Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Intellectuals

“Even in the most favourable periods for cultural development, Intellectuals tend to have uneasy relationships with the status quo.” Frank Furedi

Your status quo for example.

“Atheism or similar charges was not unusual among intellectuals, nor condemned by the masses. The prize-winning plays of Aristophanes were not merely atheist, but made fun of the gods and their prophets and oracles.” Benjamin Jowett

Good for them!

“In the most secret heart of every intellectual ... there lies hidden ... the hope of power, the desire to bring his ideas to reality by imposing them on his fellow man.” Lionel Trilling

Yo, AJ and Satyr!
You're up?

“He was born to be alone, a damned cold intellectual, an egoist.” Ursula K. Le Guin

Me? Yeah, sometimes.

“Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.” Luis Fernando Verissimo

Up in the clouds here. Those dueling definitions and deductions.

“What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own." Daniel J. Flynn

See, I told you.

[iambiguous]

Hmm. Are the “aliens” being portrayed here really just a way of imagining how some see the invasion of immigrants throughout Europe? I mean, how far fetched is it? They live among themselves by and large in “ghettos”. And they are not human at all. Well, not like you and I. More like, say, insects. But don’t let their seeming subjugation fool you. They are just biding their time. One day they will reemerge as jihadists [you know, terrorists] and reek havoc among the civilized populations throughout the world.

Here is one take on that angle: theguardian.com/film/filmblo … ate-change

Or the focus may be [and in fact is] more narrowly drawn: race [apartheid] in South Africa: The film was inspired by director Neill Blomkamp’s childhood in South Africa during apartheid.

It is a four fold society here. There are the “prawns” – the aliens. There are the citizens living around the alien ghetto – almost all poor blacks. There are the gangster “Nigerians” who deal with the prawns directly. And then there are the “authorities” in the government and the media and the military – all white.

In any event, this "insect race" is one that must be kept as far removed from the rest of us as possible.

Shot in the “faux documentary” style.

Alas though, in the end, it all devolves into a shoot-em-all-up quagmire of special effects violence. And about as improbable too.

See if you can spot the military industrial complex here.

The language used by the aliens (clicking sounds) was created by rubbing a pumpkin.

All the shacks in District 9 were actual shacks that exists in a section of Johannesburg which were to be evacuated and the residents moved to better government housing, paralleling the events in the film. Also paralleling, the residents had not actually been moved out before filming began. The only shack that was created solely for filming was Christopher Johnson’s shack.

The title is a nod to a real place and a real incident. District 6 was a mixed race neighborhood of Cape Town which the apartheid government demolished in 1966 to make room for whites.

The mutilated animal carcasses in the background of many scenes were real and with only a few exceptions, were already in the real slums and shacks used for the filming. IMDb


DISTRICT 9

Wikus [to the camera]: We are here at MNU head office, Department of Alien Affairs. My name is Wikus van de Merwe. And behind me you can see other Alien Affairs workers. And what we do here at this department is…is we try to engage with the prawn on behalf of MNU…and on behalf of humans.

Or, sure, just call Terminex.

Sarah [a sociologist, to the camera]: The creatures were extremely malnourished. They were very unhealthy. They seemed to be aimless. There was a lot of international pressure on us at the time. The world was looking at Johannesburg…so we had to do the right thing. The government then established an aid group that started to ferry the aliens to a temporary camp that was set up...just beneath the ship. We didn’t have a plan. There was a million of them. So, what was a temporary holding zone soon became fenced, became militarized. And before we knew it, it was a slum. Well, the truth is nobody really knew what this place was. There’s a lot of secrets in District 9.

Cue the deep state. Every nation has one.

Citizen [to the camera]: The government is spending so much money to keep them here when they could be spending it on other things. But at least…at least they’re keeping them separate from us.

The most important thing by far, right AJ?

Wikus [to the camera]: The prawn doesn’t really understand the concept of ownership of property. So we have to come there and say, “Listen, this is our land. Please will you go?”

Commie insects!

Sarah: Where there’s a slum, there’s crime and District 9 was no exception. The Nigerians had various scams going. One of them was the cat-food scam…where they sold cat food to the aliens for exorbitant prices. Not to mention interspecies prostitution. And they also dealt in alien weaponry.

The fucking Nigerians again with their scams?

Wikus [handing an Alien reproductive apparatus to co-worker]: Here, you can take that, you want to keep that, as a souvenir of your first abortion.
Thomas [beaming]: Thanks, boss!

Sort of as it were.

Wikus [while the ‘anti-abortion team’ burns down the shack with the alien eggs in it]: You hear that? That’s a popping sound that you’re hearing. It’s almost like a popcorn!

Yeah, it did. Grimly speaking.

Grey [to the camera]: MNU is trying to move the aliens for humanitarian reasons…but the real focus, just as it has been right from the beginning, is weapons. MNU is the second-largest weapons manufacturer in the world. We assumed that we’d be able to pick up the alien gun and be able to shoot it. It didn’t work like that. As we discovered, their technology is engineered in a biological manner…and interacts exclusively with their DNA. So it just doesn’t work with humans. It’s as simple as that.

See, it's everywhere.

Wife: What’s the matter?
Wikus [already infected]: I might have crapped in my pants.

Shades of The Fly here as Wikus starts to become more and more like one of them!

MNU official #1: Gentlemen, you’re running out of time. This is the key stage in the metamorphosis. His DNA is in perfect balance between alien and human. The problem is, as the infection spreads the transition becomes permanent and less active.
MNU official #2: He’s going to turn into one of them, a prawn?
MNU official #1: What happens to him isn’t important. What’s important is that we harvest from him what we can right now. This body represents hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars worth of biotechnology. There are people out there, governments, corporations who would kill for this chance.
MNU official #2: Will he survive the procedure?
MNU official #1: No, of course not. We need everything. Tissue, bone marrow, blood. The procedure’s gonna basically strip him down to nothing.

Next up: the prawns here react.

Grey [to the camera]: He became the most valuable business artifact on Earth. He was the only human who had ever…successfully… been combined with alien genetics and remained alive. But his real value was that he could operate alien weaponry.

Can you say that?

Wikus: When we get to the mother ship, how long is this gonna take?
Christopher: To do what?
Wikus: The fixing. To fix me.
Christopher: It’s going to take a bit longer than I thought.
Wikus: Okay. All right. That’s fine. How long do you need?
Christopher: Three years.
Wikus: Sorry, wait. Just go slowly with the clicks there. It sounded like you said “three years.” Like human years?!

Are there really any others here?

Wikus: The deal was, you go home, I get fixed.
Christopher: I will not let my people be medical experiments!
Wikus: I’m a fucking medical experiment. You hear me? I’m a fucking medical experiment, man!

Aren't we all...to some.

[Phil8659]

"Good thing we didn't step in it." Cheech and Chong

[iambiguous]

Nature

“We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.” Charlotte Brontë

On the other hand, what are the odds that He does actually exist.

“You will manage to keep a woman in love with you, only for as long as you can keep her in love with the person she becomes when she is with you.” C. JoyBell C.

You first.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” William Blake

In other words, whatever that means.

“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Winston S. Churchill

Hint, hint.

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” Henry David Thoreau

Actually, I didn't know that. And I still doubt it.

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Uh, one tree at a time?

[iambiguous]

Teen angst. Think Jason Dean. Same actor but very different roles. Dean embodied a cynical nihilistic rage directed at any and all authority. Solution? Blow the whole damn thing up.
On the other side of the coin is Mark Hunter. Same contempt [and hardcore cynicism] regarding “the system”. But his reactions – eventually – are grounded more in exposing it to the world and then motivating “the kids” to do something destructive about it. Like, say, change it. All of it. Only first “the kids” have to bring him around to that.

Of course the “system” here is rather far removed from the manner in which folks like me embed it in political economy. His rendition is more along the lines of your hard core “radical liberal”: change yourself into one of them [the hip radicals] and the “blue meany” world of alienation and repression will all come crashing down.

Try to even imagine kids from the more squalid parts of our urban jungles – the world of hard core dope addiction, entrenched poverty and gang banging – watching this. Lots of hopelessly idealistic [i.e. cringe worthy, excruciating] moments here.

So, in their heart some will go along for the ride but in their head...they just know better.

Lots of stick figures here. But sometimes that’s all you really want. You know, when you’re just a kid yourself. Or [wink, wink] young at heart.

This film was made nearly 35 years ago. You tell me in which direction “youth culture” has turned. At least here in America. For every OWS advocate out there, there must be at least 50 kids who just want to be “stars”. Or, if not that, at least “cool”.


Pump Up the Volume

Mark [as Hard Harry]: Do you ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?

If only going back to...the Revolution?

Mark [on the radio]: I like the idea that a voice can just go somewhere uninvited and just kind of hang out like a dirty thought in a nice clean mind. To me a thought is like a virus. You know, it can just kill all the healthy thoughts and just take over.

Again and again and again if you're lucky.

Mark Hunter: You see I didn't plan it like this. My dad got me this shortwave radio set so I could just talk to my buddies back east. But I couldn't reach anybody. So I just imagined I was talking to nobody, I imagined nobody listening. Maybe I imagined there would be one person out there... And then one day I woke up, and I realized I was never going to be normal, so I said, "Fuck it." I said, "So be it." And Happy Harry Hard-On was born.

He means scripted of course.

Marla [his mother]: We think you should see a psychiatrist.
Mark: Is it that obvious?

And she's completely oblivious to Hard Harry.

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: Suicide is wrong, but the interesting thing about it is how uncomplicated it seems. There you are, you got all these problems swarming around in your brain, and here is one simple, one incredibly simple solution. I’m just surprised it doesn’t happen every day around here.

You first.

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: I’m sick of being ashamed. I don’t mind being dejected and rejected, but I’m not going to be ashamed about it. At least pain is real. I mean, you look around and you see nothing is real, but at least the pain is real.

Uh, the good news?

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: They say I’m disturbed. Well, of course I’m disturbed. I mean, we’re all disturbed. And if we’re not, why not? Doesn’t this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy? It makes a helluva lot more sense than blowing your fucking brains out.

Next up: blowing their fucking brains out.

Mark Hunter: Just look inside yourself and you'll see me waving up at you naked wearing only a cock ring.

I missed that part. Why? Just lucky I guess.

Mark Hunter: You see, feeling screwed up in a screwed up place in a screwed up time does not mean you are screwed up, if you catch my drift.

Caught and then some.

Nora: I'm the "Eat me, beat me" lady.

Though not necessarily in that order.

Harry: Sometimes being young is less fun than being dead.

Try being old then.

Mark [as Hard Harry on the radio]: Hi folks! It seems we have a new listener tonight. Mr Watts of the F.C.C. Hi Arthur thanks for coming out. Imagine a fucking political hack being in charge of free speech in America.

Talk Hard!

[iambiguous]

Nothing is what it seems. And [apparently] not only in Chinatown. In fact, wherever you find a government [local, state, federal…here and abroad] the only common denominator is wealth and power. It is only a matter of how far in the background it is. Less so in places like Beijing and Moscow, more so in places like Washington D.C. and Los Angeles.

Or course [over time] things do change. Except for those parts that don’t. Here it’s another portrait of L.A. Confidential. The wheeling and the dealing that goes on somewhat at a distance from, say, democracy and the rule of law. The Golden Rule? Yeah, but the other one. Unless, of course, that’s the one you were thinking of. And, if anything, that always comes a lot closer to objectivism than the rather lamebrain renditions of it from the deontologists here.

Nowadays of course the rich and the powerful rely less upon flagrant corruption and more upon simply paying off their political cronies in campaign contributions. That and the ignorance of "the masses". It’s all more or less out in the open now. And it’s all perfectly legal. And given the current ideological propensities of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court, starting to spread [again] like wildfire.

And then the other part of the story. Noah and Evelyn and Katherine. A whole different kind of corruption altogether.

But either way the folks involved in the corruption have two ways they go about it: using carrots or using sticks. But one way or the other they intend to get their way.

The Chinatown screenplay is now regarded as being one of the most perfect screenplays and is now a main teaching point in screen writing seminars and classes everywhere.

So, new thread?

The enigmatic title stands for failure, bad luck and being out of your depth in something you don’t understand.

Katherine Mulwray is raised believing that Evelyn Mulwray is her sister, but it is later revealed that Evelyn is her mother (or rather, both mother and sister). Shortly after the film was released, Jack Nicholson discovered that the woman he was raised to believe was his sister was, in fact, his mother.

Roman Polanski has said that the dark ending to the film was a result of his own despair following the murder of his wife, actress Sharon Tate.

At the time of filming, Jack Nicholson had just embarked on his longstanding relationship with Anjelica Huston. This made his scenes with her father, John Huston, rather uncomfortable, especially as the only time Anjelica was on set was the day they were filming the scene where Noah Cross interrogates Nicholson’s character with “Mr Gittes…do you sleep with my daughter?” IMDb


Chinatown

Bagby: Gentlemen, today you can walk out that door, turn right, hop on a streetcar and in twenty-five minutes end up smack in the Pacific Ocean. Now you can swim in it, you can fish in it, you can sail in it but you can’t drink it, you can’t water your lawns with it, you can’t irrigate an orange grove with it. Remember we live next door to the ocean but we also live on the edge of the desert. Los Angeles is a desert community. Beneath this building, beneath every street there’s a desert. Without water the dust will rise up and cover us as though we’d never existed!

Political economy some call it. Supply and demand. Ripe for the picking. Corruption, in other words.

Jake [to the boys in the office]: So there’s this guy. He’s tired of screwin’ his wife… So his friend says to him, Hey, why don’t you do it like the Chinese do? So he says, How do the Chinese do it? And the guy says, Well, the Chinese, first they screw a little bit, then they stop, then they go and read a little Confucius, come back, screw a little bit more, then they stop again, go and they screw a little bit…then they go back and they screw a little bit more and then they go out and they contemplate the moon or something like that. Makes it more exciting. So now, the guy goes home and he starts screwin’ his own wife, see. So he screws her for a little bit and then he stops, and he goes out of the room and reads Life Magazine. Then he goes back in, he starts screwin’ again. He says, Excuse me for a minute, honey. He goes out and he smokes a cigarette. Now his wife is gettin’ sore as hell. He comes back in the room, he starts screwin’ again. He gets up to start to leave again to go look at the moon. She looks at him and says, Hey, what's the matter with ya. You’re screwin’ just like a Chinaman!

Of course, some even deem the title of the film itself to be racist.

Jake: Mulvihill! What are you doing here?
Mulvihill: They shut my water off. What’s it to you?
Jake: How’d you find out about it? You don’t drink it; you don’t take a bath in it…They wrote you a letter. But then you have to be able to read.

He's always provoking someone.

Jake: Hello, Claude. Where’d you get the midget?

See what I mean? Only this time it comes back to bite him...on the nose.

Noah Cross: You may think you know what you’re dealing with, Mr. Gittes, but, believe me, you don’t.
[Jake grins]
Noah Cross: Why is that funny?
Jake: That’s what the District Attorney used to tell me in Chinatown.

And for a damned good reason too.

Jake: That dam is a con job.
Evelyn: What dam?
Jake: The one your husband opposed. They’re conning L.A. into building it, only the water won’t go to L.A. It’ll go here. Everything you can see, everything around us. I was at the Hall of Records today. In the last three months, Robert Knox has bought 7,000 acres, Emma Dill 12,000 acres, Clarence Speer 5,000 acres, and Jasper Lamar Crabb 25,000 acres.
Evelyn: Jasper Lamar Crabb?
Jake: Know him?
Evelyn: No, I think I’d remember.
Jake: They’ve been blowing these farmers out of here and buying their land for peanuts. Have any idea what this land’ll be worth with a steady water supply? About thirty million more than they paid.
Evelyn: And Hollis knew about it?
Jake: It’s why he was killed. Jasper Lamar Crabb. There was a memorial service at the Mar Vista Inn today for Jasper Lamar Crabb. He died two weeks ago.
Evelyn: Is that unusual?
Jake: A week ago he bought those 25,000 acres. That’s unusual.

It starts with a C.

Jake [pretending to seek a nursing home for his father]: There’s one thing. Do you accept people of the Jewish persuasion?
Mr. Palmer: I’m sorry, we do not.
Jake: Don’t be sorry - neither does Dad.

Figures, let's say.

Evelyn: When was the last time?
Jake: In Chinatown.
Evelyn: What were you doing there?
Jake: Working for the District Attorney.
Evelyn: Doing what?
Jake: As little as possible.
Evelyn: The District Attorney gives his men advice like that?
Jake: They do in Chinatown.

How about now?

Jake [to Escobar]: You’re dumber than you think I think you are.

Right over his head, of course.

Evelyn: She’s my daughter.
[Jake slaps Evelyn]
Jake: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn: She’s my sister…
[slap]
Evelyn: She’s my daughter…
[slap]
Evelyn: My sister, my daughter.
[More slaps]
Jake: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn: She’s my sister and my daughter!

So, he wasn't her father?

Jake: How much are you worth?
Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake: I want to know what you’re worth. Over ten million?
Noah Cross: Oh, my, yes.
Jake: Then why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What can you buy that you can’t already afford?
Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes. The future!

In other words, more of the same.

Noah Cross: Now where’s the girl? I want the only daughter I have left…as you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.
Jake [sarcastically]: Who do you blame for that? Her?
Noah Cross: I don’t blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of anything.

You, perhaps, being the only exception?

Jake: Evelyn, put that gun away. Let the police handle this.
Evelyn: He owns the police!

It still hasn't sunk in yet how far this goes.

Escobar [After Evelyn had just been killed]: Go home, Jake. I’m doing you a favor
Walsh: Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

"Chinatown, a place where secret organizations rule, the law is meaningless, and good intentions are brutally suppressed, serves as the symbol for the true nature of every city." quora

[iambiguous]

Nikola Tesla

Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

Yeah, and look where we are now.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

Like going from cloud to cloud here.

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.

The fool?

The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.

That and the Bible?

What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife.

That and the Bible?

Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.

Why? Just lucky, I guess.

[iambiguous]

Imagine: For years and years you have always had a mustache. And for years and years the folks around you have never seen you without one. One day on impulse you shave it off. You expect all manner of reactions from your friends, from colleagues and acquaintances. But especially from your family and your loved ones.

Instead they all react the same: what mustache? Sure, a few of them might not notice it. Some folks just don’t keep track of things like that. A full bread, yes. Or if you dyed your hair purple, probably. But “just a mustache”? Here though no one notices it.

At first, you’re thinking they’re all in on the same joke. They’re just conspiring to act as though nothing has changed. Nope. Still, it is one thing for them not to notice that it is gone, another thing altogether to insist it was never even there in the first place.

But the mustache is only the beginning. What else is there about his life that may not be at all as you imagine it to be.

Increasingly he becomes more and more paranoid about what is and what is not real. As well he should. Aren’t we talking about his very sanity here?

And just how many mental, emotional and psychological levels can we entertain here in order to explain the “meaning” of the film. Lots and lots of them apparently: https://offscreen.com/view/carreres_la_moustache

Or maybe it is not really your own sanity at all that is in question…but the sanity of others. Your wife, for instance. Who to believe…and about what?

And what of that surreal sequence in Hong Kong…the small village in China? What a jolt to the narrative that is. How in the world do all of the pieces fit together here. Or maybe that is the point. They fit together from a point of view. More or less sane.


La Mustache

Marc: Are you asleep?
Agnes: No.
Marc: What are you thinking about?
Agnes: Your mustache, of course.
[long pause]
Agnes: You know, in the car earlier, I thought if you carried on, I’d really get scared. I got scared.
Marc: You carried on.
Agnes: Please stop it. It scares me.
Marc: So don’t start again.
Agnes: You’re the one starting again. Stop it!
Marc: It doesn’t matter. I’ve shaved it off, but it can grow back.
Agnes [bolting out of bed]: Why are you doing this?! You know you’ve never had a mustache!!

In other words, the mustache becomes a metaphor for, well, any number of things, right?

Marc: You just called my parents to cancel lunch?
Agnes: Your mother, yes.
Marc: Okay, you spoke to my mother, but we were having lunch at at my parents’?
[long pause]
Agnes: Your father’s dead, Marc. Your father died last year.

A "condition" for sure. If it's not just a metaphor.

Marc: Agnes, you aren’t going to vanish? Not you.

Next thing you know he is on the bed curled up in the fetal position.

Marc: My key.
“Hotel” clerk: The lady.
Marc: The lady?
“Hotel” clerk: Yes sir. Your wife.

Yes, her. And she is acting rather, well, strange. Another jolt to reality. This one, anyway.

Marc: You’ll come back?
Agnes: Of course.
Marc: Wait. I’ll come with you.

Everywhere from then on.

Agnes: I almost thought you’d shaved your mustache off earlier. I’d like to see you without it one day.

So off it comes.

Agnes: I see you’ve done it.

Somewhere in the twilight Zone let's say.

[iambiguous]

Absurdity

“One is always willfully absurd.... If one does not say silly things with a purpose, then he is merely an idiot.” Galen M. Beckett

Let's run this by the idiots here.

“It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this further, the notion of living one’s life for the purposes of pondering the absurdity of living was an even greater absurdity in and of itself, which thus, by reductio ad absurdum, rendered the fear of death a necessary function of life and any lack thereof, a trifling matter rooted in self-inflicted incoherence.” Ashim Shanker

Heads life wins, tails we lose.

“There is small merit in mocking goodness, tweaking charity; it is much more comic to deprive people of their petty little existence for no reason at all, for a lark.” Jacques Rigaut

I could go there, sure, but for the most part it's just not worth the time.

“Mom said she didn't want her youngest daughter dressed in the thrift-store clothes the rest of us wore. Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. "Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom. "Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.” Jeannette Walls

Loopholes. Thank God for them?

“The feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.” Albert Camus

You tell me.

“Christianity would be helpless without the idea of free will and the idea of
free will would be helpless without incongruity.” Kedar Joshi

Let's go up into the clouds and refute this theoretically.

[iambiguous]

She wakes up on Christmas morning. And there’s her boyfriend James lying on the floor next to her. Dead. A suicide.

Noted. Now it’s time to get on with her life.

You know it goes deeper than this. But you are not privy to that part. He no longer wanted to live. And so he stopped. Their relationship then can only be imagined. The whole sequence is eerie, ineffable, out of focus. Day after day she comes and goes. Day after day she leaves the corpse sprawled out on the floor in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room.

You have no idea how to react because there is simply too much you can only guess at. But he’s dead and she’s not.

The boyfriend was a writer. A good one. He leaves her the novel he had written and instructions on what publishers to send it to. She does what he asks. Only she affixes her own name as the author. The book gets published. The publishers send her a check for a lot of money. Meanwhile, not only did she not write the book, she hasn’t even read it!

As for her relationship with with Lanna, your guess is as good as mine. Why? Because nothing is more exasperating than watching a film from Scotland in which there are no English subtitles. They may speak English there, sure, but try following it without subtitles. But you get the gist of it. Especially the part where it crumbles.


Morvern Callar

Morvern [looking at the computer screen]: READ ME
[she clicks on enter]

"Sorry Morvern,

Don’t try to understand, it just felt like the right thing to do. My novel is on the disk, print it out and send it to the first publisher on this list. If they will not take it, try the next one down. I wrote it for you.

I love you.

Be brave."

Instead, she stabs him in the back. Or so it certainly seemed that way to me.

Lanna: Where are we going?
Morvern: Somewhere beautiful.

And that's before the check as I recall.

Lanna [to Morvern]: What do you want, a planet of your own?

In other words, don't try to pin her down. Not on this planet.

Susan [publisher rep]: Do you have an agent? Someone on the business side we should talk to?
Morvern [taken aback]: Me. You can talk to me.
Publisher rep: What did you have in mind for an advance?
[Morvern just gawks at him]
Publisher rep: Well, should I just put something out then? Something in the region of 100?
[nothing from Morvern]
Publisher rep: Well, I’ll be direct. We love the novel. We don’t just jump on a plane and fly to Spain everytime an unsolicited manuscript comes through the door. But you are a first time writer and as such we are taking a risk. So you have to appreciate that.
[Morvern nods]
Susan: I can assure you that as a first time writer, a hundred thousand pounds is a really good deal.
[Movern is dumpstruck but tries not to show it]
Morvern: Can I go to the toilet?

That ever happen to you?

She walks out of sight but her body language tells us all we need to know about how blown away she is by this offer. They could have told her 1,000 pounds and for all she knew that could have been a good offer!

Let's just say that Ignorance is bliss from time to time.

Publisher rep [to Morvern]: So, are you working on any more new material?
Susan: Just give us a few hints. What are you working on next? What’s your next book about?
Morvern: I work in a supermarket.
[the reps burst into laughter]
Publisher rep #1: So, Morvern, you really do work in a supermarket?

Not anymore.

Morvern: Fuck work Lanna, we can go anywhere you like.
Lanna: I’m happy here.
Morvern: Are ya?
Lanna: Yeah, everyone I know is here. There’s nothing wrong with here. It’s the same crapness everywhere, so stop dreaming.

So Movern leaves town [with that big fat check] without her.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

They all got their just desserts.

[iambiguous]

You’re blind. Since birth. And you have a meddling, overprotective mom. So, really, what are your options?

Moving to San Francisco and settling into your own apartment? How likely is that?

But they have an agreement. He can try – try to make it on his own. For two months. She stays away. If he can’t hack it though, it’s back home. For the remainder of his life. Or at least until Mom kicks the bucket. At first though he had Linda. Then Linda left him for someone else.

Meanwhile, Goldie Hawn moves in next door. A young and “free spirited” wannabe actor in a San Francisco that is still smack dab in the middle of “the Sixties”. She spends most of her time prancing about Don’s apartment in her underwear. Being an “ex-hippie” and all.

Still, she’s in his apartment for the longest time and doesn’t even realize that he is blind. He has to tell her.

We see this one coming a mile away. At least until Don meets Ralph. And, then, just for a second…

But being blind since birth? How different is that really from once having been able to see? That’s something I have found myself mulling over from time to time. After all, if you are born blind that’s all you know. And from the cradle to the grave. But what must it be like to never know what to means to see? For some, it’s back to the distinction Woody Allen makes:

"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable."

That’s not how Don thinks about it though:

"I was born blind. I never had to adjust. It’s be different if I’d been able to see and then went blind, but for me, blindness is normal.[/b]

Cue Maia among others.

Of course there are [apparently] things worse than being blind. Being “emotionally crippled” for example.


Butterflies Are Free

Jill: I was married once when I was 16.
Don: Sixteen?! How long were you married?
Jill [remembering back glumly]: It seemed like weeks…

Me? It seemed like decades.

Jill: Wow, I thought I was sloppy!
Don: What do you mean?
Jill: Well, unless you know something I don’t. Like, ashes are good for the table. Is that why you keep dropping them on there?
Don: Have you moved the ashtray?
Jill: It’s right here, what’re ya blind?
Don: Yes.
Jill: What do you mean, yes?
Don: I mean, yes, I’m blind.

Oh...

Don [about being blind]: Wait. Don’t get self-conscious about it. I’m not.
Jill: Why didn’t you tell me?
Don: I just did.
Jill: I mean when I came in.
Don: You didn’t ask.
Jill: Well, why would I ask you? I don’t walk into somebody’s house, saying: “Hi, I’m Jill Tanner, are you blind?”

Well, that's true.

Jill: I’m auditioning for a part in a new play with a little theatre group called The Cosmic Workshop. It’s about this girl who gets all hung up when she marries a homosexual. Originally he was an alcoholic, but homosexuals are very in now in movies and books and plays, so they changed it.
[pause]
Jill: Are you homosexual?
Don: No, just blind.

What are you "just"?

Mrs. Baker [interrogating Jill about being divorced]: How long were you married?
Jill: Six days.
Mrs. Baker: And on the seventh day you rested?

Sort of.

Mrs. Baker [Jill says she has to go to an audition]: Then you’re an actress?
Jill: Well, yeah.
Mrs. Baker: Might I have seen you in anything, besides your underwear?
Jill: Um, not unless you went to Beverly Hills High School. I was in The Mikado. I played Yum-Yum.
Mrs. Baker [snickering]: Yes, I’m sure you did.

Yum yum and then some.

Mrs. Baker [trying to make Don come home]: If you insist on staying here, I will not support you.
[Don goes to the phone]
Mrs. Baker: What’re you doing?
Don: Calling The Chronicle. What a story! ‘Florence Baker Refuses to Help the Handicapped!’
Mrs. Baker: Donnie, I’m serious.
Don: Oh, well, then I’ll call the New York Times.
Mrs. Baker: What are you going to do for money? The little you saved must be gone now.
Don: I can always walk along the streets with a tin cup.
Mrs. Baker: Now you’re embarrassing me.
Don: Oh, no, I’ll keep away from Saks.

That's big of him.

Mrs. Baker [to Jill]: You’ve seen Donnie at his best in that place that he’s memorized. He’s memorized how many steps to the drugstore, to the delicatessen. And you were probably very impressed by that. But I’ve seen him in strange surroundings. He didn’t know I was watching him. I’ve seen him lost. I’ve seen him panic. He needs someone who will stay with him. And not just for six days.

A challenge?

Jill [to Mrs. Baker]: It was Linda Fletcher, not you, who gave him what he needed most…confidence in himself. You’re always dwelling on the negative. Always what he needs, never what he wants. Always what he can’t do, never what he can. What about his music? Have you heard the songs he wrote? I’ll bet you didn’t even know he could write songs. Well, you might be dead right about me. I’m not the ideal girl for Don. But I know one thing: neither are you! And if I’m going to tell anybody to go home, it’s gonna be you, Mrs. Baker! You go home!

Back to Saks.

Jill [talking about auditioning for the play naked]: I don’t think anyone could call me a prude.
Mrs. Baker [mock outrage]: I’d like to see them try!
Jill: Well, at first I hated the idea of getting completely undressed, but there were, like, twenty or thirty actors all around me, all naked, and I was the only one with clothes on! How would you feel?
Mrs. Baker: Warm. All over.

Now this takes me back to...to Richard Flax.

Mrs. Baker [talking about Ralph’s play]: I do not intend to pay money to see nudity, obscenity and degeneracy.
Ralph: Mrs. Baker, these things are all a part of life.
Mrs. Baker: I know, Mr. Santori. So is diarrhea…but I wouldn’t classify it as entertainment.

Good point?

Don [when Jill says she’s moving in with Ralph]: Tell me, Jill, with Ralph, is it like the Fourth of July and like Christmas?
Jill: Not exactly. He has a kind of…strength. With him it’s more like Labor Day.

Just out of curiosity, which holiday best describes you?

Don: You wouldn’t feel a thing about walking out on Ralph or Sebastian or Irving. Well hate me! Or love me! But don’t leave because I’m blind…and don’t stay because I’m blind!
Jill: Who are Sebastion and Irving?

I forgot myself.

[iambiguous]

Stupidity

“You're just another American who is willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick being shoved up your asshole every day... The owners of this country know the truth... it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it!” George Carlin

Bravo!

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are.” Richard Ford

When's the last time this surprised you?

“You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all. He'd probably say he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity.” Markus Zusak

Not your God, of course. Or, sure, only your God.

“She avoids deep thought...not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy.” Alex Shakar

That'll do it.

“This is probably the advantage of being stupid. Stupid people just do. We tend to overthink. If we could eliminate the “over” and just think, then we could do, too. Only we’d be smarter doers because we’d be thinkers.” Sarah Strohmeyer

We'll need, oh, I don't know, a context?

“And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.” Mark Haddon

Here? Don't get me started.

[iambiguous]

The gang’s all here. And, sure, some of them were famous only for being famous. Even back then. Though that was more or less just catching on. Most of them were famous because they were actually accomplished at something: acting, painting, writing, composing.

Not many philosophers showed up though. Unless you counted the literati.

Nowadays of course being famous “just for being famous” is rather routine. Someone like that comes along practically everyday. Or they are famous basically for being “pop” artists. To each his or her own, of course, but, hey, come on…accomplished artists?

Warhol on the other hand seemed to explore/expose/entertain art [and fame] more…ironically: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

Well, aside from what we put there. The, uh, intelligentsia?

What is remarkable about Warhol is the existential gap that existed between the unremarkable life he lived as a child and the truly remarkable life he lived as an adult. As daseins go it was quite extraordinary. Sickly and introverted as a child he imploded into his own little world. Of drawing and art and illustrating. And let’s not forget he came into his own as a commercial artists. A fashion illustrator bringing to life all of the fashion accouterments of the beautiful people. Though it is said he always approached this as just a path into the world of “fine art”.

But, let’s face it, it is not just a coincidence that “commercial art” burst onto the scene at a time when, increasingly, commercials/advertisements themselves were exploding into “mass consciousness”. They were everywhere in a world where the media [and television especially] became the dominant distraction.

And the general consensus among those who knew Warhol best was that, above all else, he loved money. That and [apparently] all the jewelry it could buy.

Which makes you wonder: How much was he paid for his appearance on The Love Boat?


superstar: the life and times of andy warhol

Interviewer: I’d like to talk some more about the paintings and the things you did earlier because I think there is something that needs to be explained for the public which has a certain impression of you and I’m not sure it is the one that you would want them to have…although I don’t think that it matters much to you. Is that true?
Warhol [seemingly bewildered]: What?
Interviewer: Does it matter to you that people feel one way or the other about you? You have a kind of reputation now that is a little bit apart from what you really are, I think. Does it matter to you that they feel one way rather than another about you?
Warhol [deadpan]: I don’t really understand…what do you mean?

Warhol the ironist?

Interviewer [with Warhol standing in front of his Brillo pad illustrations]: Are you just interested in finding something pretty easy to do and then just submitting it?
Warhol: Uh, yes.

Or, sure, Uh, no.

Ultra Violet: We wasted a lot of time, I’m embarrassed to say. That’s my only regret about the '60s - the time wasted.

Next up: time wasted here?

Ultra Violet: We would arrive at The Factory around 11 o’clock in the morning. We would look through all of the newspapers and magazines and see if we were in them. If we were not in them the day was lost, we were depressed. And if we were not in them we would call the media and organize an interview or a little scene or something. We wanted attention. Fame was the cosmic glue of The Factory.

Fame for some...fame and fortune for others.

Interviewer: Andy, do you think that pop art has reached the point where it is becoming repititious now?
Warhol: Uh, yes.
Interviewer: Do you think it should break away from being pop art?
Warhol: Uh, no.
Interviewer: Are you just going to carry on?
Warhol: Uh, yes.

Then "uh" all the way down one suspects.

Tom Wolfe: Prior to the pop art world of Andy Warhol, the reigning attitude in the world of art was that of the abstract expressionists. And the idea was that America was a benighted, crassly commercialized, rather horrible place and the artist could only turn his back and avert his eyes as best he could…Warhol came along as a slightly younger generation and his idea was, “Oh, it’s so horrible, I Iove it”.

Uh, whatever?

Hilton Kramer [former New York Times art critic]: He treated it all as a game and the name of the game was success. The statement that Warhol was making in his work goes something like, “ha, ha, ha”.

Next up: Har Har Harr!

Broadcaster: When asked to defend himself against his critics, Warhol replied, “Oh, I can’t because they’re right.”

Next up: the history of Campbell Soup can designs. No, really, the actual history of it.

Broadcaster: One of the most publicized of the films is “Sleep” by Andy Warhol. Six and a half hours of a man sleeping.
Interviewer: Why is it that you are making these films?
Warhol: It’s just easier to do…it’s easier to do then…mm…painting, The camera has a motor. You just turn it on and walk away. It makes the film all by itself.

Next up: "Death?"

Fran Lebowitz: Andy was one of the primary inventors of the affect that the media has now. People don’t remember but there used to be many less celebrities back then…there were a few celebrities but now celebrities constitute a real segment of the population. And I think that Andy was largely…not solely…but largely responsible for that. Andy made fame more famous.

Imagine then his reaction to fame today.

Tom Wolfe: The attitude that they talk about in downtown New York, in Soho, all the young artists talk about is the Warhol attitude. The Warhol legacy. And the attitude is that you can have your cake and eat it too. You can wallow in all the marvelous excesses of the American life and at the same time be superior to it. You are mocking it at the same time that you are indulging it.

And, of course, the equivalent of that here.

[iambiguous]

In which the question, “what shit are you willing to put up around a genius?” is groped at. And then grappled with. But never quite pinned downThe genius after all is often portrayed in art as a difficult person to be around. And precisely because the qualities that make him a genius [and it’s almost always a him] are the qualities that make him difficult to be around. No still waters here. He seems to run “deep” regarding all aspects of his life. Just ask him. Oh, and ask him how great he is. Anyway, since we are lucky enough to be around genius at all then, hey, cut him some fucking slack!

So it then comes down to this: where the rest of us are willing to draw the line. But that can often depend entirely on what we get out of his genius. For example, does it make any money for us? Or does he fulfill us emotionally? sexually? Does he have a provocative, stimulating mind?

Then you measure that against all the times you feel like strangling the son of a bitch. But since that often varies considerably from day to day it’s no easy task to finally make up your mind.

And did I mention that, in any event, this is done tongue in cheek? Not that underneath it all there aren’t some bitter lessons to be learned about life and love.

Rosie O’Donnell was offered the role of Hattie. She turned it down due to her disdain for Allen’s relationship with Soon-Yi Previn.Samantha Morton received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and she has no spoken lines at all. IMDbRosie O’Donnel as Hattie? Nope, I can’t even imagine it. And Samantha Morton also played the character Morvern Callar above. Can she act or what?


Sweet and Lowdown

Woody Allen: Why Emmet Ray? Because he was interesting. To me, Emmet Ray was a fascinating character. I was a huge fan of his when I was younger. I thought he was an absolutely great guitar player…and he was funny. You know, or…if funny’s the wrong word, then sort of pathetic in a way. He was flamboyant and he was, you know…boorish and obnoxious.

A boorish and obnoxious genius.

Ben Duncan [DJ]: Well, the problem is that there’s just so little known about him. But we do know that he was a great guitar player. I’d say he was probably the second greatest guitar player in the world. Django Reinhardt was the best… and believe me, Emmet idolized Django. He was in awe of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3RjISiW7gA…

Emmet: I can’t settle down, Ann.
Ann: We don’t have to marry.
Emmet: I gotta be free. I’m an artist.
Ann: I thought you liked me.
Emmet: We have fun. I took you to the dump. I let you shoot my gun at some rats.
Ann: Shootin’ rats at the dump is not my idea of a good time.
Emmet: Why not? We brought sandwiches.
Ann: And sittin’ at the railroads watchin’ trains, that’s pretty strange too.
Emmet: See? That’s what I mean. What I like to do, what you like to do, ain’t the same thing.
Ann: That’s not it, Emmet. It’s that you keep your feelings locked up…and you can’t feel nothin’ for anybody else.
Emmet: You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Now that takes me back. I just can't remember how far.

Emmet [to Hattie who is mute]: Do you know how to write? Did you go to school? What is that? Is that a yes or a no? You’re a hard-luck case. You an orphan? You don’t know? Oh, this is great. This is great. I get a goddamn mute orphan half-wit here.

Among other things, as it turns out.

Emmet [to Hattie who is struggling to replace a tire on the car]: What’s the matter? Nobody said it was going to be a picnic. You know I can’t risk my hands.

Cue Glenn Gould!

Manager: Emmet, we gotta look for places to cut down.
Emmet: I burned a hundred dollars once. A guy dared me. He was a floor-flusher. He burned a fifty, I burned a hundred. He burned a twenty, I burned another hundred. I could cut that out.

Any floor-flushers here?

Blanche: I won’t squeal on you if you take me for a drive in that sublime automobile of yours.Emmet: Drive. Where?Blanche: Where? To the ends of the earth. Astonish me.

Guess where he takes her!

Blanche [to Emmet after she shoots the rat]: Do you get a bigger kick doing this, or stealing small objects?

Cue Willard?

Blanche [voiceover]: After-hours jam session. Chicago South Side. He’s like a cat…a feline with the guitar, which is his only, certainly deepest love. No, his only. The sound…the beat, the ideas…where do they come from? Any woman would be second to his music. He wouldn’t miss me any more than the woman he abruptly left. He could only feel pain for his music.

A genius in other words. Not unlike you here, right?

Woody Allen: And then he just, you know, seemed to fade away. I mean, I have no idea. Some people said he went to Europe. And some people feel that he may have stopped playing altogether. But we do have, fortunately, those last recordings he made. And they’re great. They’re absolutely beautiful.

The beauty of jazz. Though I've seldom been able to experience it myself.