no other way out.
Clay: What are you talking about?
Vincient: I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry, Clay.
Clay: Vincent? Vincent?

Boom...

Shrink [to Clay thinking he is Vincent]: Vincent, you have the opportunity to see your past in whatever light you choose. But for the future to begin you need to understand the past you have created.

Here in particular, let's say.

Alice: Maybe it’s time for you to go home. But you’re going home unequipped. You don’t know what you need to know.
Clay [thinking he is Vincent]: I don’t know anything.
Alice: No. You simply can’t remember. You can’t remember the man you were, the way you were, the actions you took, the things you did, the things you said…But you will remember. You will remember everything.

And what a shock that would be: remembering you are really someone else. That’s the kicker here. All these people want him to regain the memories of a man he never was!

Shrink: As Freud said, nothing is insignificant.

But first you have to know who you are saying this to. And even he doesn’t know that.

Witness: His look was just different. I don’t think he was the same man.
Detective: This particular man has had extensive plastic surgery due to an accident…his face is going to seem, might seem to be a little different.
Witness: Then how do you expect me to identify him?
Lawyer: Precisely. It boggles the mind.

In other words, the white dude or the black dude?

Shrink: You just got finished telling me that you are Clay Arlington.
Clay [after having just killed Vincent]: No. I told you I remember another past…when I was Clay Arlington.
Shrink: If your memory has returned don’t you think it might be useful now to integrate that past into your life?
Clay: Which past?
Shrink: The past you know to be your own.
Clay: It’s all my past. Who was hounded by the police? Who was dragged though a lineup?
Shrink: But that was all just a terrible mistake.
Clay: I look in the mirror I see Vincent Towers. When I go to the club people call me Vincent Towers. Renee’s in love with Vincent Towers.
Shrink: Clay, we’re talking about two distinct lives.
Clay: And one is gone. There’s a dead body that can’t be identified. In a most real way it is not the body of Vincent Towers. I am Vincent Towers.

You tell me.

Shrink [voiceover]: He is not Vincent Towers. He is Clay Arlington. He may dress in Vincent’s fine clothes, drive Vincent’s expensive cars, play golf at Vincent’s country club or use Vincent’s box at the opera but this will not make him Vincent Towers. He can never be Vincent Towers simply because he is not. Nothing can change this, not the material comforts afford him or the love that Renee may provide. And if by some chance over the cries of his true ego he is able to achieve happiness, it will be false…empty. For he has buried the wrong life, the wrong past…buried his soul. He has lost all that makes life worth living. Of this we can be completely certain.

Buried the wrong soul? Right. And that certainty can always be just a point of view.

[iambiguous]

If you are going to commit suicide, you can pick worse ways to do it. Or, sure, better ways.

How can someone barely able to imagine what it must be like inside Ben’s head pass judgment on his behavior? We do get a few glimpses…clues. The photo of a wife and child going up in flames. But it could really be practically anything.

The whole point is being oblivious to all the things you want and need to be oblivious to.

At least that’s the plan. Well, someone’s plan I’m sure.

The guy who wrote the novel the film is based on committed suicide a couple of weeks after finding out it was being made into a movie. His father said that he said it could serve as his suicide note to the world.

As for Sera with an E, lots of them around too. Is there anything new to say about it? Or Yuri. The good news here is he’s out of the picture before you know it. And none too soon. But each one of us is still on our own individual trajectory from the cradle to the grave. Way beyond trying to pin down…rationally.

Anyway, this may well be the most improbable love affair you could ever imagine. Or, perhaps, in Las Vegas, it happens every day.

Author John O’Brien, on whose novel this movie is based, committed suicide two weeks after the movie went into production. Director Mike Figgis contemplated abandoning the project, but decided the film would make a good memorial for O’Brien.

To get ready for his role, Nicolas Cage would film himself drunk to study his speech patterns.

Ben doesn’t eat a single thing during the entire film. This reinforces his dependence on alcohol as chronic alcoholics usually forget to eat or can’t force food down. During the restaurant scene he puts spaghetti on his fork but doesn’t eat it. And when Sera fixes him rice, he eats an ice cube instead

The bartender at the breakfast/biker bar that wipes the blood from Ben’s face is played by Julian Lennon, son of John Lennon.

Leaving Las Vegas


Ben: I don’t remember if my wife left me because I started drinking or I started drinking 'cause my wife left me.

He'll drink to it either way.

Ben: I understand what you’re saying. I appreciate your concern. It’s not my intention to make you uncomfortable. Please, serve me today, and I’ll never come in here again. If I do, you can 86 me.
Bartender: Stop fucking with me Ben! I can 86 you anytime I want to. Hey, I don’t give a fuck what you do. That one’s on the house, son.

The rest he pays for.

Ben [in his head to a bank teller]: Are you desirable? Are you irresistible? Maybe if you drank bourbon with me, it would help. Maybe if you kissed me and I could taste the sting in your mouth it would help. If you drank bourbon with me naked. If you smelled of bourbon as you fucked me, it would help. It would increase my esteem for you. If you poured bourbon onto your naked body and said to me “drink this”. If you spread your legs and you had bourbon dripping from your breasts and your pussy and said “drink here” then I could fall in love with you. Because then I would have a purpose. To clean you up and that, that would prove that I’m worth something. I’d lick you clean so that you could go away and fuck someone else.

And the point of all that is what exactly?

Ben: Hi, Bill.
Bill [his boss]: Take a seat. Ben, we’re gonna let you go.
[he hands Ben an envelope]
Ben: This is too generous, Bill.
Bill: We really liked having you around, but you know how it is. I’m sorry. What are you gonna do now?
Ben: I thought…I thought I’d move out to Las Vegas.

Plenty of booze there, right?

Sera [to Ben]: Wow, what this room needs is more booze.

Wink, wink.

Sera: For 500 bucks, you can do pretty much whatever you want. You can fuck my ass.
Ben: Oh, my God!
Sera: You can come on my face.
Ben: Oh!
Sera: Whatever you want to do. Just keep it out of my hair. I just washed it.

Let's run this by Mary.

Sera: What’s the story? Are you too drunk to come?
Ben: I don’t care about any of that. There’s time left. You can have more money. You can drink all you want. Just stay. That’s what I want. I want you to talk or listen. Just stay.

So, she stays.

Sera: So, Ben with an “N”…what brings you to Las Vegas? Business convention?
Ben: No, I came here to drink myself to death. Cashed in all my money, paid my American Express card…gonna sell my car tomorrow.
Sera: So, how long will it take you to…drink yourself to death?
Ben: I think about four weeks.

But who's counting.

Sera: So why are you a drunk?
Ben: Why am I a drunk? Is that really what you wanna ask me?
Sera: Yes.
Ben: Well, then, this is our first date, or our last. Until now I wasn’t sure it was either.
Sera: First. It’s our first.

Though not many more to follow.

Sera: Is drinking a way of killing yourself?
Ben: Or, is killing myself a way of drinking?

Fortunately, dead is dead.

Ben: Don’t you think you’d get a little bored, living with a drunk?
Sera: Well… that’s what I want.
Ben: You haven’t seen the worst of it. I knock things over… throw up all the time. These past few days I’ve been very controlled. You’re like some sort of antidote that mixes with the liquor and keeps me in balance. But, that won’t last forever.

To say the least, for example.

Sera: Don’t you like me, Ben?
Ben: Sera…what you don’t understand is - no, see, no.
Sera: What?
Ben: You can never, never ask me to stop drinking. Do you understand?
Sera: I do. I really do.

And then she really didn't.

Ben [to Sera]: We both know that I’m a drunk. And I know you are a hooker. I hope you understand that I am a person who is totally at ease with that. Which is not to say that I’m indifferent or I don’t care, I do. It simple means that I trust and accept your judgment.
Sera: I was really worried about how that would be…but now I’m not. But you should know that included with the rent around here is a complimentary blow job.

Nothing like that here, I should point out.

Sera: I want you to see a doctor.
Ben: Sera, I’m not gonna see a doctor. Maybe it’s time I moved to a hotel.
Sera: And do what? Rot away in a room? We’re not gonna talk about that. Fuck you. You’re staying here. You’re not going to any motel. It’s just one thing you can do for me. That’s all I ask...You can do this one thing for me.

She's still deluding herself.

Ben: Perhaps I could crash on the couch for a few hours and then leave.
Sera: Get out.

He's gone.

Ben [to Sera as he is dying]: See how hard you make me, angel?

Powerfully pathetic, let's say.

Sera [to shrink]: I think the thing is we both realized that we didn’t have that much time, and I accepted him for who he was. I didn’t expect him to change. I think he felt that for me too. I liked his drama. And he needed me. I loved him. I really loved him.

Ah, to be needed again!

[iambiguous]

John Fowles from The Magus

Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish if we are to live in society. It is one I have long ago banished from my life. You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be.

Clearly enigmatic enough for most of us.

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope—an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

Like that will stop me.

The height the dupe has fallen is measured by his anger.

Hear! Hear!

“It is not the state of war that isolates. It is well known, it brings people together. But in the battlefield -- that is something different. Because that is when the real enemy, death, appears. I no longer saw any warmth in numbers. I saw only Thanatos in them, my death.

I get this actually.

She would give herself violently, then yawn at the wrongest moment. She would spend all one day cleaning up the flat, cooking, ironing. Then, pass the next three or four Boheminanly on the floor in front of the fire, reading Lear, women's magazines, a detective story, Hemingway. Not all at the same time, but bits of all in the same afternoon. She liked doing things, and only then finding a reason for doing them.

Alison. Back then.

Never take another human being literally. He added. Even when they are so ignorant that they don't know what 'literally' means.

We'll need a context to nail this one down. A whole bunch of them maybe.

[iambiguous]

It’s hard to believe the guy who directed this film was the one at the Republican National Convention…the one up on the stage talking to an empty chair. And not too many black folks out in the audience applauding him either. And the sound track was about as far removed from bebop as it could get.

Funny world, isn’t it?

Pain. And what to do about it. And here one size hardly ever fits all. And that [sometimes] is where the dope comes in. It just goes around and around when you’re in pain. If that’s the reason you use it. There’s always the part about the pleasure you get too. Again, you’d have to be him to really understand how all the variables fall into place. And he was, after all, a great “artist”. An innovator. For some that’s compensation enough. Bebop. It’s a whole other world for most of us. Disorienting, for example.

So, I’m in way over my head here. How close or how far it is from the “real thing”? I just don’t know. But there are always going to be the parts that, up to a point, we can recognize in the characters. The parts we wish we could be more like ourselves, the parts we’re eternally grateful we never will.

To wit: He’s brilliant. But’s he’s a real pain in the ass. Nobody interested in making money is willing to put up with all the shit they have to endure to employ him. And then there’s the law. They hound him for “fixing”. And the turmoil they cause in his life just makes him need a fix all the more. And then that’s before we get to all the stuff I can’t even think of.


Bird

Title card: “There are no second acts in American lives.” F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And then those with no acts at all.

Bird: Guess who stopped in tonight? My ulcers. I gave them some codeine but they wouldn’t go away.

And, of course, the equivalent of that all the way from head to toe.

Doctor [reading a chart]: “Case number 1540: Patient admitted to psychiatric at request of wife following suicide attempt by ingestion of iodine. Patient has a past history of, quote, nervous breakdown, unquote, for which he was hospitalized in California for 8 months. The wife says this attempt was related to depression over the recent death of their daughter and also by reverses in, quote, his career. End of quote.

But there's always the next one.

Chan [to Doctor]: When all else fails, what he’ll do is provoke a fight. If he can’t afford to get drunk, the substitute is pain. It takes his mind off things for a while. There was a time he could do that with conversation…but not since the ulcers stated bleeding.

Pain. That will fucking do it over and over and over again.

Chan: Well, there’s the suicide room.

How about one here?

Bird: There’s one night in my life I never want to forget. I never want to go through it again. I was 15…and I woke up feeling more pain than I’ve ever felt. I didn’t know why until somebody told me I was strung out. Somebody had to tell me that.

Strung out. Just for the record, "severely debilitated from alcohol or drugs". Or, sure, of course, from life itself.

Chan: What I mean by my type…
Bird: …is the type you don’t have to be faithful to.

On the other hand, does it work both ways?

Doctor [reading from Bird’s chart]: “Contibuting factors to patient’s nervous breakdown in California, winter 1946, were as follows: A: Disorientation due to unfamiliar surroundings. B: Disappointing public reaction, bordering on hostility, to patient’s particular style of music. C: Reduced availability of narcotics due to police crackdown.”

The worst of all possible worlds, let's call it.

Dizzy: I guess they weren’t quite ready to be invaded out here.
Bird: I thought we had a radio gig tomorrow.
Dizzy: We did, Yard, we did. But the station joined in the ban. “Bebop tends to pervert young minds.”
Bird: Who said that?
Dizzy: Somebody with enough juice to get 12 radio stations to turn us off.

"Bebop has roots in swing music and involves fast tempos, adventurous improvisation, complex harmonies and chord progressions, and a focus on individual virtuosity."

Enough said?

Esteves: Bird, you’re an alcoholic, you’re a junkie…and your mind is hanging by a fucking thread.

So play ball with the law.

Benny: What the fuck you want to go back to New York for?
Bird: Because.
Benny: “Because.” You know, I been here four years. I work ten months out of the year. More, if I want to. Go to Belgium, Holland, Sweden. You could do the same. You know, I don’t go for that shit you people play but over here they are crazy about it. Now you don’t get rich, but you live. And they treat you like a man.

Can you dig it?

Benny: Everybody says that what you do on the bandstand is great. You the man. Until you mess up. And you always mess up. You mess up over there, you’ll be in trouble so deep they won’t even let you play in the goddman place they named after you in the first place. Now, am I lying?

Next: you mess up here.

Bird: Oh, God. Red. Not you, man.
Red: Why not me?
Bird: If you want to play like Bird, you gotta shoot shit like Bird? Is that what you thought? Is that what they told you?
Red: I don’t remember.
Bird: No! No!
[he grabs him and pins him to the wall]
Bird: It don’t help, man. It don’t help. Don’t you know that?
Red: I know now.

When did it first occur to you?

Bird: Ain’t it a bitch? I go to a liver doctor and I pay him $50. And it don’t help me. I go to an ulcer doctor…same thing, except I pay him $75. But I go to some little cat up in a house somewhere and pay him $10 for a bag of shit and a little peace…my ulcers don’t hurt, liver don’t hurt. My heart trouble is gone. And this is the man I’m supposed to stay away from? Mr. Gillespie, my comrade in arms, that is what I call…a paradox.

Anyone here selling? What and how much?

Dizzy: No, no, what you’re really asking me is how come when I’m supposed to hit at 9:30, I hit at 9:30? How come I can land on a cat I love as much as I love you and then fire his ass for showing up late or stoned? Why I can hold a group together? Why I’m a leader?
Bird: Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.
Dizzy: Because they don’t expect me to be. Because, deep down, they like it if the n***** turns out unreliable. Because that’s the way they think it’s supposed to be. And because I won’t give them the satisfaction of being right.

Let's run this by the bigots here.

Dizzy: They gonna talk about you when you’re dead, Bird. More than they do now. They gonna shovel you under like they love to do. My secret? My secret is if they kill me…it won’t be because I helped them.

For starters, say.

Doctor [on the phone calling in Bird’s death]: Charles Christopher Parker, Junior. Preliminary diagnosis: heart attack. Stocky, male, negro. Approximately 65 years of age.
Baroness Nica: He was 34.

Tell me that doesn't speak volumes.

[iambiguous]

It would piss anyone off. You come up with a superior product and someone waltzes in from the outside and tries to take it all away from you. That it’s dope doesn’t make any difference, right? Well, except for the part about pursuing a legal recourse. Here you are more or less on your own. So, if you want it, you better have the balls to fight for it. Either that or secure script approval.

Drug wars.

Based on what I’ve seen in the media, some of the scariest people on earth are members of the drug cartels in Mexico. There is absolutely nothing they won’t do to anyone who gets inbetween them and their drug money. Nothing. And it is all made possible by an idotic drug policy that for all practical purposes both precipitates and then sustains it’s existence.

Ben is the Buddhist. Chon is the baddest. O is their Babe. But this ain’t the 1960s.

In this world, everything always revolves around options. And your capacity to make more. At least the part that isn’t in La La Land. And for all I know that’s most of it. At times it’s like watching cartoon characters. Or an episode of The A-Team. But then the part about the “savages” that run amok in the drug cartels isn’t. The only consolaton is that most of the mayhem is internecine.

What would it take to turn you into a savage? Well, let’s make a deal.

For legal reasons, all the marijuana plants in the film are artificial. The production designers visited legal medical marijuana growers to get the details right.

The character of Elena is loosely based on Mireya Moreno Carreon who’s known to be the first Mexican female boss cartel. IMDb


Savages

O [voice-over]: Just because I’m telling you this story doesn’t mean I’m alive at the end of it. This could all be pre-recorded and I could be talking to you from the bottom of the ocean. Yeah, it’s that kind of a story. Because things just got so out of control.

Of course, for some, that's the whole point.

O [voiceover]: Chon is a killer. Two tours. Iraq, Afghanistan. And he came back with a Iot of cash, but no soul. He’s always trying to fuck the war out of himself. I have orgasms. He has war-gasms.

I had them once myself. Unless they were actually something else.

O [looking at a man walking amidst severed heads]: Is that Iraq?
Chon: No, Mexico.

No sweat though. Trump will soon put them all out of business.

Ben [to Chon]: That was Mexico, this is Laguna. The cops here wear shorts and ride bicycles.

Let's explain that.

Chon: Last chance Ben. You let people think you’re weak, sooner or later you have to kill them.
Ben: Buddha would not agree.
Chon: What does a fat Jap know?
Ben: He’s a fat Indian.

[i[Was anyway. Now he's Mr. Nirvana.[/i][/i]

Chon [to the cartel rep]: I think, basically, you want us to eat your shit and call it caviar.

Or else?

Elena: May I ask you how long have you been using, Ophelia?
O: Since the eighth grade.
Elena: And you’re wondering why you’re having concentration problems?

Using what, you might wonder. But not for long.

Elena [to O]: And my daughter, she’s ashamed of me. And I am proud of her for it.

She’s…deep.

Elena [to O about Ben and Chon]: There’s something wrong with your love story, baby. They may love you, but they will never love you as much as they love each other.

The usual, in other words.

Chon: So, I read up on your Buddha. According to the Dalai Lama, if you are in a position to prevent greater violence, strike first and strike fast. Alex kidnapped people, Ben. He had people tortured and killed.
Ben: So have we.

Savages let's call them.

Chon [to Ben]: You’re already dead. You’re dead from the moment you’re born. If you can accept that, you can accept anything.

Another really deep dude. Though, sure, point taken.

O [voiceover]: That’s how I imagined it went down, but the truth has an imagination of its own. What really happened was more of a fuck-up than a shoot-out.

If it really happened at all, let's say.

O [voice-over]: I looked up the definition of the word savage. It means cruel, crippled, regressed back to a primal state of being. One day, maybe, we’ll be back. For now, we live like savages… beautiful savages.

If she says so herself.

[iambiguous]

Here we go again: Dopes doing the dope. Dopes selling the dope. Dopes coming up with the policies to stop them. Dopes in the White House for example.

It’s been a great success so far, hasn’t it?

Or, as Nino puts it:

"I’m not guilty. You’re the one that’s guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You’re the one who’s guilty. I mean, c’mon, let’s kick the ballistics here: Ain’t no Uzi’s made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way."

Of course he’s guilty as hell for the part he plays.

Meanwhile the economic policy of the folks in the government revolve largely around exporting living wage jobs and creating the conditions that all but guarentee more dope use. But fuck it…it’s them not us.

Is the lesson learned or is it just the opposite: I want to be like these, dudes, man! But this is basically what most folks imagine when they think of this shit. Nothing like L.A. “hoods” at all. Though, basically, it’s exactly the same thing. It’s Scarface wannabes here, Scarface wannabes there. Say hello to my little friend.

The good, the bad and the ugly. They come in all colors here.

And not a single use of the N-word. Or none that I recall.

Story is largely based on a real-life Detroit gang known as The Chambers Brothers. Writer Barry Michael Cooper got the idea for the film after visiting Detroit and learning about the gang’s exploits.

On Inside the Actors Studio, Chris Rock claimed that for several years following his acclaimed performance as a crack addict, drug dealers would approach him and put crack and cocaine in his pocket; joking that “they thought it was a documentary.” He stated that, although he knew people who used crack at the time, he never did and, in his 1997 memoir “Rock This” had only smoked marijuana twice. IMDb


New Jack City

Nino [just before sending a man to his death]: Money talks, and bullshit runs a marathon. So, see ya and I wouldn’t want to be ya.

A "hood" thing? Sure, let's call it that and move on.

Nino: Yeah, we takin’ over the Carter. We gon’ bum rush the whole damn thing. Now if the tenants cooperate, oh, it’ll be lovely. They’ll be loyal customers, if not, fuck it, it’ll be like in Beirut, they’ll be live-in hostages.

A "hood" thing? Sure, let's call it that and move on.

Nino: You must like slumming, Kareem. Why would a high-class guy like you leave a good computer job at the bank come all the way uptown by gypsy cab to work among a den of thieves?
Kareem: I’m no dummy. It’s basic common sense and arithmetic. The difference between them paying me $800 a week and you paying me $8,000 a week.
Selina: I find my cousin also likes the fact that you’re in the tradition of Joe Kennedy.
Nino: Good. Cause you gotta rob to get rich in the Reagan era. They running a strange program. More poor and disenfranchised folks than this place has ever seen. They try to act like it don’t exist. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor don’t get a thing. Times like these, people want to get high. Real high and real fast.

Let's fit Trump into all of this now.

Stone: We need some evidence. Evidence of murder, drug trafficking, racketeering, tax evasion. Anything. We’ve never been able to make anything stick on Brown.
Scotty: No shit. 1/3 of the department’s on Nino’s payroll. The other 2/3s don’t care unless it affects their community.

So, what did they manage to stick on you?

Scotty [watching Nino and his gang play Black Panthers]: Nino’s trying to purchase a conscience. I ain’t buying this Robin Hood bullshit.

That won't stop them from selling it, of course. And there are suckers born every minute.

Pooky [to Scotty]: They got that shit hooked up like Mission Impossible, man!

Or Mission Ridiculous?

Pooky [about the room used for freebasing]: They call it the Enterprise Room, man, because it’s for people who wanna be beamed up to Scotty.

Or beamed down to all this shit.

Nick [to Scotty arguing with Stone]: Excuse me, is this one of those black things?

And, for some, what can't that be?

G-Money [aloud to himself and a crack pipe]: What G-Money has brought together let no man put asunder. I now pronounce us man and wife. You may kiss the bride.

Repeat as necessary. At least until, well, you know.

Stone [to Scotty]: The operation was a failure. We didn’t arrest anyone. No one, man. We didn’t get any evidence. Nothing. No financial records, nothing. We still could be out there fighting scum like Nino Brown…except for two things: I gambled on you, and you gambled on a crackhead.

He wondered: what is there a philosophical equivalent of a crackhead?

Scotty: Operation’s gone, Nino’s loose, Pookie’s dead. I got Pookie killed, man.
Nick: Cut out this self-pitying shit about you killing Pookie. If anyone killed him it was me. I could see it.
Scotty: How the hell you gonna to tell me you killed Pookie?
Nick: Do you remember when you said I didn’t care? When what the hell was I doing at Pookie’s funeral anyway? Remember? I used to be Pookie.
Scotty: How the hell you used to be Pookie?
Nick: I was poor white-trash Pookie. This whole drug shit, it’s not a black thing, it’s not a white thing. It’s a death thing. Death don’t give a shit about color. You don’t have to like me. Hell, I don’t even know if I like you. But we’re in this together now, partner.
Scotty: You know, a drug dealer is the worst kind of brother. He won’t sell it to his sister, he won’t sell it to his mother. But he’ll sell it to one of his boys in the street. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to kill Nino Brown. Are you with me?
Nick: I’m ahead of you.

Just out of curiosity, who wouldn't you sell it to?

Nino: When I was young, I was a member of this gang called the L.A. Boys.
Scotty [working undercover]: Lennox Ave.
Nino: You know it. The leader, Jughead, told me to prove my loyalty, I had to snuff somebody out. It was like, “No problem.” I said, “An enemy?” He said, “No, that’s too easy.” “It’s got to be an ordinary mo.” So I rode down the road. Copped me a bag of that Red Devil angel dust. I got so zooted. I walked up on this lady. She must have been a schoolteacher or something. I was so fucking crazy, man, I didn’t even care. I stepped to her. I didn’t even stay to see her body drop. I just ran.

Is there anyone here who does not believe this happens all the time in neighborhoods nowhere near to their own?

Nino: He used you, G. What ever happened to, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
G-Money: You know what happened to it. “The world is mine.” Remember that? “Everything is mine. Everything"

So, where would you fit yourself in here?

[iambiguous]

Yuval Noah Harari

“But the most important finding of all is that happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.”

And, really, how complicated can that be?

The Scientific Revolution has not been a revolution of knowledge. It has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery that launched the Scientific Revolution was the discovery that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.

Comforting enough for you?

You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins.

Not good, I'm guessing.

Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.

Objectivist myths, let's call them.

In fact, monotheism, as it has played out in history, is a kaleidoscope of monotheist, dualist, polytheist and animist legacies, jumbling together under a single divine umbrella. The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It’s called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion.

Anyone here know for sure?

There is some evidence that the size of the average Sapiens brain has actually decreased since the age of foraging. Survival in that era required superb mental abilities from everyone. When agriculture and industry came along people could increasingly rely on the skills of others for survival, and new ‘niches for imbeciles’ were opened up. You could survive and pass your unremarkable genes to the next generation by working as a water carrier or an assembly-line worker.

"Niches for imbeciles". Let's just leave it at that.

[iambiguous]

American youth culture. Sometimes it’s just mindless. But sometimes it can be mindless…and downright dangerous. Especially when you are around those of the male gender. And guess what? There is dope [and dopes] everywhere here too!

This is based on a true story. It’s the one here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of ... _Markowitz

But these kids aren’t exactly in the same boat as the folks from New Jack City. They are all white. And most of their families are smack dab in the middle of the upper middle class.

Like father, like son?

These are the kind of kids [boys] who spend their days watching hip-hop videos. They need to keep track of what’s “cool”. Dope is cool. Guns are cool. Bling is cool. Booty is cool. Violence is cool. Then the “bitches” just go along with it. It’s so sub-mental you can’t quite wrap your mind around it. How could kids fall for this shit?!! But there it is.

And, sure enough, there’s a poster of Scarface on Johnny’s wall.

And the kid they kidnap…Zack…all he wants to be is just like them!


Alpha Dog

Sonny: You wanna know what this is all about? You can say it’s about drugs or guns or disaffected youth, or whatever you like. But this whole thing is about parenting. It’s about taking care of your children. You take care of yours, I take care of mine.

Think Less Than Zero on steroids here.

Interviewer: Your son was a drug dealer?
Sonny: A drug dealer? No. Did he sell a little weed? Yeah.
Interviewer: A little weed? He was a major supplier to the San Gabriel Valley.

Let's split the difference.

Frankie: Will you watch the kid for me for a little while?
Keith: Watch him?
Frankie: Yeah. Keep an eye on him. No phones and no leaving him alone.
Keith: No phones? l don’t get it.
Frankie: All right, look. lf l tell you something, can you keep your fucking mouth shut? The kid’s older brother owes Truelove money and Johnny’s holding him like a marker or something, until he gets paid.
Keith: That’s fucked up.
Frankie: No. No, bitch, it’s not like that. The kid knows what’s happening, and he’s cool with it. l mean, look at the motherfucker. He ain’t going nowhere.

Doesn't want to in other words. Doesn't mean though he really knows what's happening.

Tiffaney: Whoa, you guys, dude, what’s going on?
Susan: This kid has been kidnapped!
Keith: No, he hasn’t!
Tiffaney: You mean like ‘‘abducted’’ kidnapped? Fucking stolen!
Susan: Ask him.
Zack: Yeah. Yeah, they took me. But it’s okay.
Tiffaney: They took you? Why?
Susan: Because his scumbag brother owes Johnny Truelove money.
Keith: Shut up!
Julie: Whoa! That’s fucking hot.
Tiffaney: Dude, so you’re like ransom or something.
Julie: Yeah. Stolen boy.
Tiffaney: Yeah. You don’t look stolen.
Zack: Yeah. l know. lt’s weird.

But no where near as weird as it's going to be.

Susan: But the kid has been kidnapped!
Tiffaney: Dude, that’s so fucking cool.
Susan: Dude, this shirt is fucking cool, Bob Marley is cool, you guys think that kidnapping is cool?
Tiffaney: Yes, Susan, I think this is so exciting. I think it’s romantic. He’s doing this for his brother!
Zack: Susan, chill out!
Susan: It’s wrong, it’s wrong! Am I the only fucking person who thinks this is fucking wrong?

Some are at least cconfused about it.

Johnny [to Frankie]: I want to ask you something. Hypothetically, all right? This isn’t real, right? We’re just talking here. But…What would you say if l were to offer you $2,500 just to kill the kid?

He'd probably pay Johnnie $2,500 to kill him.

Jake [on the phone with Johnny]: It was you. I know it was you who took him. No matter where you go, No matter what you do, I’m gonna hunt you down. I’m gonna hunt you down and then I’m gonna slit your throat and then I’m gonna cut you open and then I’M GONNA EAT YOUR MOTHER FUCKING HEART! YOU BETTER YOU PRAY, JOHNNY YOU BETTER FUCKING PRAY THAT THE COPS FIND YOU, BEFORE I DO! GET ON YOUR COCKSUCKING KNEES AND PRAY!

Nope, didn't work.

Johnny [on phone]: Question for you. Let’s say, someone owes someone I know money and won’t pay. So that someone I know has his boys snatch the deadbeat’s kid brother till does he does pay. What kind of problems is he looking at?
Lawyer: Big ones. If he asks for ransom he’s looking at life.

And if he kills him?

Frankie: Yesterday Johnny offered me 2,500 bucks to kill the kid.
Susan: What?
Frankie: Right. Kill him.
Susan: Oh, Jesus.

Should we really bring Him into all this?

Frankie: Ain’t no fucking way, Elvis. I’m not digging. Fuck you! I did my shit. This is the line, motherfucker! Everybody’s got one and mine’s a fucking grave, all right?

Elvis Schmidt. Now he's one scary motherfucker. If you get my drift.

Keith [to Elvis]: What the fuck do you need duct tape for, Dude?

I already guessed why myself.

Cosmo: Let the spooks do the hard time, Johnny…call it off.

You know, if that's now even possible with mindless lackeys like Elvis Schmidts around.

Elvis: If the kid goes home, everybody’s looking at life.
Frankie: Life?
Elvis: Life. We talked to a lawyer, man, and there’s no way around it.
Frankie: Life for what? For taking care of the kid? For letting him sleep at my fucking house?
Elvis: You were there from square one. You sat on him the whole fucking time. You think you’re going to walk?
Frankie: Goddamn. Life?
Elvis: There it is.
Frankie: I like the kid.
Elvis: What’s not to like? He’s 15. He’s just too much of a liability.

No, really, almost everyone of them really did like the guy.

Interviewer: About the funeral? Jake didn’t show?
Zack’s mom: No. Oh, he said it was out of respect for me. That’s a crock. He just didn’t want to get hit. l’m sorry, l don’t understand. Shot. Killed. Murdered. l happen to know he owes $50,000 to one drug dealer. They have their own rules in the drug world. They killed my son for $1,200.

And change?

Interviewer: Somebody had to help him get out of the country. Somebody has to be sending him money.
Sonny: I do not know where my son is. And if I knew, you think I’d tell you and this fucking camera?
Cosmo: I think he’s lost.
Sonny: I think he’s right. I mean, I ain’t seen him. He ain’t here. He must be lost. Now get the fuck out of my house.

But then 5 years later he [Jesse James Hollywood] was found. In Paraguay. He is now in prison serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.