Philosophy Now Forum

Sincerity in mind is the door to Divine Knowledge.

for Gary...

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

-Philip K. Dick

There are blind folks who insist they develop heightened senses to compensate for it. But that is just what this monster is looking for.

Going blind. Being blind. For some that is horror enough.

The things we see. The things we can’t see. Scary being a matter of perspective. What do we see that in not seeing wouldn’t scare us? What of things you can’t see you can still hear.

Do we believe what we see? Do we believe what we hear? Do we believe what we think? Well, which makes you the least scared? But seeing, hearing and thinking something doesn’t it make it true.

Then there are the things that get stuck inside our heads that scare us most of all.

In the dark, things can get scarier. There are just many different ways you can be in the dark. But one way to keep [at least some] frightening things at a distance is to choose the dark. And to stay there.


Julia's Eyes [Los Ojos de Julia]

Soledad: Lately, Sara hardly spoke to me. She’d made new friends.
Julia: What new friends?
Soledad: Younger people, you know, from the Baumann Center. A center for the blind, not far from here. One of those places where they tell you you can still do anything you like despite being blind. If you can’t hear, you’re deaf. If you lose your arm, you’re armless. If you can’t see, you’re blind. And nothing is like it was before.

Unless, of course, you are born blind, born deaf, born with missing limbs.

Julia: How come you remember my sister but not the man?
Waiter: It was hard not to notice her. You know, because of the bandages.
Julia: Bandages?
Waiter: From the operation.
Julia [more to herself]: My sister had an operation?

Let's just say that she is in the dark about many things.

Julia [After Isaac tells her Sara committed suicide because the operation did not work]: What else are you not telling me?
Isaac: I wanted to protect you.
Julia: From what?
Isaac: From the truth, Julia.
Julia: And what is the truth?
Isaac: Sara committed suicide because she couldn’t bear to be blind.

If that is the truth of course.

Julia: My sister was with a man, wasn’t she
Crespulo: The invisible man.
Julia: Pardon?
Crespulo: The man who came with your sister, nobody remembers him, right?
Julia: Just because no one remembers him doesn’t mean he’s invisible.
Crespulo: Some people have no light. Do you know what it is to enter a room and have nobody look at you? Or to walk down the street and have people bump into you? Or to ask something three times and nobody answers? That’s the man you are looking for. A silence, a void, an absense.

Next up: all the invisible posters here.

Julia: If the operation doesn’t work, I couldn’t complain. I’ve already seen all I wanted to see. I’ve spent my life looking for invisible planets. My eyes have seen amazing things. But nothing compares to the night sky over the Sahara.

Your reaction may well be different.

Julia: Monsters aren’t real, Lia!
Lia: This one is. He collects images. He has a wall filled with photos of you and Sara.

Unless, of course, some things are not what they seem.

Man: You don’t know what fear is! You’ve no idea what fear is! Real fear! Fear of being ignored or rejected, fear of indifference. Julia, look at me! You don’t know what it is to be condemned to darkness and to have to hide in another world, a silent world without looks, getting used to life counting your steps, always wearing the same clothes, using your voice, one voice and no voice; and the eyes, some eyes and no eyes. It’s been so long, Julia, that in the end, you become a shadow, until one day, you discover that blind people know you’re there, that you’re breathing, that you’re still alive. And you can offer them your eyes for theirs.

Next up: fractured and fragmented shadows.

Julia: If you’re not Ivan, who are you?

More to the point: why are you who you are and not something else?

Angel: Mama. Mama. I asked you a question. How long have you been able to see?

How long do you think?

Julia: What happened to his eyes.
Dr. Roman: He donated them.
Julia: And where are they?
Dr. Roman: Where he would have wanted them.

Ambiguous enough for you?

William Golding from Lord of the Flies

The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood—and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition.

We still recognize that of course. Though, by all means, some more than others.

Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!

Ah, the Beast inside each and every one of us.

The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.

This, dasein and political economy.

Which is better -- to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?
Which is better -- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?
Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?

Once and for all let's settle this.

If only one had time to think!

How about we make time here?
Yes, yes, of course: theoretically.

Life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly, I mean.

Though certainly more than all the others.

Never watched the original and I only watched this one because I have never not watched something put out by the Coen Brothers. So it was okay I guess. Parts of it even better than that.

Another Dirty Harry more or less. But a colorful cuss no doubt about it.

And then there’s Marshall Cogburn…

Mattie is somewhat…unbelievable? For one thing, she’s 14 years old and sounds like she graduated from Harvard Law School. But grit for grit she’s right up there with Calamity Jane.

Besides, you make allowances when this stuff is coming from the Coens.


True Grit

Title card: The wicked flee when none pursueth. Proverbs 28:1

To wit: https://youtu.be/R8VswzDwS0c?si=7zsxowqbYZksAN2L

Stonehill: I do not entertain hypotheticals, the world as it is is vexing enough.

Can't get around them here though, right? And, no, not just theoretically.

Lawyer: Mr. Cogburn, did you find a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it?
Cross-examining Lawyer: Objection your Honor, Leading
Judge Parker: Sustained. Rephrase the question.
Lawyer: What happened then?
Cogburn: I found a bottle with a hundred and twenty-five dollars in it.

A Perry Mason moment!

Cross-examining Lawyer: Mister Cogburn, in your four years as US Marshal, how many men have you shot?
Cogburn: Shot? Or killed?
Cross-examining Lawyer: Let us restrict it to killed so we may have a manageable figure.

Or just how many he killed at the Alamo.

Cross-examining Lawyer: So, you say that when Amos Wharton raised his axe, you backed away from him.
Cogburn: That’s right.
Cross-examining Lawyer: In what direction were you going?
Cogburn: I always go backwards when I’m backing up.

In fact, there may well be no other possible direction.

LaBoeuf: You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin’ I gave some thought to stealin’ a kiss…though you are very young, and sick… and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.
Mattie: One would be just as unpleasant as the other.

The part they leave out of course.

Mattie: And “futile”, Marshal Cogburn, “pursuit would be futile”? It’s not spelled “f-u-d-e-l.”

Talk about futile!

Mattie [cutting the rope on the tree]: Why did they hang him so high?
Cogburn: I do not know. Possibly in the belief it’d make him more dead.

Hard to say, of course.

Bear Man [tilting his head to indicate the corpse behind him]: I have taken his teeth. I will entertain an offer for the rest of him.

Possession being 9/10ths of the law.

Quincy [to Mattie]: Who worked you over with the ugly stick?

You tell me: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=4 ... =620&dpr=1

LaBoeuf: As I understand it, Chaney… or Chelmsford, as he called himshelf in Texas… shot the senator’s dog. When the senator remonstrated, Chelmsford shot him as well. You could argue that the shooting of the dog was merely an instance of malum prohibitum, but the shooting of a senator is indubitably an instance of malum in se.
Cogburn: Malla-men what?
Mattie: Malum in se. The distinction is between an act that is wrong in itself, and an act that is wrong only according to our laws and mores. It is Latin.
Cogburn: I am struck that LaBoeuf is shot, trampled, and nearly severs his tongue, and not only does not cease to talk, but spills the
banks of English!

Go figure?

Cogburn: I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which will you have?
Lucky Ned Pepper: I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!

To wit: https://youtu.be/Ekt3fD2vx5c?si=QAGOO0KDzurzbMxf

Meaning

“Not everything that can be counted counts.
Not everything that counts can be counted.” William Bruce Cameron

You first this time.

“Keep your mind open. The meaning of things lies in how people perceive them. The same thing could mean different meanings to the same people at different times.” Roy T. Bennett

On the other hand, what if that was really true?

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.” Rebecca Solnit

And not just astrologically. Though close to it?

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.” Alan Cohen

Not to worry, you'll find it someday.

“Words have weight.” Stephen King

True. But I'm still packin', okay?

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.” Jean-Paul Sartre

Next up: inside the worm.

Lantana is a plant. A weed actually.

As with The Dead Girl this film revolves around characters that revolve around the body of a woman that shows up…dead. If only later in the film and under very different circumstances.

This is how the lives of most of us are. We interact in a particular circle of relationships but those we interact with create or become a part of other circles too. But very, very few have access to all of them. So we see them only from a point of view. And sometimes something traumatic can jolt the cirlces. They bump into each other in ways no one could have foreseen or anticipated.

And relationships in the modern world are often frenetic to say the least. We don’t have the relatively rigid rules that pervaded communities in the past. A proper place for everything and everything in its proper place? How many of us will acknowledge [or tolerate] that?

See how many times you recognize yourself here

Lantana is set in suburban Sydney and focuses on the complex relationships between the characters in the film. The central event of the film is the disappearance and death of a woman whose body is shown at the start of the film, but whose identity is not revealed until later. The film’s name derives from the plant Lantana, a weed prevalent in suburban Sydney. wiki


Lantana

Valerie [a psychologist speaking at a conference]: We don’t know what to feel anymore. We don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. The confused cry of the modern age. We ask, “What can we believe in? What should we believe in?” Our politicians? Hardly. Our priests? You’d be amazed at how many clients come to see me because they once believed in a priest. It’s not supposed to be that way. But it is. What then? Our parents? “Home is a sanctuary.” For the privileged few. For most, it’s a battleground. It’s not meant to be like that. But it is. Love? Can we believe in love? Feel safe in it? Loving someone means we have to relinquish power. It’s mutual surrender. But how can this take place? Trust. Trust is as vital to human relationships as breath is to life…and just as elusive. Two years ago, my 11 year-old daughter was murdered. Her name was Eleanor. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did.

On the other hand, maybe it is supposed to be like that.

Leon [clutching his chest after having sex with Jane]: I get this pain in my chest sometimes.
Jane: You know, you really should have told me that you have a weak heart.
Leon: I don’t.
Jane: It’s because I don’t want to have an affair with…
Leon [angrily]: For Christ’s sake, I don’t have a weak heart, all right? And this is not an affair, it’s a one-night stand that happened twice.

And then [sometimes] goes on for months and months.

Valerie: Do you worry that we don’t make love very often?
John: No. I don’t really think about it that much.
Valerie: Why not?
John: I love you. Whether we make love three times a week or once a month does not really change that.
Valerie: Doesn’t it?

A new thread?

Jane: I really like you, Leon. Maybe a little too much. But I’m…I’m starting to wonder just… where this might go.
Leon: I’m still in love with my wife, Jane.
Jane: Right. I’m sorry. So…I’m wondering why…why have you been seeing me if you’re still in love with your wife?
Leon: I don’t know. It’s not something that I planned. Look, Jane, l…This doesn’t have to end badly.
Jane: Just go. Just go. Go.

Let's tackle this logically.

Valerie: Are you trying to justify his deceit?
Patrick: No, I’m trying to understand it. It’s complex.
Valerie: But isn’t it still an act of deceit? No marriage can be based on that.
Patrick: Most marriages are based on that.
Valerie: You think you know what goes on in most marriages?
Patrick: What? Because I’m gay, I can’t have an opinion…?

Human all too human...gay, straight and all the rest of them.

Patrick: He takes refuge in me. In what I offer him.
Valerie: What do you offer him?
Patrick: Sex unencumbered by need.
Valerie: Why doesn’t he leave her?
Patrick: Good men don’t know how to leave their wives.
Valerie: Good men or cowardly men?
Patrick: He told me that making love to her was like trying to fill an empty well.

Next up: what we fill it with here.

Nik: I think Jane was trying to come on to me.
Paula: What? She’s lonely, Nik. And you’re bored. That’s a lethal combination. Stay away from her.
Nik: What’s the matter? You’re a bit jealous, huh? Huh?
Paula: You ever fuck with our marriage, and I cut your balls off. I’ll hang them on the lawn, between your socks and your jocks.

You never really know sometimes if they mean it.

Leon: I tell my wife everything.
John: That suprises me.
Leon: Why?
John: Most men hold something back.

Next up: I tell my husband everything.

John: What holds your marriage together, Leon?
Leon: Loyalty? Love? Maybe habits sometimes, passion, our kids.
John: Ours was held together by grief. There wasn’t much else left.
Leon: You didn’t love her anymore?
John: I’m saying that sometimes, love isn’t enough.

Especially if you spead it around too thin.

Sin nombre: nameless. Which is more or less the manner in which many folks here prefer to think of the many folks coming up from down there. They have jobs to do. Okay, let them. As long as they are not our jobs. You know the ones.

As for the cast of characters, the gang’s all here. And all the other ones too. Mostly they prey on and off each other. Which makes them all the more invisible to us. Down there especially.

M13 at wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13

I suspect we are meant to watch this and come to sympathize with the plight of those who see the only viable option available to them is to “head North”. But I suspect even more that few minds will be changed.

Cary Fukunagra spent two years researching the film, spending time with people on the trains and with gangsters in Central America. He also used two gang members to script edit making the slang and language as up to date and realistic as possible. IMDb



Sin Nombre

Casper [to Smiley]: To be part of our gang, first you have to kill one of our rivals, a chavala.

Smiley is all of about 12.

Mago: You fucked up, chavala. You put yourself in Mara land.
Chavala: I told you I don’t do that shit no more. I’m just going north.
Mago: You ain’t worth shit, bitch. After we shoot you we’re going to chop you up into 18 pieces and feed you to the dogs.

And that’s exactly what they do…with the kid [Smiley] pulling the trigger.

Mago [to Smiley]: El Mara. Now you’re part of a family with thousands of brothers. Wherever you go, there’ll be someone to take care of you.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

Horacio: Not even half of these people will make it. But we will.

By hook or crook?

El Sol: 30 seconds of cortes for lying.

Build that fucking wall?

Casper: Where’s Martha Marten?
Mago: She’s gone.
Casper: Home?
Mago: The Devil took her. You’ll find another.

Repeat as necessary. And it always is.

Smilely [to all his half-pint homies]: He killed Lil Mago. He’s been green-lit. It’s the rules.

Not unlike the rules here...if considerably harsher.

Sayra [to Casper]: Back home, my friend Clarissa made me see this crazy neighbor, Doña Eleanor, you know, like witchcraft? She smoked this puro, then told me with her freaky voice that “You’ll make it to the U.S.A…but not in God’s hand…but in those of the Devil’s.”

If you can tell them apart, of course.

Smilely [to Casper]: Mara por vida, homie.

Then he shoots him dead.

A movie about movies. Those who show them. Those who watch them. But not the way we show them or watch them today.

Simpler times? Not really. Just different from the times we know now. And even here there are a gazillion different ways to describe what that means. Maybe the relationship might be described as more intimate. After all, back then there were a lot less distractions available to escape from what most understood to be the daily grind. So “the movies” played a much larger role in the lives of many more people.

But back then only the local priest got to see all the good parts. Kissing, for example. And you can bet that “I” was more deeply
submerged in “we”. And “we” were always far more obsessed with distinguishing what is right from what is wrong.

And since there was usually only one cinema per town, everyone – rich, poor, vulgar, refined, literate, illiterate, Communist, fascist – were all stuffed in it together. That made for some interesting combinations.

One of the best film endings ever.

Ironically, when the film played in Italy, it was not a box office success.

The soundtrack alone is worth whatever you pay for the movie.



Cinema Paradiso

Lia: Look, Ma…It’s useless calling him. He’ll be terribly busy, God knows where he is. Besides he might not even remember. Do as I say, forget it…He hasn’t been here for thirty years. You know how he is.
Maria: He’ll remember.

In a word: Alfredo

Clara: No, she said that someone has died—someone named Alfredo. The funeral is tomorrow. Who is he, a relative?

Where even to begin.

Cinema patron: Twenty years I’ve been going to the cinema and I’ve never seen a kiss!

God's will, let's call it.

Alfredo [to Toto]: This is not a job for you. It’s like being a slave. You’re always alone. You see the same film over and over and over again, because you have nothing else to do. And you start talking to Greta Garbo and Tyrone Power like a nut! You work on holidays, on Christmas, on Easter. Only on Good Friday are you free. But if they hadn’t put Jesus Christ on a cross…You’d work Good Fridays too!

God's will, let's call it.

Alfredo [after the arrival of the new non-combustible film]: Progress always comes too late.

Anyone predict when it will arrive here?

Salvarore: They tell me you never go out, never talk to anybody. Why?
Alfredo: Toto, sooner or later there comes a time when talking or not talking is the same thing. So you might as well just shut up.

Of course, some of us discovered that here.
Or there.

Alfredo: Living here day by day, you think it’s the center of the world. You believe nothing will ever change. Then you leave: a year, two years. When you come back, everything’s changed. The thread’s broken. What you came to find isn’t there. What was yours is gone. You have to go away for a long time…many years…before you can come back and find your people. The land where you were born. But now, no. It’s not possible. Right now you’re blinder than I am.
Salvatore: Who said that? Gary Cooper? James Stewart? Henry Fonda? Eh?
Alfredo: No, Toto. Nobody said it. This time it’s all me. Life isn’t like in the movies. Life…is much harder.

Actually, it was Giuseppe Tornatore.

Alfredo: Get out of here! Go back to Rome. You’re young and the world is yours. I’m old. I don’t want to hear you talk anymore. I want to hear others talking about you.

And what do you know...!

Alfredo [to Salvatore at train station]: Don’t come back. Don’t think about us. Don’t look back. Don’t write. Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all. If you do and you come back, don’t come see me. I won’t let you in my house. Understand? Whatever you end up doing, love it. The way you loved the projection booth when you were a little squirt.

Let's just say he has his reasons.

Wife: Alfredo left something for you. Come and see me before you leave.

This: https://youtu.be/TflvNm22cpk?si=zbu-a4l_TeFDOPni

Salvatore: When did you shut it down?
Spaccafico: Six years ago this May. No one came any more. You know better than me, Mr. Di Vita, the economy, television, videos. By now the movie business is only a memory. The city’s bought it to make a new parking lot. Next Saturday they’re tearing it down…A pity.

Cue Joni Mitchell?

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

Now all that need be is it is actually true.

In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.

Link us to nothing your art has articulated.

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.

Next up: how things ought to be instead?

So in the end, when one is doing philosophy, one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

What's yours?

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

Let's run that by our own "my way or the highway" pinheads.

“The great delusion of modernity, is that the laws of nature explain the universe for us. The laws of nature describe the universe, they describe the regularities. But they explain nothing.

And not very well either.

Politics, religion, revolution. Way back in the 1960s. And way over yonder in Pakistan. Right at the time Bangladesh was given birth.

This film was originally banned in Bangladesh because [of course] there was a fear it might spark religious tensions. 90% of those who live in Bangladesh are Muslim. So most of that must have revolved around the extent to which the right narrative was being chosen.

This is a true story in the sense that it is based on the actual experiences of the writer and director.

Think of it as the making of dasein en masse. Just a whole bunch of conflicting versions of them. What’s cruical is the access you have [as a child in particular] to alternate narratives. And then [here] the extent to which religion as a moral or spititual narrative becomes subsumed in the political narrative of jihad.

You see all this [back then, now, probably forever] and you shrug: I can’t go on, I’ll go on. What else is there but to choose the least of all worst possible worlds?

One take on it: https://youtu.be/KUcgzphu850?si=4W1LY9xmPE2zaPhc


The Clay Bird [Matir Moina]

Teacher at Madrasa: New boy, what is your name?
Anu: Anu.
Teacher: That is not a proper Islamic name. From now on, your name here is Kazi Muhammod Anwarul Islam.

Junior?

Kazi: My son should not see all that Hindu rubbish. I’ll send him off to the madrasa.

Like others send their sons off to the yeshiva.

Teacher: You all know about the holy night of Meraj. On this night, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, rode a winged horse to have an audience with Allah. On his way back from Heaven, he met the Prophet Moses, peace be upon him. Prophet Moses asked Prophet Muhammad: “How many prayers did you get assigned for your followers?” Muhammad said: “Fifty per day.” Moses cried out: “That’s too much. Go back and ask him to reduce it.” So, Muhammad went back to Allah. On his return he told Moses he got it reduced to five prayers.

Uh, is this actually true?

Teacher [who is against the Islamic radicals]: The truth is you cannot make Islam flourish with politics or arms. It’s by spreading Islamic knowledge that Islam will flourish. But this is not just knowledge. This is also practice. Who is sent to madrasa? Mostly orphans, and children whose parents are too poor to afford food and clothing, not to mention education. Our duty is to take care of them and make them true Muslims. It’s unfair to use these children for political ends.

Of course, that's still going around.

Milon: Uttam, try to understand. It’s not a matter of democracy or national liberation, the issue is economic. Here lies the question of imperialism and the class struggle.
Uttam: You’re still spellbound by your communist ghosts. Despite your differences, you’re like your brother. Kazi’s homeopathy and your “Marx-pathy”. Both came from Germany.
Friend: And fascism is also from Germany. Whether Marxism or capitalism, all “isms” are Western.

West of where though?

Uttam: Do you dismiss Islam as Western?
Friend: Not at all. Our Islam has flourished on our own soil.
Uttam: Nothing is purely indigenous, it’s all mixed up.

Next up: Uh, Judgment Day?

Kazi: Islam will prevail.[/b]

Yeah, one of them perhaps. But not his.

Ayesha: Look around you! Your Muslim brothers have burnt your sacred cluster to the ground.

The more things change?

Science

“We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.” Carl Sagan

See, I told you.

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.” Terry Pratchett

Uh, different definitions, perhaps?

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.” Charles Darwin

Pinheads let's call them.

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” Stephen Hawking

Anyone here actually know?

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” Nikola Tesla

Theoretically.

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” Antonio Gramsci

You tell me.

Cigarettes. One of the most dangerous substances we still have the freedom to choose. To buy, in other words. Hey, when millions of dollars are at stake, moralists will make exceptions.

This is a movie that exposes precisely how the powers that be in “the industry” and in government still manage to keep cigarettes legal. And those who are the toughest on the cigarette folks are those who have the least to lose if they ever were made a lot harder to get.

But who is kidding whom. If you made them illegal, it would be prohibition all over again. Organized crime would just have a new product to sell. It’s probably wiser to just make them more and more expensive. And exclude them from more and more places.

But this is also a movie about how to use language to twist the world into any contraption you need it to be. Providing you subscribe to the concept of “moral flexibility”.

Sam Elliott wanted his character to refuse to take the money. Jason Reitman spent three hours persuading him to do the part as scripted.

No one is shown smoking a cigarette throughout the entire movie. In fact, except in the black and white film that Naylor watches, no-one is seen even holding a cigarette. Naylor holds an empty packet and Robert Duvall holds an (unlit) cigar. IMDb


Thank You For Smoking

Joan Lunden: Robin Williger. He is a 15 year old freshman from Racine, Wisconsin. He enjoys studying history; he’s on the debate team. Robin’s future looked very, very bright. But recently he was diagnosed with cancer, a very tough kind of cancer. Robin tells me he has quit smoking, though, and he no longer thinks that cigarettes are “cool.”

See how it works?
No, I didn't think you would.

Nick Naylor [narrating]: Few people on this planet know what it is to be truly despised. Can you blame them? I earn a living fronting an organization that kills one thousand two hundred human beings a day; twelve hundred people. We’re talking two jumbo jet plane loads of men, women, and children. I mean there’s Attila, Genghis, and me, Nick Naylor the face of cigarettes, the colonel sanders of nicotine. This is where I work, the Academy of Tobacco Studies. It was established by seven gentlemen you may recognize from C-Span. These guys realized quick if they were gonna claim cigarettes were not addictive they better have proof. This is the man they rely on, Erhardt Von Grupten Mundt. They found him in Germany. I won’t go into the details. He’s been testing the link between nicotine and lung cancer for thirty years, and hasn’t found any conclusive results. The man’s a genius, he could disprove gravity.

A paid spokesman some call him.

Nick: My point is that you have to think for yourself. If your parents told you that chocolate was dangerous would you take their word for it?
[Children all say no]
Nick: Exactly! So perhaps instead of acting like sheep when it comes to cigarettes you should find out for yourself.

Uh, a dream sequence?

Bobby Jay: Did you know that you can fool the breathalizer test by chewing on activated charcoal tablets?
Polly: Well, maybe we should change our slogan to “If you must drink and drive, suck charcoal.”
Nick: Won’t the police ask about the charcoal in your mouth?
Bobby Jay: There’s not a law against charcoal.

Thank God for loopholes?

Joey: Dad, why is the American government the best government?
Nick: Because of our endless appeals system.

Bought and paid for of course.

Nick: What is the subject of your essay?
Joey: Why is American government the best government in the world.
Nick: Your teacher crafted that question?
Joey: Yeah. Why?
Nick: Well…I’ll look past the obvious problems in syntax for a moment, and I’ll focus more on the core of the question. I mean, “A,” does America have the best government in the world? And “B,” what constitutes a “best government”? Is it crime, is it poverty, literacy? Hmm? And America - definitely not best. Perhaps not even better than most. But we do have a very entertaining government…

Pick three:
1] Joe Biden
2] Donald Trump
3] Robert Kennedy Jr.

Thank You For Smoking

BR: People, what is going on out there? I look down this table, all I see are white flags. Our numbers are down all across the board. Teen smoking, our bread and butter, is falling like a shit from heaven! We don’t sell Tic Tacs for Christ’s sake. We sell cigarettes. And they’re cool and available and addictive. The job is almost done for us!

Cynical enough for you?

Nick: In 1910, the U.S. Was producing ten billion cigarettes a year. By 1930, we were up to 123 billion. What happened in between? Three things. A world war, dieting… and movies.
BR: Movies?
Nick: 1927- talking pictures are born. Suddenly, directors need to give their actors something to do while they’re talking. Cary Grant, Carole Lombard are lighting up. Bette Davis- a chimney. And Bogart- remember the first picture with him and Lauren Bacall? Oh, she sort of shimmies in through the doorway, 19 years old. Pure sex. She says, “Anyone got a match?” And Bogie throws the matches at her…and she catches them. Greatest romance of the century. How’d it start? Lighting a cigarette. These days when someone smokes in the movies, they’re either a psychopath or a European.

Which one are you?
As for movies and cigarettes, point taken.

Nick [out loud to reporter]: Everyone has a mortgage to pay.
Nick [to himself]: The Yuppie Nuremberg defense.

What do you pay yours doing?

Jeff: Sony has a futuristic sci-fi movie they’re looking to make.
Nick: Cigarettes in space?
Jeff: It’s the final frontier, Nick.
Nick: But wouldn’t they blow up in an all oxygen environment?
Jeff: Probably. But it’s an easy fix. One line of dialogue. ‘Thank God we invented the… you know, whatever device.’

What have we invented here?

Jeff: For Pitt to smoke, it’s $10 million; for the pair, it’s 25.
Nick: 25?! Usually when I buy two of something, I get a discount. What’s the extra five for?
Jeff: Synergy. These are not stupid people; they got it right away.
Pitt and Zeta-Jones lighting up after some cosmic fucking in the bubble suite’s gonna sell a lot of cigarettes.
Nick: Well, for that kind of money, my people will expect some very serious smoking. Can Brad blow smoke rings?
Jeff: I don’t have that information.
Nick: Well, for $25 million, we’d want smoke rings.
Jeff: Oh, one other thing- you’ll be cofinancing the picture with the Sultan of Glutan.
Nick: The Sultan of Glutan? The one who massacred and enslaved his own people? Aren’t they calling him the Hitler of the South Pacific?
Jeff: No, I can’t speak to that- All my dealings with him, he’s been a very reasonable and sensitive guy.

Ah, of course: the real world.

Lorne Lutch: You look like a nice enough fella. What are you doing working for these assholes?
Nick: I’m good at it. Better at doing this than I ever was at doing anything else.
Lorne Lutch: Aw, hell, son. I was good at shooting VC. I didn’t make it my career.

Let's decide which is worse...cigarettes or communism.

Thank You For Smoking

Nick: I don’t think people from the alcoholic beverage industry need to worry about being kidnapped just yet.
Polly: Pardon me?
Nick: Look, I mean, nothing personal, but tobacco generates a little more heat than alcohol.
Polly: Oh, this is news.
Nick: My product puts away 475,000 a year. That’s 1,200 a day. How many alcohol-related deaths a year? 100,000 tops? That’s, what, 270 a day? Wowee. 270 people, a tragedy. Excuse me if I don’t exactly see terrorists getting excited about kidnapping anyone from the alcohol industry. How many gun deaths a year in the U.S.?
Bobby Jay: 11,000.
Nick: 11,000, are you kidding me? 30 a day. That’s less than passenger car mortalities. No terrorist would bother with either of you.
[pause]
Nick: Okay, look…stupid argument. I’m sure both of you warrant vigilante justice.
Polly: Thank you.

Cigarettes, booze, dope, guns.
Though for some not necessarily in that order.

From Heather’s news article: “Nick Naylor, lead spokesman for big tobacco, would have you believe he thinks cigarettes are harmless. But really, he’s doing it for the mortgage…The MOD squad-meaning, of course, merchants of death- is comprised of Polly Bailey of the Moderation Council and Bobby Jay Bliss of the gun business’s own advisory group, SAFETY. As explained by Naylor, the sole purpose of their meetings is to compete for the highest death toll as they compare strategies on how to dupe the American people…The film, Message from Sector Six, would emphasize the sex appeal of cigarettes in a way that only floating, nude, copulating Hollywood stars could…This did not stop Nick from bribing the dying man with a suitcase of cash to keep quiet on the subject of his recent lung cancer diagnosis…Nick’s own son, Joey Naylor, seems to be being groomed for the job as he joins his father on the majority of his trips.”

Child abuse?

Nick: How can you do this to me?
Heather: For the mortgage.

Her mortgage Nick, not yours.

Joey: Why are you hiding from everyone?
Nick: It has something to do with being generally hated right now.
Joey: But it’s your job to be generally hated.

You know, Dad, to pay the mortgage.

Nick: Right there, looking into Joey’s eyes, it all came back in a rush. Why I do what I do. Defending the defenseless, protecting the disenfranchised corporations that have been abandoned by their very own consumers: the logger, the sweatshop foreman, the oil driller, the land mine developer, the baby seal poacher…
Polly: Baby seal poacher?
Bobby Jay: Even I think that’s kind of cruel.

Next up: you're an Eskimo.

Bobby Jay: Still feeling like Jimmy Stewart?

Nope, more like Jim Taylor.