Philosophy Now Forum

Ludwig Wittgenstein

I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere.

I won't go there if you won't.

If we hear [someone speak] Chinese we tend to take his speech for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognize language in what he hears. Similarly I often cannot recognize the human being in someone etc.

I won't go there if you won't.

Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending [them] off to sleep again.

New thread?

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

New thread?

The world is everything that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things

Well, some things, I'm sure.

The war saved my life. I don't know what I would have done without it. Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I'm standing eye to eye with death.

Well, let's just say the man i was before the war would scarcely recognize the man I became after it.

Based on a true story? Ray Manzarek insisted it was a terrible account of the band’s history. And he knows a thing or two about it, having actually been a member of the band.

In his own way, Jim Morrison was an ironist. Or so it seems to me. He would take your reaction to The Doors seriously only up to a point. He would then take his own reaction to your reaction seriously only up to a point. Beyond that is the narrative. The subjective prejudice. And then the politics.

Same with “the times” out of which The Doors came into existence. Nothing necessarily sacred about that either. It’s all just a matter of opinion. Some stay the same over time and some don’t. And it stays like this all the way down to The End.

And I still recall columnist George Will’s hysterical reaction to the movie.

Is this closer to the “truth”? It’s a futile argument. Start there and you’ll come closer to whatever the truth might possibly be. Or at least until you start to think it is something else.


The Doors

Jim [from his film class project]: Nietzsche said, “All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity."

So, how do you like mine?

Jim: I feel most alive confronting death, experiencing pain.
Pam: I think you’re most alive recognizing beauty, seeing truth. Does death turn you on? You love death?
Jim: Life hurts a lot more. When you die, the pain’s over.

You reach this point or you don't.

Music manager: Leave it to me, I can take you all the way.
Ray: You liked our music?
Manager: I loved it. That’s why I’m here. It’s dark though. Get some tunes like Herman’s Hermits. That shit goes right to the radio.

It still does.

Holzmann: Hi, I’m Jack Holzmann, I own Elektra Records. Listen, if you could record what you did in there, we’d have something and make a lot of money. And Rothschild here was born to be a producer.
Rothschild: You guys were… it’s Bertold Brecht, it’s cabaret, it’s rock’n’roll. I’m really blown away, I’d like to get you guys into a studio…like immediately. Mr. Morrison, how’d you like to come down from there and go make a record?
Jim: Sure, why not?

And that's just what they did.

Interviewer: Name, occupation?
Pamela: Pamela Morrison, ornament.

She doesn't know the half of it.

Ed Sullivan: And fellows, have a nice big smile when you get out there. There’s no point in being sullen.
Jim: We’re kind of a sullen group, Ed.

Or he certainly was.

Photographer: Do you have any idea what these pictures can do? One image controls millions of people.
Jim: Where are the Doors?
Photographer: Right here! Forget the Doors. You’re the one they want. You are the Doors. Come on! Yeah that’s good. Be ugly! I love that. Anything you want. There are no restrictions here. Look at yourself. Fall in love with yourself. You’re your own audience now. The want you, worship, love you, adore you. Jim Morrison. The God of Rock and Cock.

There are worse things to be, I suppose.

Andy Warhol: Somebody gave me this telephone…I think it was Edie…and she said I could talk to God with it, but uh… I don’t have anything to say…so here…
[giving Jim the phone]
Andy Warhol: …this is for you…now you can talk to God.

Of course, Jim's in Heaven now, right?

Reporter: How do you feel about being called the ultimate Barbie Doll?
Jim: Well, when you say something like that I guess it’s a shortcut to thinking.
Reporter: What about the dreadful reviews your new poetry book has gotten?
Jim: I guess they didn’t understand.

Made a fool out of her, as I recall.

Reporter: Do you believe in drugs, Mr. Morrison?
Jim: I believe in excess…I believe in a long prolonged derangement of the senses to attain the unknown…Although I live in the subconscious, our pale reason hides the infinite from us.

Excess works for me. Or, rather, it used to.

Jim [in a monologue]: Let’s just say I was testing the bounds of reality. That’s all. I was curious. I kind of always preferred to be hated. Like Erich von Stroheim in the movies: The man you loved to hate. That’s meant to be ironic. Like courage wants to laugh. Essentially stupid situations. I go out on stage and howl for people. In me, they see exactly what they want to see. Some say Lizard King, whatever that means. Or some black-clad leather demon, whatever that means. But really, I think of myself as a sensitive, intelligent human being, but with the soul of a clown that always forces me to blow it at the most crucial moment. I’m a fake hero. A joke that God’s played on me.

See? An ironist if there ever was one.

Pamela [of Patricia]: You actually put your dick in this woman?
Jim: Well… sometimes, yeah/

She's a Wiccan to boot.

Rothschild: I’m sitting in that fuckin’ booth for months. I look out of that glass: I see Jim, I hear Jim, But do you know what? I miss him. And the whole time he’s standing right there in front of me. How can that be? Don’t make me go through it again. I went through this watching Janis dive to the bottom of a bottle of “Southern Comfort.” I won’t go through it again!

Let's just say that sometimes he'll go too far.

Jim: Hey listen, Paul, can you get us some heroin?
Rothschild: No!
Jim: Why not?
Rothschild: No!
Jim: Why not? What’s some heroin?
Rothschild: I’m not going to participate in anything that’s going to help you accomplish your goal, Jim.
Jim: What’s my goal, Paul?
Rothschild: “Your only friend, the end.”

I mean, who really knows what he believed about death.

Robbie [to Jim]: You said you love pain. You run from it every chance you get.

In one ear and out the other?

Jim: Are you going to get rid of it? Look…wouldn’t it be better to have it with someone who wanted to be its father?
Patricia: A fucking genius, that’s what it’d be. From you and me? The child would be a goddess or a god.
Jim: It would be a monster.

Probably, let's say.

Again, “The Troubles”. Again, based on a true story. Again, different sides. Only this time the magnification goes all the way down to just two men: the man who shot the other man’s brother.

In other words, there is no political, social or economic context to explore. It is essentially idealistic. Conflicts of this sort involve violence and the violence rips individuals, families, communities, nations, worlds apart. If only we could all just recognize the senselessness of it. But the conflicts are not senseless at all. They revolve around those in power able to forge a government [armed to the teeth] able to sustain an infrastructure that preserves their own interests.

Yes, Alistair was just a teenager playing soldier. The point being not to be thought of as chicken by Sammy. He gets caught and goes to jail. For 12 years.

Now he’s out and it has been set up: He’s going to confront the boy [now a man] whose brother he shot and killed all those years ago.

The producers of the show are looking for “real emotion”. And then they are looking for “truth and reconciliation”. But that might not be what Joe is looking for at all.

Bobby Sands would have been 70 today.



Five Minutes Of Heaven

Alistair [talking to tv camera in 2008]: For me to talk about the man I have become, you need to know about the man I was. I was fourteen when I joined the tartan gangs and I was fifteen when I joined the UVF. At that time, don’t forget, there were riots on the streets every week; petrol bombs everyday, and that was just in our town. When you got home and switched on the TV, you could see what was happening in every other town as well, and it was like we were under siege. Fathers and brothers and friends were being killed in the streets, and the feeling was we had to do something. We’re all in this together and we all have to do something.

Of course, here, there's our "we" and their "we".

Alistair [to the tv camera]: The thing you have to remember; what you have to understand, is the mindset. Once you have signed up to terror, and joined the organization; the group, your mind closes right down. It becomes only our story that matters, not their story - the Catholics. It’s only my people that are being killed, and here suffering and that need looking after. Catholics being killed? Doesn’t enter your head. And so when I went up to Sammy, our local commander, and told him I wanted to kill a Catholic man, it wasn’t a wrong thing for me to do. In my head, it was the proper; the just; the fair; the good thing to do, and so, it was easy.

Let's call it, say, objectivism?

Alistair [to the TV camera]When I got to the house, there was a boy in the street. I didn’t expect him to be there, but, there he was. I only looked at him for a moment because I had a job to do, but if I had known that he was Jim’s brother, I would have shot him as well. It was in the mindset. It was tit-for-tat, and perhaps one more - why not? That’s what it was like. I was only seventeen. I’d seen my people fighting ever since I was a wee boy. You’d take sides with your friends as a boy, but we weren’t just throwing stones over the fence - we were shooting guns. What I want to tell people; what society must do is to stop people getting to the point where they join the group. Because when you get to that point it’s too late. No-one’s gonna stop you. No-one’s gonna change your mind. And once you’re in, you will do anything. You will kill anyone on the other side, because it’s right to do it. Once your man has joined the group, society has lost him. And what he needs to hear are voices on his own side, stopping him before he goes in. There were no voices on my side, not on my side of the town, not in my state. No-one was telling me anything other than that killing is right. It was only in prison when I heard that other voice.

Just out of curiosity, what's your own mindset here?

Alistair [to TV camera] When I got home, my mother and father were watching the TV, and it came on the news that the man I had shot was dead. I was so excited, I couldn’t wait for when I would get my congratulations. Sammy was going to come knocking at my door, he was going to lead me out into the street and proudly walk me into the bar, and everybody was gonna stand up and applaud. Me? I would’ve shot anyone for that. And that is why I talk to anybody who would listen now, to tell them to stop boys like me thinking that to shoot an innocent, and a decent man in the head, is a good thing.

Again, they don't call it a mindset for nothing.

Alistair [1975 to his mates]: So this is our first kill, boys. I told Sammy that I wanted to do it. He said he’d check and see if there was anything else going down tonight. He came back to me and said it was good to go…He just looked us in the eyes like he was, you know, he was proud of us. I’m telling you, it was a good feeling. We’ll be walking into that bar ten foot tall now, eh?

Of course, this could never happen to you, right?

Alistair [2008]: It’s a programme about reconciliation. My own, in fact. It’s my own. I’m to meet the brother of the man I killed.
Ray [driver]: Have you not met him yet?
Alistair: No. No, not since the day.
Ray: Well, did you ask for this?
Alistair: That was never going to be my call, Ray. I don’t have the right to ask anything from him.
Ray: So did he call you or…?
Alistair: No, the programme people, they approached him. Then me. I said I’d be I’d be willing t-to, you know. If it’s a meeting he wants I’d be willing t-t-to do it, to see him. I’d do anything to…You know, to…

Let's leave it at that for now.

Joe [of Alistair]: She’s been staring at me for 33 years, do you know that? What it’s like? Your mother blaming you for 33 years? Three bullets went into his head. You’d know that, though. Did you know another one hit a picture of a cat on the wall? It wasn’t me who broke that picture, I never got the blame for that one, and if it wasn’t me who broke the picture on the wall, it wasn’t me who killed my brother. I didn’t kill him like she said I did. It was you. It was you in the car arriving at her house and shooting three bullets into her son’s head, making her grieve the way she did, blaming me the way she did.

The fog of war?

Joe [to himself]: I can do handshakes, Michael! And I can do victim. I can do handshake and victim both at the same time. But I’ve made a decision on this one. Reconciliation? You have no idea.
[he pulls out a dagger]
Joe [to himself]: A handshake? For killing my brother? For me taking the blame? 33 years of that? What do you think I am, a joke? If ever a man deserved a knife run through him, that scum of the earth. Truth and reconciliation? I’m going for revenge.

I won't get you started here if you don't get me started.

Joe [to Vika]: But I don’t do kindness. I fucking hate kindness. I don’t let that in. I let it in then, but never again. The trouble with me is, I’ve got all the wrong feelings. Oh, his feelings! They are just right, just perfect! He did it in cold blood, but now look at the man he has become! “What is it like to kill a man,” they all ask him? “Well, you have to understand…” And off he goes again, telling them all about this and that. But hats off to him, he’s cracked it! He knows they all love to shake hands with a killer.

If not become one themselves?

Joe [to Vika]: Listen to him, they will say, and there is hope in the world! And you know what he’s thinking? Do this gig well here and I’ve got another 20 years of pay cheques in front of me. I can talk about that day then and this day now for the next 20 years, how I came face to face with the brother of my victim, and how it was the final act in my journey towards a magnificent redemption, and how listening to me is the way forward in life, plus VAT. And with their cheques in my pocket, I will talk unto the wretched of the world and I will heal them with my words, I won’t have to work in a fucking egg carton factory ever again!"

Pick one:
1] hear! hear!
2] whatever?

Joe: So! The man shot my brother three times in the head. The man is having the life of Riley. What should I do? Do I shake his hand or do I kill him?
Vika: Well, killing him wouldn’t be good for him.
Joe: For sure of that!
Vika: But it wouldn’t be good for you either.
Joe: Oh, not good for me? My five minutes of heaven! How would that be not good for me?

What might be your own rendition of this?

Alistair: 33 years that boy has been living in this head, standing there, staring at me, looking up at me, never leaving me. Never leaving. Every morning waiting for me, and I know he’ll be there for always. I don’t know what to do any more. How to deal with this. I feel I’ve come to the end of what I can take. Time will heal they say…what everybody says about everything. The years just get heavier. Why don’t they tell you that? Nobody tells you that!

And then we still have death to look forward to.

Joe [on phone]: Alistair Little?
Alistair: Yeah?
Joe: It’s Joe Griffin. We’re finished.

If only "here and now"?

God

“Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered.
Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.” John Knowles

Sure, roll the dice. Then get back to us.

“I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do.” Billy Connolly

I can live with that.

“Like apes, we breed, sleep, and die. Yet like God we say, "I am." We are ontological oxymorons.” Peter Kreeft

Next up: teleological oxymorons.

“Inasmuch as I am a spiritual man, I do believe in God - I think that He created an order for the world; I believe that, in constantly bombarding Him with requests for miracles, we're also asking that He unravel the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would be a cartoon, not a world.” Douglas Coupland

Let's just say that some of us are working on it.

“Admire and adore the Author of the telescopic universe, love and esteem the work, do all in your power to lessen ill, and increase good, but never assume to comprehend.” John Adams

Of course, that's still around.

“Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?'
"Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.” Kingsley Amis

If, in other words, you get his drift.

From wiki:

"This film is inspired by the real-life killing in Texas of an American teenager, Esequiel Hernandez Jr, by United States Marines during a military operation near the United States–Mexico border as well as the novel As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner which displays the same plot, promise, and challenges encountered in the movie."

As with most political issues that flare up from time to time on the news, immigration stirs up a lot of emotions. The arguments come and go. Some try to be reasonable, others are just out to parade their own blind [and often rabid] prejudices about “those people”. They are the ethnocentric racists and that will always more or less be the bottom line. Still, even among them there are folks who are particularly despicable. They practice what they preach. And sometimes they work for the government. And then over time it can all become institutionalized.

But this isn’t really about that. This is less political than personal. A man becomes your close friend. And being an illegal “wetback” north of the border, he knows the risk he runs. So should the worst come to pass he asks you to bury him in the town of his birth. The town where his family and his wife reside. A town in Mexico. Or so he says. But then he has already been buried twice already.

For me dead is dead. Where you bury me is meaningless. Or even if you bury me at all. But others think about it differently. Still, what are our obligations to the dead? Folks think differently about this too.

The end here is infused with all manner of ambiguity. So don’t even try to pin it down. And it’s not so much a matter of redemption as it is the manner in which a new experience can leave you changed forever.

Director/Actor Jones gave each cast member a copy of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” to read so that they would understand alienation, a big theme in both the novel and the film.

Much of the movie was shot on Tommy Lee Jones’s own ranch. IMDb


The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Border Patrolman: How many got away?
Norton: Three.
Border Patrolman: Well, someone’s got to pick strawberries.

Sic 'em Trump?

Border Patrolman: You were way overboard there, boy.
Norton: No sir. Fuck it. They were trying to get away.
Border Patrolman: I want you to think about how much trouble I’ll get into if you keep beating these people up. I don’t like trouble, boy. I don’t like it at all.

Let alone murdering them.

Rachel: Viagra works for Bob.
Belmont: I’ll turn truck-stop queer and blowjob-giver before I use that shit.
Rachel: That’s what Bob said.

What did you say?

Pete: I told you you notify me.
Belmont: You’re not his family. I don’t have to notify you about a goddamn thing. He was a wetback.

We'll see about that.

Pete: Dig him up.
Norton: Who?
Pete: Melquiades Estrada, you stupid gringo son of a bitch. You killed him, now dig him up.

Two to go.

Melquiades: Promise me one thing, Pete. If I die over here, carry me back to my family and bury me in my home town. I don’t want to be buried on this side among all the fucking billboards.

Of course, they're everywhere now.

Norton: Hey! Hey, you!
Pete: My name is Pete.
Norton: Well, Pete, the ants are eating your friend.

That ever happen to you?

Pete: Thank you!
Old Man with Radio: I need to ask you a favor.
Pete: Anything you want.
Old Man with Radio: I need you to go ahead and shoot me. My son, he ain’t coming back.
Pete: Oh, he’ll come back.
Old Man with Radio: He said he had cancer. Told me to go into town with him. But I don’t want to go. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t want to offend God by shooting myself. It’s a problem, you see.
Pete: We don’t want to offend God either.
[Pete and Mike start to leave]
Old Man with Radio: You’re good people. You need to go ahead and shoot me.

Or are they good people if they don't?

Mariana: Is there hot coffee?
Juan: Yes, fresh made.
Mariana: Bring me the pot.
[Mariana pours the coffee in Mike’s lap, then hits him with the pot]
Mariana: Now we’re even, asshole.

Or closing in on it.

Norton [to Pete riding away]: You gonna be alright?

Next up: Anton Chigurh.

You can’t really blame them for trying. And, as this is based on an actual event, they really did try. To do what? To get their son back…to reclaim their family. But in order to do that they end up kidnapping a Texas State Trooper. That’s right: Texas. So you know this is not likely to have a happy ending.

You also can’t help but wonder just how far from the truth this is. At times it’s like watching the Keystone cops. Every imaginable fuck up possible. At one point there are over 150 cars following them down the highway! And that’s not counting the hairbrained locals. Or the media.

Needless to say they become folk heroes.

Anyway, here’s what really happened:
https://www.haysfreepress.com/2012/05/0 ... z2aBgXXIA7

Or one version of it.

Although the events of the film occur over a couple of days, in reality the events were over with in just a few short hours. IMDb


The Sugarland Express

Prison guard: You are permitted to display familial affection, including bodily contact, as long as it doesn’t outrage the public decency.
Lou Jean: Does that mean we can kiss?
Prison guard: If you so desire.

Does that mean they can exchange philosophy?

Hubie: Clovis…nobody breaks out of pre-release!

Well, not unless they have a pretty good reason.

Mrs. Nocker [to Pa]: Oh shit! Our car’s stole.

Hapless let's call them.

Mrs. Nocker: You got me out here with no where to sit.
Mr. Nocker: Why don’t you sit on your fist and lean back on your thumb.

Let's all weep for their future. As I'm sure they would weep for ours.

Slide [on radio]: We got a 10-32 here. Says drop off or he’ll shoot.
Captain: They hurt you any, Maxwell?
Slide: I’m sorry about this, Captain. I had no idea they were 96s
Clovis: What you talkin? 32? 96? You tryin’ to code me out?
Slide: No sir, it’s merely a verbal shorthand. 10-32 is a man with a gun. 10-96 is your mental subject.
Clovis [grabs the radio]: We ain’t no mental subjects! I’ve done some dumb things but I ain’t no mental subject!

Forget it. It's just too close to call this time.

Lou Jean [at the gas station]: Hey, look, they got Gold Stamps! I want Gold Stamps!

A Goldie Hawn moment, let's call it.

Slide [on the loudspeaker]: Captain, this is patrolman Maxwell Slide. I suppose y’all might want to end it right here now. If that’s your thinkin’, sir, it’s fine by me. Y’all come on in. Tell everyone I told you that.

You know, getting them all on the same page.

Slide [to the captain]: He took my gun but he was never going to use it.

Of course, this is Texas.

She is in the wrong office. She thinks it’s a shrink but it’s really a…tax accountant? But he is so intrigued by her tale he lets her go on. And on and on. She is pouring out the most intimate details of her emotional and sexual life. But sooner or later…

Until then though he serves her better than the shrink would. Why? Because he genuinely becomes entranced by her predicament. He comes to care about her and does not react to her as a “professional” might. They are stangers who do become intimate. And then oddly enough he himself makes appointments with the shrink in order to gain those “professional” insights into the human psyche.

And, naturally, in his own way, his personal life is as problematic [desolate] as hers.

As much as anything it conjures up a tale of…hope? Or, more precisely, an intrigung existential glimpse into the nature of contingency, chance and change. But hope is just one direction in which things can go. And what can we ever truly believe of the things people – strangers, in particular – tell us?

And then there is always the part about beauty. As though her own was hardly worth mentioning? As though it really wasn’t a factor at all? And what of Jeanne. Pretty…but not beautiful. And older. And already thoroughly explored.


Intimate Strangers [Confidences Trop Intimes]

William: Who referred you to me?
Anna: Nobody. I looked in the yellow pages.

Go on...

Anna [thinking she is talking to a psychiatrist]: My husband has stopped touching me. We don’t have sex anymore. It’s been six months. It just stopped dead. I miss the pleasure he gave me. But also the kissing and the cuddling.

It's, uh, complicated let's say.

Jeanne: Doctor? You posed as a shrink?
William: I didn’t pose. She mistook me for Dr. Monnier. The psychiatrist down the hall. She’d come to see him.
Jeanne: And you didn’t enlighten her?
William: I realized too late. My tax clients often unload their love lives. I thought she wanted advice on divorce.
Jeanne: Is she pretty?

Oh yeah.

Anna: My husband wants me to make love to another man.
William: Another man? Someone you know?
Anna: No, any man. He’s obsessed with it. “You’re free to fuck whoever you like.” His word, not mine “Fuck.”

Next up? He sees the shrink!

Dr. Monnier [to William]: “Couches deep as tombs”. You know the line from Baudelaire?

Next up: forums deep as tombs.

William: I’ve got to tell her the truth. I need her number. I know nothing about her.
Dr. Monnier: You know too much already.
William: No, I need to contact her.
Dr. Monnier: “****-act”. That’s what everyone wants.

This guy is good.

Dr. Monnier: People have lost the art of listening. Even barbers and waiters can’t be bothered now. In you, she has found an open ear.
William: Is that bad?
Dr. Monnier: As long as her health doesn’t suffer, I can’t bar you from seeing her. Your business isn’t unlike mine. We both treat the same neuroses, what to declare and what to hide.
William: My “open ear” won’t solve her problems.
Dr. Monnier: Her problems or yours?

This guy is really good.

Anna: You cheated me.
William: The evidence is against me. Forgive me, please.
Anna: No. I could have killed you. Really!
William: It was a stupid misunderstanding. I’m sorry.
Anna: And me? Telling all my secrets to a nobody! I felt dirty. Like I’d been raped!

That's a good a way to put it.

Dr. Monnier [to William]: Listen. Your tie is always perfectly tied, your tax affairs are rock solid, but let your brush with psychoanalysis teach you this, at least – you do not master everything. Some things escape you.

Wow. What if that's true for all of us?

Jeanne: You never could make the first move. She must wonder why you are waiting.
William: It’s not why she comes.
Jeanne: Why else? To recite her orgasms to a tax lawyer? Does it get you hard?

By now, we're all wondering where the fuck this is going.

Jeanne: You asked my advice. Decide what you want.
William: I wish I knew.
Jeanne: It’s easy! Dump her or hump her.

And the equivalent of that here?

Anna: He laid me on the bed, leaving the light on. He moved my hand to stroke him. We clung to each other all night. Together again. I won’t go into details.
William: No, do! Spare me no details. The mouth, the tongue, the fingers. Sado? Maso? Scato? Penetration? Vaginal? Anal?
Anna: What’s got into you?
William: You can say it all, but I can’t take it all. I saw you two last night. The room was opposite my window. Perhaps you didn’t notice.
Anna: No…
William: Your husband came to see me. “Fuck my wife in my home”, he said. But fucking her in view of me was even better.

Is that where it's going?

Anna [to William]: So, where were we…

More to the point perhaps is where they are now.

When you first see him you’re wondering: how disturbed is he? Ten minutes later you still don’t know for sure but you’re thinking: it’s probably worse than you imagine.

Think about this: suppose you were a musician and you composed something that motivated two fans to commit suicide? How do you measure your responsibility here? Click, say.

Anyway, after 20 years out of the limelight, what could possibly bring this retired rock star back out into the world? Nazis, maybe? But first his estranged father has to die.

His father was a prisoner at Auschwitz. He spent his life looking for his “persecutor”, former SS Officer Alois Lange. Cheyene takes up the quest. But is he just a “small fry” or a “shark”? Mostly what he did was humiliate him. And what is that compared to all the atrocities embodied at Auschwitz?

Weird doesn’t even come close to describing it. The visual images alone though are worth whatever you paid to watch it.

Look for the biggest pistachio in the world. But not the smallest.

When Cheyenne is talking with David Byrne, he reveals he lives tortured by the suicide of two teens who were fans of him. This is a recreation of a real-life incident that happened in 1985 in Reno, where two young ones called Raymond Belknap and James Vance made a suicide pact after listening to Judas Priest’s songs. IMDb


This Must Be the Place

Cheyenne: What do you call yourselves?
Steven: The Pieces of Shit.
Cheyenne: That’s a really good choice.
Steven: You’re fuckin’ right it is, yeah! It took us 6 months to come up with it, besides it’s exactly the right name for this moment in history.

So, anyone here beg to differ?

Mr. Keogh: How many times must we tell you you’re not welcome at our sons’ graves?

Do they know that?

Desmond: Why isn’t there any water in your pool?
Cheyenne: I don’t know… No one ever filled it.

That'll do it.

Mordecai: What are you insinuating?
Cheyenne: That even Nazi hunters follow the rules of show business and go where the biggest publicity will be.

The rules of show business....did they ever catch on here?

David Byrne: You were an artist. You did that when you were performing.
Cheyene: Fuck I was, David, the fuck I was. I was a fucking pop star. And I just wrote dreary songs because they were all the rage and made tons of money. Just depressed songs for depressed kids, and two of them, more fragile than the rest, ended up doing themselves in as a result of it. And now I go to a cemetary once a week to appease my guilt and it doesn’t make it better, it makes it fucking worse!

Bummer.

Cheyenne: You know what the problem is…Rachel?
Rachel: What?
Cheyenne: Without realizing it, we go from an age where we say: “My life will be that” to an age where we say: “That’s life.”

In other words, whatever the fuck is left of it.

Gun dealer: Hi. What sort of weapon are you interested in?
Cheyene: One that hurts.
Gun dealer: Well, you’ve come to the right place.

So, does your own still hurt?

Alois Lange: I hated your father because his obsession with me made my life impossible. But I have to say that he completely won me over. The unrelenting beauty of revenge. An entire life dedicated to avenging a humiliation.

I suspect that includes any number of posters here.

Mordecai: Your father loved you.
Cheyenne: How do you know?
Mordecai: He told me.
Cheyenne: That’s not true, but it’s nice of you to say.

Shades of Magnolia, let's call it.

Joe Abercrombie from The Blade Itself

Walk in God’s footsteps, Ferro Maljinn.
Huh. They have no God here.
Say rather that they have many.
Many?
Had you not noticed? Here, each man worships himself.

Or, from time to time, here, the occasional woman.

As far as I’m concerned you can fuck whomever you please, though my general observation has been that, as far as the reputations of young women are concerned, the less fucking the better. The reverse is true for young men of course. Hardly fair, but then life is unfair in so many ways, this one hardly seems worth commenting on.

Where does that leave us then?

Repetition – the curse of the old.

Groots -- the curse of the old philosophers.

I was too busy wallowing in pain and bitterness. Too busy being tragic.

No, really, right?

Unfortunately, you couldn’t just piss in a pot in this place. They had a special thing, like a flat wooden shelf with a hole in it, in a little room. He’d peered down into that hole when they first arrived, wondering what it could be for. It seemed like a long way down, and it smelled bad. Malacus had explained it to him. A pointless and barbaric invention. You had to sit there, on the hard wood, an unpleasant draught blowing round your fruits. But that was civilisation, so far as Logen could tell. People with nothing better to do, dreaming up ways to make easy things difficult.

Next up: Let's put a tariff on that here.

The ever so slightly stupid will act more stupidly in clever company.

I've been bringing that out here now for years.[/j]

The last time we left them [cinematically], Diane Ladd and Laura Dern could not have been more different as Mother and Daughter. That would be in Wild At Heart. It had come out just the year before.

A whole different world you might say. And, as I always say, when you live in a whole different world chances are your sense of self will be reflected in that. So then I ask myself: what parts transcend this? What are the aspects of human interaction that cross all space and time?

Well, human sexuality for one. We all come equipped biologically – or most of us do – to have sex, to enjoy sex. But there are any number of historical and cultural contexts in which any particular individual might experience it…or not experience it. With or without pleasure. Here a young woman comes into full blossom. She wants sex, she wants love. She has had a tumultuous [and promiscuous] past. But it is 1931 in the deep South. And this is a respectable family she has come to live with. And there are both the father and the son to contend with. And then, later, practically every man in town.

So, she is “sick” the doctor decides. Neurotic. Hysterical. There’s only one thing to do. But only over Mother’s dead body.


Ramblin' Rose

Willcox/Buddy [voiceover 1971]: In deep Dixieland, the month of October is almost summery. I had come south to visit my father. Mother had died a few years before, and Daddy was living all alone. He wouldn’t have it otherwise. Looking at that old house, a painful nostalgia gripped me for the south itself, the old south I had known, and the people in it. When I was thirteen years old, a girl came to this house. I overheard my father decide in a conference with my mother to hire this girl, a good natured and highly unfortunate girl who was working for a farm family down near Gadsden, Alabama. Thus she was hired, sight unseen, by a long distance call. She was the first person I ever loved outside members of my own family. But as my father said, she caused one hell of a damnable commotion.

In a word: Sex.

Buddy: Rose, who were those scoundrels in Birmingham?
Rose: Nobody.
Buddy: But who were they?
Rose: They were just bad men, that’s all.
Buddy: In what sense were they bad?
Rose: Bad is bad, Buddy. There ain’t no sense to it.
Buddy: Did they try to induce you to become a prostitute?
Rose: I don’t answer talk like that, Buddy. I just don’t hear it, I turn my back and look away!

Instead, Buddy pursues it further

Doll: What are they doing now?
Buddy: Her titty is out! Daddy has his hand on it!

Daddy, on the other hand...?

Daddy [to Rose]: Put your damn tit back in your dress. Replace that tit!

Alas, that's what she does, as i recall.

Buddy: Can’t I just see what the nipple looks like?

Of course, we alrady know, don't we?

Buddy: Rose, since your here in bed with me and I’ve already touched your titty…
[he whisperes in her ear]
Rose: Buddy, What an awful thing to say! Where are you getting such ideas at?!
Buddy: I’m curious, Rose. I’m real curious.
Rose: Curiosity killed the cat.
Buddy: Yeah, but satisfaction brought him back.
Rose: You ought to be ashamed, a child your age asking such a nasty thing.
Buddy: But I’m curious. It’s nature. Now what’s wrong with nature? I’m 13 and a half. Can’t I touch it just a little? To see what it’s like? Can’t I touch it just for a second? Don’t you like me?
Rose: Sure I like you, Buddy, but you’re just a child.
[she let’s him touch it…you know, it]
Rose: Buddy, quit it.
Buddy: I’m not hurting you, am I?
Rose: No, you’re not hurting me. You just better quit it, Buddy.
Buddy: Why if I’m not hurting you?
Rose [breathing heavy]: You…you wouldn’t understand. I must be out of my mind.
Buddy: Without a doubt this is the most pleasant experience in my life.
[Rose has an orgasm]
Buddy: What’s the matter, Rose, are you sick or something.
Rose: I must be crazy or something. I gotta get out of here! I gotta get out of here!

How the hell did this get by MPAA?!
Let's watch it again...

Rose: Buddy, Mr. Right is out there somewhere and I’m going to find him.

No way she'll leave it all up to fate.

Rose: I know it was wrong and I oughtn’t to have done it. But I am only a human girl person!
Daddy: Rosebud, you break my heart. But I am only a human man person myself…of the father variety. Pack your bag baby. As of this moment you are fired.

Any human girl persons here care to comment.

Doctor: This girl is sick in more ways than one. She is an extreme psycho-neurotic with uncontrollable sexual impulses. It would be a mercy to spare her the suffering she causes herself…and others. Therefore I am recommending as a therapeutic measure the removal of her second ovary.
Daddy: Reluctantly I agree. It would be a kindness and a blessing to her…and to everyone else. The girl is over-sexed. I say spare her.
Mother: Over my dead body! Are you human beings…or some kind of male monsters? Is there no limit to which you will not go to keep your illusions about yourself? You’d go so far as to mutilate a helpless girl who has no means of defending herself?

Yes, but it's the principle of the thing, Mother.

Daddy: Rose isn’t dead, son, not really. Some of us die, some of us don’t. Rose lives!
[pause]
Daddy: Don’t worry about it, boy. She’s at rest with Mother and the creator of the universe. She’s at rest with Mother.

What is there really left to say?

True crime. Lots of folks are fascinated by this stuff. On television they have entire programs – entire channels – dedicated to it. The killers in particular. And no killers are more in demand than serial killers. Just google it.

And right up there at the top [or damn close to it] is this one: Zodiac.

Why? Lots of reasons. Many I’m probably not thinking of. But there are a few almost everyone does:

1] it has never been [definitively] solved
2] the enigmatic ciphers
3] the way he taunted the authorities
4] that strange dude considered most likely to be the killer

What makes events like these most frightening is the randomness of the killings. Someone just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not that he is hunting you down…but that you are there when he decides to hunt someone down. In other words, if it could be anyone then that includes everyone. At least if they venture out into the public.

It’s puzzling though how some folks become utterly fixated on certain cases. They read everything they possibly can about them and invest hours and hours putting pieces together into something they feel satisfied is the whole truth. Or closer than anyone else has ever come to it. Meet Robert Graysmith. He wrote the book on it.

Zodiac’s confirmed [as of yet] first murder on Lake Herman Road was excluded from the film on the basis that there was no surviving victim to corroborate details. In the spirit of accuracy, the crew decided to not include the Lake Herman killings and to instead begin with the July 4th crime, considered to be his second action of murder.

The producers hired a private investigator to track down the real-life Zodiac survivor, Mike Mageau.

Dave Toschi in real life was the inspiration for Steve McQueen’s performance in Bullitt. In the film, Graysmith mentions that Toschi wears his gun like Bullitt. Avery replies that Bullitt got it from Toschi. IMDb


Zodiac

FBI agent: All right, people, listen up. The cipher’s broken into three sections…each with 8 lines and 17 symbols. No breaks denoting different words. No numbers or clues to substitution keys. And you got symbols from at least seven different sources. Greek, Morse code, Navy semaphore, weather symbols, astrological signs.

So, what's the problem, then?

Graysmith [reading the cracked cipher from Zodiac]: “I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest, because man is the most dangerous animal of all. To kill something is the most thrilling experience. It is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl. The best part of it is that when I die, I will be reborn in paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.

You first this time.

Toschi: Suspect’s negro male adult, who also happens to be a stocky, crew cut caucasian.

Fucking cops!

Graysmith: Whoa. Dude, he wears his gun like Bullitt.
Avery: No, McQueen got that from Toschi.

That’s actually true.

Captain Lee: You got any hard suspects?
Toschi: Uh, about 90 an hour. I’m up to about 500.

0 for 500 it is then.

Zodiac letter: “This is the Zodiac speaking. I’d like to see some nice Zodiac buttons wandering around town. Everyone else has these buttons…like peace, black power, 'Melvin eats blubber,'et cetera. It would cheer me up if I saw a lot of people wearing my button. Please no nasty ones.”

Or he'll start blowing up school buses, as I recall.

Graysmith: Doesn’t it bother you that people call you Shorty?
Shorty: Doesn’t it bother you that people call you retard?
Graysmith: Nobody calls me that.
Shorty: Right.

And right it is:

Graysmith: Does anybody ever call me names?
Avery: What, you mean like retard?
Graysmith: Yeah.
Avery: No.

Well, that's settled at least.

Graysmith [reading from the newspaper]: “Paul Avery’s investigation has won him a message from the Zodiac warning: ‘You are doomed.’ As a result, several crime newsmen are wearing Iapel buttons reading: ‘I am not Paul Avery.’”

And it worked, as far as I know.

Armstrong: Did you see this?
Toschi: Unfortunately, yes…
Armstrong: Here comes every lunatic in California.

Or, perhaps, lunatic wannabees?

“Suspect”: I’m the Zodiac.
Armstrong: And how did you kill your victims?
“Suspect”: With a gun. No…with a hammer.

The other end, perhaps?

Arthur Leigh Allen: I am not the Zodiac. And if I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.

Well, with some suspects, you just can't win.

Arthur Leigh Allen: Oh. “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Armstrong: What?
Arthur Leigh Allen: “The Most Dangerous Game.” That’s why you’re here isn’t it? It was my favorite book in high school. It’s about this man who waits for these people to get shipwrecked on this island. Because he was tired of hunting animals, he hunted the people for the challenge.
Toschi: And man is the most dangerous animal of all?
Arthur Leigh Allen: That’s the whole point of the story

And it still is, of course. Though, every once in a while, it's a woman.

Melanie [to Graysmith…now her husband]: Nobody has more Zodiac crap than you do.

She comes around or she doesn't as I recall.

Toschi: Mr. Graysmith… Zodiac hasn’t written in three years. You know how many murders we’ve had in San Francisco since?
Graysmith: No.
Toschi: Over 200. That’s a lot of dead people and grieving families that need help.

Like that will actually make any difference.

Melanie: When is it gonna be finished? When you catch him, when you arrest him?
Graysmith: Be serious.
Melanie: I am serious.
Graysmith: I need to know who he is. I need to stand there. I need to look him in the eye…and I need to know that it’s him.
Melanie: Is that more important than your family’s safety?
Graysmith: Of course not.
Melanie: Why? Why do you need to do this?
Graysmith: Why? Because nobody else will.
Melanie: That’s not good enough.
Graysmith: Are you done? Can I go?

Yeah, but only for now.

Graysmith: Do you remember his name?
Linda: It was short, like a nickname. Like Stan.
Graysmith: Rick?
Linda: No, I don’t think so.
Graysmith: Are you sure?
Linda: Yeah.
Graysmith: How can you be sure? It was long ago. Think hard. It was Rick.
Linda: No, it wasn’t.
Graysmith: It was Rick. It was Rick Marshall.
Linda: No.
Graysmith: Just say it.
Linda: It wasn’t Rick.
[pause]
Linda: It was Leigh.

It's solved!

Graysmith: Dave, he made a mistake! The birthday was the one time that he was weak, the one time he gave something away!
Toschi: Robert…
Graysmith: It’s Arthur Leigh Allen!
Toschi: Where did you get that name?
Graysmith: December 18th. He called the Belli’s house. “I have to kill. Today is my birthday.” It was his birthday. Arthur Leigh Allen was born on December 18th.
Toschi: Get in here.

Of course, we know where that ended up.

Graysmith: This is a case that’s covered both northern and southern California with victims and suspects spread over hundreds of miles, would you agree?
Toschi: Yeah.
Graysmith: Darlene Ferrin worked at the Vallejo House of Pancakes on Tenneessee St. Arthur Leigh Allen lived in his mother’s basement on Fresno St. Door to door, that is less than 50 yards.
Toschi: Is that true?
Graysmith: I’ve walked it.
Toschi: Jesus Christ.

Of course, we know where that ended up.

Graysmith: Just because you can’t prove it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Toschi: Easy, Dirty Harry.

Not even close?

Mike Mageau [after identifying Arthur Leigh Allen as his shooter]: The last time I saw this face was July 4th, 1969. I am very sure that’s the man who shot me.

Unless, of course, it's not.

Death

“Our love was a two-person game. At least until one of us died, and the other became a murderer." Dark Jar Tin Zoo

In other words, not the other way around.

“Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.” Holly Black

Theoretically, as it were.

“We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.” John Banville

Of course, you have to be a celebrity, right?

“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.” Mary Roach

Why can't I, he wondered.

“We all didn't come into to the world at the same time so it makes sense that we don't leave it at the same time.” Lurlene McDaniel

Now that we have that settled...?

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” Steve Jobs

Among other things, forget about it.

How true to life is this? Well, since most of the main characters are based on folks writer and director John Singleton knew, I’d say it’s true enough. More to the point though is this: 30 years later how much different are things in South Central L.A.?

Some folks will watch films like this in order to be educated about a world they know nothing about. Others will watch it in order to be enterained by a world that merely reinforces their own personal prejudices.

What always strikes you about “the hood” in L.A. though is how different it seems to be from “the hood” depicted in, say, The Wire. Right here in Baltimore, my own hometown. It looks more like suburbia than “the projects” often depicted in the urban environments that proliferate on the East Coast. But the seeming endless sound of guns being fired, choppers overhead and/or sirens wailing links them both in ways many folks know little or nothing about. Except when we are watching stuff like this.

One thing seems certain: Here or there even the best Moms and Pops are up against peer pressures – and gang culture – that are hard to really subdue. Especially if they are raising sons. But some do manage to prevail. Otherwise this movie wouldn’t even exist.

The self-hating black police officer was based on a cop whom John Singleton witnessed as a kid. Singleton felt it was critical to show this officer to show how racist black police could be towards black people.

In order to maintain a sense of realism (i.e., shots firing unexpectedly), John Singleton never gave the actors cues as to when the shots would be fired. As such, their reactions are real.

After this film premiered nationally, there were instances where rival gang members ran into each other in theaters showing this film and engaged in shootouts.

John Singleton based Tre’s childhood on his own. Singleton’s father was a mortgage broker like Laurence Fishburne’s character. When he was 12, Singleton moved in with his father in South Los Angeles. Like Tre, Singleton stayed out of trouble with his father’s guidance and went to college. IMDb


Boys In the Hood

Doughboy [aged 10]: Damn, Tre, your daddy mean. He’s worse than the bogeyman himself N The Hood. Gotta do all these leaves. Who he think you is, Kunta Kinte?

If you get hus drift.

Furious: You may think I’m being hard on you right now, Tre, but I’m not. I’m trying to teach you how to be responsible. Your friends across the street, they don’t have anybody to show them. You gonna see how they end up too.

So, it's "beyond their control?"

Tre [Age 10]: Don’t y’all know that this is a dead body?
Ric Rock: Yeah, motherfucker, we know that shit. He ain’t bothering you, so don’t fuck with him.

Not unlike the dead bodies here?

Furious: Okay, then. What’s the three rules? Break it down for me. And think before you answer.
Tre [aged 10]: First, always look a person in the eye. Do that, they respect you better. Two was to never be afraid to ask you for anything. Stealing isn’t necessary. And the last one, I think, was to never respect anybody who doesn’t respect you back. That right?
Furious: Yeah. Yeah, you got it.

How's that working out for you?

Furious: What do you know about sex?
Tre [aged 10]: I know a little bit. I know, I take a girl and stick my thing in her and nine months later a baby comes out.
Furious: You think that’s it?
Tre: Basically, yeah.
Furious: Well, remember this: Any fool with a dick can make a baby, but only a real man can raise his chldren.

Any fools with a dick here?

Tre [on the phone] Who dis?
Reva [mother]: Who dis? What kind of way is that to answer the phone? Have you given anymore thought to what we talked about?
Tre: Yeah…I don’t know yet.
Reva: Let me speak to your daddy.
Tre: POP! Telephone.
Furious [to Reva]: Who dis?

A chip off the old block?

Old Man: Ain’t nobody from outside bringing down the property value. It’s these folk, shootin’ each other and sellin’ that crack rock and shit.
Furious: Well, how you think the crack rock gets into the country? We don’t own any planes. We don’t own no ships. We are not the people who are flyin’ and floatin’ that shit in here. I know every time you turn on the TV thats what you see, Black People, sellin the rock, pushin the rock, pushin the rock, yeah I know. But that wasn’t a problem as long as it was here.
[referring to Compton, Watts and other Black ghettos]
Furious: It wasn’t a problem until it was in Iowa…and it showed up on Wall Street where there are hardly any black people. You wanna talk about guns, why is it that there is a gun shop on almost every corner in this community?
Old Man: Why?
Furious: I’ll tell you why. For the same reason that there is a liquor store on almost every corner in the black community. Why? They want us to kill ourselves. You go out to Beverley Hills, you don’t see that shit.

Next up: we Trump this.

Shalika: Well you tell me this n*****, how you know God’s a he? He can be a she. You don’t know that.For one thing, you don’t know what the fuck I be motherfucking knowing.
Doughboy: I read about this shit when I was in the pen. It was this book, right, and it was telling life in the perspective if God was a bitch. Said if God was a bitch, there wouldn’t be no nuclear bombs, no wars because that ain’t in a bitch’s nature. Life would be different if God was a bitch.
Shalika: Why every time you talk about a female you say bitch or whore or hootchie?
Doughboy: Because that’s what you are.
Shalika: n*****, fuck you.

A Hood thing?

Ricky: I’m going into the fucking Army. That’s all there is to say.
Tre: You’re doing what?! Man, what are you, a damn fool?
Ricky: They say I can learn to work on computers. Plus, they’ll give me money for college.
Tre: Listen to you. You sound like the commercial. They don’t tell you that you don’t belong to you no more. You belong to them, the government. Like a slave or something. My daddy told me a black man has got no business, no place in the white man’s Army.
Ricky: I heard all that. I got a little boy to think about, okay? I don’t want to be like my brother. Hanging out and not doing shit. End up dealing 'caine, just like him. I want to do something with my life. I want to be somebody.
Tre: Listen, let me tell you something. When you join that Army, you ain’t gonna be nobody.

Tell that to Sargeant Currie.

Tre: I didn’t do nothing.
Officer Coffey: You think you tough?
[pulls gun on Tre]
Officer Coffey: Scared now, ain’t you? I like that. That’s why I took this job. I hate little motherfuckers like you. Little niggers, you ain’t shit! I could blow your head off with this Smith & Wesson and you couldn’t do shit. Think you tough? What set you from? Look like one of them Crenshaw mafia motherfuckers.

On the other hand, who has the gun?

Furious: Now I want you to give me the gun.
[Tre does not hand the gun to his father]
Furious: Oh, I get it, you gonna end like Doughboy… like little Chris in a wheelchair.
[Tre still doesn’t respond]
Furious: GIVE ME THE MOTHERFUCKING GUN, TRE.

Of course, that stuff is still going down.

Doughboy: Turned on the TV this morning. Had this shit on about how we’re living in a violent world. Showed all these foreign places. How foreigners live and all. I started thinking, man. Either they don’t know…don’t show…or don’t care about what’s going on in the 'hood. They had all this foreign shit. They didn’t have shit on my brother, man.

So, don't forget to vote.

For some the blue line is a lot thinner than for others. And then there are those who view it as actually worse than no line at all. It’s all about stuff like class and race and gender. Among other things.

There are folks who even argue the police are good to have around only because things would be so much worse if they were gone completely. Defund the police? Right. But in the interim they don’t really expect them to be of much use when the crime is directed at them personally. Somebody breaks into your apartment or robs you on the street [in some parts of town] and chances are they will never be caught and punished.

Then there’s the part about corruption. The part that plays out when actual inncocent people are framed for a crime they didn’t commit. The part where the only thing that ever really seems to matter is to get the crime “off the books”. Cops, in other words, who really don’t give a fuck whether someone is innocent or guilty…they just want the case “solved”. So they use whatever means necessary to accomplish that. In places like this [Vidor, Texas] there’s “by the book” justice and there’s the way things actually get done. Sometimes they bear almost no resemblance to each other. It’s all invested in the “good ole boy” approach to “criminal justice”. And if you are not a “local”, you can easily be on your own.

There are so many slimeballs here. All you can think about are the hundreds of innocent folks over the years who were railroaded like this. Folks who weren’t later exonerated after famous documentaries were made about them.

Was rejected by the Oscars for Best Documentary category in 1989 because it was considered to be a fictional film due to its scripted content.

Errol Morris spent 2-1/2 years tracking down the various players in the Randall Adams case and convincing them to appear in the film.

In light of the new evidence uncovered by the film, an evidentiary hearing was held. David Harris testified, recanting his earlier testimony against Randall Adams. “Randall Adams knew nothing about this offense and was not in the car at the time,” Harris testified. Adams’ capital murder verdict was overturned, and he was released from prison in March 1989. Adams then filed suit against filmmaker Errol Morris over the rights to his life. IMDb

https://youtu.be/0dXvsoyNJ08?si=ZFIuagXC4nxZxX1C


The Thin Blue Line

Harris: I’m driving down some street somewhere in Dallas. I had just turned 16. And there was a guy over there, I think he’d run out of gas. I took him to get some gas. This was Randall Adams.

Of course: the Benjamin Button Syndrome!

Adams: I get up, I go to work on Saturday. Why did I meet this kid? I don’t know. Why did I run out of gas at that time? I don’t know. But it happened. It happened.

Of course: the Benjamin Button Syndrome!

Adams: Gus Rose walked in. He had a confession there he wanted me to sign. He said that I would sign. He didn’t give a damn what I said. I would sign this piece of paper. I told him I couldn’t. “I don’t know what the hell you people expect of me. But there’s no way I can sign that.” He left. He came back in minutes. And threw a pistol on the table. Asked me to look at it. Which I did. I looked. He asked me to pick it up. I told him no, I wouldn’t do that. He threatened me. Again, I told him no. He pulled his service revolver on me. We looked at each other for… To me, it seemed hours. I do not like looking down the barrel of a pistol. I do not like being threatened. When he finally saw that he would either have to kill me…or forget the signature…I guess he forgot the signature, because he put his pistol up.

Otherwise, much of this might not have happened at all.

Dennis Johnson: I prepared a motion for a continuance to get more time to try the case and in doing that had to lay out my schedule for several weeks as to exactly what time I’d be in Vidor, Texas. Vidor is the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan for the state of Texas. It’s a city where black people will not spend the night. Black people won’t even stop there to get their car filled with gasoline. And furthermore, the people of Vidor were under the impression that the policeman that was murdered was a black man.

A "sundown town" they called them.

Floyd Jackson: David didn’t have a conscience. If I do something bad I think, “Shucks, I shouldn't done that, I feel bad about it.” It didn’t bother him. It didn’t bother him at all.

Never read Kant, I suspect.

Edith James [regarding the Millers]: The only reason they were talking to the police at all was that there had been a three-day running knife fight in their apartment. And they were all booked for disorderly and drunk behavior in there…including assault with knives, and all kinds of stuff. When they were at the police station, they suddenly decided to volunteer all this information about what they had seen about the police officer’s killing.

And, no, not just in Texas.

Woman: The Millers were scum. They were actually just scum. Let me put it in his words. For enough money, he would testify to what they wanted him to say. He would say anything they wanted him to say. Or he would see anything that they wanted him to see. Those were his words.

Of course the cops and the prosecutors here are scum too.

Judge: I do have to admit that in the Adams case…and I’ve never really said this…Doug Mulder’s final argument was one I’d never heard before. About the “thin blue line” of police that separated the public from anarchy. I have to concede that there my eyes kind of welled up when I heard that. It did get to me emotionally.

You get this or you don't.

Adams: You have a D. A…he doesn’t talk about when they convict you or how they convict you… he’s talking about how he’s going to kill you. He don’t give a damn if you’re innocent. He don’t give a damn if you’re guilty. He’s talking about killing you. You get numb. You get…It’s like a bad dream. You want to wake up, but you can’t do it. Fifteen times a day, I hear this same story about what happens when a man is electrocuted. His eyeballs pop out. His fingernails pop out. His toenails pop out. He bleeds out of every orifice he’s got. They don’t care…They don’t care. All they want to do is talk about how they’re going to kill you. That’s the only thing that they cared about and talked about.

Pick one:
1] genes
2] memes

Melvyn Bruder: Prosecutors in Dallas have said for years that any prosecutor can convict a guilty man. It takes a great prosecutor to convict an innocent man.

Dallas. Isn't that in Texas?

Sam Kittrell: David thought that the one that was really at fault that night was the guy that got killed. He said, “That guy’s crazy. He came after me with a gun.” I told him, “David, you’d broken into his house, you abducted his girlfriend, what was he supposed to do?” He said, “Man shouldn’t come out with a gun. That dude’s crazy. He should have been killed.”

And he may well have actually believed it.

Adams [of David Harris]: The kid scares me. To think that he could actually be out there, walking the streets…and Dallas County let him go. The kid had seven crimes coming down on him. He had armed robberies. He had firing on a peace officer. He had breaking and enterings, aggravated assaults. God knows what all this kid had. And Dallas County gives him complete immunity for his testimony. Just lets him walk.

Shades of Hurricane Carter as it were.

Adams: My mom had a good phrase. She said the first night she pulled into Dallas, it was raining…and that it was lightning. And they’re coming into Dallas and she said if there was ever a hell on earth, it’s Dallas County. She’s right.

My guess: for some considerably more than others.

Errol Morris: Were you surprised when the police blamed him?
Harris: They didn’t blame him. I did. A scared sixteen-year-old kid. He would sure like to get out of it if he can.
Errol Morris: Do you think they believed you?
Harris: No doubt. Must have. They didn’t have nothing else until I give them something, so…I guess they get something, they run with it, you know.
Errol Morris: Were you surprised they believed you?
Harris: I might have been. I don’t know. I was hoping they’d believe me, you know. After all was said and done it was kind of unbelievable. But there it is. I’ve always thought if you could say why there’s a reason Randall Adams is in jail, it might be because the fact that he didn’t have no place for somebody to stay that helped him that night…landed him where’s he’s at…That might be the reason. That might be the only, total reason why he’s where he’s at today.

That’s where the documentary ends. Go to wiki to note what followed. A gigantic miscarriage of justice—Texas style.

Philosophy

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.” Graham Greene

I was just thinking that myself.

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.” Roger Ebert

On the other hand, look where that got me.

Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked.” Philip K. Dick

We'll need a context of course.

“There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.” Richard Rorty

So much for an "Intrinsic Self" then?

“The best ideas are common property” Seneca

Of course, here in America of late so are the worst ideas.

“The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.” Arthur Schopenhauer

I was once this optimistic myself.