Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Richard M. Rorty

This cultural Left thinks more about stigma than about money, more about deep and hidden psychosexual motivations than about shallow and evident greed.

I know that I did.

The sectarian divisions which plagued Marxism are manifestations of an urge for purity which the Left would be better off without.

Tell me about it!

…‘the homosexual,’ ‘the Negro,’ and ‘the female’ are best seen not as inevitable classifications of human beings but rather as inventions that have done more harm than good.

Let's run this by, among others, Angela Davis.

One reason the cultural Left will have a hard time transforming itself into a political Left is that, like the Sixties Left, it still dreams of being rescued by an angelic power called "the people"

Trust me: not any more.

Interesting philosophy is rarely an examination of the pros and cons of a thesis. Usually it is, implicitly or explicitly, a contest between an entrenched vocabulary which was become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things.

See! I told you!!

Ontology is more like a playground than a science.

Next up: teleology.

[iambiguous]

0sama bin Laden was the religious equivalent of a Nazi. He set out to find infidels and then he exterminated them. In this respect he got what he deserved and good riddance. I’m for any operation that rids the world of folks like him. Religious fanatics with guns and bombs and IEDs are some of the most dangerous folks anyone like you and I are ever likely to encounter. All you need be is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Boom. You’re gone.

But the number of innocent men, women and children he exterminated does not compare – does not even really come close – to the number of innocent men, women and children that folks like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Barack Obama sent packing to their graves.

But the controversy here revolves mostly around the use of torture. As though that were infinitely more important than an examination of the historical factors that led to the war in Afghanistan itself. As with The Hurt Locker, the director is more interested in nailing the operations down tactically than in examining the strategic nature of American foreign policy in the march up to war. In other words, the manner in which the military industrial complex was intimately interwoven into the sort of work done at the World Trade Center. How many Americans ask themselves: Why did they choose that target? Because they were really tall buildings?

The problem I always have with propaganda is the same. The extent to which those dispensing it are even aware that this is what they are dispensing. It’s not the parts they include but the parts they leave out. They either do is in cohoots with the folks behind the war economy or they don’t. Or it’s somewhere in the middle. In the muddle of human interactions around events like this.

And then there is that beautiful bit of irony when the Pakistani Air Force scrambles their F-16s, heading for the bin Laden complex. Now, take a wild guess: What country did Pakistan purchase those planes from? Hint: Lockheed Martin. My father once worked for them…back when it was Martin Marietta.

“Zero Dark Thirty” in military terms means 12:30 AM. Zero Dark is midnight, 00:00 on a 24 hour clock, 30 being added to connote 30 minutes past. In the scene during the raid you can see Maya look at the clock being shown as 00:30.

The movie was originally about the unsuccessful decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden. The screenplay was completely re-written after bin Laden was killed.

This movie depicts a high-level CIA official (known in the film as “The Wolf” and played by Fredric Lehne) as a devout Muslim. This corresponds with a March 24, 2012, Washington Post article titled “At CIA, a Convert to Islam Leads the Terrorism Hunt,” which (pseudonymously) profiles “Roger,” the chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and identifies him as an adult convert to Islam.

In an unusual step, acting CIA Director Michael Morell issued a statement about the film emphasizing that while the production team had met with the CIA, the film is a dramatization and is not historically accurate. Morell specifically contradicted the film’s assertion that “enhanced interrogation techniques”, also known as “torture”, had been of significant benefit in locating Osama bin Laden. Director Morell stated, “That impression is false. We cannot allow a Hollywood film to cloud our memory.” IMDb

Uh, yeah, right.


Zero Dark Thirty

Dan: I own you, Ammar.

No, not literally. On the other hand...

Dan: Right now, this is about you coming to terms with your situation. It’s you and me, bro. I want you to understand that I know you, that I’ve been studying you for a very long time. I could have had you killed in Karachi. But I let you live so you and I could talk.
Ammar: Then you beat me when my hands are tied.

On the other hand, he owns him.

Dan: Did you really think that when we got you, I would be a nice f****** guy?
Ammar: You’re a mid-level guy. You’re a garbage man in the corporation! Why should I respect you, huh? Why?

Yeah, how about that, Dick?

Dan [repeated line]: When you lie to me, I hurt you.

Really, really bad sometimes.

Dan [to Ammar]: It’s cool, that you’re strong and I respect it, I do. But in the end, everybody breaks, bro. It’s biology.

Tell me about it...

Dan [to Ammar]: You see how this works? You don’t mind if my female colleague sees your junk, do you?
[he pulls down Ammar’s pants]
Dan: Dude, you shit your pants.

Dan [to Ammar]: You know, I can always go eat with some other dude, hang you back up to the ceiling…

Dan [to Ammar]: This is a dog collar. You determine how I treat you.

Really, how pathetic is that?

Jessica: How’s the needle in the haystack?
Mayas: Fine.
Jessica: Facilitators come and go, but one thing you can count on in life is that everyone wants money.
Maya: You’re assuming that Al Qaeda members are motivated by financial rewards. They’re radicals.
Jessica: Correct. You’re assuming that greed won’t override ideology in some of the weaker members.
Maya: Money for walk-ins worked great in the cold war, I’ll give you that. Just not sure those tactics are applicable to the Middle East.

Let's run this by the walk-ins here.

Dan: We don’t know what we don’t know.
Bradley: What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Daniel: It’s a tautology.

On the contrary, it's a fundamental component of the human condition.

George Wright: If you thought there was some secret cell somewhere working Al Qaeda, I want you to know that you’re wrong. This is it. There’s no working group coming to the rescue. There’s nobody else, hidden away on some other floor. There is just us. And we are failing. We’re spending billions of dollars. People are dying. We’re still no closer to defeating our enemy. They attacked us on land in 98, by sea in 2000, and from the air in 2001. They murdered three thousand of our citizens in cold blood, and they’ve slaughtered our forward deployed. And what the fuck have we done about it? What have we done? We have twenty leadership names and we’ve only eliminated four of them. I want targets! Do your f****** jobs, bring me people to kill!

Any questions?

C.I.A. Director: What’s this - this cluster of buildings down here?
George: The PMA - it’s the Pakistani Military Academy.
[C.I.A. Director looks at him incredulously]
George: It’s their West Point.
C.I.A. Director: And how close is it to the house?
George: About a mile.
Maya: Four thousand, two hundred, twenty one feet; it’s closer to eight-tenths of a mile.
C.I.A. Director: Who are you?
Maya: I’m the motherfucker that found this place. Sir.

Oh...

Maya [to the SEAL team]: There are two narratives about the location of Osama bin Laden. The one that you’re most familiar with is that UBL is hiding in a cave in the Tribal Areas, that he’s surrounded by a large contingent of loyal fighters. But that narrative is pre- 9/11 understanding of UBL. The second narrative is that he’s living in a city - living in a city with multiple points of egress and entries and with access to communications so that he can keep in touch with the organization. You can’t run a global network of inter-connected cells from a cave..

Of course, now he's in Paradise:

"According to these traditions, Muslim men that die waging jihad against the enemies of Islam will be rewarded by Allah in heaven (jannah) as martyrs (shuhada) and receive seventy-two virgins to enjoy in blissful ecstasy." springer

Maya: [to the SEAL team]: Quite frankly, I didn’t even want to use you guys, with your dip and velcro and all your gear bullshit. I wanted to drop a bomb. But people didn’t believe in this lead enough to drop a bomb. So they’re using you guys as canaries. And, in theory, if bin Laden isn’t there, you can sneak away and no one will be the wiser. But bin Laden is there. And you’re going to kill him for me.

In other words, bomb the whole complex into oblivion—including all of the women and children. Like we did with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. Call it, say, "the fog of war."

[Ansiktsburk]

God Jul!

[iambiguous]

The interconnected lives of women in modern day Tel Aviv. In some respects like the interconnected lives of people in any other part of the world. But in other respects – historically, culturally, experientially – unique and different. As co-director Etgar Keret notes below, they are lives in which each character only has so much control over the factors that push and then pull them in different directions. They are emotionally adrift in what can be the raging sea of humanity. A really, really bleak snapshot of modern-day Israel. And this is at a considerable distance from the volatile admixtures that encompasses the Middle East geopolitically.

Just like lots of folks over here [and no doubt where you are] there are many barely able to keep their head above water—financially and otherwise. Capitalism rules the roost there too. The things people are forced to do just in order to survive. But, as we all know [because they keep telling us], if you can’t make ends meet [or thrive and prosper] you have no one to blame but yourself.

And then out of the blue comes this little girl. She just seems to materialize out of thin air on the beach; Batya takes on the responsibility of caring for her. And then she loses her. And this is a very strange little girl. I mean really, really strange. For example, she says nothing at all. And don’t even think of taking the inflatable inner tube off.

During a screening of the film in Albany, New York, in 2009, co-director Etgar Keret stated that the title of the film is a reference to the fact that jellyfish drift in the sea and do not have much control over their fate or direction. IMDb


Jellyfish [Meduzot]

Boyfriend: So, should I stay or go?
Batya [after he has already gone]: Stay.

I've been there myself a couple of times.

Batya: She disappeared.
Cop: Disappeared?
Batya: I looked for her all night. I took her to work and…I left her alone for a minute. I yelled at her. Sit down, relax. I lost her, I was responsible for her.
Cop: You’re not her mother, you just found her, right? So, that’s that.
Batya: What do you mean? What do we do now?
Cop: Nothing.
Batya: Nothing?
Cop: Unless someone comes looking for her. Her mother, her father. No one’s looking for her.
Batya: I’m looking for her.
Cop: You’re not her mother.
Batya: So what? The girl disappeared!
Cop: You know how many people disappear? Missing people are at the bottom of the list.
[he plops a stack of documents on the desk]
Cop: They don’t even get a folder. Eliyahu Zilka. No family. 83 years old. Hana Kelman. Alzheimer’s. Mois…What’s this? Moizo…Crozskazi…Can’t even say his name, so how are they gonna find him… Eliyahu Zilka. No family. Lost at sea. if you had her picture, maybe I could do something.
Batya: Like what?
Cop: Put out an all-points bulletin. Maybe someone would call.

The "system" let's call it.

Batya: They promised he’d come back.
Friend: Who?
Batya: The ice cream man. My mother promised he’d come back. Did they promise you anything when you were a child?
Friend: My parents are Holocaust survivors. I never asked anything from them.
Batya: You’re second generation?
Friend: We’re all second generation…of something.

Anyone here convinced that they're not?

Daughter: But did you like my acting?
Mother: Well, half the time you’re lying on the floor dead. And when you were acting, you and that Hamlet just kept fondling each other.
Daughter: We weren’t fondling each other. It’s physical theater.
Mother: Physical, yes, but why do you have to touch each other all the time?
Daughter: You don’t like touching at all.
Mother: What?
Daughter: Nothing, never mind.
Mother: No. What did you say? If you have something to say, say it. Even on stage no one understands a word you mumble.
Daughter [looking down at her…at the distance between them]: I’ll never come here again. Ever.

Next up: measuring the distance between us here.

Keren [reading from a note left in the room by a woman she suspects wrongfully of having slept with her husband]: “I thought it would be simpler to die. I hate hotels. Maybe that’s why I chose to die in one. What am I waiting for? It’s all ready, the pills, my mood. So why doesn’t it happen? Is it because I’m not happy with the suicide note? I can’t find words to express my emotions. And I won’t do it until I find them. Or maybe it’s because I met someone who’ll save me. A ship inside a bottle cannot sink, or collect dust. It’s nice to look at and floats on glass. No one is small enough to board it. It doesn’t know where it’s heading. The wind outside won’t blow its sails. It has no sails, only a slip, a dress. And beneath them, jellyfish…”

In other words, a metaphor for whatever you need it to be.

[iambiguous]

R.D. Laing

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.

Bummer?

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.

Either way, something breaks.

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.

I tried that a few times myself. The pain, however, was never impressed

Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjunt to an insane world.

A "Sixties thing" let's call it.

The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.

The f****** masses!

Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.

That and many, many other things.

[iambiguous]

I couldn’t draw a bunny to save my life. At least not one that looked like a bunny. But in the art world today that is not necessarily the point. The bunny can be seen as representing almost anything. And there may well be an infinite number of ways any one particular human mind might want to convey this in any one particular art form. Or a combination thereof.

The way Ray Johnson draws one really doesn’t resonate much with me. Maybe because I could have drawn it myself.

But I will always be drawn to anyone who is way, way, way off the beaten path. And then when the only thing more mysterious than his life is his death, well, I’m hooked.

But: My problem here is always the same. This “abstract”, “conceptual”, “avant-garde” art is not something that has any real impact with me. As with philosophy, my concerns always revolve around this: How Ought We To Live? Values and identity. The rest [like this stuff] is just too far removed from that. Or, rather, it is for me. But I’m sure any number of more sophisticated folks might try to explain why that is not really the case at all.

More to the point: He seemed to live inside his head. He lived in the world he created inside his head. That’s what I do. He gave others only bits and pieces. Peeks inside. That’s what I do. Only I never fully realized the advantages of going this way this until later in life. He seemed to pop out of the womb this way. One gets the impression he was not really self-conscious of this as a choice at all.

His equally enigmatic death. Did he jump in? A suicide? That’s how it was ruled. No note though. No explanation to anyone. He just left his house filled with hundreds of boxes packed with his work. Or did he? Were there clues left in the art? In one box in particular?


How To Draw A Bunny

Cop [who investigated Johnson’s death]: Starting with the initial phone calls, it was quite amazing and something I’ll remember from my whole police career. How a man who was 67 years old could go that length of time and still be a mystery to so many people. A lot of people knew this man. He made many, many phone calls to many, many people…and even more receiving calls from everyone around the world…Everyone had a story about Ray Johnson, but no one ever knew the whole Ray Johnson. It was like he would allow you just so far into his own being and that was it.

And then my own rendition of that.

Richard Feigen: Ray was taken seriously by a lot of famous people in the underground art world…You started talking to Ray and you could be on the phone all day long…He was on this other planet…an inhabitant of this other planet and he was very hard to follow.

Of course, as some know full well, practice makes perfect.

Frances Beatty: He was like a work of art. Everything he wore, everything he touched, everything he said…you could see the wheels going around and around and around all the time.

Next up: spinning your wheels here.

Frances Beatty: I’ll never forget. One day he said, “I think I have a show”. I said great Ray what’s it going to be. He said, “we’ll have nothing in the gallery”. I said, look Ray we could do nothing if we were downtown but uptown I don’t think we could do nothing. But you never knew if Ray was really going to do nothing or if his nothing was one of his “nothings”—his performances. They were called “nothing”. So you never knew if he was going do a] “nothing” or b] not do anything at all.

There’s one where he is in a gallery and he is just running around and around the room pushing a portable chalkboard. Finally, he stops and throws a stack of papers up into the air and they fall all around the chalkboard. Or “beat it, eat it” where he hopped around a cardboard box beating it with his belt. fArt some call it.

Morton Janklo: He came to me and he said he would like to do my portrait. He said I had an interesting face and I thought that was very flattering. So we made an appointment at my home and he cast a shadow of light on the wall, put me in the light and he did an outline of my face on a large sheet of paper. And that was it. We had a drink and he left.

But that’s not where the story ends though.

Jim Rosenquist: In those days, all the artists very extremely hungry. They were very, very poor. They used to live on nothing. They were always really, really skinny. Nobody was concerned about money because none of us had it…I visited Ray when he lived on Suffolk Street. His apartment room was totally bare except for a stack of books going all the way up to the ceiling across the middle of the room. Oh, that’s a nice stack of books, I said. Yeah, he said, it holds up the ceiling.

And these days...?

Roy Lichtenstein: I imagine most people wondered how he existed. And he was thought of as an artist but very few people saw any of the art.

Now we can all see it: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a ... =618&dpr=1

Malka Safro: Dorothy Podber was the wildest, wayout, wackiest, most extraordinary creature that ever walked the earth. She and Ray were an extraordinary pair and they would always go and visit people, doing things that were always unbelievable. She would carry out Ray’s concepts in her head…but her head was already there.

You tell me.

Billy Name. I was like a very good friend of Dorothy. She and Ray knew they could always be whereever I was. And under any circumstances. She came up to the Factory one day…Andy was working on a silkscreen when she opened her purse and took a pistol out. There was a stack of Marilyns leaning against the wall and she shot her right between the eyes and the forehead. She put the gun back in her purse, put her gloves on and left. It was a performance piece. So they’re now known as the shot Marilyns and are very valuable…She was dangerous.

No, Valerie Solanas was dangerous.

Billy Name: Ray wasn’t into narcotics or opiates at all. Not at all. I mean zero. He was already high all the time. People would get high on things to try to get to where Ray was.

Anyone where Ray was here?

Jean-Claude [on Ray’s death]: Was it the last joke he played on the art world…to die without a word.
Christo: I don’t know.
Jean-Claude: Maybe he thought his death was a joke. We will never understand why he did that.

Any updates?

Friend: How if none of us can figure out his motive for living could any of us figure out his motive for dying? In terms of the way his life was set up, you could never ask those questions.

Then the way mine is set up. If, splintered as "I" am, it's set up at all.

[iambiguous]

God is everywhere here. And yet He doesn’t make a single appearance. Do you doubt this? Then you are not alone.

Doubt is not an attribute God is said to have. How can He being omniscient. As such, there is not a single solitary instance of child sexual molestation [or rape] that could possibly have escaped His notice. And not just regarding priests either. Yet He did [does] nothing. But not to worry: He has His reasons.

And if the faithful really want to be smug they can always remind us that Divine Justice awaits the sinners. Even if they do get away with it down here.

The film unfolds right on the cusp between the old and the new. Before and after John Kennedy was assassinated. Before and after the Beatles. But to understand how that tugged some in conflicting directions you had to be there. Even the Catholic church wasn’t immune.

However, Sister Aloysius [the dragon] will be one of the last swept aside. She will go down swinging. Or is she just there to deflect any doubt about the good Father’s intention? Or his behavior?

Today of course we know just how widespread this sort of behavior was back then. And we know the role that the Catholic church played in sweeping it all under the rug. And it is the fact that this movie was made in 2008 which compelled the ending we got. Had it come out back then we know that the dragon would have been slain. Now, in a sense, they both are. But the crucial point is this: neither of these characters are cut from cardboard.


Oprah Winfrey reportedly lobbied for the role of Mrs. Miller, but John Patrick Shanley refused to even give her a reading.

Just as he did with the play, John Patrick Shanley only told the actor who played Father Flynn whether or not Flynn was guilty. None of the other actors knew. IMDb


Doubt

Father Flynn: What do you do when you’re not sure? That’s the topic of my sermon today. Last year when President Kennedy was assassinated, who among us did not experience the most profound disorientation? Despair? Which way? What now? What do I say to my kids? What do I tell myself? It was a time of people sitting together, bound together by a common feeling of hopelessness. But think of that. Your bond with your fellow being was your despair. It was a public experience. It was awful, but we were in it together. How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by a private calamity? "No one knows I’m sick. " "No one knows I’ve lost my last real friend. " "No one knows I’ve done something wrong. " Imagine the isolation. Now you see the world as through a window. On one side of the glass, happy untroubled people, and on the other side, you.

Me and then some.

Sister James: But maybe it’s nothing.
Sister Aloysius: Then why do you look like you’ve seen the devil?

Too close to call...there and then.

Sister Aloysius [to Sister James]: Years ago at Saint Boniface there was a priest. But I had Father Scully then. Here, there’s no man I can go to. Men run everything. We are going to have to stop him ourselves.

Of course, we're still rooting for him. Or I was.

Father Flynn: It might be jolly to include a secular song.
Sister Aloysius: Secular?
Father Flynn: Yes. It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas. Something like that.
Sister Aloysius: What would be the point of a secular song?
Father Flynn: Just fun.
Sister James: Or Frosty the Snowman.
Father Flynn: That’s a good one.
Sister Aloysius: Frosty the Snowman espouses a pagan belief in magic. The snowman comes to life when an enchanted hat is put on his head. If the music were more somber, people would realize the images are disturbing and the song heretical.
Sister James: I never thought about Frosty the Snowman like that.
Sister Aloysius: It should be banned from the airwaves.
Father Flynn: So, not Frosty the Snowman.

Let's just say it was the way that he said it.

Sister Aloysius: May I ask what you are writing down with that ball-point pen?
Father Flynn: Oh, nothing. It’s an idea for a sermon.
Sister Aloysius: You have one right now?
Father Flynn: I get them all the time.
Sister Aloysius: How fortunate.
Father Flynn: I forget them so I have to write them down.
Sister Aloysius: What is the idea?
Father Flynn: Intolerance.

Let's just say it was the way that he said it.

Sister Aloysius: What happened in the rectory?
Father Flynn: Happened? Nothing happened. I had a talk with a boy.
Sister Aloysius: About what?
Father Flynn: Private matter.
Sister Aloysius: He’s twelve years old, what could be “private”?

Let's just say it was the way that she said it.

Sister James: How can you be so sure that he is lying?
Sister Aloysius: Experience.
Sister James: You just don’t like him! You don’t like it that he uses a ballpoint pen. You don’t like it that he takes 3 lumps of sugar in his tea. You don’t like it that he likes Frosty the Snowman and you are letting that convince you? Of something that’s terrible, just terrible. Well, I like Frosty the Snowman!

Again, we are still on his side. Or, rather, I still was.

[the intolerance sermon]
Father Flynn: A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O’ Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. ‘Is gossiping a sin?’ she asked the old man. ‘Was that God All Mighty’s hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?’ ‘Yes,’ Father O’ Rourke answered her. ‘Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have borne false witness against your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.’ So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. ‘Not so fast,’ says O’ Rourke. ‘I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.’ So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. ‘Did you gut the pillow with a knife?’ he says. ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘And what were the results?’ ‘Feathers,’ she said. ‘Feathers?’ he repeated. ‘Feathers; everywhere, Father.’ ‘Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.’ ‘And that,’ said Father O’ Rourke, ‘is gossip!’

And all the gossip here. Right, kids?

Father Flynn [to Sister James]: It’s me that cares about that child, not her. Has she ever reached out a hand? That black boy needs help or he’s not gonna make it. If she has her way, he’ll be left to his own undoing. Why do you think he drank the wine? He’s in trouble. And she sees me talk in a human way to these kids and she immediately assumes that there must be something wrong with it. Well, I’m not gonna let her keep this parish in the Dark Ages, and I’m not gonna let her destroy my spirit of compassion…There are people who go after your humanity, Sister, that tell you that the light in your heart is a weakness. Don’t believe it. It’s an old tactic of cruel people to kill kindness in the name of virtue.

Any one here want what's left of my own humanity?

Mrs. Miller: That’s why his father beat him. Not the wine.
Sister Aloysius: What are you telling me?
Mrs. Miller: I’m talking about the boy’s nature now, not anything he’s done. You can’t hold a child responsible for what God gave him to be.
Sister Aloysius: I’m only interested in actions, Mrs. Miller.
Mrs.Miller: But then there’s the boy’s nature.
Sister Aloysius: Leave that out of it.
Mrs. Miller: Well, forget it then. You’re the one forcing people to say things. My boy came to your school 'cause they were gonna kill him in the public school. His father don’t like him. He come to your school, kids don’t like him. One man is good to him, this priest. Then does a man have his reasons, yes. Everybody does. You have your reasons, but do I ask the man why he’s good to my son? No. I don’t care why. My son needs some man to care about him and to see him through to where he wants to go. And thank God this educated man with some kindness in him wants to do just that.
Sister Aloysius: This will not do.
Mrs.Miller: It’s just till June.
Sister Aloysius: I’ll throw your son out of this school.
Mrs. Miller: And why would you do that if it didn’t start with him?
Sister Aloysius: Because I will stop this.
Mrs. Miller: You’d hurt my son to get your way?
Sister Aloysius: It won’t end with your son.
Mrs. Miller: Throw the priest out then. Please leave my son out of this. My husband will kill that child over a thing like this.

Why do these things have to be so complicated? Why can’t everything be reduced down simply to Right and Wrong?

Father Flynn: You haven’t the slightest proof of anything!
Sister Aloysius: But I have my certainty! And armed with that, I will go to your last parish, and the one before that if necessary. I’ll find a parent. Trust me, Father Flynn, I will.
Father Flynn: You have no right to act on your own! You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us! You have no right to step outside the church!
Sister Aloysius: I will step outside the church if that’s what needs to be done, though the door should shut behind me! I will do what needs to be done, though I’m damned to hell! You should understand that, or you will mistake me.

She's easy to despise. Unless, of course, she's right about Father Flynn.

Sister Aloysius: If you will not leave my office, I will. And once I go, I will not stop.
Father Glynn: Wait…
[long pause]
Father Flynn: I can’t say everything, you understand? There’s things I can’t say, even if you can’t imagine the explanation, Sister. Remember, there are things beyond your knowledge. Even if you feel certainty, it is an emotion, not a fact.

In fact, howver...

Sister Aloysius: You are a cheat. And that warm feeling you experienced when that boy looked at you with trust was not the sensation of virtue. That could be got by any drunkard with his tot of rum.
Father Flynn: I can fight you.
Sister Aloysius: You will lose.
Father Flynn: Where is your compassion?
Sister Aloysius: Nowhere you can get at it.

Closing in on what may well be...the truth?

Father Flynn [his final sermon]: I never like to say goodbye, but there is a wind behind every one of us that takes us through our lives. We never see it. We can’t command it. We don’t even know its purpose. 'Cause I would have stayed among you longer, but that wind is taking me away.

So, I'm thinking, there's no doubt that he's guilty now.

Sister Aloysius: They made Father Flynn pastor of Saint Jerome.
Sister James: Who?
Sister Aloysius: The bishop. Appointed Father Flynn pastor of Saint Jerome Church and School. It’s a promotion.
Sister James: You didn’t tell them?
Sister Aloysius: Oh, I told our good monsignor. I crossed the garden, and I told him. He did not believe it to be true.
Sister James: Then why did Father Flynn go? What did you say to make him leave?
Sister Aloysius: That I had called a nun in his previous parish, that I had found out his prior history of infringements.
Sister James: So you did prove it?
Sister Aloysius: I made no such call.
Sister James: You lied?
Sister Aloysius: Yes. But if he’d had no such history, the lie wouldn’t have worked. His resignation was his confession.

Let's run this by the Kantians here, of course.

Sister James: I can’t believe you lied.
Sister Aloysius: In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God. Of course, there is a price.
Sister James: I see.
Sister Aloysius: Oh, Sister James.
Sister James: What is it Sister?
Sister Aloysius: [she begins to weep, then cry]: I have doubts. I have such doubts.

And that's saying something.

[iambiguous]

Somewhere in the middle of all this is Johnson and McNamara…the best and the brightest…the MIC…Wall Street. And the soldiers who fought there. And I was one of them. But it all quickly becomes simply overwhelming. You try to capture it in a narrative and you just become all tangled up in hundreds of them. The individual here is just a speck. All you can do is either know [and accept] it or not.

Almost everyone agrees this is an “anti-war” film. But really only in the most abstract [or, paradoxically, most visceral] sense. In fact, it could be argued it is basically neutral regarding our involvement in Vietnam. Instead, the focus [through Kurtz] is on the manner in which the war was fought. If we had fought it his way, we would have won.

All of these terrible things happen but there is no effort made to delve into why we were over there in the first place. It just seems to be the way folks [men, in particular] are. They clamor towards the heart of darkness and it’s almost pointless to try to explain it much beyond that. And maybe this narrative really is more applicable than my own. I have no illusions whatsoever regarding things like this. We piece them together into conflicting fabrications…and then we trade “the facts” back and forth until one of many conflicting consensuses are arrived at. Always here, always now.

I often complain about folks who reduce everything down to logos, forgetting the pieces that emanate from all the other parts of the brain…in particular the emotional and psychological elements. But here it is just the opposite. The narrative seems awash in subjunctive references…with hardly any attention given at all to the reasons people give for going to war. And how that is related to such things as subsistence and the distribution of wealth and power. They hint at these things in the French sequence [from Redux] but that was shelved from the orginal release. Their honest reactions to Communism and politics for example. Here it is the psychological tug of war between Kurtz and Willard. Kurtz actually being well on the way to insanity.

Watch this [especially the Kilgore sequences] and then revisit Obama, Biden and Kerry Inc. remonstrating against the Assad regime in Syria. Like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush remonstrating against Saddam Hussein. The sheer f****** hypocrisy of it all!

Francis Ford Coppola believed that Marlon Brando was familiar with Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and had prepared for the role before the legendary actor arrived on the set. When Brando did come out, Coppola was horrified to find that Brando had never read “Heart of Darkness”, did not know his lines, and had become extremely fat (Kurtz had always been written as a tall but starvingly-thin man). After some panicking, Coppola decided to film the 5’10" Brando as if he was a massively built, 6’5" brute (to explain Brando’s size) and steered the camera clear of Brando’s huge belly.

The scene at the beginning with Captain Willard alone in his hotel room was completely unscripted. Martin Sheen told the shooting crew to just let the cameras roll. Sheen was actually drunk in the scene and punched the mirror which was real glass. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed by his actions that they wanted to stop shooting, but Coppola wanted to keep the cameras going.

Francis Ford Coppola lost 100 pounds while filming and threatened suicide several times during the making of the film.

Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming and some shots of Willard’s back are of doubles, including Sheen’s brother Joe Estevez who was flown out specially. IMDb


Apocolyse Now

Willard [voiceover]: Saigon… shit; I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said “yes” to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now…waiting for a mission…getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger.

Of course, we know how that turns out.

General Corman [to Willard]: Walter Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this country’s ever produced. He was brilliant. He was outstanding in every way. And he was a good man, too. A humanitarian man. A man of wit and humor. He joined the Special Forces, and after that, his ideas, methods, became…unsound. Unsound.

Of course we know how that turned out.

Colonel Lucas: Your report specifies intelligence/counterintelligence with ComSec I-Corps.
Willard: I’m not presently disposed to discuss these operations, sir.
Colonel Lucas: Did you not work for the CIA in I-Corps?
Willard: No, sir.
Colonel Lucas: Did you not assassinate a government tax collector in Quang Tri province, June 19th, 1968? Captain?
Willard: Sir, I am unaware of any such activity or operation…nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir.

A company man, in other words.

General Corman: Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there’s a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You have and I have them. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And, very obviously, he has gone insane.

Want to know mine? Here, I mean.

Willard: Terminate the Colonel?
General Corman: He’s out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.
Civilian: Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Colonel Lucas: You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist…

"As always, should you or any of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

Willard [voiceover]: How many people had I already killed? There were those six that I knew about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. That wasn’t supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit… charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do? But I really didn’t know what I’d do when I found him.

I wondered about that myself.

Willard [voiceover]: At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier. I couldn’t believe they wanted this man dead. Third-generation West Point, top of his class…Korea, Airborne, about a thousand decorations, etc., etc. I’d head his voice on the tape and it really put the hook in me, but I couldn’t connect up that voice with this man. Like they said, he had an impressive career. Maybe too impressive. I mean, perfect. He was being groomed for one of the top slots in the corporation.

He means the deep state, of course.

Chef [in a helicopter]: Why do all you guys sit on your helmets?
Soldier: So we don’t get our balls blown off.

Your move, Chef.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.
[he kneels on the beach]
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ‘em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like…
[sniffing, pondering]
Kilgore: …victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…

Next up: Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chef: A tiger! A fuckin’ tiger!. Never get out of the boat! Never get out of the boat! I got to remember, never get out of the boat!!!
[he tears off his shirt…then his pants]
Chef: I’m done with this goddamn f****** shit! You can kiss my ass on the county square, because I’m f****** bugging out! I don’t f****** need it! I didn’t get on the goddamn eight grade for this kind of shit! All I wanted to do is f****** cook! I just wanted to learn to f****** cook, man!

Sauces especially. But I sure as shit know how he felt. And it had nothing to do with staying on the boat.

Willard ]voiceover]: Oh man…the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.

Same here. Only up in the clouds.

Willard [voiceover]: Charlie didn’t get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory.

Victory it is then.

Willard [voiceover]: No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command’s ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.

Tell me about it.

Willard [after the boat crew kills everyone on the sampan…and he shoots the lone wounded survivor…a young girl…dead]: It’s a way we had over here for living with ourselves. We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.

But he’s perfectly okay with cold-blooded murder.

Willard: Hey soldier, do you know who’s in command here?
Soldier: Ain’t you?

https://youtu.be/Ko97BKLjpdo?si=RNLZ1Gi6kNIx9MRh

Willard: My mission is to make it up to Cambodia. There’s a Green Beret colonel up there who’s gone insane, and I’m supposed to kill him.
Chef: That’s f****** typical! Shit! f****** Vietnam mission! I’m short and we gotta go up there so you can kill one of our own guys? That’s f****** great! That’s just f****** great, man! Shit! That’s f****** crazy! I thought you were going to blow up a bridge, or some f****** railroad tracks, or something!

There's nothing quite as daunting as being short in a war zone. I sweated out each and every f****** day myself.

Willard: Could we, uh… talk to Colonel Kurtz?
Photojournalist: Hey, man, you don’t talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. He’s a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he’ll… uh… well, you’ll say “hello” to him, right? And he’ll just walk right by you. He won’t even notice you. And suddenly he’ll grab you, and he’ll throw you in a corner, and he’ll say, “Do you know that ‘if’ is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you”… I mean I’m… no, I can’t… I’m a little man, I’m a little man, he’s…he’s a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas…

In other words, so what if he's insane.

Chef: This colonel guy, he’s wacko, man. He’s worse than crazy, he’s evil! That’s what the man’s got set up here, man! It’s f****** pagan idolatry! Look around you! Shit, he’s loco…I ain’t afraid of all them f****** skulls and altars and shit! I used to think that if I died in an evil place, then my soul wouldn’t make it to heaven. But now…fuck. I don’t care where it goes, as long as it ain’t here.

Off with his head!

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It’s no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I’m a soldier.
Kurtz: You’re neither. You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

I knew it!

Photojournalist [to Willard]: The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He’s dying, I think. He hates all this. He hates it! But the man’s a…He reads poetry out loud, all right? And a voice…he likes you 'cause you’re still alive. He’s got plans for you. No, I’m not gonna help you. You’re gonna help him, man. You’re gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna sat when he’s gone? 'Cause he dies when it dies, when it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? He was a kind man? He was a wise man? He has plans? He has wisdom? Bullshit, man! Am I gonna be the one that’s gonna set them straight? Look at me! Wrong! You!

Oh, it's Williard alright.

Kurtz [reading a poem aloud]: “We are the hollow men and the stuffed men together filled with straw. Alas dried voices, when whisper together quiet and meaningless wind in dried rats’ feet over broken glass our dry cellar.”

Next up the hollow and the stuffed men here.

Photojournalist: This is dialectics. It’s very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That’s dialectic physics, okay? Dialectic logic is, there’s only love and hate. You either love somebody, or you hate them.
[Kurtz throws his book of poetry at him]
Photojournalist: This is the way the f****** world ends! Look at this f****** shit we’re in, man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I’m f****** splitting, Jack.

A colorful character you can't halp but be completely bewildered about.

Willard [voiceover]: On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I’d know what to do. But it didn’t happen. I was in there with him for days. Not under guard. I was free. But he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do at I did. If the generals back in Nah Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want, if they ever learned just how far from them he’d really gone. He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I’d never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.

Fractured and fragmented, as it were.

Kurtz [to Willard]: I’ve seen horrors…horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that…but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror…Horror has a face…and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it…I never want to forget. And then I realized…like I was shot…like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God…the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men…trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love…but they had the strength…the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, then our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling…without passion…without judgment…without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

A pile of horseshit, of course. And then some.

Willard [voiceover listening to the ship radio request bomb coordinates]: They were gonna make me a Major for this, and I wasn’t even in their fuckin’ army anymore. Everybody wanted me to do it. Him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take his pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier. Even the jungle wanted him dead. And that’s who he really who he took his orders from, anyway.

The f****** jungle, he means.

Kurtz [making a recording just before Willard kills him]: “We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write “fuck” on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”

Fuck that, right?

Kurtz: The horror…the horror…

Cue the airstike.

[iambiguous]

Death

“The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.” Christopher Hitchens

Really, if the party is heavenly in every respect, I'll take my chances with immortality.

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.” Vladimir Nabokov

I know that I do.

“Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.” Paulo Coelho

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

“What am I dying for?” Stephenie Meyer

Next up: what are you living for?

“There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.” Robyn Schneider

Instead, cue the distractions.

“It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.” Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

On the other hand, why would they want to?

[iambiguous]

All part of the business. And in order to sustain the business all is permitted. Depending of course on where you fit into the hierarchy. And even this business has rules. If, for example, you are inclined to break them. If, for example, you have the balls to break them. Even if you don’t have balls at all.

But never in a million years would you suspect Violet of being the one to break them. Corky sure. But then when you put the two together…what a team. And a love story to boot. Maybe not one of epic stature but it sure held my interest. And what sparks it in part is the tension arising from all the parts that don’t fit. Trust has to be earned here to say the least.

But not Ceasar’s. Ceaser here is like the character he played in Risky Business. Only much more dangerous. This is the part of the business that scares the shit out of most folks. It is completely amoral. If you get between what these guys want you get eliminated. With the minimum of pain if you’re lucky. And maybe the criminal justice system will avenge you. But I wouldn’t count on it.

The plot is a bit fantastic. But you get sucked into it anyway. You want these grotesque bastards to be taken. You want them to turn on each other. You want the least of the bad guys to prevail. Especially these two.


Bound

Violet: I’m in awe of people who can fix things. My dad was like that. We never had anything new. Whenever something broke he would open it up, tinker with it and it would work. His hands were magic … I bet your car is twenty years old.
Corky: Truck.
Violet: Truck. Of course.
Corky: '63 Chevy.
Violet: I knew it.

Didn't surprise me either.

Violet [to Corky]: I’m not apologizing for what I did. I’m apologizing for what I didn’t do. Do you have a bed somewhere?

Turned out that she did.

Corky: So, Ceasar’s Mafia, huh?
Violet: You have to ask? Funny. Nobody really calls it that anymore. They call it “the Business.”

Then the equivalent of what we call the business here.

Violet [to Corky who heard her and Shelly through the thin walls]: That wasn’t sex. That was work. You made certain choices in your life that you paid for. You said you made them because you were good at something and it was easy. Do you think you’re the only one that’s good at something? We make our own choices and we pay our own prices. I think we’re more alike than you want to admit.

Trust me: at first, I'm figuring no f****** way. Then it dawned on me...

Violet: Fuck it! I think you better leave.
Corky: I think so, too.
Violet: Try not to steal anything on the way out.

A temporary glitch, let's call it.

Mickey [holding a pair of pruning shears]: Shelly, I’m gonna ask you 10 times. You understand? 10 times.
[he puts Shelly’s thumb in the shears]
Micky: One. Where’s our money?

I guess they still haven't figured it out yet...that money is the root of all evil.

Corky: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Do you have any idea what you are saying? You are asking me to help you fuck the mob.
[Violet nods]
Corky: These people are serious, Violet. If you want to know how serious, ask Shelly. They’re worse than any cop because they have lots of money and no rules.

As they are both about to find out for themselves.

Corky [to Violet]: You have no idea what you’re asking. How much trust two people need to do something like this. For me, stealing is a lot like sex. Two people that want the same thing sit in a room and they talk, they start to plan and it’s like flirting, a kind of foreplay, because the more they talk about it, the wetter they get. The difference is, I can have sex with someone I just met, someone I hardly know, but to steal I need to know someone like I know myself.

On the other hand: who would ever have thought that would be Violet?

Caesar [to one dead Johnnie]: I’m a dead man, Johnnie? I’m a f****** dead man? Guess again, Johnnie. Who’s the dead man? Who? Who’s dead, fuckface? Who? Who? I can’t hear you, Johnnie. Guess again. Take another guess, Johnnie. Take another f****** guess!!

Of course, Johnnie has...family?

Caesar [to Violet]: Now, if you’re thinking about doing something stupid, remember I just killed Gino Marzzone. You understand what that means?[/b]

My guess: an offer she can't refuse.

[Caesar is aiming his gun at Corky, who is tied up]
Caesar: Wake up, wake up. Wake up you f****** dyke. God. I should have seen this coming the minute I met you. Everybody knows your kind can’t be trusted. f****** queers make me sick. But you made a fatal mistake. You tried f****** the wrong guy. And I swear to you that I’m going to kill you for it. Where’s my money?
Violet: Don’t tell him.
Caesar: Shut up, Violet!
Violet: He can’t kill you.
Caesar: Violet!
Violet: Not until he has the money.
[He fires the gun at the wall behind Violet to scare and silence her]
Caesar: Now. Where is it?
Corky: Lick me.
Caesar [jabbing her with the gun]: Where…Is…My…Money?
Corky: Either pull the trigger or get that f****** thing out of my face.

What balls! Scripted as it were.

Caesar [holding out the pruning shears [remember them]?: Hey, Violet, remember these?
[he puts a gag in Violet’s mouth and looks down at Corky]
Caesar: Allright, I’m going to start with Violet…so you get an idea of what’s coming. I’m going to ask you ten questions. Every time I don’t get an answer I cut off a finger. Where’s the money?[/b]

It worked. Sort of.

Corky: You can’t kill me.
Caesar: Oh really? Why not?
Corky: I could be lying.

Eventually, scripted, she tells him.

Mickey: Cease, can I ask you something?
Caesar: Yeah, sure.
Mickey: Why’d you move all the furniture around?

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle? Only here it's a matter of life and death.

Caesar: You don’t wanna shoot me, Vi. Do ya. Do ya? I know you don’t.
Violet [pulling the trigger]: Caesar, you don’t know shit.

Of course, she's only paraphrasing Arlis Sweeney.

Corky: You know what the difference is between you and me, Violet?
Violet: No.
Corky: Me neither.

And they both lived happily ever after.

[attofishpi]

All part of the business. And in order to sustain the business all is permitted. Depending of course on where you fit into the hierarchy. And even this business has rules. If, for example, you are inclined to break them. If, for example, you have the balls to break them. Even if you don’t have balls at all.

But never in a million years would you suspect Violet of being the one to break them. Corky sure. But then when you put the two together…what a team. And a love story to boot. Maybe not one of epic stature but it sure held my interest. And what sparks it in part is the tension arising from all the parts that don’t fit. Trust has to be earned here to say the least.

But not Ceasar’s. Ceaser here is like the character he played in Risky Business. Only much more dangerous. This is the part of the business that scares the shit out of most folks. It is completely amoral. If you get between what these guys want you get eliminated. With the minimum of pain if you’re lucky. And maybe the criminal justice system will avenge you. But I wouldn’t count on it.

The plot is a bit fantastic. But you get sucked into it anyway. You want these grotesque bastards to be taken. You want them to turn on each other. You want the least of the bad guys to prevail. Especially these two.


Bound

Violet: I’m in awe of people who can fix things. My dad was like that. We never had anything new. Whenever something broke he would open it up, tinker with it and it would work. His hands were magic … I bet your car is twenty years old.
Corky: Truck.
Violet: Truck. Of course.
Corky: '63 Chevy.
Violet: I knew it.

Didn't surprise me either.

Violet [to Corky]: I’m not apologizing for what I did. I’m apologizing for what I didn’t do. Do you have a bed somewhere?

Turned out that she did.

Corky: So, Ceasar’s Mafia, huh?
Violet: You have to ask? Funny. Nobody really calls it that anymore. They call it “the Business.”

Then the equivalent of what we call the business here.

Violet [to Corky who heard her and Shelly through the thin walls]: That wasn’t sex. That was work. You made certain choices in your life that you paid for. You said you made them because you were good at something and it was easy. Do you think you’re the only one that’s good at something? We make our own choices and we pay our own prices. I think we’re more alike than you want to admit.

Trust me: at first, I'm figuring no f****** way. Then it dawned on me...

Violet: Fuck it! I think you better leave.
Corky: I think so, too.
Violet: Try not to steal anything on the way out.

A temporary glitch, let's call it.

Mickey [holding a pair of pruning shears]: Shelly, I’m gonna ask you 10 times. You understand? 10 times.
[he puts Shelly’s thumb in the shears]
Micky: One. Where’s our money?

I guess they still haven't figured it out yet...that money is the root of all evil.

Corky: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Do you have any idea what you are saying? You are asking me to help you fuck the mob.
[Violet nods]
Corky: These people are serious, Violet. If you want to know how serious, ask Shelly. They’re worse than any cop because they have lots of money and no rules.

As they are both about to find out for themselves.

Corky [to Violet]: You have no idea what you’re asking. How much trust two people need to do something like this. For me, stealing is a lot like sex. Two people that want the same thing sit in a room and they talk, they start to plan and it’s like flirting, a kind of foreplay, because the more they talk about it, the wetter they get. The difference is, I can have sex with someone I just met, someone I hardly know, but to steal I need to know someone like I know myself.

On the other hand: who would ever have thought that would be Violet?

Caesar [to one dead Johnnie]: I’m a dead man, Johnnie? I’m a f****** dead man? Guess again, Johnnie. Who’s the dead man? Who? Who’s dead, fuckface? Who? Who? I can’t hear you, Johnnie. Guess again. Take another guess, Johnnie. Take another f****** guess!!

Of course, Johnnie has...family?

Caesar [to Violet]: Now, if you’re thinking about doing something stupid, remember I just killed Gino Marzzone. You understand what that means?[/b]

My guess: an offer she can't refuse.

[Caesar is aiming his gun at Corky, who is tied up]
Caesar: Wake up, wake up. Wake up you f****** dyke. God. I should have seen this coming the minute I met you. Everybody knows your kind can’t be trusted. f****** queers make me sick. But you made a fatal mistake. You tried f****** the wrong guy. And I swear to you that I’m going to kill you for it. Where’s my money?
Violet: Don’t tell him.
Caesar: Shut up, Violet!
Violet: He can’t kill you.
Caesar: Violet!
Violet: Not until he has the money.
[He fires the gun at the wall behind Violet to scare and silence her]
Caesar: Now. Where is it?
Corky: Lick me.
Caesar [jabbing her with the gun]: Where…Is…My…Money?
Corky: Either pull the trigger or get that f****** thing out of my face.

What balls! Scripted as it were.

Caesar [holding out the pruning shears [remember them]?: Hey, Violet, remember these?
[he puts a gag in Violet’s mouth and looks down at Corky]
Caesar: Allright, I’m going to start with Violet…so you get an idea of what’s coming. I’m going to ask you ten questions. Every time I don’t get an answer I cut off a finger. Where’s the money?[/b]

It worked. Sort of.

Corky: You can’t kill me.
Caesar: Oh really? Why not?
Corky: I could be lying.

Eventually, scripted, she tells him.

Mickey: Cease, can I ask you something?
Caesar: Yeah, sure.
Mickey: Why’d you move all the furniture around?

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle? Only here it's a matter of life and death.

Caesar: You don’t wanna shoot me, Vi. Do ya. Do ya? I know you don’t.
Violet [pulling the trigger]: Caesar, you don’t know shit.

Of course, she's only paraphrasing Arlis Sweeney.

Corky: You know what the difference is between you and me, Violet?
Violet: No.
Corky: Me neither.

And they both lived happily ever after.

[iambiguous]

Ayn Rand from The Fountainhead

Never ask people about your work.

Unless, of course, they are "one of us".

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments.

Whatever that means.
In other words, whatever you need it to mean.

Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched.

Obviously: some a hell of a lot more than others.

I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean he won't die someday. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means.

Of course, immortality as a concept is one thing, immortality for all practical purposes, something altogether different.

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Processed philosophy let's call it.

No speech is ever considered, but only the speaker. It's so much easier to pass judgement on a man than on an idea.

Which man? What idea?

[iambiguous]

The plot of this movie is derived from a bedtime story written by a ten year old kid. And it’s really more about the science of dreams than sleep. Though you might be wondering how much science a ten your old kid can pack into a bedtime story.

Take this one with a few grains of salt. Much like dreams themselves. On the other hand, they are derived from the lives we live. And only a fool wouldn’t take those with a grain of salt. A whole box of it, in fact. For some, a barrel or two.

Let’s face it. Our waking lives can sometimes be excruciatingly boring and routine. Especially those of us who work at jobs that have been rationalized down to either/or. How many of the same dots can you connect over and over and over again before you are crawling the walls. So you better be prepared to live as much as you possibly can in a dreamworld. Or pile up lots of distractions. Sex, for example. Only steeped in the vernacular of the hopeless romantics like…Stephane. They call it Love instead.

And tonight [and tonight only] you will dream of cardboard. Or dream in cardboard. If not that, than cloth.

“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.” No, it was Bob Dylan not Abraham Lincoln who said that.

Sam Nessim gave Michel Gondry the idea for the film when Gondry asked the then 10-year-old Mounier to come up with a bed time story. Literally the next day, Gondry began writing the script. IMDb

I believe it.


The Science of Sleep [La Science des Rêves]

Stephane [on designing a calendar depicting disasters]: It’s called disasterology. It’s for the customer that needs a little bit of a sense of humor.
The Boss: My customers don’t need a sense of humor. They want puppies, trucks, flowers or nudes. That’s all.

The masses, let's call them.

Stephane: P. S. R. Parallel Synchronized Randomness. An interesting brain rarity and our subject for today. Two people walk in opposite directions at the same time and then they make the same decision at the same time. Then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it, and then they correct it. Basically, in a mathematical world these two little guys will stay looped for the end of time. The brain is the most complex thing in the universe and it’s right behind the nose.

A good place for it apparently.

Guy: Imagine if Martine comes and gives you a blowjob in the darkroom. I can arrange it.
Stephane. So getting laid is all that matters? It doesn’t matter who the person is?
Guy: You see, I’m not a creative person like you. I don’t feel the need to leave a trace of me behind.

Well, it sort of makes sense.

Guy: Do you know “goat on the hill”? It is a sex position.
Stephane: I know it’s hard for you to understand but not every man is a sex maniac, you know.
Guy: Oh yeah? Like every woman is a romantic?

Fit yourself in there and then get back to us.

The Boss: Six months ago a stranger came to see me with a terrible accent and a dumb project. The world and myself weren’t ready for it. But we’ve leaped into absurdity. And I regret to say our new calender, “Diasterology” by Mr. Stephane Miroux, is a huge success!

Next up: absurdity here.

Stephane: This girl is at once all the women that broke my heart. She is so beautiful and generous, and she’s asking me to leave…because she is dumping me. She’s dumping me because I am a cheap drug dealer, and I am a drug dealer because she wants to leave me.

Here he may just as well have been dreaming.

Guy [after throwing his TV set into the canal]: It floats!
Stephane: Yeah, it floats.
Guy: Now maybe the fish can enjoy all that crap.

And no not just shark week.

Serge: It’s one thing to be called fags, but to be called dykes is unacceptable.

Unless, of course, it's the other way around.

Stephane: I like your boobs. They’re very friendly and unpretentious. Maybe someday you can show them to me.
Stephanie: There’s not much to see.

That's true.

Stephanie: Why me?
Stephane: Because you are different. Because everyone else is boring.

Not much different here, is it?

[iambiguous]

Blindness

“I didn't realize it until now, but I don't really know anything about them, or what kind of people they are, really. You can't see inside a person's heart.” Koushun Takami

Besides, all it does is pump blood.

“Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.” Jose Saramago

Dasein among other things.

“I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.” John Wyndham

Or hear, touch, smell and taste them?

“We are all more blind to what we have than to what we have not.” Audre Lorde

Next up: what we see here.

“Eyes and ears are not the problem...It is rage that blinds and deafens us. Or fear. Envy, mistrust. The world contracts, gets all out of joint when you are angry or afraid.” Jan-Philipp Sendker

I know that mine does.

“There must be a government, said the first blind man, I'm not so sure, but there is, it will be a government of the blind trying to rule the blind, that is to say, nothingness trying to organize nothingness.” José Saramago

Metaphorically as it were.

[iambiguous]

Many years ago, I walked away from my family, and I never looked back. Then a few years back there’s a knock on my door and something was pushed through the mail slot. Turned out it was a letter [with some photographs] from my brother. He wanted to reestablish some sort of contact between myself and the family. But being even farther off the beaten path now, I imagined the distance between us was all the more problematic. So, I never responded. But it’s not like I don’t wonder from time to time what might have happened had I done so. And somehow, they did track me down. So, anything might happen down the road I suppose. But not from my end.

Two brothers here as well. Or so it seems. And the gaps between them widening all the more over the years. Only the contact is made. A week later and he’s off again. But then events conspire against them. Or so it seems.

People might abandon the present because they wish to rise above it. But then years later the estrangement can revolve more around their embarrassment at having failed to.

And there is this whole thing about birth families. Why should it be assumed that we are obligated to them in some inherent fashion when we did not even choose to become part of their lives? It is just through the accident of birth. At least later in life we can choose our friends, our lovers, our spouses. We can choose to have children. Or choose not to. But with brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins – even with mothers and fathers – it is all largely fortuitous. We are “thrown” in with them at birth. We chose none of it. And the implications of that needs to be acknowledged…and respected.

In a world where each individual becomes smaller and smaller fame and celebrity can loom larger and larger. But the past can loom larger still.

Francis Ford Coppola’s take on the autobiographical elements of his film: “nothing in it happened, but all of it is true”. He claimed that this is the kind of film he set out to make as a young man, before he was sidetracked by fame and fortune. IMDb


Tetro

Miranda [to Bennie]: He really doesn’t want to know his family anymore.

Then this part: do any of them want to know him?

Bennie: You called her your friend. Why not your brother?
Tetro: People around here don’t know very much about me. Miranda doesn’t even know who our father is. I’d like to keep it that way.

Let's just say he has his reasons. Only that doesn't make them reasonable, of course.

Bennie: It’s going to be hard for us to have a conversation if I can’t ask questions.
Tetro: Who wants a conversation? Not me.

Let alone an actual relationship.

Bennie [referring to Tetro’s writing]: So what was it about?
Tetro: Brothers. Both gifted musicians. An ancient theme: Rivalry.
Bennie: You’re writing the story of our father…
Tetro: One brother goes to to New York City, becomes a big star, he does nothing to help the older brother, who taught him everything he knew.

Or, in my case, taught me nothing at all.

Tetro: Listen, Bennie, I divorced myself from my family, okay? Fathers, sisters, all of it. All of it. All right? I don’t want to talk about it.

But Bennie is relentlessly officious. This would drive me insane. But it can take other paths. Every family is different.

Bennie: What is with him?
Miranda: He is like a genius without enough accomplishments, you know?

Oh, yeah. Among others, I may well have written the book.

Bennie: Everything I’ve loved or been interested in has been because of you. You’re the one who took me everywhere and showed me books and those strange movies like The Red Shoes and Tales of Hoffman. Then you disappeared, without even an explanation.

I had an explanation myself. And I still do.

Bennie: Who is that?
Miranda: That is the most important critic and writer in South America. She uses the pen name “Alone”. She was your brother’s teacher and mentor, until…until she turned against him. There are different stories why. No one knows the truth. It’s a mystery. Like the mystery of your father, and who he really is.

I'll tell you the truth regarding anything you wish to know about me. And all you have to do is to actually believe it.

Miranda [leaving Tetro and Bennie]: I’ll be at the other insane asylum.

You know the one.

Tetro [as a young man]: Dad, I don’t want to continue with pre-med.
Carlo: If not pre-med, then what?
Tetro: Philosophy.
Carlo: How do you make a living at philosophy?
Tetro: I want to be a novelist.
Carlo: Novelist? A writer?
Tetro: Yes, that’s what I want to do.
Carlo: Well, to make a living as a writer, you’d have to be a genius.
Tetro: So?
Carlo: There’s only room for one genius in this family.

Or, for some, none at all.

Miranda [after Bennie has taken Tetros work, written an ending and gotten it published and produced…without his knowledge or permission]: This is exactly what I had hoped for, what will cure you.
Tetro: You think this will cure me?
Miranda: Absolutely.
Tetro: Am I not okay the way I am? Am I not famous enough? I had a girlfriend once who was very impressed with famous people. And one day, a very famous person took her away. Stole her from me.

On the other hand, deservedly?

Tetro: I’m gonna tell you straight, Bennie. I am not your brother. I’m your father.
Bennie: I don’t believe a word you say.
Tetro: Believe it it, Bennie. You know the ending you wrote in the play? The father gets killed? You’re looking at him.

Now what?