Philosophy Now Forum

Trust

Charlie [in the hotel room]: It’s okay, Annie. Don’t worry. I’m just going to take these things off...

Later…

Annie [texting Charlie]: Why aren’t you calling me back?

Why? Because he's already on to the next one...

Lynn [mother]: How long will this take?
Doug: It depends if we get enough genetic material to run a profile.
Will [father]: And if there is, how long?
Doug: Right now, there’s a nationwide backlog. In Illinois alone, we’ve got 2,000 unopened kits sitting in freezers waiting to be processed. Some people have been waiting a year.
Lynn: How is that possible?

Indeed, if the government had the political will here it would not be so. Everything is a matter of priority. Of politics.

Will: You won’t believe this. This is the National Sex Offenders Registry. These perverts are all over Willmette, not just Chicago. See this? All these red dots. They’re everywhere.
Lynn: Oh, my God.

God indeed?

Will [handing Lynn the IM transcript he stole from Doug Tate]: Read it.
Lynn: What is it?
Will: Just read it. “I can’t stop thinking about it. You inside me. I get wet when I picture it.”
Lynn: Okay, stop.
Will: Our daughter wrote this. Annie. “How big are you? I bet you taste good.”
Lynn: Will, stop it.
Will: “I want to see it, right now”. I mean, she’s 14. Where the hell did she learn this?
Lynn: She is 14. She didn’t make this happen!
Will: We’re gonna have to talk to her about this.
Lynn: You are not going to talk to her about this.
Will: But look at it! Our daughter sounds like a fucking porn star!

Let's blame, uh, social media?

Annie: Everything would have been fine if everyone would have just chilled out.
Will: What are you talking about?
Annie: Charlie and me. Are you the crazy one! Checking my phone, bringing out sickos on the web.
Will: I’m trying to find the scumbag.
Annie: He’s not like that! You don’t even know him!
Will: My God, you’re protecting him. The guy raped you.
Annie: He didn’t rape me!..Get out, get out of my fucking room now! I hate you. get out!

The thing is we know the guy is a scumbag. But she won’t admit this to herself. And theoretically, it is always possible that some 14 year olds are precocious enough, emotionally mature enough, to handle the situation if the man really isn’t a scumbag. But the law can never take chances here. And I don’t think it should.

Gail: We can’t control what happens to us or our loved ones. What happens when Annie goes to college?
Will: What are you saying?
Gail: People get hurt. There’s only so much we can do to protect ourselves, our children. The only thing we can do is be there for each other when we do fall down to pick each other up.

Is this true? Again, it always depends on the context. On the people. On what we think we know is true.

There are generally two kinds of horror films. The first revolves around one or another supernatural element: ghost, monster, creature etc. Not particularly effective if you don’t believe in that sort of thing.

But, in the second, we are the source of the horror. And these are often called “psychological horror” films because the horror is derived from the mind of someone who is very, very real. Just [for one or another reason] very, very twisted too.

And they can scare the shit out of you because, however unlikely, it is not entirely out of the question that you won’t stumble into one. Someone, for example, who, as a child, is brutalized. It can leave their psyche in tatters. Then you come along. She’s the monster here. But it makes perfect sense that she would be. You are just the collateral damage.

And each time the film cuts to the man in the canvas bag that’s where your mind heads.


Audition [Ôdishon]

Shigeharu: I’d like to see many women then choose my ideal one.
Yasuhisa [a film producer]: I have an idea. Have an audition.

In the guise of, say, casting a movie.

Yasuhisa: I intend holding the audition next week. Choose 30 applicants.
Shigeharu: 30 applicants?
Yasuhisa: That’s right. And don’t trust the pictures. The composition can be much more useful.

Or confuse you all the more.

Shigeharu: Your writing says that quitting what you love is almost similar to accepting death. I was highly impressed. I think everybody has similar experiences. In your lifetime when you have something beyond your control. What can you do but accept it? I think that’s life. I mean I was amazed a young girl like you understands that. I think you live your life in a very thoughtful way.

Her picture? Drop dead gorgeous of course.

Yasuhisa: You decided on her before the audition.
Shigeharu: She really impressed me.
Yasuhisa: I’m sure she’s a serious type of girl. She is better than her photo and may also be good hearted. But I don’t like her.
Shigeharu: What’s wrong with her?
Yasuhisa: Can’t say exactly what’s wrong. I just don’t like her.

Of course, unlike the rest of us, he's not privy to the man in the canvas bag.

Yasuhisa: About Ms. Yamasaki. Without suspicion, I called Ace Records. It’s no big deal, but something didn’t seem right.
Shigeharu: What is it?
Yasuhisa: Director Shibata isn’t at the company. To be precise, he isn’t there anymore. He’s been missing for a year. He just disappeared.

Of course, people just disappear every day, don't they?

Asami: Living alone was a hassle, I have nobody to talk to. You are the first one who is really warmhearted and tries to accept me and tries to understand who I really am.
Shigeharu: It’s hard to overcome that experience, but, someday you’ll feel that life is wonderful.

At his expense, alas.

Audition [Ôdishon]

Asami: Please…Look at my body. I burnt myself when l was little. I want you to know all about me.
Shigeharu: You are very beautiful.
Asami: Please love me. Only me.
Shigeharu: I understand.
Asami: Everybody says so. But l hope you are different from the others. Only me. OK? Only me. Please love me. Only me.
Shigeharu: Yes.

Trust me: Or else.

Hotel manager [on phone]: This is the front desk. I’m terribly sorry. You must be in bed. We tried calling many times but there was no answer. The thing is, your partner left. We want to confirm your stay.
Shigeharu: Left?

She'll be back.

Shigeharu: Asami was supposed to work here 3 times a week.
Man at Stone Fish bar: Some kind of a mistake.
Shigeharu: Excuse me…Why was the owner killed?
Man: I’m not sure but people talk about some sort of man problem. She used to be associated with a music industry guy. She used drugs too.
Shigeharu: Did she get murdered here?
Man: The body was chopped up completely. It’s a 28 year old building. The whole thing is tilted. We saw her blood flowing through a gap in the door. The other mystery was…The police tried to recompose her body together. Three extra fingers and an ear came up. An extra tonque as well. Isn’t it a terrible world?

I’d say so.

Asima: When l was little, my parents got a divorce. I was sent to my uncle’s house. That was a terrible place. I only remember being abused.

Really, really, really abused.

Asami: You guys collect many girls from auditions. Make them fail. You contact them later. Just wanting to have sex. Everybody is the same.

Pick two:
1] genes
2] memes

Asami [pushing long needles into him]: Painful? Words create lies. Pain can be trusted. This is the most painful point. Then here too. Here as well. Right? Here we go. Underneath the eyes is also very painful.

Note...

When the film was screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2000 it had a record number of walkouts. At the Swiss premiere someone passed out and needed emergency room attention." IMDb

Asima: You can’t go anywhere without feet. And this wire can cut through meat and bone easily.

And then his son comes home.

Stanisław Lem from Solaris

Was it possible for thought to exist without consciousness?

God knows?

...even the most seemingly abstract, sublimely theoretical, mathematicized achievements of science have in reality moved only a step or two away from a prehistoric, coarsely sensory-based, anthropomorphic understanding of the world around us.

Examples?

I was already thinking there was no way out of the vicious circle of madness—after all, no one can think with anything but his brain, no one can be outside himself to check whether the processes taking place in his body are normal.

Or, for that matter, abnormal.

It’s what we wanted: contact with another civilization. We have it, this contact! Our own monstrous ugliness, our own buffoonery and shame, magnified as if it was under a microscope!

Next up: war of the worlds.

Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him.

Rhymes with dasein.

Giese was an unemotional man, but then in the study of Solaris emotion is a hindrance to the explorer. Imagination and premature theorizing are positive disadvantages in approaching a planet where—as has become clear—anything is possible. The fact is that in spite of his cautious nature the scrupulous Giese more than once jumped to premature conclusions. Even when on their guard, human beings inevitably theorize.

What, even here?

Romania, 1987, the brutal Ceausescu communist regime is in place; birth control is illegal and abortion is a crime punishable by death.

Imagine enduring the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy back then and there. Or, perhaps, imagine women enduring it again here and now. Here in America if the political reactionaries prevail.

The abortionist is basically all about the money [and, as it turns out, sex] and the patient is not exactly prepared for what’s coming.

But this guy is a real scumbag. And when men and women talk about these things it is sometimes as though they are in 2 different worlds.


4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days [4 Luni, 3 Saptamâni si 2 Zile]

Mr. Bebe: What month are you?
Gabita: Third.
Mr. Bebe: On the phone you said second.
Gabita: Yes, it was second then, now it’s the third.

Or the fourth.

Mr. Bebe: What did you expect? When you called me, I thought you’d decided.
Gabita: I have, but…
Mr. Bebe: But what? Young lady, this isn’t a game. We could go to prison for this. Both of us. Only I would face a longer sentence. We’re not fooling around here. Once it starts, there is no turning back.

And being short on cash is no problem at all.

Otilia: How long will the abortion take?
Mr. Bebe: It could take 2 to 3 hours or 2 to 3 days. It depends on how the body reacts. Each one is different.

And cash is cash.

Mr. Bebe: How many months did you say?
Gabita: 3
Mr. Bebe: I suggest you pay attention. What was your last period…?

Turns out she was actually closer to 5 months than to 2.

Mr. Bebe: I don’t judge you for what happened. In life, we all make mistakes. I asked you nothing. It’s none of my business. I’ve hidden nothing. I came in my car, I left my ID at reception. If the police come, they’ll get me first. I’m risking my freedom. I have a family, a child of my own. So if I’m nice to you, if I help you, you should be nice to me too, right? Do you think I’d risk 10 years in jail for 3,000 lei.

Payment in kind let's call it.

Mr. Bebe: Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll go to the bathroom. When I come out, you give me your answer. If it’s yes, tell me who goes first. If it’s no, I get up and go.

So, into the bathroom with him they both go. And not to brush their teeth.

Otilia: Shit Gabita, sometimes you drive me crazy!!

You have to sympathize with her here. From start to finish Gabita has made this all so much worse than it had to be. But then what do I know about being in this predicament.

Gabita: I got rid of it. It’s in the bathroom.

And there it is, the aborted fetus laying on the bathroom floor. And it's clearly not just a clump of cells.

Gabita: You will bury it, won’t you? Promise?
Otilia: I won’t just dump it.

I forget: did she or didn't she?

Gabita: Did you bury it?
Otilia [after pause]: Do you know what we are going to do? We’re never going to talk about this again.

Probably not then.

Logic

“When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker’s mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed. Excrement may be regarded as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in food have been exhausted. In any event, it cannot serve the purposes of sustenance, any more than hot air can serve those of communication.” Harry G. Frankfurt

Much as he exemplifies that here?

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.” Carveth Read

On the other hand: about what?

“He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.” Julian Barnes

Take that, Mr. Objectivist!

“People will always prefer black-and-white over shades of grey, and so there will always be the temptation to hold overly-simplified beliefs and to hold them with excessive confidence” Thomas Gilovich

Take that, Mr. Objectivist!

“What we believe is heavily influenced by what we think others believe” Thomas Gilovich

Pick three:
1] historically
2] culturally
3] experientially

“Whenever there's something wrong with your writing, suspect that there's something wrong with your thinking.” Patricia T. O'Conner

Or, sure, there's something wrong with what others think they are reading.

Ballast: “Anything that gives mental, moral, or political stability or steadiness.”

Some need it more than others. Some have it more than others. And one may have nothing to do with the other.

Imagine, for example, your twin brother commits suicide. What do you do? Try it yourself? That’s what he does. And comes this close to succeeding.

From then on it’s trying to close the gap between your own life and the lives you see unfolding on the screen. For me the gap is considerable. These folks are mainly working class blacks struggling to survive from day to day down in the Misssissippi Delta. And way out in the sticks too. Race isn’t really a factor here so much always there somewhere in the background.

It’s hard to believe but these are just local non-professional actors.


Ballast

James [holding a gun on Lawrence]: Where’s his wallet?
Lawrence: It’s next door.
James: Go get it. So how did he die?
Lawrence: He took pills and fell asleep.
James: On purpose?
Lawrence: Yes. So how does that make you feel?
James: Just give me the wallet. I don’t feel nothing. He was an asshole and a fucking coward.
Lawrence: Did your mama tell you that?
James: You both are.
Lawrence: I know you think a lot of ugly things about Darrius, but he really loved you.
James: No, he didn’t. He never even came to see me once.
Lawrence: He couldn’t, James. Your mama asked the court to make it illegal for him to see you. You didn’t know that?

Indeed, what of all the things you yourself know little or nothing about that shaped and molded your own life dramatically?

Lawrence: I’ll give you money if you need it, but you have to tell me what it’s for.
James: Just give it to me!
Lawrence: If it’s to buy drugs, I ain’t giving you any.
James: Just give it to me!
Lawrence: Not for that. You’re all fucked up now, aren’t you?
James: You want me to shoot you?
Lawrence: You can shoot me if you want.
James: I’ll shoot you!
Lawrence: I don’t care.

Hell, hadn’t he just shot himself in the chest?

Marlee [James’s Mother]: He fired me. He said I couldn’t work this way. I had to take a sick leave. And I’ve already had too many, so I’m out! He said I couldn’t work like this 'cause it’s disturbing for the clients. Like the motherfuckers even know I’m there! I’m invisible to them! I’m so sick of this shit!

Of course, most of us have been there. Some, many times.

James [trying to figure twins]: If you’re almost the same person and have the same feelings as my dad, did you love my mom too?
Lawrence: No.
James: Did she love you?
Lawrence: No.

Twins. Until they're not.

James [to his mother]: Did you ask the court to make it illegal for my dad to see me?
Marlee [to Lawrence]: You no good motherfucker, you never stop, do you? How the fuck you gonna tell James I had Darrius barred from seeing him?
Lawrence: 'Cause it’s the truth.
Marlee: He left us first. Why the hell you didn’t tell him that truth? How you gonna fill his head with some fucked-up bullshit about his father loving him…making him out like some goddamn hero and me some crazy woman? He left us like a fucking coward!

What to believe? Who to believe?
This time...

Lawrence: It took our dad a whole lifetime to save up enough to buy this property and you just think you can walk in our lives in one day and piss that all away? That’s a pretty fucked-up kind of love, don’t you think?
Marlee: A fucked-up kind of love? Let me tell you what’s a fucked-up kind of love…Being so terrified of your brother wanting…
Lawrence: You were an addict, Marlee. Where was that money really going to?
Marlee: Fuck you! You were so terrified of him having something out of life, wanting something different…you was willing to destroy his whole damn family! Huh? Weren’t you? For what? To be caught in some sick little prison of yours? That’s a truly fucked-up kind of love!
Lawrence: You will never comprehend my love for him.
Marlee: You call that shit love? That bullshit you whispered in his ear about me was love? Look what your love did to him!

And there we are. Trying to sort through the narratives, trying to figure out who is lying to the other more or less than they are lying to themselves. But then, necessity being the mother of invention, they "work things out".

Marlee: I know that the things you been doing with James are genuine. It’s confusing, but it makes sense. I mean, genetically and all. That’s why I’m saying I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m saying, but…
[they hug and Lawrence tries to kiss her]
Marlee: What the fuck you doing? Shit! Is this what it was all about? Is this what you was after?

The ending is just ambiguous enough to let you know you have barely scratched the surface in understanding these folks. Just as, no doubt, they would barely scratch the surface in knowing us.

A chance encounter and the real estate shark tumbles back into the world of music. The world of the artiste. The world of the classical pianist. But no less the crook and no less the thug.

The past and the future begin to tug fiercely at him.

One pays better though. And it might work if one chose to actually let go of the past. But when you tug it into the future with you day after day [and it’s filled with corruption and the potential for violence] it’s just too jarring a leap. The mother is long gone but the father is right there. His head is always in two places.

Dad’s got to go. But is that enough?


The Beat That Mt Heart Skipped[De Battre Mon Coeur S’est A
rrêté]

Conservatory Professor: You last played when?
Thomas: About ten years ago.
Professor: Ten years without practice?
Thomas: I practice. I never gave up comletely. I play for myself, when I’m in the mood, or for friends.
Professor [with barely disguised sarcasm]: And now you are auditioning?
Thomas: That’s right

Cue the tutor.

Thomas [walking away from the professor]: Fuck you, p****.

The thug in him, let's say.

Robert [father]: Remember that favor I asked you?
Thomas: What favor?
Robert: The couscous jerk who owes me 6 months rent.
Thomas: Sorry, no time.
Robert: No time? Time to see that fag and get psyched up about pianos, but not twenty minutes for me?

No, but twenty minutes later on...?

Thomas: Hold it. Doesn’t she speak French?
Jean-Pierre: She only just got here. She speaks Chinese, Vietnamese and a little English.
Miao Lin [as Thomas lights a cigarette]: No smoking.
Thomas: No smoking, no talking?

Piano! Piano! Piano!

Sami: Playing piano is making you flip. Stop it now!
Thomas: Nothing is making me flip. I’m not flipping. I’m having a ball. I feel fantastic, dont’ you see? It’s important, I’m serious about it.
Sami: You gonna make dough from pianos?
Thomas: Not pianos, the piano! It’s not about making money, it’s about art.
Sami: What’s in it for us? You coming to meetings all, ‘Hi guys, I’ve been playing piano.’ Shit, I’ll take up the banjo.
Thomas: It’s over your head.

Though clearly not over Miao Lin's head.

The truth not only can be adjusted, it is done all the time. And you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that. You just have to be a capitalist. It’s the nature of the beast. The bottom line. It’s only a matter of how you rationalize it. If you bother with that at all.

And ironically the biggest scams revolve not around crooks like these but around the things that are all perfectly legal.

Sort of.

So, every now and then another one of these big corporate scandals – Hooker Chemical, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Exxon, Shell – hits the front page. But nothing really changes. Not systemically. It all just becomes absorbed in the best of all possible worlds that it’s claimed to be.

Would that “real life” could have an ending like this one.



Michael Clayton

Arthur: Michael. Dear Michael. Of course it’s you, who else could they send, who else could be trusted? I… I know it’s a long way and you’re ready to go to work… all I’m saying is wait, just wait, just-just-just… please hear me out because this is not an episode, relapse, fuck-up, it’s… I’m begging you Michael. I’m begging you. Try and make believe this is not just madness because this is not just madness. Two weeks ago I came out of the building, okay, I’m running across Sixth Avenue, there’s a car waiting, I got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport and I’m dictating. There’s this, this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad, and suddenly she starts screaming, and I realize we’re standing in the middle of the street, the light’s changed, there’s this wall of traffic, serious traffic speeding towards us, and I… I-I freeze, I can’t move, and I’m suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I’m covered with some sort of film. It’s in my hair, my face… it’s like a glaze… like a… a coating, and… at first I thought, oh my god, I know what this is, this is some sort of amniotic - embryonic - fluid. I’m drenched in afterbirth, I’ve-I’ve breached the chrysalis, I’ve been reborn. But then the traffic, the stampede, the cars, the trucks, the horns, the screaming and I’m thinking no-no-no-no, reset, this is not rebirth, this is some kind of giddy illusion of renewal that happens in the final moment before death. And then I realize no-no-no, this is completely wrong because I look back at the building and I had the most stunning moment of clarity. I… I… I… I realized Michael, that I had emerged not from the doors of Kenner, Bach, and Ledeen, not through the portals of our vast and powerful law firm, but from the asshole of an organism whose sole function is to excrete the… the-the-the poison, the ammo, the defoliant necessary for other, larger, more powerful organisms to destroy the miracle of humanity. And that I had been coated in this patina of shit for the best part of my life. The stench of it and the stain of it would in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this is, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait. It must stand the test of time. And Michael, the time is now.

Go figure?

Michael: Mr. Greer, you left the scene of an accident on a slow week night, six miles from a state police barracks. Believe me. If there’s a line, you’re right up front.
Mr. Greer: I can get a lawyer any time I want. I don’t need you for that. We’re not sitting here for forty five minutes for a god damned referral.
Michael: I don’t know what Walter promised you but…
Mr. Greer: A miracle worker. That’s Walter on the phone twenty minutes ago. Direct quote, okay, “Hang tight, I’m sending you a miracle worker.”
Michael: Well, he misspoke.

In more ways than one as it turned out.

Mr. Greer [pointing to the ringing phone]: That’s the police, isn’t it?
Michael: No. They don’t call.

Good to know.

Arthur: Six years, Michael. Six years I’ve absorbed this poison. Four hundred depositions, a hundred motions, five changes of venue…85,000 documents in discovery. Six years of scheming and stalling and screaming, and what have I got? I’ve spent 12 percent of my life defending the reputation of a deadly weed killer!

Shades of Erin Brockovich?

Karen: This is totally unacceptable. This is a 3-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit. In the morning, I have to call my board. I have to tell them that the architect of our entire defense has been arrested for running naked in a snowstorm, chasing the plaintiffs through a parking lot.
Michael: I understand.
Karen: What sickness is he talking about?
Michael: I don’t know. It could be a number of things.
Karen: Well, give me one.
Michael: Frostbite.
Karen [shocked]: You think this is funny!

And it doesn't get funnier still.

Marty: We’ve got 600 attorneys here. We’ve got to find out who’s an expert on psychiatric commitment statutes.
Michael: I can tell you who that is: Arthur.

Uh-oh.

Michael Clayton

Arthur [on the phone with Anna Kaiserson]: Isn’t it what we wait for? To meet someone… and they’re, they’re like a lens and suddenly you’re looking through them and everything changes and nothing can ever be the same again.

Next up: the fractured and fragmented lens here.

Arthur: Michael, I have great affection for you and you live a very rich and interesting life, but you’re a bag man not an attorney. If your intention was to have me committed you should have kept me in Wisconsin where the arrest report, the videotape, eyewitness reports of my inappropriate behavior would have had jurisdictional relevance. I have no criminal record in the state of New York, and the single determining criterion for involuntary commitment is danger. Is the defendant a danger to himself or to others. You think you got the horses for that? Well good luck and God bless, but I’ll tell you this: the last place you want to see me is in court.
Michael: I’m not the enemy.
Arthur: Then who are you?

How about in your state?

Authur: Yes! Here we are, all together. Is everyone listening? 'Cause this is the moment you’ve been waiting for, a very special piece of paper, so let’s have a big, paranoid, malignant round of applause… for United Northfield Culcitate Internal Research Memorandum #229! June 19th, 1991. “Conclusion: The unanticipated marketing growth for Culcitate by small farms in colder climates demands IMMEDIATE cost-benefit analysis.” Hah. Would you like a little bit of legal advice? NEVER let a scientist use the words “unanticipated” and “immediate” in the same sentence. Okay? Okay. “In-house field studies have indicated small, short-season farms dependent on well water for human consumption are at risk for toxic, particulate concentrations at levels significant enough to cause serious human tissue damage.” Well, this is a long way of saying that you don’t even have to leave your house to be killed by our product, we’ll pipe it into your kitchen sink. “Culcitate’s great market advantage that it is tasteless, colorless, and does not precipitate, has the potential to mask and intensify these potentially lethal exposures.” Now, I love this. Not only is this a great product, it is a superb cancer delivery system. “Chemical modifications of Culcitate product, or the addition of a detector molecule such as an odorant or a colorant, would require a top-down redesign of the Culcitate-manufacturing process. These costs, while assumed to be significant, were not summarized here.” Which, loosely translated, means “it’s going to cost a fortune to go back on this, and I’m just an asshole in a lab, so could someone else PLEASE make the decision?” “CLEARLY, the release of these internal research documents would compromise the effective marketing of Culcitate, and MUST be kept within the protective confines of United Northfield’s trade secret language.” You don’t need me… to tell you what that means. Goodbye!

And good riddance for any number of them.

Karen: Okay.
Wet Man: Is that, “Okay, you understand,” or “Okay, proceed”?

You're probably wondering, "what's the difference?"

Michael: What if Arthur was onto something?
Marty: What do you mean? Onto what?
Michael: U North. What if he wasn’t crazy, what if he was right?
Marty: Right about what? We’re on the wrong side?
Michael: Wrong side, wrong way. Anything. All of it.
Marty: This is news? This case reeked from day one. Fifteen years in I gotta tell you how we pay the rent?
Michael: But what would they do, what would they do if he went public?
Marty: What would they do? Are you fucking soft? They’re doing it! We don’t straighten this settlement out in the next twenty four hours, they’re gonna withhold nine million dollars in fees. Then they’re gonna pull out the video of Arthur doing his flashdance in Milwaukee, they’re gonna sue us for legal malpractice. Except there won’t be anything for them to win, because by then the merger with London will be dead and we’ll be selling off the goddamn furniture!
[hands Michael an envelope]
Marty: That’s eighty. We’re calling it a bonus. You’ve got a three year contract, that’s your current numbers, that’s assuming this all works out.

Cue the cronies, in other words.

Michael [to Karen]: I’m not the guy that you kill. I’m the guy that you buy. Are you so fucking blind you don’t even see what I am? I’m the easiest part of your whole goddamn problem and you’re gonna kill me? Don’t you know who I am? I’m a fixer. I’m a bagman. I do everything from shoplifting housewives to bent congressmen…and you’re gonna kill me?

Almost did, remember?
https://youtu.be/m8BL6-a_lzM?si=PlxMxqGkU4AfouS1

Karen: Five is easier. Yeah, 5 is something that we could talk about.
Michael: Good. And then the other 5 is to forget about the 468 people that you knocked off with your weed killer.
Karen: I’ll talk to…
Michael: Do I look like I’m negotiating?

The good guys win one!

Michael: You’re so fucked. Here let me get a picture while I’m at it.
Karen: You don’t want the money?
Michael: Keep the money. You’ll need it.
Don: Is this fellow bothering you?
Michael: Am I bothering you?
Don: Karen, I’ve got a board waiting in there. What the hell’s going on? Who are you?
Michael: I’m Shiva, the God of death.

For all practical purposes, in this case.

Taxi driver: So what are we doin’?
Michael: Give me fifty dollars worth. Just drive.

Fifty bucks. That ought to get him at least a couple of miles.

Sarah Perry from The Essex Serpent

Must we make battlegrounds out of our children?

Though some wouldn't have it any other way.

...what use was it to observe the human species and try to understand it? Their rules were fathomless and no more fixed than the wind.

Right, like everything is only as it ever could have been. Unless, of course, that's actually true.

The principle of caution, respecting the gravity of human suffering, weighs against procreating to the extent that it is unpredictable whether the person created will have a good life.

Though some will in fact embody spectacluar lives.

I said I'd go alone, but perhaps that's the point; perhaps we are always alone, no matter the company we keep.

I know I have always been. Why? Just lucky I guess.

But she’d learned the humility of scholars: that the more she knew, the more she did not know.

Unlike, say, the scholars here who do know everything.

Living outside of any story―living without hope for the future, without the belief that one is part of a narrative―is confusing.

When it's not actually fractured and fragmented.

Ten years in the making this particular revenge is served up very cold indeed. But it is a strangely problematic portion. Depending on how much emphasis you place on intentions. Or the lack of discretion. Or even common courtesy.

But this was, after all, the most important moment in her life.

On the other hand, I draw the line at collateral damage. Especially children.


The Page Turner

Jean [to Melanie]: There’s something I want to tell you before I go. My wife is a pianist. She plays in a trio. They’re giving a concert next week. A very important concert. You need to know that two years ago, she was in a car crash. Somebody drove into her. It was a hit-and-run. Since then, well, it made her fragile. She started getting stage fright. All performers get stage fright but hers is quite crippling. That’s why she needs support. It’s important that you’re here all the time.

Of course, unbeknownst to anyone, she and his wife go way back.

Ariane: You read music?
Melanie: Yes. I used to play the piano.
Ariane: You gave it up. That’s a pity.

Now she just turns pages. Or not as it were.

Ariane: Did you know Melanie plays the piano?
Jean: No. Do you?
Melanie: I did, a long time ago.
Ariane: Well, she reads music perfectly. She’s turning for me at the radio concert.
Jean: That’s a big responsibility! A page turner can throw everything off balance. Horowitz said this, not me.

Of course, we know what's coming. We just didn't know it would go that far.

Ariane: I’m going to ask her to turn at the concert. It’s a little risky but she’s quite at ease. She reassures me.
Virginie: Notice how she watches you?
Ariane: How?
Virginie: Intently.

There's a reason for that.

Tristan [rubbing his arm]: I have a pain here.
Melanie: Don’t worry. It happens. It’s a secret. Not a word.
Ariane: What’s a secret?

Again, he's just a child though.

Ariane: How did it happen?
Virginie: Cellos are heavy. He said he lifted it up to retract the spike. It slipped, I suppose. But I’ve never heard of such an accident.

Another secret!

Melanie: There’s one thing I’d like to ask you for. You’ll think it’s weird.
Ariane: No. Go on.
Melanie: I’d like your autograph.

The last nail in the coffin?

William Golding from Lord of the Flies

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.

Well, not counting philosophy, perhaps.

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

Or here, personas.

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of mans heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Next up: Yellowjackets.

Which is better--to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?

Better for who?

I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either.
Piggy paused.
Unless—
Ralph moved restlessly.
Unless what?
Unless we get frightened of people.

Let's just say it's the difference between The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock.

“The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?”

Of course here that's all changing, right?

In some respects, it’s the standard “love me love me love I’m a liberal” line on corporate America: if only those who run Big Business would learn a lesson from the decent hard working man on the street: Can’t we all just get along?

But this is grasping capitalism on the level in which some claim socialism to be purely scientific. But admittedly this does come a lot closer than most films in the genre to exposing it as a “system.” As a political economy. The role of power in other words.

Any time you change lanes you are creating a new set of conditions. And that can set into motion consequences beyond your wildest dreams. Or nightmares. But even those less drastic can have a profound effect on your life. And here worlds clash. Worlds each of them are basically oblivious to.


Changing Lanes

Doyle: Come on, man, don’t leave me out here like this.
Gavin: Sorry, better luck next time.

And for both of them as it turns out.

Doyle: You said, “Better luck next time.” I said, “Give me a lift”. You said “Better luck next time” and just sped off.

Well, it's not like he didn't a reason to.

Doyle: Money. You… you think I want money? What I want is my morning back. I need you to give my time back to me. Can you give me back my time? Can you give my time back to me? Huh? Can you? So she won’t move back to Oregon! So she won’t take my sons! So they’ll move into the house so I can be a father! Just 20 minutes! Can you give me that?

They may as well be from different planets.

Michelle: I always thought you were cutting a pretty big corner by convincing a dying old man to sign a power of appointment.
Gavin: It wasn’t like that.
Michelle: Are you sure it wasn’t like that?

Oh, it was like that, alright.

Gavin: What am I gonna do? How do I get the file back?
Michelle: Well…there’s this guy. He helps with things that need…helping out.
Gavin: Like what?
Michelle: Like things. Like…getting people to do things you want them to do when they don’t necessarily want to do them.
Gavin: Where is he?

And, no, he's not a button man.

Doyle: I hope you don’t mind, but I was intrigued by your conversation. I just thought you were in advertising. So I want to give you my dream version of a Tiger Woods commercial, okay? There’s this black guy on a golf course. And all these people are trying to get him to caddy for them, but he’s not a caddy. He’s just a guy trying to play a round of golf. And these guys give him a five-dollar bill and tell him to go the clubhouse and get them cigarettes and beer. So, off he goes, home, to his wife and to their little son, who he teaches to play golf. You see all the other little boys playing hopscotch while little Tiger practices on the putting green. You see all the other kids eating ice cream while Tiger practices hitting long balls in the rain while his father shows him how. And we fade up, to Tiger, winning four Grand Slams in a row, and becoming the greatest golfer to ever pick up a 9-iron. And we end on his father in the crowd, on the sidelines, and Tiger giving him the trophies. All because of a father’s determination that no fat white man - like your fathers, probably - would ever send his son to the clubhouse for cigarettes and beer.

Next up: Richard Williams

Changing Lanes

Sponsor: What happened in court today?
Doyle: I’m in a bar. What does that tell you?

Bill Hurt as it turns out.

Gavin: Let me think about it.
Stephen: What the hell are you going to think about, your high school ethics class?

Pick one:
1] what would Jesus do?
2] what would Kant do?
3] what would you do?

Michelle: What’s the file say?
Gavin: It says they pay themselves a million and a half dollars…each, out of the trust.
Michelle: Which is the reason why they got rid of Mina Dunne and the rest of the board.
Gavin: It’s probably not even illegal.
Michelle: It’s probably just disgusting.

Let's just say a buck is a buck.

Doyle: I wasn’t bankrupt yesterday and I’m not bankrupt today!
Ron: I’m sorry, Mr. Gipson. The computer says you are.

Next up: the computer says you're dead.

Cynthia [wife]: What do you think the law is at this level of the game? At my father’s level? It’s a big, vicious rumble, Gavin. The people who established this law firm and the people who sustain it understand the way the world works. If you want to continue to live the way we are living…
Gavin: You have to steal.

Big time if you can.

Gavin [to priest in confessional]: I came here for some meaning. I’m trying…I want you to give the world meaning to me.
Priest: Why does the world need meaning?
Gavin: Why does the…Because…because the world’s a sewer. Because the world’s a shithole and a garbage dump. Because my father-in-law got me to screw a good man, a decent man out of his money. And my wife cheers me on. Because I got into a fender bender with vthis guy on the FDR. I had a fight with him. I tried to do everything to settle it. But this guy just won’t let it go.
Priest: Why? Why wouldn’t he let it go?
Gavin: I DON’T KNOW WHY!! Sometimes, God likes to put two guys in a paper bag and just let 'em rip.

Of course!

Gavin [snickering then laughing out loud]: The law keeps us civilized?
Tyler [interviewing for a job]: I don’t think it’s funny.
Gavin: That’s why I’m gonna give you this job. I’m giving you the job because I wanna hear what you have to say about the law after you’ve worked here for five years. Or three years. Or a month. A week, a day, an hour.

The law? Show me the money!

Sponsor [to Doyle]: What you saw today is that everything decent is held together by a covenant. An agreement NOT to go bat shit.

Well, except here, of course.

Stephen: How the hell do you think Simon Dunne got his money? You think those factories in Malaysia have day care centers in them? You wanna check the pollution levels of his chemical plants in Mexico or look at the tax benefits he got from this foundation? This is all a tightrope, you gotta learn to balance.
Gavin: How can you live like that?
Stephen: I can live with myself…because at the end of the day I think I do more good than harm. What other standard have I got to judge by?

Uh, yours?

Gavin: I was thinking about what you said to me. About the end of the day - about doing more good than harm. That is what you said, isn’t it?
Stephen: Don’t you fuck with me.
Gavin: I am not fucking with you, sir. Can you imagine how unpleasant it would be if the judge got a hold of this file? I’m gonna hold on to this file. I’m gonna keep it in a very safe place. But I’m not going to Texas. I’m gonna come back into work on Monday. I’m gonna start doing that pro bono work that you recommended that I do. But I’m gonna do it from our office. The first thing we’re gonna do is help a man buy a house.

Turn everything back on.

Valerie: What do you want?
Gavin: Five minutes, ma’am. I owe your husband twenty. Hell… I’m only asking for five with you.

The white man's burden?