Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Art

“Everything you can imagine is real.” Pablo Picasso

Define real?

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” Rainbow Rowell

Confused, for example.

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” Leonardo da Vinci

On the other hand, blah, blah, blah?

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” Albert Einstein

So, am I mysterious enough for you?

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.” Leonardo da Vinci

On the other hand, whatever that means?

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts." Kurt Vonnegut

Let's just that, for me, it's a bit too late.

[iambiguous]

A true cult classic. But since we are not all members of the same cult that will mean different things to different people.

It’s not based on a true story. But not being based on a true story doesn’t mean much in today’s world. Why? Because we know just by watching the daily news that it could happen. That it does happen. Sort of. Folks seem to be held captive by one or another maniac practically every other week now. And that's just in America!

Of course God’s in the mix. And class. And poverty. When this sort of thing happens they are almost always in the midst of it somehow. That and pathology.

Try to imagine. For 30 odd years your mother kept you locked in [for all intents and purposes] a dungeon. You’ve never been “out in the world” at all. And then suddenly you are. The only way you know how to behave is by imitating your mother. And then others. So that’s what you do. You mimic everyone you come across. Sometimes it is funny. Sometimes it is surreal. Sometimes it is…unsettling.

During shooting director Rolf de Heer heard a rumor that the Australian government might legalize the death penalty. Outraged at this, he wrote an alternate ending which featured Bubby being arrested and hanged for his crimes. de Heer eventually changed his mind and the ending was never shot.

There were 32 different Directors of Photography during the shoot. The idea was to have a different D.P. for every new place that Bubby went to not only give the film more of an experimental feel, but also to eliminate the worry of having to always have the same crew on set every day.

The feral cat killed in the movie was killed humanely by a vet, and not suffocated as depicted in the movie. The same cat was used both when it was alive and after it had been put to sleep. The kitten depicted to be killed later in the movie was not feral, and was not really killed, it was only sedated.

The “wheelchair robbery” scene was based on an actual event that the director had witnessed while writing the script. IMDb


Bad Boy Bubby

Mother [to Bubby]: Don’t move! Jesus can see everything. He tells me you moved, by Christ, I’ll beat you brainless!

Hour after hour after hour he just sits there until Mom comes home.

Bubby: Bubby naughty…
Mother [starts smacking him]: Oh, Christ! What you done?! You… filthy little ****! You dirty little shit! I’ll send you to hell, just you see, you’ll go to hell, and your eyes will fall out, and your p**** will fall off, you dirty little SLIME!

At least he has a cat to torment?

Bubby [to the cat]: And if the poison doesn’t get you…God will.

Count on it.

Harold [Bubby’s father who shows up out of the blue]: And yet I never knowed I had a son! Good, healthy-looking specimen, too. You done well, Flo. Hey, son! You can call me Pop! I’m your Pop!
Bubby: Pop. Pop.
Father: He’s gettin’ the idea.
Bubby: Pop. Pop-pop-pop…Pop. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

"Bubby speak" let's call it.

Bubby [smothering mom and pop]: Now… you be still, Pop. Mum…you be still, too.

About fucking time, Bub!
And then, just like that. he’s, uh, free. Like you and I are now. Well, if we were Bubby and lived smack dab in the middle of a working-class community in Australia.

[Bubby approaches buxom Angel for the first time]
Bubby: You’re a sexy woman. God, you’ve got great tits. Great big whoppers!

In other words, as I recall, just like Mom's.

Bubby: Jesus can see everything I do… and he’s going to beat me brainless!
The Scientist: Come.
[the scene changes; they are no longer in a huge church but in a huge factory]
The Scientist: You see, no one’s going to help you Bubby, because there isn’t anybody out there to do it. No one. We’re all just complicated arrangements of atoms and subatomic particles - we don’t live. But our atoms do move about in such a way as to give us identity and consciousness. We don’t die; our atoms just rearrange themselves. There is no God. There can be no God; it’s ridiculous to think in terms of a superior being. An inferior being, maybe, because we, we who don’t even exist, we arrange our lives with more order and harmony than God ever arranged the earth. We measure; we plot; we create wonderful new things. We are the architects of our own existence. What a lunatic concept to bow down before a God who slaughters millions of innocent children, slowly and agonizingly starves them to death, beats them, tortures them, rejects them. What folly to even think that we should not insult such a God, damn him, think him out of existence. It is our duty to think God out of existence. It is our duty to insult him. Fuck you, God! Strike me down if you dare, you tyrant, you non-existent fraud! It is the duty of all human beings to think God out of existence. Then we have a future. Because then - and only then - do we take full responsibility for who we are. And that’s what you must do, Bubby: think God out of existence; take responsibility for who you are.

Well, he is a scientist, right?

Bubby [now alone out on the street]: Fuck you, God! Strike me down, if you dare! Fuck you, God. Fuck you, God! Strike me down, if you dare!

What balls!

Bubby [mimicing the scientist]: It is the duty of all to think God out of existence.
Angel: You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?

Of course, Angel doesn't know what we know.

Angel [taking Bubby to her home for dinner]: This is going to be fun…
Angel’s mother: How do you like your dinner, Mr Pop?
Bubby: Pizza be better than this.
Angel’s mother: Our daughter has a healthy appetite, don’t you think?
Angel: Mother, don’t start.
Angel’s father: Be quiet! Let your mother speak uninterrupted!
Angel’s mother: Thank you, dear! We tried to bring her up as best as we could but she’s been rather a disappointment to us.
Angel’s father [to Angel]: Be the first time you didn’t finish your dinner!
Angel’s mother: I find fat people so…so gross! So unfortunate, of course but so…ugly. And what do you think, Mr Pop?
Bubby: I think Angel is beautiful.
Angel’s Father: She’s a fat slut.
Angel’s Mother: Watch what you say, dear.
Angel’s Father: Better be known that she’s a fat slut.
Angel’s Mother: If God had wanted us to be fat, he’d just made us all the same way, wouldn’t he? But he didn’t! God doesn’t like fat people! Fat people are an abomination in his eyes!
Bubby [mimicing the scientist]: Fuck you, God! Strike me down if you dare! Angel be beautiful. God be a useless ****!

On the other hand, what are the odds it's your God, right?

Angel: My parents were just waiting to die anyway, Bubby. They were both riddled with poisons and cancers…Asbestos from the brake linings. Lead from the car exhaust. PCP’s from the car seats. Dioxins, parathidions, dieldrin, Mercury. Radioactivity. Whoever did it, just put them out of their misery.
Bubby: Ashes to ashes…dust to dust. That be nice.
Angel: They be poisoning us! They be poisoning the air that we breathe!
Bubby: If the poison don’t get you…then God will!

Hell, he's almost as repetitive as I am!

[iambiguous]

Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Dean: My dear fellow, who will let you?
Roark: That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

So, do those of his ilk need to be stopped?

I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you.

No, really, who would you be willing to die for?
Me? No one. At least no one comes to mind

To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".

Uh, start here, perhaps?
https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora
After all, there is almost nothing they don't already know about what it truly means to both love and to know yourself. Well, if only as they do.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

In other words, to see and to understand it exactly as she does.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul -- would you understand why that's much harder?

What soul, Ms. Objectivist?

But you see, said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

A perfectly scripted assessment, let's call it.

[iambiguous]

Another cult movie. Another argument over what the hell that means. But this one is in the book.

A movie within a movie. A man hiding his identity on and off the screen.

Quiet on the set! And…action! Now you see him, now you don’t. Here the danger is real, there it’s just for the shot. Meanwhile, we are watching the spectators watching the movie being made. What’s real and what is not? The director is even clever enough to intertwine them into something resembling a reality. His, for example. And in order to get it just the way he wants it, everything else becomes irrelevant…just as everyone else becomes expendable.

Cameron isn’t a real stunt man. He just plays a stunt man who is playing someone else in the movie. And a real stunt man is hired to play him playing the stunt man. But the guy did survive 26 months of combat in Vietnam. Doing the real thing as it were. So, as he insisted to Chuck, “give me a break”. But, of course, he’s just an actor playing a Vietnam vet. Just as he is an actor playing a criminal. We grasp this but we are still very curious to know what crime he actually committed. Why, in other words, are the actors playing the cops after him?

Eli isn’t a real director either. He is being directed by a real director though. Just as [more or less] the real director is being directed by the films producers and the folks who run the studios.

Anyway, the bottom line: It’s just a movie about how movies intertwine what is being made up regarding things that could in fact have happened. Or have in fact happened. After all, the Vietnam war was real. And post traumatic stress syndrome is real. But in the movies though are the rewrites. And that’s all it takes to change reality there.

Look for Charles Manson.

Although actors like Martin Sheen and Jeff Bridges were lobbying hard for the part of Cameron, Steve Railsback clinched the part after director Richard Rush saw his stirring performance as Charles Manson in Helter Skelter.

Co-screenwriter Richard Rush has said of the rejection of his first draft script by Columbia Pictures studio executives: “They couldn’t figure out if it was a comedy, a drama, if it was a social satire, if it was an action adventure…and, of course, the answer was, ‘Yes, it’s all those things’. But that isn’t a satisfactory answer to a studio executive”. IMDb



The Stunt Man

Cop [as Cameron plays a pinball machine]: You’re gonna win.
Cameron: Win what?
Cop: A free game.
Cameron [bitterly]: Just what I need, one more chance to lose.

That is one way to look at it, of course.

Cameron: If you want to get home for Thanksgiving, you better figure the guy coming at you is trying to kill you. Learned that from the gooks.
Eli: Gooks? That has a nostalgic ring. You really did call them gooks? I thought that was just Time Magazine.

Lots of soldiers I came to know "over there" used that word. Even in regard to the fucking ARVNs!

Cameron: The cops are going to know exactly what I look like.
Eli: Oh stop all this worrying. You must have heard surely of movie magic. You shall be a stunt man who is an actor who is a character in a movie who is an enemy soldier. Who will look for you?

Indeed, I stopped years ago, myself.

Cameron: I knew daredevils in Vietnam, and I ain’t got nothin’ against them. It’s just they’re all dead.

Next up: the philosophic daredeils here. Or am I still the only one.

Raymond: I’ll never understand why these guys take the chances.
Eli: I don’t know. Probably because all we know is that we shall die…It makes us so scared, so crazy we’ll do anything…Which is what our film is about…or did no one tell you that.

Note to iwannaplato: please tell us what the movie is really all about.

Eli: Sam, this picture is my child. What would you say if the studio said your daughter Jennifer would look better with her fingers chopped off?
Sam: Well, being an insecure writer, I’d call my agent and get a second opinion.

I know! Let's call it Hollywood!

Eli [to Cameron]: Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray’s belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he’d be a happy man!

What about that, God?

Eli [after an effects shot involving a dummy has gone wrong]:It’s so awful, it’s beautiful. I do wish I could use it.
Sam: That’s all we need.
Eli: Well, we need something, Sam, and damn well you know it. Something better.
Sam: Better? How better?
Eli: Something less boring. Something crazier.
Sam: A dead man’s boots are dropped over his own airfield out of chivalry. That’s not crazy enough for you, huh?
Eli: They did it in a film called “Wings.” Even the dummy was bored.

It's a strange, strange world out there isn't it?

Eli [after a cameraman says cut because there’s only 22 seconds of film left]: In 22 seconds, I could break your fucking spine. In 22 seconds, I could pinch your head off like a fucking insect and spin it all over the fucking pavement. In 22 seconds, I could put 22 bullets inside your ridiculous gut. What I seem unable to do in 22 seconds is to keep you from fucking up my film!

Next up: catch 22 seconds

Eli: I lost you Nina…to that swell wholesome fine looking kid, that soldier boy wanted by the police, the FBI, the sheriff, the Army and possibly the Vietcong. And for God knows what crime. Christ woman do you not see the man…he’s gleaming with blood.
Nina: He says that you are trying to harm him.
Eli [after a pause]: Any number of people are trying to harm him.

Yeah, you gotta put these things in perspective.

Cameron [to Nina]: I’m beginning to feel like something Sam wrote. I’m not real. I’m some jerk American flyer from World War I who has to go off some bridge and die because the goddamn script says so. If they just tore out that page…just ripped it out, I’d be flying again. If they crossed it out and wrote something else like “at the last moment the car veers off from the railing and he goes speeding off to live happily ever after”.

In other words, shit happens.

Eli: I know a man who made an anti-war movie…a good one. When it was shown in his home town, army enlistment went up six hundred percent. I’m trying to convince the world with my movie that there is a reasonable and better way of getting home for Thanksgiving.

Or, at the very least, by Christmas.

[iambiguous]

I never really played arcade videogames. The “classics” or otherwise. So, I’ll never know first-hand why those who played them passionaitely prized their skills [or their “world records”] as though they were, I don’t know, Super Bowl champions? Nobel Peace Prize winners?

But [as kids] most of us know what it’s like to be really good at something. And by something, I mean at anything. If you could pitch pennies better than anyone, or pitch horseshoes, or pitch baseballs. It didn’t matter. Somebody in your neighborhood had to set the records. So why not you?

But with videogames [back then] everyone in the universe seemed to be playing them. And not just kids. If you held the world’s record for playing Donkey Kong you were [in that world] a fucking rock star. A fucking God. That is, until somebody new came along and beat it. Or alleged that he did on videotape.

One thing for sure. This was a world populated almost entirely by boys and men. All white apparently. And I don’t recall seeing a single female participant. Why? Nature? Nurture?

And then there’s the whole question of “cheating”. Here Billy Mitchell pretty much comes out looking [at best] like a hypocrite.

Several of those depicted in the documentary, including Wiebe and Mitchell themselves, claim that it does not accurately depict events. For example, Wiebe and Mitchell were, and still are, on much friendlier terms than is suggested, and another player’s record was in place during some of the events but is omitted. The director has conceded to many of these claims in statements, arguing that the fictionalized account is more entertaining.

On March 5, 2010, Hank Chien became the new Donkey Kong world record holder, scoring 1,061,700 points. On August 7 2010, Bill Mitchell regained the Donkey Kong record with a score of 1,062,800. Steve Wiebe regained the title on September 20, 2010 with 1,064,500 points. As of 10 January 2011, Hank Chien holds the world record with 1,068,000 points. IMDb

And today? Robbie Lakeman with 1,272,800 points.



King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters

Billy Mitchell: There’ll always be the argument that video games are meant to be played for fun. Believe me, some of it’s a lot of fun. Video games are meant to be played at home, relaxing on a couch amongst friends. And they are, and that’s fun. But competitive gaming, when you wanna attach your name to a world record, when you want your name written into history, you have to pay the price.

Next up: competitive ping pong.

Title card: “This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.” William S. Burroughs

And, of coure, what we do here.

Walter Day: I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to be the center of attention. I wanted the glory, I wanted the fame. I wanted the pretty girls to come up and say, “Hi, I see that you’re good at Centipede.”

Can you fucking believe it?!

Billy Mitchell: The top French pilot in World War I shot down 24 enemy planes. The top American pilot-- you don’t know his name, do you? Nobody does. But it’s Eddie Rickenbacker. Shot down 26 enemy planes. The German Ace, the Red Baron. Everyone knows who the Red Baron is. That’s 'cause he shot down 87 enemy planes. I mean, he was the best. There’s just a level of difference between people, and it translates into some games.

Let's run this by Vincent Lauria.

Announcer: When Billy Mitchell walks into an arcade, you know, everything stops. There’s electricity around Billy Mitchell. Everybody wants to crowd around him. Everybody wants to see him.

He wondered who was the equivalent of that here.

TV Newscaster: On July 4, at a New Hampshire arcade, 34-year-old Billy Mitchell became the first person to master Pac-Man by recording the first ever perfect game.

What the hell does that even mean?
This apparently...

Gamer: To get through every board of Pac-Man, getting every dot, every energizer, every ghost that’s applicable, to reach to the final 256th screen without dying? That’s–lt’s impressive in its own right.

Well, if that sort of "kid stuff" thing impresses you.

[Top gamers talk Donkey Kong]

Gamer: Well, Donkey Kong, without question, is the hardest game. lt’s ridiculously difficult on the first screen. Donkey Kong is releasing these barrels. You got to jump over the barrels. You gotta duck the barrels. You can grab a hammer and hammer the barrels.

Gamer: Okay, the secret about the barrel board is you can actually control the barrels. Right above this ladder, you’ll do a quick left, and then a hard right turn. See how it went down? Went down again. You gotta get past all the barrels, the fireballs, get up the ladders. And as soon as you get to her, Donkey Kong takes her away to the next level.

Gamer: The average Donkey Kong game doesn’t last a minute. lt’s absolute brutality. Each of the 18 elevator boards represents the greatest challenge in video game playing.

Gamer: The average gamer on Donkey Kong will never get past the third elevator stage. Just the slightest touch from one of these springs, kills you. There’s no hammer for them. There’s no way to defeat them. All you can do is avoid them. That’s it. And the secret to the third elevators is knowing which spring to go on, and then knowing which spring to move up the ladder on, and recognizing when you must retreat. lf you don’t time it just exactly right, you will die.

Gamer: For years and years, it was believed that Billy’s record of 874,000 in was really the highest score anyone would ever get.

You know, FYI.

Steve Wiebe: I was havin’ the game of my life. I was–I think I got 600,OOO, uh, and I hadn’t died yet. And then I started hearing some noises coming down the stairs, screaming…
Derek Wiebe [his young son yelling]: Daaad!
Steve Wiebe [playing Donkey Kong]: Yes, Derek. What’s wrong?
Derek Wiebe [upset and angry]: Wipe my butt! Stop playing Donkey Kong! Stop playing Donkey Kong! Stop playing Donkey Kong!
Steve Wiebe: And it’s all on tape, and I–That’s the tape I had to send in to–to Twin Galaxies!

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to play Donkey Kong.

Billy Mitchell: No matter what I say, it draws controversy. It’s sort of like the abortion issue.

I don’t see any difference, do you?

Gamer: Numerous classic games, they all have something in common. They have an end to the game play. There’s not quite enough memory for the final board. It’s called a ‘‘kill screen’’ because basically, there’s no way to finish the level. That some sort of random data, or code, inside the program, ends up getting used for what you see on the screen. Donkey Kong is really strange in that it actually lets you play the final screen–the kill screen level–for maybe five seconds or so. Everything looks normal and then, suddenly, Mario just up and dies on you.

Actually, I didn't know that.

Brian Kuh: You know, he’s gonna have to play it perfectly, he’s at the hardest part of Donkey Kong, and it’s not gonna get any easier. So we may have an exciting moment here, or you know, the pressure may get to him, one of those random elements might happen. Sounds like he just cleared another board, but we could have a wild barrel, or some aggressive fireballs. I thought I was gonna be the first FunSpot kill screen, and then I had three fireballs trap me, I had the hammer in my hand, they still got me. So anything can happen in Donkey Kong. So for someone else to beat me to the kill screen would be a letdown, but lets see what happens, maybe he’ll crack under the pressure and maybe I’ll get my chance to do it first.

Next up: the kill screen here.

Walter Day: The Mitchell/Wiebe rivalry is among the greatest: the Yankees and Red Sox, Maris and Mantle, Hekyll and Jekyll.

Uh, Ravens and Steelers?

Jillian Wiebe [his young daughter]: I never knew that the Guinness World Record Book was so…I never knew it was so important.
Steve Wiebe: I guess a lot of people are…yeah, a lot of people read that book.
Jillian Wiebe [while directly looking at Steve, her father]: Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there.

Nope, he didn’t.

Steve Wiebe: It’s kind of ironic that he went-- He was a guy that pushed for live scores all the time. And now here I am at Funspot busting my ass to get a live score and he just submits taped scores now and then gets the record.

How far would you go to set one?

[iambiguous]

Blindness

“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.” John Lennon

...misunderstanding all you see.

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.” Helen Keller

That's one way to think about it, of course. On the other hand, I guess we'll never know.

“I've gotten really hot since you went blind.” John Green

Hot as hell on some days.

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.” Tennessee Williams

Never even came close myself. Right, Supannika?

“There's none so blind as those who will not listen.” Neil Gaiman

In addition, in other words.

“There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.” August Strindberg

Unless, of course, you're blinded by the light.

[iambiguous]

Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Dean: My dear fellow, who will let you?
Roark: That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

So, do those of his ilk need to be stopped?

I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.

No, really, who would you be willing to die for?
Me? No one. At least no one comes to mind

To say “I love you” one must know first how to say the “I”.

Uh, start here, perhaps?
https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/

After all, there is almost nothing they don’t already know about what it truly means to both love and to know yourself. Well, if only as they do.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

In other words, to see and to understand it exactly as she does.

To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That is what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul – would you understand why that’s much harder?

What soul, Ms. Objectivist?

But you see, said Roark quietly, "I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.

A perfectly scripted assessment, let’s call it.

[iambiguous]

What does it tell you about modern art and celebrity and fame?

[insert wink here]

Good, at least we are both on the same page.

For some, the only thing more surreal than looking at modern art is listening to the artists [and the critics] talk about it. They have words they connect to the painting but it is as though any other words would fare just as well. It’s both a “technical” and an “aesthetic” experience. Some being more qualified than others [apparently] to make that distinction…and then to pass judgments on one and/or both. On the other hand, no one really has much to say about it anyway. They look at it…and they just know: “This is nice. I like it.” Things like that.

I’m sorry, but I have always been particularly ironic about this stuff. But then how hard is that? Or, rather, what do I know about it? Still, he’s no Lionel Dolby.

And then the truly murky part about his mother. The past in other words. It always works differently for each of us. Made all the murkier though because we often don’t have access to the past of others. Only what they tell us about it. Which all too often is only what they think it is anyway. The murkiest reality of all.

Listen for the soundtrack. It’s…exceptional.

Gary Oldman’s character, Albert Milo, wasn’t a real person, but is actually a portrayal of director Julian Schnabel.

In the film, David Bowie is adorned in the actual wigs worn by the real Andy Warhol.

The estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat refused to allow his works to be used, so the director, Julian Schnabel, personally painted the reproductions which are used throughout the film. IMDb


Basquiat

Rene [voiceover]: Everybody wants to get on the Van Gogh boat. There’s no trip so horrible that someone won’t take it. The idea of the unrecognized genius slaving away in a garot is deliciously foolish one. We must credit the life of Vincent Van Gogh for really sending this myth into orbit. I mean, how many pictures did he sell, one? He couldn’t give them away. He has to be the most modern artist, but everybody hated him. He was so ashamed of his life that the rest of our history will be contribution to Van Gogh’s neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another like Van Gogh. In this town, one is at the mercy of the recognition factor. One’s public appearance is absolute. Part of the artist’s job is to get the work where I will see it. I consider myself a metaphor on the public. I am a public eye, a witness, a critic. When you first see a new picture. You don’t want to miss the boat. You have to be very careful. You might be staring at Van Gogh’s ear.

Then the part where some are ignored here, right?

Basquiat: I-Is this the s-s-suicide h-h-hotline?
Voice: Yes. My name is Chris. What’s yours?
Basquiat: Jean Michel.
Chris: That’s a beautiful name. French?
Basquiat: Haitian. I’m going to kill myself. I’m taking pills. Reds, blues, greens.
Chris: What? Wait a minute… talk to me.
Basquiat (about to sob): This city’s k-killing me.

https://youtu.be/ygSS1tC2PFo?si=Q5f80oyXCmWcEWs6

Benny [to Basquiat]: And you gotta do your work all the time. The same kinda work, the same style – over and over again, so people recognize it and don’t get confused. Then, once you’re famous, you have to keep doing it the same way, even after it’s boring – unless you want people to really get mad at you – which they will anyway.

That ever happen to you? I mean, philosophically.

Benny [to Basquiat]: Famous people are usually pretty fuckin’ stupid.

What's this then make the "fans" who made them famous?

Basquiat: You wanna buy some ignorant art? Ten bucks.
Warhol: Gee, ignorant art?
Basquiat: Yeah…Like – stupid, ridiculous, crummy art.
Warhol: Ohhh. That’s new. That sounds good.
Basquiat: Ten bucks apiece.
Warhol: Well, gee, you didn’t work very much on these. I can give you like five.

Of course, this is modern art -- fArt -- in a nutshell, for some.

Rene: What’s your real name?
Basquiat: Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Rene: Oh my God, you sound famous already!

And he may or he may not be fooling.

Rene: When I speak nobody believes me, but when I write it down everybody knows it to be true.
[pause]
Rene: There’s never been a black painter in art history that’s been considered really important, you know?
Basquiat: Are you writer or a white writer?
Rene: I may be white but I’m a “niggah”. You ask anybody.

Some white folks apparently are "permitted" to use the N word.

Cynthia Kruger: I don’t know…This one’s nice, but I don’t know if I could live with it. That green is so… institutional. It’s fascinating, his choice of crossing out words that way.
Annina: Yeah, well, they are more meaningful in their absense, no?
Cynthia Kruger: I just don’t know if I can live with the green.
Basquiat: You want me to make it a nice shit brown?
Tom Kruger: I beg your pardon. Nobody makes fun of my wife but me.

The art world meets the general public. And, yes, that includes the idle rich.
Right, Frederick?

Big Pink [after Basquiat rescues her scarf]: Oh! How can I ever thank you?
Basquiat: Maybe I can squeeze your titties?

After all, who hasn't?

Rene [voiceover]: What is it about art anyway that we give it so much importance? Artists are respected by the poor because what they do is an honest way to get out of the slum using one’s sheer self as the medium. The money earned, proof, pure and simple, of the value of that individual, the artist. The picture a mother’s son does in jail hangs on her wall as proof that beauty is possible even in the most wretched. And this is a much different idea than fancier notion that art is a scam and a ripoff. But you can never explain to someone who uses God’s gift to enslave, that you have used God’s gift to be free.

In other words, perhaps, "Of all lies, art is the least untrue." Gustave Flaubert.

Interviewer: You’ve had twenty-three one man shows, been in forty three group shows from Zurich to Tokyo. You’ve had over fifty articles written about you, switched galleries – how many times? DJ’d in the hottest clubs.
[he reads from press clipping]
Interviewer: “…one of the youngest artists ever to be included in the Whitney Biennial”…also produced a rap record. It’s said you’re quite the ladies man – even dated Madonna for a couple months! All this at the ripe old age of 24. One might ask: is there anything left for Jean Michel Basquiat to do? Bottom line: What is it that get’s you out of bed in the morning?
Basquiat [grinning ironically]: I hate this man. Can you shut that recorder off.

Of course, he's only paraphrasing Andy.

Interviewer: Do you consider yourself some sort of primal expressionist?
Basquiat: You mean a primate? Like an ape?
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself a painter or a black painter?
Basquiat: Oh, I use lots of colors, not just black.
Interviewer: How do you respond to being called, “the picanny of the art world?”
Basquiat: Who…who said that?
Interviewer: That’s from Time magazine.
Basquiat: No, no, no, no, no. They said I was the Eddie Murphy of the art world.

Of course, he's only paraphrasing -- imitating -- Andy.

Interviewer: Let me open something up here. You come from the middle class. Your father is an accountant. Why did you live in a cardboard box on Tompkins Square? Do you feel you were being exploited…or are you yourself exploiting the, uh, white image of the black artist from the ghetto…
Baquiat: Ghetto? I don’t exploit it, no. Other people…See, you made me put my foot in my foot. Other people…other people might exploit it. It’s possible.
Interviewer: Is it true that your mother resides in a mental instituion? Is that right?
[no response but his face is contorted]
Interviewer: You angry?
Basquiat: Now? Right now?
Interviewer: No, as an artist?
[no response]
Interviewer: Okay, good. That’s good.

The fucking press! Of course, any number of them are only in it for the money themselves.

Basquiat: Giorgio?
Giorgio: Yes, Mr. Basquiat.
Basquiat: You see this table behind me?
Giorgio: Yes.
Basquiat: Put their bill on my tab.

And, one day, the equivalent of that here, perhaps?

Milo: Let me tell you, Jean Michel, there are about ten people on the planet who know anything about painting. And Andy is one of them. You know, your audience isn’t even born yet.

Painting -- art -- in a nutshell, isn't it? In other words, whatever that means?

Title card: Jean Michel Basquiat, American painter, died on August 12th, 1988 of a heroin overdose. He was 27 years old.

Another one bites the dust.

[iambiguous]

There are characters you bump into on the screen and you think, “Hey, on the inside, that’s just the way I think…that’s just the way I feel”. But on the outside [and especially in your interactions with others] you couldn’t possibly be farther removed. So, who are you really trying to fool?

See if you can figure out the one closest to me. Hint: It’s not Louise, Sophie, Sandra, Jeremy or Brian.

Johnny is right out on the edge. But he has done a lot of deep thinking about our place in the universe so he’s not just throwing a dart in the general direction of the bullseye and hoping to at least hit the wall. He always at least lands on the board. But we have to do more to survive from day to day than just reasoning about things. And those parts he hasn’t quite mastered. Quite the opposite you might say. Here he is more like a bottle of nitro-glycerine.

Johnny and Louise have a back story. In manchester. But we never find out what that is. Now, in London they seem to be on very different paths. But all the time you know that, much like your own, these are just teeny, tiny slices of all the different ways one can choose to live his or her life. If you have any real choice at all.

It’s like the end of the world here. But, on the good days, it’s only brutal. And then there is Jeremy to remind you that bad as things are, they can always get much, much worse.

The script was largely created by improvisation during 11 weeks of rehearsal before shooting. The script was only 25 pages long. IMDb

This makes the film all the more remarkable.


Naked

Johnny [to Sophie]: I mean, tossing all these satellites and shuttles out into the cosmos. What do they think they’re gonna find up there that they can’t find down here? They think if they piss high enough, they’re gonna come across the monkey with the beard and the crap ideas? And it’s, like, “Oh! There you are, captain! Are you busy? Because I’ve got a few fundamental questions for you.”

Johnnyspeak let's call it.

Louise: What are you doing here? You look like shit.
Johnny: I’m just tryin’ to blend in with the surroundings.

No, really, that's one way to look at it.

Louise: So, how did you get here?
Johnny: Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.
Louise: I see you haven’t changed.
Sophie: He’s a fuckin’ genius, this geezer!

In fact, from time to time, don't get him started.

Johnny: How’s your mum?
Louise: Fine. How’s yours? Still pulling pints?
Johnny: She’s dead. She’s still a good fuck though. I mean, the rates are a bit extortionate… but I do get a discount what with being the son and everything.
Sophie: Apparently, you shouldn’t stick anything up your **** that you can’t put in your mouth.

So, you're wondering, is this just an act between them?

Louise: Were you bored in Manchester?
Johnny: Was I bored? No, I wasn’t fuckin’ bored. I’m never bored. That’s the trouble with everybody - you’re all so bored. You’ve had nature explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the living body explained to you and you’re bored with it, you’ve had the universe explained to you and you’re bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it’s new as long as it’s new as long as it flashes and fuckin’ bleeps in forty fuckin’ different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I’m not fuckin’ bored.

That makes at least two of us then.

Johnny: You know what frightens me about the human body?
Sophie: What?
Johnny: Well, it’s like the, er, most sophisticated mechanism in the entire universe, and yet it’s so fuckin’ quiet, isn’t it? Know what I mean?
Sophie: Dunno. Mine makes enough noise.
Johnny: It’s like this, er, wet, pink factory. What the fuck are they makin’ in there? I mean, what’s the product? You never see no delivery trucks comin’ and goin’, do you?

Go ahead, run this by God and get back to us.

Maggie: Have you ever seen a dead body?
Johnny: Only me own.

Indeed, here and there he might just as well have been one of the living dead.

Brian: Waste not, want not.
Johnny: And other clichés.
Brian: But a cliché is full of truth, otherwise it wouldn’t be a cliché.
Johnny: Which is in itself a cliché.

Word games. Don't leave home without them.

Johnny: Has nobody not told you, Brian, that you’ve got this kind of gleeful preoccupation with the future? I wouldn’t even mind, but you don’t even have a fuckin’ future, I don’t have a future. Nobody has a future. The party’s over. Take a look around you man, it’s all breaking up. Are you not familiar with the book of Revelations of St. John, the final book of the Bible prophesying the apocalypse?.. He forced everyone to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead so that no one shall be able to buy or sell unless he has the mark, which is the name of the beast, or the number of his name, and the number of the beast is 6-6-6… What can such a specific prophecy mean? What is the mark? Well the mark, Brian, is the barcode, the ubiquitous barcode that you’ll find on every bog roll and packet of johnnies and every poxy pork pie, and every fuckin’ barcode is divided into two parts by three markers, and those three markers are always represented by the number 6. 6-6-6! Now what does it say? No one shall be able to buy or sell without that mark. And now what they’re planning to do in order to eradicate all credit card fraud and in order to precipitate a totally cashless society, what they’re planning to do, what they’ve already tested on the American troops, they’re going to subcutaneously laser tattoo that mark onto your right hand, or onto your forehead. They’re going to replace plastic with flesh. Fact! In the same book of Revelations when the seven seals are broken open on the day of judgment and the seven angels blow the trumpets, when the third angel blows her bugle, wormwood will fall from the sky, wormwood will poison a third part of all the waters and a third part of all the land and many many many people will die! Now do you know what the Russian translation for wormwood is?.. Chernobyl! Fact. On August the 18th, 1999, the planets of our solar system are gonna line up into the shape of a cross… They’re gonna line up in the signs of Aquarius, Leo, Taurus, and Scorpio, which just happen to correspond to the four beasts of the apocalypse, as mentioned in the book of Daniel, another fuckin’ fact! Do you want me to go on? The end of the world is nigh, Brian, the game is up!
Brian: I don’t believe that. Life can’t just come to a stop.
Johnny: All right, I’m not saying that life will end or the world will end, or the universe will cease to exist. But man will cease to exist! Just like the dinosaurs passed into extinction, the same thing will happen to us! We’re not fuckin’ important! We’re just a crap idea!

Need I point out that 1999 has come and gone? But I don’t hold that against him.

Johnny: Do you think that the amoeba ever dreamed that it would evolve into the frog? Of course it didn’t. And when that first frog shimmied out of the water and employed its vocal cords… in order to attract a mate or to retard a predator…do you think that that frog ever imagined that that incipient croak…would evolve into all the languages of the world, into all the literature of the world? Of course it fucking didn’t. And just as that froggy could never possibly have conceived of Shakespeare…so we can never possibly imagine our destiny.
Brian: I know what my destiny is.
Johnny: Yeah, but what you’re experiencing, as far as I can gather with all these manifestations of, uh, regression and precognition and transmigratory astral fucking chatterings is just the equivalent of that first primeval grunt…because evolution isn’t over. Man isn’t the be-all and fucking end-all. Look, if you take the whole of time and represent it by one year, were only in the first few moments of the first of January. There’s a long way to go. Only now we’re not going to spout extra limbs and wings and fins because evolution itself is evolving.

And look where the fuck we are now.

Brian: You don’t believe in God.
Johnny: Of course I believe in God. You see, the thing is, Brian that God is a hateful god. Must be because if God is good, then why is there evil in the world? Why is there pain and hate and greed and war? Doesn’t make sense. But if God is a nasty bastard, then you can say, “Why is there good in the world? Why is there love and hope and joy?” Well, let’s face it. Good exists in order to be fucked up by evil. The very existence of good enables evil to flourish. Therefore, God is bad. And it doesn’t matter how many past or future existences you have because they’re all gonna be riddled with grief and anguish and sickness and death. You see, Brian, God doesn’t love you. God despises you. So there’s no hope and mankind is just a component of the device by which the devil creates itself. Are you with me?

Nope. But then we’re not really supposed to be, are we?

Jeremy: Hope I haven’t given you AIDS, Sophie.
Louise: Jesus Christ!
Sophie: Are you serious?
Jeremy: I was merely jesting.
Louise: Very funny.
Jeremy: I think AIDS is rather healthy in its way.
Louise: You what?
Jeremy: I realise that’s not the fashionable thing to say, of course.
Louise: No, it’s not.
Jeremy: But the world is over crowded, isn’t it? It does need a little pruning.
Sophie: You fuckin’ better be joking.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. With sociopaths it's just hard to tell sometimes.

Johnny: No matter how many books you read, there is something in this world that you never ever ever ever ever fucking understand.

Well, perhaps, theoretically, you can simply think that you do.

Sophie: What is a “proper relationship”?
Louise: Living with someone who talks to you after they bonked you.

Maybe. With silly old me, however, it always depends on what they have to say.

[iambiguous]

Yuval Noah Harari

Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.

Let's not even begin to explain this.

The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota whether space and time are absolute or relative. If you think it is possible to bend space and time, well be my guest. ...In contrast, Darwin has deprived us of our souls. If you really understand the Theory of Evolution, you understand that there is no soul. This is a terrifying thought, not only to devote Christians and Muslims, but also to many secular people who don't hold any clear religious dogma, but nevertheless, want to believe that each human possess an eternal, individual essence that remains unchanged throughout life and can survive even death intact.

There's theory this and theory that...and then there's theory everywhere in between

If you are really in love with someone, you never worry about the meaning of life.

As often as not, let's say

Centuries ago human knowledge increased slowly, so politics and economics changed at a leisurely pace too. Today our knowledge is increasing at breakneck speed, and theoretically we should understand the world better and better. But the very opposite is happening. Our new-found knowledge leads to faster economic, social and political changes; in an attempt to understand what is happening, we accelerate the accumulation of knowledge, which leads only to faster and greater upheavals. Consequently we are less and less able to make sense of the present or forecast the future. In 1016 it was relatively easy to predict how Europe would look in 1050. Sure, dynasties might fall, unknown raiders might invade, and natural disasters might strike; yet it was clear that in 1050 Europe would still be ruled by kings and priests, that it would be an agricultural society, that most of its inhabitants would be peasants, and that it would continue to suffer greatly from famines, plagues and wars. In contrast, in 2016 we have no idea how Europe will look in 2050. We cannot say what kind of political system it will have, how its job market will be structured, or even what kind of bodies its inhabitants will possess.

Next up: imagining America in 2050. Or, perhaps, what's left of it?

Consistency is the playground of dull minds

Tell me we won't need a context here.

Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales.

Well, that and crony capitalism.

[iambiguous]

But there was one man who…

And one of the most common scenarios here is the loner standing up to the bullies. In, say, a private boarding school. But this one is layered just a bit more. And that makes it stand out. Really stand out.

It is not only bullies that run the student body, but bullies that run the school. And then the bully at home. You always want to be like Erik yourself. And then you start in on calculating why exactly you are not. Sometimes the gaps are beyond your control. But then again, sometimes they are not. Sometimes you just don’t have the balls.

And then there’s this: In being the victim of bullies all too often it can turn you into a bully yourself. It’s always about the context though and you’re point of view. That never changes. And that can either be the good news or the bad news. And that never changes either. And this one is bursting at the seams with class. Or for some, caste.

This is all about tyrants and how to confront them. Through passive resistence or open revolt? Or simply by becoming invisible to them. But it’s always the same: what is at stake? what have you got to lose? And some are more ruthlessly tyrannical than others. Imagine King or Ghandi going up against the Nazis. The ante can always be upped. And to the grave if necessary.

In the end though, he doesn’t just give them a pounding, he outwits them. More to the point, he humiliates them. He is simply smarter than they are. But they get their own licks in as well. And if they can’t get him they can always go after those he cares about.

This is based at least in part on a true story. Two of them apparently.


Evil [Ondskan]

Stepfather [after slapping Erik for dropping his fork]: Let’s have a talk after dinner, just the two of us.

Take a wild guess.

Headmaster: Never, I repeat never, in all my years as headmaster of this school, have I met a more vicious pupil than you with such a brutish level of behavior. That some teachers happen to defend your academic ability does make up for your behavior. In fact, it makes it even worse. It’s beyond understanding. It’s deeply worrying. There is only one word for people like you, and that is “evil”. Evil in its purest form. What you need is a good thrashing.

The irony is lost on him too.

Pierre: Here the students keep order.

He means the fucking bullies, of course.

Erik: Pierre, what happens if you hit them back?

What do you think happens?

Erik: Do you really think it is possible to resist them non-violently?
Pierre: That’s what I want to think.

We'll see where that gets him.

Erik: What bloody ring?

Oh, he'll find out soon enough.

Berg: Sport is democratic, Erik. Remember that.

Oh, but it’s another lesson that Erik learns from him.

Erik [at mealtime sniffing the air]: Strange. Can anyone smell shit? Shit. I smell shit.

Shifting into a higher [or lower] gear.

Pierre [after Dahlen pisses on his bed]: Don’t you understand what this is about? They’re trying to get at you. They’ve just changed their tactics.

In other words, they're just getting started.

Erik [to Berg]: You said I’d be untouchable. That it was a matter of honor for you. But there’s no honor here. You know that. There are many different ways of making life hell for people.

Berg just looks at him. He says nothing. It’s all rigged. There’s only one possible solution now: the script.

Pierre: Silverheim is cruel. He’s an evil human being. But why? Was he born like that or has he been here too long, maybe beaten as well. That’s how the system works, isn’t it? Kicked around in the lower form? Revenge later on…
Erik: I just know that people like Silverheim have to be fought. Someone like him must never win. Not now or ever. That’s it!

Of course, it helps that Erik is a first class martial arts expert.

Teacher: Why didn’t you defend him? Are you as cowardly as the others?
Erik: You get expelled if you fight a council member.
Teacher: The thing that separates humans from animals is not only intelligence, it’s also morality. The ability to know the difference between good and evil. You have all behaved like animals. Like vultures. It’s undignified! Do you hear me? Undignified! This has got to stop.
Erik: I don’t think sir understands exactly what’s happened here.

Ah, of course, morality in the real world.

Erik [to his step-father]: It’s over! You’re getting out of here! In half an hour you’re going to be in the hospital. You won’t see, your nose will be snapped, your arms will be broken. You won’t dare tell anyone. You’ll say that you fell down the stairs…This is going to hurt a hell of a lot. You’ll be screaming until you pass out. I swear I’m going to do it. People like you have to be destroyed.

A one-man A-Team as it were.

[iambiguous]

We should always do the right thing. And, depending on what it is we are talking about, there will always – more or less – be a consensus regarding what exactly that is. But beyond that it’s…philosophy?

Of course when the temperatures soar into the triple digits it’s always going to be a lot harder to do the right thing anyway. Especially for those folks actually sweltering in it.

It’s now been over 30 years since Lee brought this one out. So, are we any closer [or perhaps maybe even farther away still?] from doing it right? I’d like to think that I am. But then [philosophically] I always get stuck in the same places.

Lee seems to be on both sides of the divide here: There’s the part clearly rooted in racism and there’s the part not really rooted much in racism at all. You can almost read Bill Cosby’s rap about race interspersed between the lines. But folks still put the line in different places. And, in the end, it all seems to be about the rage.

It closes with a quote from Martin Luther King about hatred and violence defeating itself. Some will make the connection between that and the movie they just saw…but others will just grunt and snort derisively. You’re call.

This film was inspired by an actual incident in New York where some black youths were chased out of a pizzeria by some white youths in a section of New York known as Howard Beach.

All of the scenes of the corner men were improvised. IMDb


Do the Right Thing

Mister Senor Love Daddy: Today’s temperature’s gonna rise up over 100 degrees, so there’s a Jheri curl alert! That’s right, Jheri curl alert. If you have a Jheri curl, stay in the house or you’ll end up with a permanent black helmet on your head fuh-eva!

On the other hand, what do I know about that?

ML: Well, gentlemen, the way I see it, if this hot weather continues, it’s going to melt the polar caps and the whole wide world. And all the parts that ain’t water already will surely be flooded.
Coconut Sid: You’re a simple motherfucker. Now where you read that shit, eh? Polar caps…
ML: Don’t worry about it. But when it happens, and I’m in my boat, and your black asses are drowning, don’t call for me to throw you no rope, no lifesaver, or no nothing.
Sweet Dick Willie: You fool! You’re 30 cents away from having a quarter! Where the fuck you gon’ get a boat?

30 cents from having a quarter. I like that.

Buggin’ Out: Hey, Sal, how come they ain’t no brothas on the wall?
Sal: You want brothers on the wall? Get your own place. You can do what you wanna do. You can put your brothers and uncles and nieces and nephews, your stepfather, stepmother, whoever you want. See? But this is my pizzeria. American-Italians on the wall only.
Buggin’ Out: That may be fine, Sal, but you own this. Rarely do I see any American-Italians eating in here. All I see is black folks. So since we spend much money here, we do have some say.

Which one is closer to, say, the objective truth.

Coconut Sid: Look at those Korean motherfuckers across the street. I betcha they haven’t been a year off da motherfucking boat before they opened up their own place.
Coconut Sid: It’s been about a year.
ML: A motherfucking year off the motherfucking boat and got a good business in our neighborhood occupying a building that had been boarded up for longer than I care to remember and I’ve been here a long time.
Sweet Dick Willie: It has been a long time.
Coconut Sid: How long?
ML: Too long! Too long. Now for the life of me, I haven’t been able to figger this out. Either dem Koreans are geniuses or we Blacks are dumb.
Coconut Sid: Fuck you. It’s got to be because we are black. Ain’t no other explanation.
Sweet Dick Willie: Hold on, you motherfuckers. I’m tired of hearing that old excuse. I’m tired of hearing that shit.
ML: You know, I swear, man, I will be one happy fool when we open our own business right here in our own neighborhood. I swear to God, I will be the first in line to spend what little money I have there.
Coconut Sid: Be right there with you, man.
Sweet Dick Willie: You motherfuckers are always talking that Keith Sweat shit, “I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that”. You ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing but sit you monkey ass on this corner. Hey, ML, when you gonna get your business?
ML: What?
Sweet Dick Willie: Yeah, just what I thought. You ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing. But I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do, hear me, I’m gonna go over there and give them Koreans more of my money.

What to make of that?

Mookie [to the camera]: Dago, wop, guinea, garlic-breath, pizza-slingin’, spaghetti-bendin’, Vic Damone, Perry Como, Luciano Pavarotti, Sole Mio, nonsingin’ motherfucker.
Pino [to the camera]: You gold-teeth-gold-chain-wearin’, fried-chicken-and-biscuit-eatin’, monkey, ape, baboon, big thigh, fast-runnin’, high-jumpin’, spear-chuckin’, three-hundred-sixty-degree-basketball-dunkin’ titsun spade Moulan Yan. Take your fuckin’ pizza and go the fuck back to Africa.
Stevie [to the camera]: You little slanty-eyed, me-no-speaky-American, own-every-fruit-and-vegetable-stand-in-New-York, bullshit, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, Summer Olympics '88, Korean kick-boxing son of a bitch.
Officer Long [to the camera]: You Goya bean-eating, fifteen in a car, thirty in an apartment, pointed shoes, red-wearing, Menudo, mire-mire Puerto Rican cocksucker. Yeah, you!
Sonny [to the camera]: It’s cheap, I got a good price for you, Mayor Koch, “How I’m doing,” chocolate-egg-cream-drinking, bagel-and-lox, B’nai B’rith Jew asshole.

Let’s face the facts: In America, this shit runs deep. Just a whole lot deeper in some communities than in others.

Mister Senor Love Daddy: WE LOVE ROLL CALL, Y’ALL! Boogie Down Productions, Rob Base, Dana Dane, Marley Marl, Olatunji, Chuck D, Ray Charles, EPMD, EU, Alberta Hunter, Run-D.M.C., Stetsasonic, Sugar Bear, John Coltrane, Big Daddy Kane, Salt-n-Pepa, Luther Vandross, McCoy Tyner, Biz Markie, New Edition, Otis Redding, Anita Baker, Thelonious Monk, Marcus Miller, Branford Marsalis, James Brown, Wayne Shorter, Tracy Chapman, Miles Davis, Force MDs, Oliver Nelson, Fred Wesley, Maceo, Janet Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, George Clinton, Count Basie, Mtume, Stevie Wonder, Bobby McFerrin, Dexter Gordon, Sam Cooke, Parliament-Funkadelic, Al Jarreau, Teddy Pendergrass, Joe Williams, Wynton Marsalis, Phyllis Hyman, Sade, Sarah Vaughn, Roland Kirk, Keith Sweat, Kool Moe Dee, Prince, Ella Fitzgerald, Dianne Reeves, Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Bessie Smith, Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Steel Pulse, Little Richard, Mahalia Jackson, Jackie Wilson, Cannonball AND Nat Adderley, Quincy Jones Marvin Gaye, Charles Mingus AND Marion Williams. We wanna thank you all for makin’ our lives just a little brighter here on We Love Radio!

Amen!

Pino: Pop, I’m sick of niggers. It’s like I come to work, its planet of the apes. I don’t like being around them. They’re animals.
Sal: Why you got so much anger in you?
Pino: Why? I’ll tell you why. My friends, they laugh at me. They laugh right in my face. They tell me, “Go. Go to Bed-Stuy. Go feed the moulies.”
Sal: Do your friends put money in your pockets, Pino? Do they put food on your table? Do they pay your rent or put a roof over your head? They’re not your friends. If they were your friends they wouldn’t laugh at you.

And that goes for all of our friends here, of course.

Buggin’ Out: You can’t kill us all! You can’t kill us all! You can’t kill us all! You can’t kill us all!

A challenge, perhaps, for Trump?

Sal [to Mookie]: What the fuck is wrong with you? This ain’t about money. I could give a fuck about money. You see this fucking place? I built this fucking place with my bare fucking hands. Every light socket, every piece of tile - me, with these fucking hands.

Remember back when that actually meant something?
Me neither.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“Humans are born to die, anything in between is just pure nonsense.” Anupam S Shlok

You know, essentially.

“Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is or has meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.” C.G. Jung

Our own meaning, for example.

“The ordinary man gets motivation from power and fame. The superior finds motivation in meaning and work itself.” Maxime Lagacé

Unless, of course, he's wrong.

“I think life is one big fluctuation between horniness and a sincere quest for meaning. We just call one the other.” Karl Kristian Flores

And then how that unfolds here, of course.

“Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.” Bernard Shaw

Yeah, what about that?!

“Information may travel at light speed, but meaning spreads at the speed of dark.” Richard Powers

Mine? Pitch fucking black.

[iambiguous]

One of those movies that pique your interest if only because the narrative itself seems intriguing. Out of the blue a 16 year old kid stabs an autistic boy and kills him. Why? He doesn’t know why. But it turns out he has a deeply pessimistic – sad – take on the human condition. How does that fit into it? And what about all the other dots that need commecting. Will they get to the bottom of it?

That’s what counts. Different folks may come to different bottoms…as long as they can all assure us that the bottom is there. It’s got to be there somewhere. Otherwise, anyone can say what the bottom is. Or what the top is. Or how to get from the bottom to the top. Or how to avoid falling to the bottom.

And there are so many different ways in which to hit bottom. But all of us have a different combination of trials and tribulations. Of suffering and pain. And for all manner of depth and duration. The way Leland frames everything is what disturbs others. He seems to reflect this nihilistic sense that when you add up all the parts you never reach either the top or the bottom. You just arrive at whatever particular destination that you think you have. Nietzsche’s “why?” remains unanswered. All we are left with are the usual cliches: I’m sorry. I made a mistake. It was wrong.

But he is not being cynical. And that’s the key. What he is being instead is…philosophical. He sees the world the way he does because that is the least unreasonable way in which to see it.


The United States of Leland

Leland [voiceover]: When I say I don’t remember that day, I’m not lying. I wish I did, but I just don’t. Sometimes the most important stuff goes away. Goes away so bad it’s like it was never there to begin with.

"my mind's playing tricks on me..."

Leland [voiceover]: This one is something a friend of mine said to me. “You have to believe that life is more than the sum of its parts, kiddo.” I remember it right now to the “kiddo” part. But when I think about what she said, the same thing always comes into my head. What if you can’t put the pieces together in the first place?

Then the part where you put them together one way and others insist it's the wrong way.

Woman on airplane: Aren’t you an actor?
Fitzgerald: Aren’t we all?

Hell, time and again you almost have to be in this world.

Leland [writing in his school journal]: I know what they want. They want a reason.

"...reason is the only way to change what we're creating
but sometimes reason turns into another word for waiting..."

Leland [voiceover]: And that’s when I figured out that tears couldn’t make somebody who was dead alive again. There’s another thing to learn about tears, they can’t make somebody who doesn’t love you any more love you again. It’s the same with prayers. I wonder how much of their lives people waste crying and praying to God. If you ask me, the devil makes more sense than God does. I can at least see why people would want him around. It’s good to have somebody to blame for the bad stuff they do. Maybe God’s there because people get scared of all the bad stuff they do. They figure that God and the Devil are always playing this game of tug-of-war game with them. And they never know which side they’re gonna wind up on. I guess that tug-of-war idea explains how sometimes, even when people try to do something good, it still turns out bad.

Right, like God can't thump the Devil at any time.

Pearl [who is cheating on his girlfriend]: I’m only human, man.
Leland: It’s funny how people only say that after they do something bad. I mean, you never hear someone say, “I’m only human” after they rescue a kid from a burning building.

New thread?

Fitzgerald: Chapter two.
Pearl: What’s that?
Fitzgerald: You’re not here out of some selfless devotion to my son or your admiration for my work. You’re here because you smell a good book and I’m chapter two.
Pearl: I want to write about your son…but I don’t want to exploit him
Fitzgerald: There’s no distinction.

Not even with the best of all intentions?

Leland: You know what the funny thing about earthquakes is? After an earthquake you see people pulling other people out of broken down buildings and people hugging and junk because they saw a little girl’s shoe in the middle of the road and no little girl around. Then a couple days later they forget all about it…
Pearl: Well it still shows you that there’s goodness in people.
Leland: During earthquakes at least…

Human nature in a nutshell, let's say.

Leland [to Pearl]: It covers my eyes. It’s all I can see. Say there’s some kids playing baseball. All I see is the one kid they won’t let play because he tells corny jokes. And no-one thinks they’re funny. Or I see a boy and a girl in love and kissing, you know. I just see that they’re gonna be one of those sad old couples one day who just cheats on each other and can’t even look at each other in the eye. And I feel it. I feel all of their sadness. I feel it probably even worse than that sad old couple or that corny kid will ever feel it.

All the shit you just have to endure, in other words..

Leland [voiceover]: I think there are two ways you can see the world. You either see the sadness that’s behind everything or you choose to keep it all out.

Or a grinding combination of both?

Leland [voiceover]: Maybe it makes sense now. Maybe somewhere in all of this there’s a reason. Maybe somewhere in all of this there’s a why. Maybe somewhere there’s that thing that lets you tie it all up with a neat bow and bury it in the backyard. But nothing, not getting angry, not prayers, and not tears, nothing can make something that happened unhappen.

Praise the fucking Lord?

Leland: The worst part is knowing that there is goodness in people. Mostly it stays deep down and buried. Maybe we don’t have God because we’re scared of the bad stuff. Maybe we’re really scared of the good stuff. Because if there’s no God, well, that means it’s inside of us and we could be good all the time if we wanted. So when we do bad things, it’d be because we want to or because we have to. Or maybe we just need the bad stuff to remind us what the good stuff is in the first place.

Maybe.

[iambiguous]

Bleek’s mom is hell bent on making sure Bleek’s life is nothing at all like his friends. He’s gonna be somebody someday. So he better pick up that damn horn and start blowing scales. So, does she go too far? Think Serena and Venus and Tiger.

But there he is, up on the stage fronting his own band. Playing music into the wee small hours of the morning.

We’ve seen this before: the artist obsessed with his art. Everything else is farther down the list. Only the list doesn’t always cooperate. The pressures are coming from all directions. And while the art can be a refuge from it, it can sometimes make the turbulence quake all the more. A balance has to struck. Again and again and again and again. But there are 5 in the band. And they all have their “lady-friends”. Some [including Bleek] more than one. And then the part about the money.

And wouldn’t you know it: another gambler in the bunch. The manager.

Human interaction and jazz: It’s all about the improvising.


Mo' Better Blues

Friend: I’m glad my mom ain’t like your mom, Bleek. She let’s me do what I want when I want.

On the other hand, well, you tell me.

Bleek: Who asked you?
Left Hand: Nobody asked me, man.
Bleek and Shadow [in unison]: Then shut the fuck up!

Two against one?

Clarke: Everything with you is so damn regulated. A certain time to do this, a certain time to do that. Everything’s on a scedule, a timetable. Loosen up, tightass.
Bleek: Let me explain something to you. Life is short, okay? I need it like this to get everything done. I like order.
Clarke: Order’s fine, but you’re ridiculous.

I'm inclined to agree. Or, sure, disagree.

Bleek: Boning?
Clarke: You’re been more imaginative.
Bleek: Oh, I’ve got a million of them. You ever hear of the mo’ better?
Clarke: Mo’ what?
Bleek: Mo’ better makes it mo’better.
Clarke: We don’t make love because you don’t love me.
Bleek: Oh…
Clarke: But in the meantime I’ll settle for some of that mo’ better.

Next up: mo' better philosophy.

Indigo: What would you do Bleek, if you couldn’t play anymore?
Bleek: Probably roll up in a corner and die. I’d play at my own funeral.

And that's not always easy to do.

Bleek [to Giant]: I may have been born yesterday, but I stayed up all night.

I tried that once or twice myself. And let's leave it at that.

Bleek: But the jazz, you know if we had to dep… if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death. I mean, you’ve been out there, you’re on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see? You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slabobic, anything except our people - it makes no sense. It incenses me that our own people don’t realize our own heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man.
Shadow: That’s bullshit.
Bleek: Why?
Shadow [slurred]: It’s all bullsh… Everything, everything you just said is bullshit. Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look, I love you like a step-brother, but you never gave nobody else a chance t- to play their own music, you complain about… That’s right, the people don’t come because you grandiose motherfuckers don’t play shit that they like. If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.

Thank God for rap?