Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

In all honesty, I wouldn’t have a clue as to how to interact around folks like these. The only things I care much to talk about and do these days wouldn’t be of much interest to them and the stuff they tend to go on and on and on regarding doesn’t hold much interest for me. I’m glad there are folks out there like this able to find other folks like that to form friendships with; and I sure as shit would never suggest their lives are less important to them than my life is to me. But there are just gulfs between folks that can be bridged and gulfs that cannot. It’s entirely existential.

The fact that they would release someone like Karl from the “nervous hospital” when he has absolutely no one outside he can turn to for help speaks volumes in and of itself. But this is the rural South.

Then there’s Doyle. Not just, “a close-minded redneck, but a monster”. Some folks might see him as all that’s wrong with the world. A bully with the brains of a flea. But we never really do get to find out why he is the way he is—just that he’s had “a real hard life”. And we do get a peek or two at the times when he isn’t an asshole. But someone like him in a small town can make life a living hell for others. There’s always the threat of an explosion when he’s around. And maybe something ought to be done about it. That’s partly what this film is all about.

Of course, it might just make more sense to have nothing to do with them. Move out of the small town. Get yourself an education. Interact with folks considerably more substantial and sophisticated. Let folks like this be our…entertainment? That’s not an option for Karl though. Or for Frankie.

On the other hand [and for all I know] Karl is meant to embody the second coming of Christ. But you’ll have to ask Billy Bob about that though.

In order to make his walk more awkward and consistent, Billy Bob Thornton placed crushed glass in his shoes.

Billy Bob Thornton said he wrote the role of Vaughan Cunningham specifically for his good friend John Ritter.

When Doyle tells Linda that “retards” make him sick, he adds that the same is true for antique furniture and midgets. Billy Bob Thornton has been quoted as saying that two of his phobias are antique furniture and midgets. IMDb


Sling Blade

Charles Bushman [to Karl]: A Mercury is a good car. That’s the car I was driving that day. I’ve had a lot of cars. Different kinds. Lot’s of different kinds of cars. She was standing - this girl - on the side of the street where there was this chicken stand, wasn’t the Colonel but it was a chicken stand nonetheless. I pulled the Mercury up right along side her and rolled down the window, see, by electric power. She had on a leather skirt and had a lot of hair on her arms. I like that a lot. That means a big bush. I like a big bush. She says, “Are you dating?” You know, so I said, “Sure”. She gets in and we pull off to a remote location that was comfortable for both she and I. She says, “How much do you wanna spend?”, I said, “Whatever it will take to see that bush of yours because I know it’s a big one”. She says, “Twenty five dollars”. That’s not chicken feed to a working man so I produce the $25, she puts it in her shoe, pulls up her skirt and there before me lay this thin, crooked, uncircumcised penis.
[Scoffs]
Bushman: You can imagine how bad I wanted my $25 back, huh?

Oh, yeah.

Karl: I reckon what yousa wantin’ to know is why I’m in here. Reckon the reason I’m in here is cause I’ve killed somebody, mhm. But I reckon what yousa wantin’ to know is how come mea killed somebody, so I’ll start at the front and tell ye, mhm… I lived out back of my mother and father’s place mosta my life in a little old shed that my daddy had built fur me, mhm. They didn’t too much want me up there in the house with the rest of ‘em, mhm. So mustley I just sat around out there in the shed and looked at the ground, mhm. I didn’t have no floor out there, but I had me a hole dug out to lay down in. Quilt or two tu put down there, mhm. My father was a hard workin’ man most of his life. Not that I can say the same for myself. I mostly just sat around out there in the shed, tinkerin’ with a lawn mower or two. Went to school off and on from time to time, but the children out there, very cruel to me, made quite a bit a sport of me, make fun of me quite a bit. So mostly, I just sat around out there. In the shed. My daddy worked down there at the saw mill, the plainer mill, for an old man named Dixon. Old man Dixon was very cruel feller. Didn’t treat his employees very well, didn’t pay ‘em too much a wage, didn’t pay my daddy too much a wage. Just barely enough to get by on, I reckon, mhm. But I reckon he got by alright. Hmm. I used to come out, one or the other of ‘em. Usually my mother, feed me pretty regular, mhm. I know he made enough where I could have mustard and biscuits three or four times a week. Mhm. But old man Dixon, he had a boy. His name was Jesse Dixon. Jesse was really more cruel than his daddy was. He used to make quite a bit a sport with me, when i was down there at the school house. he used to take advantage of little girls there in the neighborhood an’ all. He used to say that my mother was a very pretty woman. He said that quite a bit from time to time when I’d be down there at the school house. Well… I reckon you want me tu get on with it and tell you what happened, so I reckon I’ll tell ye. I was sittin’ out there in the shed one evening, not doin’ too much of nothin’, just starrin’ at the wall, waitin’ on my mother to come out and give me my Bible lesson. Mhm. Well, I heard a commotion up there in the house. Mhm. So I run up on the screened-in porch to see what was a-goin’ on. I looked in the window there and saw my mother layin’ on the floor without any clothes on, hmm. Mhm-hmm. I seen Jesse Dixon layin’ on top of her, hmm. He was havin’ his way with her. Hmm. Well, I just seen red. I picked up a Kaiser Blade that was sittin’ there by the screen door. Some folks call it a Sling Blade, I call it a Kaiser Blade. It’s kindly a wood handle, kind of like an axe handle. With a long blade on it shaped kinda like a bananer. Mhm. Sharp on one edge, and dull on the other. Mhm. It’s what the highway boys use to cut down weeds and whatnot. Well, I went in there, in the house, and I hit Jesse Dixon upside the head with it, knocked him off my mother, mhm. I reckon that didn’t quite satisfy me. So I hit him again with it in the neck, the sharp edge, and just plumb near cut his head off, killed him. My mother she jumped up and started hollerin’ “What’d you kill Jesse fur? What’d you kill Jesse fur?” Well… come to find out I don’t think my mother minded what Jesse was a-doin’ to her. I reckon that made me madder that what Jesse’d made me. So I take the Kaiser Blade, some folks call it a Sling Blade, I call it a Kaiser Blade, and I hit my mother upside the head with it. Killed her.

Well, click, of course.

Frank [to Karl]: Vaughan’s real good to Mama. Vaughan that you met? But he’s not able to do anything to Doyle. He’s funny. Not “funny,” ha-ha. “Funny,” queer. He likes to go with men. That makes him not able to fight good, but he sure is nice. He’s from St. Louis. Queer people get along better in a big town. I wish he like to go with women. I’d rather him be Mama’s boyfriend than Doyle.

Of course, he's just a kid.

Doyle: Hey is this the kind of retard that drools and rubs shit in his hair and all that, ‘cause I’m gonna have a hard time eatin’ 'round that kind of thing now. Just like I am with antique furniture and midgets. You know that, I can’t so much as drink a damn glass of water around a midget or a piece of antique furniture.
Linda: Doyle, you’re awful. You shouldn’t be that way.
Doyle: I ain’t saying it’s right, I’m just telling the damn truth. He’ll make me sick. I know it.

Of course: dasein. And then some.

Karl [eating potted meat]: I reckon it tastes alright.
Frank: You really think it’s got peckers in there?
Karl: You know better than that. You ought not say that word.
Frank: It smells funny.
Karl: Yeah, it’s a little loud. Looky there. I believe you’re right. I believe I see one right in there.
[They laugh]

Next up: the peckers here.

Vaughan: I’m just going to say it. I’m gay. Does that surprise you that I’m gay? You know what gay is, don’t you?
Karl: I don’t reckon.
Vaughan [quietly]: Homosexual. I like men sexually.
Karl: Not funny ‘ha-ha’, funny queer.
Vaughan: Well that’s a very offensive way to put it. You shouldn’t say that. You were taught that, weren’t you?
Karl: I’ve heard it said that a-way.

In fact, it's been said in many different ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_slang

Doyle [to Vaughan and Karl]: Hey! I said get out of my house! That goes for cocksuckers and retards!

Let's run this by Popeye.

Frank: You ever have any brothers or sisters growing up?
Karl: I had one there for a little while. But, uh, it didn’t get old enough for me to play with it.
Frank: Why not? It die?
Karl: Yes, Sir.
Frank: Why?
Karl: It got born too early. My mother and father made it come out too early some how or other.
Frank: So it died when it came out?
Karl: My daddy came out to the shed and got me. He said, “Here, take this and throw it away”, and he handed me a towel with something or another in it. Well I started for that barrel and I opened up the towel ‘cause there was a noise. Something a-moving around in there. The towel was all bloody-like all around it there. It was a lil’ ol’ baby not no bigger than a squirrel.
Frank: It was alive?
Karl: Right then it was.
Frank: A girl or a boy?
Karl: It was a little ol’ boy.
Frank: You threw it in the trash barrel?
Karl: Well that didn’t seem right to me, so I went in the shed and got me a shoe box and emptied out all the washers and nuts and screws and whatnot that were in it and I takened the little fellar and put him inside the box and buried him right there in a corner of the yard. That seemed more proper to me, I reckon.
Frank: Was it still alive when you buried it?
Karl: I heared it a-cryin’ through that box.
Frank: That don’t seem right. Seems like you would have kept him and taken care of him if he was your brother.
Karl: I wasn’t but 6 or 8. I don’t reckon I knew what to do. I didn’t know how to care for no baby. My mother and father didn’t want him and they learned me to do what they told me. These days I reckon it’s better to give him back to the Good Lord anyhow.

The Good Lord?

Father: I told you I ain’t got no boy. Get on out of here and let me be. You ain’t no kin to me.
Karl: I learned to read some. I read the Bible quite a bit. I can’t understand all of it. But I reckon I understand a good deal of it. Them stories you and Mama told me, they ain’t in there. You ought not done that to your boy. I studied on killing you. I studied about it quite a bit. But I reckon there’s no need for it if all you’re gonna do is sit there in that chair. You’ll be dead soon enough. And the world’ll be shut of you. You ought not to have kill my little brother.

Talk about beyond good and evil.

Doyle: What are you doing with that damn hammer?
Karl: I don’t rightly know. I just kinda woke up holding it.

Just out of curiosity, what have you kinda woke up holding?

Karl [to Vaughan]: Bible says two men ought not lay together. But I bet you the good Lord wouldn’t send nobody like you to Hades.

Let's run this by IC.

Doyle: Didn’t I tell you to get moved out of here?
Karl: How does a feller go about getting hold of the police?
Doyle: Use the f****** phone, I guess.
Karl: Which numbers do you put in?
Doyle: Can’t you see I’m trying to relax? I thought I told you to get out of here and leave me alone. What’cha doin’ with that lawn mower blade?
Karl: I aim to kill you with it.
Doyle: Well, to call the police, you push 911…then just tell 'em to bring an ambulance, or a hearst if you’re gonna kill me.

Actually...

Karl [on the phone]: Yes, ma’am. I’ve killed Doyle Hargraves with a lawnmower blade. Mhm. Yes, ma’am, I’m right sure of it. I hit him two good whacks in the head with it. That second one just plum near cut his head in two…It’s a lil’ ol’ white house on the corner of Vine Street and some other street. There’s a pick-up truck out front that says “Doyle Hargraves Construction” on it. Doyle said besides sending the police, you might wanna send an ambulance or a hearst. I’ll be sitting here, waiting on ye. Thank ye.

Mm-hmm.

[iambiguous]

Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Listen to what is being preached today. Look at everyone around us. You've wondered why they suffer, why they seek happiness and never find it. If any man stopped and asked himself whether he's ever held a truly personal desire, he'd find the answer. He'd see that all his wishes, his efforts, his dreams, his ambitions are motivated by other men. He's not really struggling even for material wealth, but for the second-hander's delusion - prestige. A stamp of approval, not his own. He can find no joy in the struggle and no joy when he has succeeded. He can't say about a single thing: 'This is what I wanted because I wanted it, not because it made my neighbors gape at me'. Then he wonders why he's unhappy.

Of course, that's still going on. Well, unless Schopenhauer's assessment of human wants, uh, trumps it?

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.

Good points, of course. At least until they become all but irrelevant. Or hopelessly embedded in confliciting goods.

There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.

Next up: Maia weighs in here.

...Integrity is the ability to stand by an idea.

Like, for instance, Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin stood by their own? All the way to the gulags or the gas chambers? Or Ayn Rand excommunicating those who refused to share her own ideas. If only about everything, for example.

Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.

No, really, are there any Objectivists here? Let's explore the nature of human identity on another thread.

But I don't think of you: https://youtu.be/Q_E0tfoDSEA?si=i2qgVjHUVKNh3fUw

On the contrary, that is often all the Ayn Randroids ever think about.

[iambiguous]

A docudrama based on actual events.

Imagine it. Your wife has just died. You call 911. The police arrive and, along with your wife’s dead body, they find these petri dishes that you use in your art. Next thing you know [in the post 9/11 world] you are arrested and charged with being a bio-terrorist!

The important thing to note is that Steve Kurtz is a member of an art ensemble that aims to expose what they construe to be instances of social injustice…and then seek to change things. So, for the reactionaries in power [during the Bush/Cheney administration], they were fair game. And imagine their fate under Trump.

Now, it’s not as though their bona fides as actual artists could ever be questioned. They published 5 books and had mounted art exhibitions around the globe. And they worked closely with any number of reputable scientists so that their art was rooted in assessment that could be defended as more than just an exercise in aesthetics.

But their ideas were, you know, radical. So, of course, they had to be hounded by the folks behind the Patriot Act. “Terrorism” being just the bogus facade here.


Strange Culture

Keith Obermann [from Countdown]: Like many an unfortunate drama, the story begins with a death. Steve Kurtz called 911 early on the morning of May 11th, after his wife suffered cardiac arrest and died in her sleep. When police arrived on the scene they saw not a 45-year old woman claimed well before her time, but rather petri dishes and sophisticated scientific equipment…Through his grief Steve Kurtz explained it was part of an art exhibit about genetically altered food. Unconvinced the police in Buffalo called the joint terrorism task force. Soon it was not only police searching his home but FBI agents in Haz-Mat suits…Mr Kurtz was detained, his home, his entire block sealed off for 36 hours and then along with his computers and art supplies they took his wife’s body.

Cue the f****** deep state! Right Rachel?

Title card: Steve Kurtz is unable to comment on events that occured immediately prior to his arrest. Actors have interpreted his story.

Next up: cue dasein. So that, among other things, we can interpret them.

Kurtz: What Critical Art Ensemble does is to identify things that we think are counter to the advancment of social justice and then try to do something about it. The CAE has focused on the way that the government, the military, science and industry have come together in ways that don’t do the public any good.

My guess: it does them considerably good.

Kurtz: It’s not what most people normally think of as art. We make art that questions the relationship between art commerce and bio-technology.

Yeah, normally, they think of, say, the Mona Lisa?

Kurtz [teaching a class]: Maybe we’re all becoming mutant humans in order to survive in a culture that has become The Monster. At one time…we liked to think we controlled our own identity…but I think we are beginning to realize that all of that is now part of a web that is political and social and economic networks.

Well, most here are familiar with my own rendition of this: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... s#p2187045

Kurtz: By the time it got to the Department of Justice, then there’s not any doubt that they were trying to manufacture a crime and were trying to reconstruct me into something I completely wasn’t.

The whole point being to pummel the public once again with “proof” that the terrorists were out there and that they should be very afraid. And since the “bio-terrorist” case was so flmsy the FBI tried to show that he might also be a sex deviant or a drug dealer or out to kill the president. It was all one attempt to entrap him after another. The idea was to send a message to the art world: We can come after you too.

Peter Boyle [speaking for Dr. Robert Ferrell]: From the beginning of the whole affair I saw myself simply as collateral damage. From the start the FBI seemed to be interested in Steve’s politics. I got the impression that they were against the activities of the art ensemble and this was a way to get him. Steve has an idea that they want to frighten anyone including scientists who question what is going on in this country.

Watch all that explode in about a month.

[iambiguous]

The sort of movie some will watch and think, “if only everyone could see this fim there would be no more wars”.

Or Nazis?

It breaks your heart, sure, but it’s no where near close to being that. It’s as though to suggest that kids see things straight, stripped of all the bullshit that is ideology and propaganda. Yet however much truth there is in that it doesn’t dissolve the factors rooted in political economy…or the complex manner in which human nature and nurture combine to create points of view that easily become entangled. If only by making conflicting assumptions regarding the premises used. Or the contradictory manner in which we can argue the parameters of concepts like justice, fairness, progress or human rights.

But the extent to which folks are able to grasp the ramifications of events like this, it can only aid and abet those trying to ameliorate the more egregious aspects of human interaction.

As with Life Is Beautiful, this film was criticized by some for “glossing over and trivializing” the true horrors of the Holocaust. Some argued in turn that the sympathy seemed aimed more in the direction of the few “good Germans” than toward the victims in the camp.

Look for Johnny. You can scarcely believe it’s him.

Although the concentration camp where the movie is set is never actually mentioned by name throughout the movie, we know it is Auschwitz because it was the only Nazi death camp with 4 crematoria. The SS officers are discussing the building’s construction in the Commandant’s office when Bruno’s mother interrupts the meeting. In the book it is referred to as “Out-With” (coming from the P.O.V. of Bruno, who is only nine years old and can’t pronounce some words properly).

In regards to shooting the final scene, director Mark Herman remarked “it was a nightmare on many levels. We probably had more lawyers than filmmakers. We had all of the legalities of kids in amongst grown-up naked people.” IMDb


The Boy In the Stripped Pajamas.

Title card: “Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows.” John Betjeman

Reason qua ideology, for instance.

Grandma: I sometimes wonder if this is all down to me, making you those costumes for your little plays when you were tiny. You used to adore all that dressing up. Does it still make you feel special, Ralph dear? The uniform… and what it stands for?
Father: Mother. It’s a party. Let’s not spoil it.
Grandma: Ha! Me? Spoil things?
Father [whisper]: You should be careful. Airing your views so publicly could land you in trouble. You know that.

Let's see if Donald can trump that over here.

Bruno [to his mother after first seeing Pavel]: See, I told you the farmers were strange. They all wear pajamas.

Yep, even the tiny tots.

Bruno [to Shumel]: It’s not fair. Me being stuck by myself out here while you’re over there, playing with friends all day.

Uh, little does he know. let's say.

Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day?
Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.
Bruno: The soldiers? Why?
Shumel: I don’t know. I don’t like soldiers, do you?
Bruno: My dad’s a soldier, but not the sort that takes people’s clothes away for no reason.

Uh, little does he know. let's say.

Bruno: Is your dad a farmer?
Shumel: No, he’s a watchmaker. Or he was. Most of the time now, he just mends boots.
Bruno: It’s funny how grown-ups can’t make their minds up about what they want to do. It’s like Pavel. He used to be a doctor once, but gave it all up to peel potatoes.

Uh, little does he know. let's say.

Bruno: What do you burn in those chimneys? I saw them going the other day. Is it just lots of hay and stuff?
Shumel: I don’t know. We’re not allowed over there. Mama says it’s old clothes.
Bruno: Well, whatever it is, it smells horrid.

Uh, little does he know. let's say.

Bruno [after Gretel reads a lesson from their tutor of propaganda about “the Jew”]: I don’t understand. One man caused all this trouble?

That's one spin, anyway.

Shmuel: I wish you’d remembered the chocolate.
Bruno: Yes, I’m sorry. I know! Perhaps you can come and have supper with us sometime.
Shmuel: I can’t, can I? Because of this.
[points the electric fence]
Bruno: But that’s to stop the animals getting out, isn’t it?
Shmuel: Animals? No, it’s to stop people getting out.
Bruno: Are you not allowed out? Why? What have you done?
Shmuel: I’m a Jew.

For one thing, that might explain the stripped pajamas.

Bruno: There is such thing as a nice Jew, though, isn’t there?
Herr Liszt [the tutor]: I think, Bruno, if you ever found a nice Jew, you would be the best explorer in the world.

Next up: a nice nazi.

Lt. Kotler: They smell worse when they burn, don’t they?

Little does he know, this time. Let alone Mom and Dad.

[iambiguous]

Blindness

“Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.” Margaret Cho

Her inner beauty for sure.

“Nothing is easier than self-deceit.
For what every man wishes,
that he also believes to be true.” Demosthenes

Blinded by the light, let's say.

“Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.” Sheri S. Tepper

Next up: the blind leading the blind.

“...blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.” José Saramago

See what he means?

“We scarcely know how much of our pleasure and interest in life comes to us through our eyes until we have to do without them; and part of that pleasure is that the eyes can choose where to look. But the ears can't choose where to listen.” Ursula K. Le Guin

On the other hand: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=total+sound+ ... oc4en2ll_b

“That we're going to die is something we know from the moment we are born, That's why, in some ways, it's as if we were born dead.” José Saramago

That's what religion is for thank God.

[promethean75]

"Blinded by the light"

Revved up like a deuce another runner in the night?

[iambiguous]

Is this a true story? Depends on who you ask:

Author Lorenzo Carcaterra has claimed that his book on which the film is based was a true story of his childhood. When the New York legal community went on record stating that no cases resembling the events of his book could be found in any court records, Carcaterra refused to discuss the discrepancy. His claims have been neither proven nor disproven. IMDb

Here’s one account: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/07/book ... ended.html

Even if it is not though, it’s a safe bet that somewhere out there in our “criminal justice system” stuff like this has happened. And stuff like this is still happening. All you really need is a world where lots and lots of men reside. Especially if they have dicks.

Hell’s Kitchen. As a kid I always thought how “neat” it would be to say that’s where I came from: “I was born and raised on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen…so don’t fuck with me.” Encompassing, in other words, all that is good, bad and ugly about growing up in the belly of the working class beast. Every big city has neighborhoods like this.

One thing is for certain in these neighborhoods: If somebody fucks you over, you get revenge. It might take 10 years but sooner or later you fuck them over in turn. And then some. It’s only a question of how. And then getting away with it.

We’ve seen this story a million times. Boys will be boys. And then men will be men.

It’s always interesting in films like this how we can be manipulated into rooting for folks who are really little more than street thugs. Two of these guys…while truly being victims back then…were basically professional killers in a street gang. Street toughs in a crime syndicate.


Sleepers

Lorenzo [voiceover]: Hell’s Kitchen was populated by an uneasy blend of…Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican, and Eastern European laborers. Hard men living hard lives. We lived in railroad apartments inside red brick tenements..

The proletariet we used to call them.

Father Bobby: It was the Sistine Chapel he painted.
Young John: Sixteenth Chapel?
Father Bobby: Sistine Chapel.
Young John: Who painted the other fifteen?

A misunderstanding let's call it.

Lorenzo [voiceover]: We viewed with skepticism the faces on television…those protected by money and upper-middle-class standing. A growing army of feminists marched across the country demanding equality. Yet, our mothers still cooked and cared for men who abused them mentally and physically. For me and my friends, these developments carried no weight. They might as well have occurred in another country…in another century.

On the other hand, "you've come a long way, baby."

Lorenzo [voiceover]: We were to hold the cart on the top edge of the stairwell. Leaning it downward, and wait for the vendor. We were to let it go the second he grabbed the handles. Then we’d leave the scene as he struggled to ease the cart back onto the sidewalk. To this day, I don’t know why we did it. But, we would all pay a price. It only took a minute…but in that minute everything changed.

That's all it takes sometimes. If that long.

Woman at Subway Station: Sweet Jesus! What have you boys done? What in the name of God have you boys done?
Young Michael: I think we just killed a man.

On the the other hand, "somewheres in the distance was another man being born."

Lorenzo [voiceover]: We never saw the vendor as a man…not the way we saw other men of the neighborhood. And we didn’t care enough about him to grant him any respect. We gave little notice to how hard he worked, or that he had a wife and two kids in Greece and hoped to bring them to this country. We didn’t pay attention to the long hours he worked. We didn’t see any of that. We only saw a free lunch.

Lock 'em up!

Nokes [watching Lorenzo undress]: What the fuck is that hangin’ around your neck? Take it off.
Young Lorenzo: It’s Mary, you know, the mother of God.
Nokes [scoffs]: I don’t give a fuck whose mother it is. Take it off.

Of course, he's going to Hell.

Nokes: It’s a tragedy, I tell ya. I don’t understand you, boys. I don’t think you know what it means to have rules. You gotta have rules and you gotta have discipline. Now I don’t know what it was like in your homes and your homelifes, but in my house with my father, there were rules. And if you didn’t follow the rules, there was hell to pay. You had rules and you had discipline. Sometimes it wasn’t nice, but boy, we learned. We sure did learn.
[the boys enter a storage room where the other three guards are waiting]
Nokes: Yeah, right around there to the right. There ya go. Come on now. I mean, it’s a simple thing really. You got rules and you got discipline. That’s the beginning of the story and that’s the end of the story. Do we understand each other?

Think Shawshank?

Lorenzo [voiceover]: There are no clear pictures of the sexual abuse we endured. I buried it as deep as it can possibly go.

Just not deep enough. Think Dave Boyle.

Lorenzo [voiceover]: A number of the inmates, as tough as they acted during the day, would often cry themself to sleep at night. There were other cries, too. Diffrent from those full with fear and loneliness. They were low and muffled, the sounds of pain and anguish.Those cries can change the course of a life. They are cries that once heard, can never be erased from the memory. On this one night those cries belonged to my friend John, when guard Ferguson paid him a visit.

Take a wild guess.

Young Michael: I thought you’d never wake up.
Young Lorenzo: I thought I’d never want to.
Young Michael: John and Tommy, they’re on the other side there.
Young Lorenzo: How are they? They’re alive.
Young Michael: Who isn’t?
Young Lorenzo: Rizzo.
Young Michael: They killed him?
Young Lorenzo: They took turns beating him until there was nothing of that kid to beat.

Next up: the equivalent of that here.

Nokes: So what do you want?
John: What I’ve always wanted. To watch you die.

Drip, by drip, by drip, by drip.

Tommy [after John shoots Nokes in the groin]: Did that hurt, Nokes?

So, what do you think?

Michael: It’s messy, it’s not how I had it planned but…here it is. And you and l, we can finish it.
Lorenzo: Finish what, Mikey?
Michael: You read “The Count of Monte Cristo” lately?
Lorenzo: I don’t know…ten years ago.
Michael: You see, I read a little bit of it every night. I read words like ‘revenge’. Sweet, lasting revenge.

Of course, that has to actually be an option.

Fat Mancho: You know, if you get caught on this, you’re looking straight at serious. I’m talking real jail. The big house…They are not good boys any more. They’re killers now. Cold as stone.
Lorenzo: I know. I know what they were, and I know what they are, and it’s not about that.
Fat Mancho: It’s not worth it, throwing away life just to get even. You and the lawyer have a chance to get out. To get out the right way.
Lorenzo: There’s no choice…not for us.

Click, of course.

Fat Mancho: You want a Rolls-Royce, you don’t come here, no no. You go to England, or wherever the fuck they make it. If you want champagne, you go see the French. If you need money, you find a Jew. But, if you want dirt, or scum buried under a rock somewhere, or some secret nobody wants anybody to know about, there’s only one place to go: right here, Hell’s Kitchen. It is the lost and found of shit.

Let's run this by Gail Wynand.

Lorenzo: We need somebody to take the stand and say they were with John and Tommy on the night of the murder.
Father Bobby: So, you figured if you had a priest, it would be perfect?
Lorenzo: Not just any priest.
Father Bobby: You’re asking me…you’re asking me to lie. You’re asking me to swear to God and then lie.
Lorenzo: I’m asking you to save two of your boys.
Father Bobby: Did they kill that guard?
Lorenzo: Yes.
Father Bobby: So what they said is true? They walked in and they killed him?
Lorenzo: Yes. They killed him exactly like that.

Too close to call.

Father Bobby: What about the life that was taken, Shakes? What’s that worth?
Lorenzo: To me? Nothing.
Father Bobby: Why not? Tell me.

And so he does.

Lorenzo [voiceover]: I told him about the torture, the beating and the rapes. I told him about four frightened boys who prayed to Father Bobby’s God for help that never came. I told him everything.

Yeah, what about that, Bob?

IFat Mancho [to Lorenzo and Carol]: The street is the only one that matters. Court is for uptown people with suits, money…lawyers with three names. If you got cash, you can buy court justice. But on the street, justice has no price. She’s blind where the judge sits, but she’s not blind out here. Out here, the bitch got eyes.

Let's change that, okay?

Lorenzo [voiceover]: I’ve never recovered from seeing Father Bobby take the stand and lie for us…to even the score for John and Tommy. He didn’t just testify for them, he testified against Wilkinson’s and the evil that had lived there for too long. Still, I was sorry he had to do it.

With any luck though, God will cut him some slack.

Lorenzo [voiceover]: On March 16th, 1984 John Reilly’s bloated body was found face up in a tenement building…right next to the bottle of boiler gin that killed him. At the time of his death, he was a suspect in five unsolved homicides. He was two weeks past his 29th birthday. Thomas Marcano died on July 26th, 1985. He was shot at close range. The body lay undiscovered for more than a week. There was a crucifix and a picture of Saint Jude in his pocket. He was 29 years old. Michael Sullivan lives in a small town in the English countryside…where he works part-time as a carpenter. He no longer practices law, and he has never married. He lives quietly and alone. Carol still works for a Social Service agency and lives in Hell’s Kitchen. She has never married but is a single mother supporting a growing -year-old son. The boy, John Thomas Michael Martinez, loves to read…and is called Shakes by his mother. It was our special night, and we held it for as long as we could. It was our happy ending. And the last time we would ever be together again.

Bummer, let's say.

[iambiguous]

The authoritarian personality. And it works in both directions. There are those who set themselves up as an authority figure and there are those who will comply with the orders of someone they deem to be an authority figure. Now, in the world of math and science and logic one can actually be an authority. And all the rest of us would be fools not to follow his or her lead. But in the world of value judgments there are only the more or less intelligent and sophisticated narratives of daseins.

This film is based on an incident that actually did occur in a fast food restaurant in America. In fact the post-script informs us it has happened over 70 times in 30 states.

This is the one the film is based on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_sea ... C_incident

Most of us who watch it will be appalled…and no less insistent that never in a million years would this ever happen to them. They would neither compel Becky to do as Sandra was instructed nor comply with Sandra’s commands. Instead, they would see through it all immediately and/or tell the “cop” to go fuck himself.

Roger Ebert:

Well, what would you do? You’d never go along with this, right? You’re too smart. Me, too. “Compliance” encourages us to feel superior to the employees of a fast-food chicken chain in Ohio, and so we do: Audiences are said to be outraged at what the characters do, and San Francisco-based critic Omar Moore went back to more screenings to confirm that there were walk-outs.

Walk-outs? Yeah. Lots of folks. Not because it was a shitty movie though. People were so self-righteously indignant at what the characters were doing up on the screen, they left the theatres in disgust. And that’s because almost from the start the film reveals that the “cop” on the phone is bogus. But he is good at pretending to be one. And how many of us really understand police procedures regarding something like this?


Compliance

Sandra: Becky, I have the police here on the phone saying you stole money from a customer.

Uh-oh.

Sandra: We can’t have employees stealing from a customer, you know.
Becky: But I was working. You saw me. I was up there.
Sandra: Okay. Then why do I have a police officer calling me, describing you exactly, telling me your name and saying you stole from a customer?

Uh, he's thought of everything?

“Cop” on phone: We can either drag her downtown. We book her. We process her. We put her in a holding cell, where she’ll probably be all night long.
Sandra: That seems very extreme.
“Cop” on phone: Yeah, I mean, I think in order to keep this sort of contained, what we could do is just have you strip-search her right now.

What could possibly be suspicious about that, right?

Marti: So what’s happening?
Sandra: We have to strip-search Becky, and I wanted you to come in. Corporate always wants two people for a strip search, right?

That wouldn't suprise me at all.

“Cop” on phone: Have you checked her underwear?

He was just about to as I recall.

“Cop” on phone: What about her rear? Did you make her turn around?

Hole by hole by hole as it were.

“Cop” on phone: Evan, you’re a grown man. You think naked girls don’t have places to hide money?

Just out of curiosity, where would you hide it?

“Cop” on phone [to Evan]: How big are her nipples?

Nope, no cash there.

Evan [to Becky]: He says you have to turn around and bend over so I can see if there’s anything up in there.

Just in case he missed it the first time.

“Cop” on phone: What’s that look like? Is she shaved?
Evan: It’s trimmed.
Becky: It’s shaved. It just been a couple of days.
Evan [to “cop”]: She said it’s actually shaved.

That'll do it.

“Cop” on phone: Boy, it really must be stuck up there. Okay, um, we have a special procedure that we do in this case. I’m going to need you to have her do jumping jacks to try and shake it out.

Time to walk out?

[The “cop” has Evan searching her vagina]
“Cop” on phone: What’s it look like from there, Evan? What’s it like to have a front-row seat to the show?

Then he is ordered to lay Becky [who is completely naked] across his lap and spank her “for being disobedient”. Of course it soon reaches the point [you know the one] where Evan is less reluctant to go along.

Detective [a real one]: When he told you you had to take your clothes off is there a reason you just didn’t say no?
Becky: I don’t know. I just knew it was going to happen.

Uh, whatever that means?

Interviewer: Do you feel any responsibility for what happened?
Sandra: Of course I do. But I was doing what I thought was the right thing. I think I did what anyone would do, what you would do, in that circumstance.
Interviewer: Take a girl’s clothes away because someone told you to on the phone?
Sandra: Someone who said they were the police.

No, really, let's try to imagine something she might actually draw a line regarding.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“Things don’t have significance: they only have existence. Things are the only hidden meaning of things.” Alberto Caeiro

On the other hand, how insignificant is that?

“Find what is meaningful to you and stand by it. Even if you begin to wonder if there is any meaning to anything, continue to be yourself.” Jay Woodman

And if that is no longer an option?

“So we live; a spirit that broods and hovers over the continual death of time, the lost meaning, the unrecaptured moment, the unremembered face, until the final chop that ends all our moments and plunges that spirit back into the void from which it came.” Iris Murdoch

Drip by drip by drip by drip by drip for some of us.

“Everything’s different from us. That’s why everything exists.” Alberto Caeiro

Not much that doesn't include, I imagine.

“The music plays . . . and your sense of reality is heightened to a dream.” David Mutti Clark

Maybe, but I'm sticking with this:

"If everything is a lie, is illusory, then music itself is a lie, but the superb lie. As long as you listen to it, you have the feeling that it is the whole universe, that everything ceases to exist, there is only music. But then when you stop listening, you fall back into time and wonder, 'well, what is it? What state was I in?' You had felt it was everything, and then it all disappeared." Emil Cioran

“Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.” Dejan Stojanovic

No clouds either, of course.

[iambiguous]

She’s a monster. She murdered men. But what about the monsters that tortured her and beat her and raped her and made her life a living hell? How many of them are behind bars? There’s always pretty much been a double standard here as far as the law is concerned. There’s the johns and there’s the hookers. Boys will be boys but the only real option for a woman is to be a lady.

Remember the first one? The one who drove her deep into the woods. She murdered him, right? Wouldn’t you? Or that cop demanding a “freebie”. Not deserving of the death penalty, perhaps, but certainly deserving of a few swift kicks to the nut sack. Most of these guys are pure slimeballs. Or course there is Horton.

And then she meets Selby. She falls in love. But that’s always a two edged sword. At least in this culture. Here loving someone only goes so far if you don’t have the money to sustain the relationship. She wants to quit hooking and get a job. But can she? What else does she have to market? And how much drudgery can she bear at minimum wage?

And it’s not like she really doesn’t try to get a job. It’s just that all she’s ever done is prostitute herself.

She then simply rationalizes what she does next. And giving us an inside look into the life she lives makes us [or some of us] realize that we don’t have a f****** clue as to what does or does not make sense to someone who lives a life we can scarcely even begin to understand at all. Instead, the objectivists always insist on a one-size-fits-all “metaphysical” moral calculation that divides everything into always good or always bad. But that only works on paper. Or in places like this.

Aileen Wuornos, a notoriously uncooperative person, gave director Patty Jenkins access to hundreds of letters she had written and received in order to gain insight into Aileen’s life.

The biker bar scenes were filmed at “the Last Resort” - a bar frequented by the real life Aileen Wuornos, and the site where she was actually arrested. The bar owner (who capitalized on Wuornos’ infamy by hanging a sign out in front of the bar advertising “cool beer and Killer Women”) makes a cameo as the bartender who threatens to cut off Wuornos for being over her tab limit. IMDb


Monster

Aileen [voiceover]: I always wanted to be in the movies When I was little I thought for sure day, I could be a big big star…Or maybe just beautiful. Beautiful and rich, like the women on TV. Yeah, I had a lot of dreams. And I guess you can call me a real romaniac. Because I truly believed that one day they’d come true. So I dreamed about it for hours…I believed it whole heartily. So whenever I was down, I just escaped into my mind…I heard that Marilyn Monroe was discovered in a soda shop. And I thought for sure, it could be like that. So I started growing up real young…But I was always secretly looking for who was gonna discover me. Was it this guy? Or maybe this one? You never knew. They couldn’t take me all the way like Marilyn. They would somehow believe in me just enough. They would see me for what I could be and think I was beautiful. Like a diamond in a rough. They’d take me away to my new life. And my new world…where we think we will be different. Yeah, I lived that way for long long time. Inside my head dreaming like that. It was nice day. But one day it just stopped.

Let's exchange our own renditions of this.

Bartender: The bar’s closed.
Aileen: Then do you think you could pull that stick out of your ass? Hm? Now that “the bar’s closed”.

I forget: did he?

Aileen [voiceover]: All I wanted was a beer. But the day I met Selby I spent most of the afternoon wanting to kill myself. So you can understand I was flexible. I mean everybody’s gotta have faith in something. For me all I’ve got left is love. And I was pretty sure that I was never gonna love a man again.

Of course, Selby is a Yellowjacket now.

Aileen [voiceover]: I was gonna do it, I was going to kill myself. And the only reason I didn’t was a 5 dollar bill. I knew I’d probably given some asshole a blowjob for it, so, it really started to piss me off that if I killed myself without spending it, well, then, I basically sucked him off for free!

Logical enough for you?

Selby: You can take care of me right…cause I’ve spent all my money.
Aileen: We don’t even need it. I quit hooking.
Selby: Why?
Aileen: Why? because it’s shit, man. I f****** hate it.
Selby: I thought you said it was okay.
Aileen: Oh…it is, you know, but, not always.
Selby: But what are you gonna do about work? What kind of job are you gonna get?
Aileen: I’ve been thinking about that. I was thinking about having a career. I was thinking maybe a veterinarian, you know. I love animals.
Selby: Yeah, but that’s a doctor…you gotta get a degree for that.

Next up: catch her if you can?

Job interviewer: Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. Basically, you’ve no experience, no college degree, no resume, no work history what-so-ever in fact. And now you would like to be a lawyer.
Aileen: No, see… I’m sorry, but when I read the ad I thought it said you were looking for a secretary.
Job interviewer: Ok, well you need to learn how to type. You need computer skills. Most of our secretaries have college degrees. In fact most of them have specialised in law. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but frankly this is a little insulting. I see you’re from Daytona Beach, all of that looks great, it must be wonderful. But can I tell you something? When the beach party is over, you don’t get to say, “You know what? Now I think I’d like to have what everybody else has worked their entire life for.” It doesn’t work that way.
Aileen: Fuck you, man. Yeah, FUCK YOU! YOU DON’T FUCKIN’ KNOW ME![/quote]

Well, that's more or less true.

Lawyer: OK, great. That’s great. See, now I’m so sorry I didn’t hire you before. Leslie, could you please escort Miss…I don’t even know her name because of course she doesn’t have a resume…out.
Aileen: I don’t need a fuckin’ escort you piece of shit! What, you think I’m a fuckin’ retard? Take your fuckin’ job and fuckin’ shove it!
[she turns to his secretary]
Aileen: And fuck you, Leslie!

So, did she go too far? With Leslie, I mean.

Will: You wanna call me “Daddy” while I fuck you, huh?
Aileen: I’ll try. Why? You like to fuck your kids?

Back to hooking it is then.

Aileen [to a john]: There’s this old guy used to rape me when I was 8 years old. Real good friend of my dad, you know. So I go to my dad, tell him what’s going on. My dad don’t f****** believe me, so his friend keeps raping me for years. And the f****** kicker to the story is that my f****** dad beats me up for it.

That explains...everything?

Aileen [voiceover]: People always look down their noses at hookers. Never give you a chance, because they think you took the easy way out, when no one could imagine the willpower it took to do what we do. Walking the streets, night after night, taking the hits and still getting back up.

Though occasionally throwing a few punches [and firing a few bullets] herself, of course..

Selby: We can be as different as we wanna be, but you can’t kill people!
Aileen: SAYS WHO?! I’m good with the Lord. I’m fine with Him. And I know how you were raised, alright? And I know how people fuckin’ think out there, and fuck, it’s gotta be that way. They’ve gotta tell you that ‘Thou shall not kill’ shit and all of that. But that’s not the way the world works, Selby. Cuz I’m out there every fuckin’ day living it. Who the fuck knows what God wants? People kill each other every day and for what? Hm? For politics, for religion, and THEY’RE HEROES! No, no…there’s a lot of shit I can’t do anymore, but killing’s not one of them. And letting those f****** bastards go out and rape someone else isn’t either!

Let's just say she ain't no dummy.

Horton: You don’t have to. You’re just having a hard time.
Aileen: No! I can’t let you live!
Horton: Oh God… my wife… my wife… my daughter’s having a baby.
Aileen: SHUT THE FUCK UP!
[She shoots him]

Of course, some are just too close to call.

Aileen [after being sentenced to death]: Thank you, judge. And may you rot in hell! Sending a raped woman to death! And you all…you’re a bunch of scum that’s what you are!

It's kinda true. And kinda not true.

Aileen [voiceover]: “Love conquers all.” “Every cloud has a silver lining.” “Faith can move mountains.” “Love will always find a way.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “Where there is life, there is hope.”
[scoffs]
Aileen:…They gotta tell you somethin’.

Next up: "20 years of schooling and they put you on the dayshift"

[iambiguous]

To be smashed or not to be smashed? For some that is the only question. It just comes down to whether or not it’s deemed a viable option in their lives at any particular time. Do they have to work? Do they have kids? Is their health robust? Do they give a shit only about themselves? Can they afford to be that way? Do they have access to other options?

Like, say, getting stoned.

As regarding most things though, the moral lesson revolves around the extent to which you either do or do not identify with the drunk on the screen.

Kate’s dilemma is clear. She drinks in part because it helps her to deal with the shit we all have to endure in the course of living our lives. But when she tries to stop drinking the problems come back magnified all the more. And then when she finally does succeed her marriage falls apart. And that makes her want to start…drinking. And when she’s honest with her boss about being an alcoholic she is promptly fired. And that makes her want to start…drinking.

Then there’s the part about getting sober. The part that always seems to involve some sort of “group”. And a group always means people. And when we interact with people it can precipitate the sort of stress and anxiety that led us to drink in the first place.

Then there’s the part about Kate vomiting in the classroom. A student asks if she is pregnant. The bulb lights up and she thinks better this as an explanation than the truth: that she is hung over from a night of heavy drinking. Soon, however, everyone in the school is reacting to her as though she really was pregnant! The comic [and not so comic] consequences of that are up for grabs.


Smashed

Kate: I gotta go to work, and you snoozed on my alarm again. I’m gonna be late.
Charlie [looking down at the wet bed sheets]: Yeah, well, you peed on me, so I guess we’re even.

It's got to start somehere, right?

Kate: Is that pot?
Millie: Of course not, do I look like a hippie? It’s crack.

What a relief!

Kate: Listen, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I think I need to slow down. And I might need help.
Charlie: I’ll help you.
Kate: Yeah.

As in, "yeah, right". Meaning no f****** way.

Dave: I just want to be honest. I think you’re beautiful. And smart and sexy and cool. And I know it’s wrong, but in meetings, I just stare at your lips and your legs. And I can’t stop thinking about f****** your moist pussy.
Kate [startled]: What?! What? What?
Dave: I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.
Kate: I don’t know why you said that either. Oh, my God…I mean, who says that? “Fuck your moist pussy”?! I’m gonna go inside with my husband. Thanks for your creepy version of honesty. Wow.

Okay, he blew it.

Kate: I stopped drinking for me. And I’m going to 12-step meetings.
Rochelle [her mother]: Oh, God, Assholes Anonymous. Kate’s father went to those meetings a few years after we got married. Dried up, left us. You can see how well that worked out for me. I raised her myself in this palace while he was off in Florida, with his shiny new wife and kids, the son of a bitch.
[she turns to Charlie]
Rochelle: Be careful. They can change, you know.

"They" meaning every one of us. Given enough time as it were.

Kate [to her class]: I’m not going to have a baby. Okay, look. Look, I was pregnant, and then it turned turned out it just…it just wasn’t my time, I suppose, and…
Student: Mrs. Hannah, did you kill the baby?
Kate: What?! No, no. No, of course not.
Student: My mom said if you kill a baby, you go to hell. And you can’t even go to church and ask God for forgiveness.
Student #2: Mrs. Hannah, are you going to Hell?

Kids still say the darndest things. For exmple, all the things that Mommy and Daddy crammed into their heads.

Charlie: You know what?
Kate: What?
Charlie: I f****** hate AA! It’s just…it’s just turned you into a bitch. A brainwashed bitch.

More or less, let's say.

Kate [to AA group]: You know, one of the things I’ve heard is that your best day of drinking is worse than your worst day sober. Yeah, but it’s not true. It’s not true. I mean, I had…I had some amazing times drinking and laughing and just feeling like the most adorable, charming girl in the world. When I first tried getting sober, I figured that as long as I didn’t drink, everything else in the world would just sort of magically work itself out. But it didn’t. My marriage fell apart. I lost my job. And that shit happened while I was sober. You know, I didn’t sign up for that…And another shitty slogan I’ve heard is, uh, when you’re sober for a bit and you drink again, the disease waits for you and picks up where you left off. Well, that one was pretty damn true. My life is a lot different than it was a year ago. I live alone. I’m bored a lot more. I have a job that pays a lot less. But I’m so grateful…I’m so thankful for this boring new life of mine.

A brand new scripted life as it were. But there it is: the tradeoff. Is it worth it? Is there a way to know for sure?

You tell me.

[iambiguous]

Eugène Ionesco

That's how we stay young these days: murder and suicide.

If you get his drift.
Though what are the odds of that.

Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.

He means philosopher, of course.

A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.

Next up: a poster here.

I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it.

Actually, solitude is now the only thing I can stand.

Realism falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.

Gibberish, perhaps, but our gibberish?

People who don't read are brutes.

On the other hand, those who's brutality is derived precisely from what they read? And, no, not just Mein Kampf.

[iambiguous]

All of us have a childhood that, one way or another, we carry with us to the grave. But some have a childhood so traumatic [or one perceived to be] it does serious damage to their mental and emotional health. The complexities between the past and the present here can beget all manner of perverse ambiguities. Or perverse clarities.

One look at him coming off that train and you know exactly what I mean. What could have happened to him back then to create this strange creature?

There he is [early in the picture] putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Here there is a place for every piece and every piece has but one place to be. But things get far, far more convoluted when you are piecing together the parts of a man’s life. Even when that life is your own. And my argument has always been about the manner in which each of us put the fragments together. And few of us here are afflicted with schizophrenia. Or insanity.

We’re left to wonder: Was it the trauma that caused the insanity or the insanity that caused the trauma?

But how much weight should we give to this man? Why should we even care about him at all? But that can only be a piece of our own puzzle. And the answer we give is always connected to all of the other pieces. Pieces it is presumed that we know best. But not necessarily pieces we would have collected if we had any real choice in the matter.

David Cronenberg received the screenplay from Patrick McGrath out of the blue, with a note attached saying that Ralph Fiennes was interested in playing the part of Spider. After about four pages, Cronenberg had decided that he wanted to do the film.

Samuel Beckett was one of the director’s touchstones for the film. Photographs of the playwright were pinned around the sets, and Fiennes’ hairstyle is even modeled after Beckett’s. IMDb


Spider

Spider: I will…I will not be here that long.
Terrence: Nor did I expect to be. But it is a loud world and this is an island. But an island, sir, ruled by a tyrant queen who has the power to send any one of us back to where we came from. The asylum, I mean.

An island works for me.

Mrs. Wilkinson [to Spider]: How many shirts are you wearing. One…two…three…four! Now really, is this abolutely necessary?
Terrence: Oh indeed it is, madam. Clothes maketh the man; and the less there is of the man, the more the need of the clothes.

So, how many shirts are you wearing?

Spider [“writing” in his notebook]: Yvonne Wilkinson. She made the first move.

Scribbling, I'd call it myself.

Terrence: Nasty stuff: Gas. I knew a man once… Put his head in a gas oven… Turned on the gas…Then, he changed his mind… But his head was STUCK!

And the equivalent of that here, of course.

Spider [“writing” in his notebook]: He killed her. He killed her.

Just for the record.

Mrs. Wilkinson: What've you done?! What have you done?!

Should I tell you?

John [from the asylum to Spider]: You ready to come back to us now, son?

Oh, yeah, absolutely no doubt about it.

[iambiguous]

The man with no name is back. Only this time the name he doesn’t have is a different one: Manco.

Ode to the Übermensch

Only back then the Übermensch seemed like a more viable concept. A man who was good with a gun in a town that could barely scrape together a legal code really could be the fittest to survive. And then it becomes his way or the highway. Until another Übermensch comes along with a better…argument.

Of course, some just called them bullies. Or bulldozing bastards. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about philosophy, does it?

And up on the screen the Übermensch are like the Übermensch here. They always win because it’s all done with words. Just different scripts.

What makes this film unique is that the Übermensch own it from start to finish. Practically all we ever see are Übermensch. Two on one side of the law and all the rest on the other. But what it’s really all about is the money. Or revenge. And the way you tell the good Übermensch from the bad Übermensch is the part that revolves around treachery and betrayal. Again, it has practically nothing to do with philosophy. The philosophy of, say, Nietzsche.

Look for Aguirre.

Lee Van Cleef claimed to be faster on the draw than Clint Eastwood. He took three frames of film (one eighth of a second) to draw, cock and fire. IMDb


For a Few Dollars More

Title card: Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price. That is why the bounty killers appeared.

Next up: a bounty on bullshit.

Railroad depot clerk [to the Colonel]: Guy passed by here in person and added on those two zeros. He was spittin’ mad when he saw what they was offerin’. He wasn’t flattered. He said, “A measly thousand bucks for me is much too little. I’m worth a lot more than that”. He said that, and then he added them zeros on the thousand.

The balls!

‘Baby’ Red Cavanaugh: I didn’t hear what the bet was.
Monco: Your life.

It's a good thing then that it has no value.

El Paso Bank Manager: To try robbing us would be so futile that only a complete fool would attempt it.
Col. Mortimer: Yeah. Or a complete madman.

Let's explain the actual difference.

Barkeep: Listen, mister, why did you choose my place to commit suicide? I know that man. It’s a miracle you’re alive.
Col. Mortimer: Why should a man walk around with a pistol and let himself be insulted? It’s mighty strange.
Barkeep: If the hunchback didn’t shoot you…he had a very important reason, that’s all.
Col. Mortimer: I was thinking that myself.

Anyone remember what that reason was?

Col. Mortimer: One from the outside one from the inside. There’s no other way. One of us will have to join Indio’s gang.
Manco: Why did you look at me when you said one of us?
Col. Mortimer: Because they don’t know you. Wild sees me and his hump will catch on fire.
Manco: Tell me Colonel. How do you propose that I join up with Indio? Maybe bring him a bunch of roses.

Nope, probably not.

Manco: Tell me, Colonel…Were you ever young?
Col. Mortimer: Yup. And just as reckless as you. Then one day, something happened. It made life very precious to me.
Manco: What’s that? Or is the question indiscreet?
Col. Mortimer: No. The question isn’t indiscreet. But the answer could be.

Let's roll the dice.

Col. Mortimer [to Manco]: I was worried about you…all alone with so many problems.

Next up: worrying about me.

[Mortimer has just recovered the watch from Indio, which contains a picture of the woman that Indio raped]
Manco: There seems to be a family resemblance.
Col. Mortimer: Naturally, between brother and sister.

Or father and daughter?

[iambiguous]

Tom Ripley. This is a man who clearly embodies beyond good and evil. You can defend objective ethics until you are blue in the face to him. It won’t take. Or I suspect it won’t. For him what is right and what is wrong revolves entirely around his ego, around his own wants and needs. And this is no more necessarily immoral than it is necessarily moral. It just is what it is. And it can be construed this way once one presumes that we live in a world without God.

Many might argue he embodies the attributes of the Ubermensch. But there will always be disputes regarding the extent to which his attributes are the right ones. Is he a true Ubermensch?

One thing for certain: Jonathan isn’t. At least not at the beginning. Not only that but he’s dying. He has leukemia. And he and his wife are barely afloat financially. But others are willing to take advantage of this—of him being a wanker with one foot in the grave.

And out of this comes one of the most improbable friendships you are ever likely to see. Or perhaps as close to friendship as Ripley is ever likely to come.

From the soundtrack. One of the most beautiful and stirring pieces ever composed. And [to me] it seems to capture the pathos embodied in Jonathan: https://youtu.be/EnJOH5PImrw?si=8uSe9nGF32tVfoAe


Ripley's Game

Ripley: Your entire education comes from classic car magazine and you dress like you’re on a condom run for the mob. By the way, it isn’t a Correggio, it’s a fake Rembrandt and until you know that, you’re not coming in with me.
Reeves: Don’t fuck me over here, pratt.
Ripley: Don’t threaten me. I’m not the one wearing an earring.

Well, that's true.

Guest: Have you seen Ripley’s place?
Jonathan: Bloody philistine American! He’s ruined that Palladian villa. Restored the heart and soul out of it. That’s the trouble with Ripley. Too much money and no taste.
[suddenly he sees Ripley standing in the room]
Jonathan: Oh, hi. You’re here, then. Excellent. We were hoping you’d come.
Ripley: Why?
Jonathan: Well, to… to add spice to the evening.
Ripley: Meaning?
Jonathan: You’re a bit of a local personality.
Ripley: Meaning?
Jonathan: People have heard about you.
Ripley: Meaning?
Jonathan: Nothing. Just…nothing.

Meaning?

Luisa: Why was he here?
Ripley: He wants me to kill someone.
Luisa: Why did he ask you?
Ripley: Because I can.

A game, let's call it.

Luisa: How was the party?
Ripley: Smashing.
Luisa: I knew you’d hate it. Isn’t it sad about him?
Ripley: Who?
Luisa: The picture framer. He’s got leukaemia.
Ripley: Is drunken pomposity a symptom?
Luisa: No. He’s just English.

Imagine then if he was "just an American".

Ripley [to Jonathan]: Hold my watch, because if it breaks I’ll kill everyone on this train.

Of course, with some games the stakes are considerably higher.

Ripley [to Jonathan in the bathroom with three dead bodies]: It never used to be so crowded in first class.

Tee-hee?

Jonathan: Please, I realize I’ve had over 20 minutes to adjust to becoming one of Europe’s most wanted. I know I must look ludicrous to you with my heaving, and shaking and my shockingly awful normalness. I do hope that you will forgive me.
[he breaks down]
Jonathan: I can’t look at my son! I can’t look at my son! I can’t explain how I made these dollars! And I really fear I am in fact ill. I’m not well…

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

Jonathan: I know I should thank you, I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t helped me. But I can’t say thank you. I don’t know anything about you. Who are you?
Ripley: I’m a creation. A gifted improviser. I lack your conscience and when I was young that troubled me. It no longer does. I don’t worry about being caught because I don’t believe anyone is watching. The world is not a poorer place because those people are dead. It’s one less car on the road. It’s a little less noise and menace. You were brave today. You put some money away for your family. That’s all.
Jonathan: If you lack my conscience, why did you help me on the train?
Ripley: I don’t know, but it doesn’t surprise me. The one thing I know is we’re constantly being reborn.

See! I told you!!

Jonathan: Do you think we’ll get away with it?
Ripley: Sure, why not?
Jonathan: I don’t know. I’ve just never been the sort of person to get away with things. At school, other kids got away with all sorts. But not me. I always got caught.
Ripley: You know why you got caught?
Jonathan: Why?
Ripley: Because you didn’t think of just killing your teachers.

Of course, gertting caught doing that...

Ripley [to the gangster sent to kill him]: I want you to call the man who sent you here. I want you to tell him you got a very long look at the two of us, we were definitely not the people on the train. Do you understand? If you do that, you do it convincingly, you walk out of here, we give you half a million dollars, okay? If you don’t do it convincingly, I take you out back, and I run my f****** tractor over your head the rest of the day. Okay?

An offer he can't refuse, in other words.

Ripley: You know the most interesting thing about doing something terrible?
Jonathan: What?
Ripley: Often after a few days, you can’t even remember it.
Jonathan: That makes me feel really, really good.

How terrible though?

Ripley [to Jonathan who just took a bullet for him]: Why did you do that?

Like I said, "one of the most improbable friendships you are ever likely to see."