Philosophy Now Forum

Richard Yates from Revolutionary Road

Now you’ve said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, that’s all we ever talked about. We’d sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said ‘hopeless,’ though; that’s where we’d chicken out. Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that’s when there’s nothing to do but take off. If you can.

Back to that again: actual options.

You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don't like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me, buddy, you've got nothing to apologize for.

Let's hear from the other 2%.

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

Just another wage slave as often as not.

She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was?

Let's think of others.

He had won but he didn't feel like a winner.

What exactly did he win though?

Our ability to measure and apportion time affords an almost endless source of comfort.

And how exactly is that measured? And by who?

A film where all the "action" revolves around people conversing. So you either find what they are talking about interesting or you are somehow able to relate it to your own life. And up to a point you have to either like the characters or dislike them and still find them compelling enough to invest your time in.

Some will and some won’t. And some [like me] are never really able to make up their mind.

The age-old question: What do women want and/or what do men want? Followed closely by what they probably don’t want?

Or the dope question: Is a dope dealer wasting his life? Shouldn’t he be doing something more productive like, say, making “relevant” films?

But then the discussion shifts to…rape. As in did Jon rape Amy back in high school? For example, was it really rape?

Sometimes these things come down to the unequivocal truth. He either did or he did not. But other times they come down to how each person remembers or interprets the event. And sometimes these interpretations become entangled in ulterior motives…or in politics…or in all manner of ambiguity.

I can just imagine all the conflicting reactions to this. And the bottom line is that other than the two of them no one knows what really happened at all. And, again, even then it only comes down to what they think happened…what they remember happening. Or maybe it just comes down to him feeling coerced to apologize ten years later about something he does think he did: rape her.


Tape

Vince [of Leah]: She thinks I have violent tendencies.
Jon: Oh, boy.
Vince: Jon, I never touched her.
Jon: I never said you did.
Vince: Well, she thinks I have, uh, “unresolved issues, which occasionally manifest themselves in potentially violent ways.”
Jon: She’s probably scared.
Vin:ce Oh god, of what? I never threatened her!
Jon: You sometimes present a threatening appearance.
Vince: Dude…we have been going together for three years.
Jon: So what?
Vince: So…I mean, you’d think she would be used to it by now.
Jon: Women these days have no reason to hang around potentially violent guys. It’s not an attractive quality anymore. Too many guys out there with “resolved” violent tendencies.
Vince: Oh, so I’m out of fashion?

Next up: Gattaca, as I recall.

Jon: Vince, your idea of manhood is putting on Eddie Cochrane and screwing your girl.
Vince: Hey, I’m a simple man.
Jon: Well, it’s not like that anymore. Women want other things.
Vince: Yeah, well, what do they want?
Jon: I don’t know, guys who don’t put their fists through windows, who don’t throw phones across the room…who don’t stalk their girlfriends across 16 states.

That's reasonable enough.

Jon: Private dope delivery to ex-hippies does not a mature man make, Vince. It’s no different than standing on the corner and selling to teenagers.
Vince: Why are you lecturing me?
Jon: Hey, I’m not lecturing anybody. I’m just pointing a few things out. I think you can do better.
Vince: Better than what?
Jon: Better than–better than pissing your life away.

As it turns out, we ain't seen nothing yet.

Jon: You think I should apologize to her?
Vince: Yeah, why not?
Jon: Look, it wasn’t even date rape. It was something that got a little out of hand.
Vince: I thought you weren’t sure what date rape was.
Jon: I’m sorry, okay?
Vince: Don’t apologize to me.
Jon: I’m not. I’m-- what I’m trying to say…is that 10 years ago, I did something…wrong. And that when I think about it now, the person who did that seems like a complete stranger to me. This dumb, drunk high school senior who thought she was being prudish… and needed some coercion. It was bad. I regret it. But it was a far cry from rape. And I don’t think she’d call it that either.

To believe or not to believe him, that is the question. Unless it really did all unfold somewhere in the murky middle.

Jon: I remember it because it was a pivotal thing for me. It was one of the first times in my life that I looked at myself objectively and made a conscious decision to try to avoid becoming a certain type of person.

Hint, hint, Vince.

Amy: People change. They end up having nothing to say to each other even if they were best friends years before.

That reminds me...
"How the hell can a person
Go to work in the mornin'
And come home in the evenin'
And have nothin' to say"

Amy: So tell me again what you think happened?
Jon: I think…I think I raped you.
Amy: Oh my God! No, you didn’t rape me.
Jon: Yes, I did.
Amy: No, you didn’t.
Jon: Are you trying to make fun of this?
Amy: No.
Jon: Amy, I know what happened.
Amy: Apparently not.
Jon: Yes, I do.
Amy: Says who?
Jon: Me!
Amy: Why?
Jon: Because I just admitted it.
Amy: On what, on the tape?
Jon: Yeah.
Amy: What’s on it?
Jon: It’s me confessing what I did.
Amy: That doesn’t prove you did it.
Jon: Why not?
Amy: Because if no one’s accusing you of anything, there’s no reason to confess.

Right, like these things are not often hopelessly ambiguous. Besides, in the end, Vince [and his stash] become the ones getting screwed.

Judgment Day

“I am less blindly confident than I once was, for I have been learning a truer estimate of myself, my failings and limitations, in these dark days. I have learnt to hope that if there be a Judgment Day of some kind, God will not see us with our own eyes, nor judge us as we judge ourselves.” Vera Brittain

And that's only if you worship and adore the right God. You know, assuming that He actually does exist.

“And now, we have no option. We can't say 'maybe' 'it's possible' 'it looks very probable...' No way! We have to say this is what the Bible teaches! This is fact! May 21, 2011 is the day of the Rapture, it is the day that Judgment Day begins...” Harold Camping

Next up: December 21, 2012

“God must have a weird sense of values, and if there’s a Judgment Day, as some folks think, He’s going to have a lot to answer for.” Philip Appleman

I've got a fucking ton of questions I'll be asking.

“Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.” Robert A. Heinlein

New thread?

“From my perspective I believe that most Christians do not dread Judgment Day because it is the end, but because they will no longer be able to embrace the façade of a sinless mirrored reflection.” Carl Henegan

I'll let you snicker for a while, but then it's my turn.

“Today, Negroes play on every big-league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality - we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.” Jackie Robinson

On the other hand, only five days left until the end of Negro History Month. The shortest month of the year by the way.

How important is it to note that television quiz shows were once [and maybe still are] rigged? Talk about a matter of opinion. And that in part is what this film explores. The extent of their sincerity may be in question, but the folks behind the production of the show in question here [and no doubt others] never really could figure out what the big deal was. It was just television, for Christ sakes. Show business. Geez, did anyone blow a gasket because professional wrestling was bogus? After all, the whole point of commercial television was to entertain the audience. And that simply meant scripting the drama. Just like on all the other shows.

Did they believe this? Yeah, I think some of them were genuinely baffled by the brouhaha…the boos.

But one thing is for sure. This had crony capitalism written all over it. Once the rumors of a fix started to spread, the producers contacted their political partners who pulled the right strings in the judiciary, and it was all quashed. And had it not been for the actual integrity and persistence of Dick Goodwin, I suspect I wouldn’t be here typing this. There might still have been a scandal but nothing like the one that unfolded here.

This is also in part about class. But even folks who have it feel the tug from the culture to buy things. And that takes cash. So, if someone wants to shovel cash to you under the table that’s, well, tough to resist. Especially for a charming and reasonably handsome intellectual who makes $86 a week. But more important still is the fame he’ll acquire. These programs were the original reality shows. A man or woman could go from virtual obscurity to national celebrity overnight. Even get his picture on the cover of Time magazine.

And then there’s Herb Stempel…


Quiz Show

Woman [watching Herb Stempel blabber on and on]: Now there’s a face for radio.

How about your face?

Account Guy: Stempel is an underdog. You know, people root for that. It’s a New York thing.
Martin Rittenhome [president of Geritol]: Queens is not New York!

If you get his drift.

Kitner: He’s not hurting sales, is he?
Account guy: Martin just doesn’t think he works.
Kitner: Why?
Account guy: Look, I don’t know. I guess the sponsor wants a guy on Twenty-One… who looks like he could get a table at Twenty One.
Kitner: You just tell him I said Stempel has an everyman quality. You know that whole American dream thing? You, too, can be rich?
Account guy: If the ratings stay high.
Kitner: Very funny.
Account guy: I’m just passing it along, sir.

Then they decide to boot him...

Charlie: Have you ever watched one of these, uh, quiz shows, Dad? The $64,000 Question or, or Twenty-One?
Mark [his father]: For $64,000, I hope they ask you the meaning of life.

That would be about $850,000 today.

Herb: Things are gonna change around here, boy.
Toby [his wife]: What does that mean, everything’s gonna change? What’s gonna change, Herbert?
Herb: Everything’s gonna change. For us. Hey, what the hell were you thinkin’? Toby, that box is the biggest thing… since Gutenberg invented the printing press. And I’m the biggest thing on it.

Little does he know at this point.

Enright: How much do they pay instructors up at Columbia?
Charles: Eighty-six dollars a week.
Enright: Do you have any idea how much Bozo the Clown makes?

Anyone here actually know what that might be in today's dollars?

Enright: What if we were to put you on the show? Put you on Twenty-One, and ask you questions that you know. Say the questions that he answered correctly on the test this morning.
Charles: I, I, I don’t follow you. I, I thought the questions were in a bank vault.
Enright: In a way, they are. You wanna win, don’t ya?
Charles: W-Well, I think I’d really rather try to beat him honestly.
Enright: What’s dishonest? When Gregory Peck parachutes behind enemy lines…do you think that’s really Gregory Peck? That book that Eisenhower wrote, a ghost writer wrote it. Nobody cares. It’s not like we’d be giving you the answers. Just 'cause we know you know, you still know. Right. It’s not like you’re putting me on the show, or Al and pretending to be some sort of intellectual. I mean, you have put in years of study and erudition.
Charles: I mean, I-- I-I’m just trying to imagine what, uh, Kant would make of this.
Freedman: I don’t think he’d have a problem with it.

Now that's a lie!

Enright: Look, don’t start believing your own bullshit, all right? You wouldn’t know the name of Paul Revere’s horse if he took a crap on your lawn.
Herb: She.
Enright: What?
Herb: It was a mare, remember?
Enright: Look, you lose when I tell you to lose.
Herb: But why now?
Enright: It’s an arrangement. It’s always been an arrangement.

Not unlike, say, most elections? The Deep State, remember?

Herb: You get me that panel show, or I’m gonna bring you down with me, ya lousy, lyin’ p****! You and Charles Van fuckin’ Doren.
Enright: No, you’re not.
Herb: I’ll just tell everyone that it’s a fraud. That’ll warm 'em up. The fix is in this week on Twenty-One! The cover of Time? His mug shot will be on the cover of Time!

Let's just say they were prepared for that.

Dick: We’re gonna put television on trial. Television! Everybody in the country’ll know about it.
FCC chairman: What do you have?
Dick: There’s somethin’ there. Mr Chairman, I’ll find it.
FCC chairman: The networks? The pharmaceutical industry? Cosmetics? That’s big game, son. You don’t go huntin’ in your underwear.

He didn't know the half of it.

Charles: Al, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you shouldn’t give me the answers anymore.
Freedman: Now, what do you want to do that for, Professor? Charlie, you’re doin’ the right thing, really. Everybody’s makin’ money.
Charles: Well, what if you just gave me the questions…and I could look up the answers on my own? I mean, don’t you think that would be, well, less egregious?

Too late. He's already hooked on the fame.

Freedman: You met Herb Stempel. Does he seem stable to you?
Dick: Well, I definitely have an inkling of what you’re talking about. He told me this whole story about how when a Jew is on the show…he always loses to a Gentile, and then the Gentile wins more money.
Enright: Right. I mean, who could dream up a scheme like that? A symptom of his Van Doren fixation.
Dick: The thing of it is, I looked it up. It’s true.

Oh...

Herb: The point is Van Doren got the answers.
Dick: He did not get the answers. If anything, he gave them the answers.
Herb: I know he got the answers!
Dick: Ah, bullshit, Herb. How do you know he got the answers?
Herb: Because I got the answers!

Let's run this by Toby...

Toby: You never told me you got the answers.
Herb: I knew the answers to a good part of the questions anyhow. The ones I didn’t, they fed me.
Toby: It’s dishonest.
Herb: Let me tell you about honest. You know what my father used to tell me? ‘‘Work hard and you’ll get ahead.’’ Was that honest? Look at Geritol. ‘‘Geritol cures tired blood.’’ And I’m the one who’s supposed to be ashamed.
Toby: You never said that you were getting the answers.
Herb: Let them believe whatever they want. What do I care? What do I care if a bunch of saps…
Toby: I was one of those saps, Herbert.

Ouch.

Dick: Twenty-One is rigged and I can prove it…I have Enright cold and that means I have you.
Kitner: Really?
Dick: Really.
Kitner: Then how come you’re the one who’s sweating?

Good point. At the time.

Dave Garroway [after Charles boots himself off the show]: I was wondering, what are you gonna do now? Eventually this sad day had to come, but we don’t wanna lose you, Charlie. So, at the Today Show, we decided why not make Charlie…our special cultural correspondent to the people and to the school children of America. How does $50,000 a year sound to you, Professor?
Charles: Wow. Wow. Um, well, I, uh-- I was hoping to, um, to get back to my teaching.
Dave Garroway: Well, this is the largest classroom in the world, Professor: television. So, if you will, just sign right here on the dotted line.
Dick [watching from the studio, aloud to himself]: Charlie, walk away. Come on. You don’t need it.

Nope, he doesn't walk away. Not from over 650,000 dollars.

Dick: Hey, you don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots.
Charles: Well, don’t connect them through me.
Dick: Hey, don’t treat me like some member of your goddamn fan club. Are you telling me everybody got the answers but you?
Charles: You’re so persistent, Dick. You know, I really envy that.
Dick: Was it just the money, Charlie?
Charles: You’ll forgive me, but anyone who thinks money is ever “just money” couldn’t have much of it.
Dick: Charlie, you wanna insult me, fine, but you can’t envy me at the same time.

Actually, it's the fame, of course.

Enright: You know, you got these crackpots coming out of the woodwork, you’re snooping around asking questions. You don’t have a shred of concrete evidence.
Dick: Dan, let me tell you something. In this envelope are all the questions that James Snodgrass was asked on Twenty One. The odd thing about this envelope is that he appeared on the show January 13th, if you recall. Yet, he somehow mailed this to himself on January 11th via registered mail. I’d say that’s pretty goddamn concrete, wouldn’t you?

But is it concrete enough with so much at stake?

Herb: You want to know what? If I do nothing else I will convince them that Hebert Stempel knows what won the God-damned Academy Award for best God-damned picture of 1955; that’s what I’m gonna accomplish.

And, at the time, he probably actually believed it.

Charles: I haven’t been subpoenaed. And I can’t think of anything that’d sound guiltier than a…a man who hasn’t been accused of anything protesting his innocence.
Kitner: Now, Charlie, speculation in our society has a way of becoming fact. Television is a public trust. We can’t afford even a hint of a scandal in our company.
Charles: Well, I’d rather not do it. I’m sorry.
Kitner: Haven’t we been good to you? Haven’t we treated you like part of our family? We have great expectations for you, Charlie. I know you’re gonna do the right thing.

Still too close to call.

Dick: [of Charles] There’s absolutely no need to drag the man into the spotlight.
Sandra [his wife]: You dragged Herb Stempel into the spotlight.
Dick: Stempel? The man has to be dragged from the spotlight with his teeth marks still on it!
Ssandra: Yeah, well, nobody forced Charles Van Doren to go in front of million people, either.
Dick: Sandra, this is not McCarthyism. We are not here to expose for the sake of exposing.
Sandra: You are ten times the man Charles Van Doren is, Dick. Ten times the brain, and ten times the human being. Meanwhile, you’re bending over backwards for him. You are like the Uncle Tom of the Jews.
Dick: I’m glad it’s so easy for you to destroy a man’s life. I’ll have to keep that in mind.
Sandra: The quiz show hearings without Van Doren is like doing Hamlet without Hamlet.

A class thing, let's call it.

Rittenhome: That show, Twenty-One, cost me $3.5 million a year, year in, year out. Sales went up 50% when Van Doren was on. Fifty percent. So the very idea that I was unaware of every detail or aspect of that show’s operation…well, frankly, it’s, it’s very insulting.
Dick: So you knew.
Rittenhome: It’s not about what I know. It’s about what you know.
Dick: You don’t know what I know.
Rittenhome: You know that Dan Enright ran a crooked quiz show.
Dick: Oh, he never informed you?
Rittenhome: Did he? Let’s see what he says. Dan? Look, Dan Enright wants a future in television. Okay? What you have to understand is that the public has a very short memory. But corporations, they never forget.
Dick: He’s not that stupid. He knows he’s through.
Rittenhome: Oh, no. He’ll be back. NBC’s gonna go on. Geritol’s gonna go on. It makes me wonder what you hope to accomplish with all this. Even the quiz shows’ll be back. Why fix them? Think about it, will ya? You could do exactly the same thing by just making the questions easier. See, the audience didn’t tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money.
Dick: Imagine if they could watch you.

What if they could? The fix is in. The real one. The one behind the curtains. Enright will fall on the sword.

Mark [to Charles]: Cheating on a quiz show? That’s sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip.

Thanks Dad. On the other hand...

Charles: Dad, I can’t simply just tell them the truth.
Mark: Can’t tell them the truth? Why on earth not?
Charles: Because it’s complicated.
Mark: Complicated? Charlie, from what I understand, it’s just a bunch of frauds showing off an erudition they really didn’t have. All you have to do is…
Charles: The problem is, Dad, is that it seems I was one of those frauds.
Mark [perplexed]: What?
Charles: They gave me the answers.
Mark: They gave you the answers…they gave you the answers?!
Charles: Well, no… no, at first they’d ask me questions they already knew I knew the answers to. We ran through those, and I really didn’t want them to give me the answers, so they gave me the questions and I’d look up the answers on my own, as if that were any different. Well, we ran through those in a couple of weeks and I just didn’t have the time, finally, and it just seemed silly, so…
Mark: They gave you all that money to answer questions they knew you knew…

He's absolutely dumbfounded.

Mark: I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m an old man, it’s all a little difficult for me to comprehend!
Charles: It’s television, Dad. It’s…it’s just…just television…
Mark: You make it sound like you didn’t have a choice!
Charles: What was I supposed to do at that point, disillusion the whole goddamn country?
Mark: Charlie, you took the money!
Charles: Yes, yes, I took the money!
Mark: Is that what this was about?
Charles: No… no, um, I don’t know…
Mark: It was a goddamn quiz show, Charlie.
Charles: An ill-favored thing, sir…
Mark: This is not the time to play games!
Charles: At mine own, it was mine!
Mark: Your name is mine!

He'll come around...

Reporter: Charlie, did you know you’ve been fired by NBC?
Charles: No, no. I didn’t know that.
Reporter: Professor, uh, are you, uh, proud of your son?
Mark: I’ve always been proud of Charlie. The important thing now is for Charlie to get back to his teaching.
Reporter: Did you know that the Columbia Trustees are meeting right now? They’re going to ask for Charlie’s resignation. Professor Van Doren, you spent your whole career at Columbia. What’s your reaction to that? Professor Van Doren?

Oh...

Dick [reacting to Enright’s testimony]: I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is… television is gonna get us.

By the balls, right herb?

Enright [testifying]: The sponsor makes out, the network makes out…the contestants see money they probably would never see in a lifetime…and the public is entertained. So who gets hurt?

That is one way to look at it.

Congressional oversight committee chairman: Do you see a need for government regulation in this area?
Freedman: It’s not like the quiz shows are a public utility, sir. It’s entertainment. We’re not exactly hardened criminals here. We’re in show business.

That is one way to look at it.

Like the song says: If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Here though that get’s complicated. In fact, complications abound every which way they turn. Either on the straight and the narrow or off the beaten path. Love and lust don’t often make those distinctions. But then either way they get all tangled up in…complications.

For some there couldn’t be a better way to earn a living. And for others there couldn’t be one worse. They both seem to like it. It’s just that it ain’t the same when you’re doing it for someone else. So they share the same dream: to have their own place. But that cost money. But lucky for them that they need it or they would never have met. Or maybe unlucky for them.

Anyway, they share a lot of things in common. Had the same barely-scraping-by outdoorsy working class backgrounds. About as close to cowboys as most are likely to get in this day and age. Even if they only do it partime…and occasionally with sheep. And they had to endure all the same hardships…shared all the same experiences. Seen each other naked from time to time. And they both look like, well, Hollywood movie stars.

One thing comes true loud and clear. These guys really did come to love each. Sex was just part of the way they expressed it. But that get’s all tangled up in the options they either do or don’t have. Same with the wives. But then ain’t that basically true for all of us? On the other hand, you can count on one hand the options two men in the closet had for sharing the love they felt back then…smack dab in the middle of some of the reddest most reactionary states in the union.

Michelle Williams requested that her two male leads kiss in front of her to help her get to the right emotional place for her character, Alma. As she was involved with Ledger in real life, too, she felt that such a thing would help with her portrayal. She had to goad both men as their first few attempts were far too half-hearted for her liking.

Heath Ledger declined to go to the one month cowboy camp that had been organized as he had grown up on farms in Western Australia. Jake Gyllenhaal was required to attend, however, as he needed “roughing up”.

One of Daniel Day-Lewis’ favorite films. He cites the reason for this as being Heath Ledger’s performance. After Ledger’s death Day-Lewis dedicated his SAG award for There Will Be Blood (2007) to Ledger’s memory mentioning in particular the final scene in Ennis’ trailer being “as moving as anything I have ever seen”.

There was an audible gasp at the Academy Awards when presenter Jack Nicholson read out Crash (2004) as 2005’s Best Film over this film, much fancied. Nicholson himself admitted to being shocked as he too had voted for Ang Lee’s film. IMDb


Brokeback Mountain

Ennis: We’re supposed to guard the sheep, Jack, not eat them.

On the other hand, who the hell is ever going to find out?

Jack: My momma, she believes in the Pentecost.
Ennis: What exactly is the Pentecost? I mean, my folks, they was Methodists.
Jack: The Pentecost… I don’t… I don’t know what the Pentecost is. I guess it means the world ends and guys like you and me march off to hell.

Unless, of course, it's all bullshit.

Ennis: This is a one-shot thing we got goin’ on here.
Jack: It’s nobody’s business but ours.
Ennis: You know I ain’t queer.
Jack: Me neither.

Too close to call?

Alma: You know, your friend could come inside, have a cup of coffee…
Ennis: He’s from Texas.
Alma: Texans don’t drink coffee?

Do they?

Jack: Ya know it could be like this, just like this always.
Ennis: Yeah, how do you figure that?

In, say, a parallel universe?

Ennis [to Jack]: Now you shut up about Alma. This ain’t her fault. Bottom line is…we’re around each other an’ this thing, it grabs hold of us again at the wrong place at the wrong time and we’re dead.

Love and lust or lust and love?

Ennis: There were these two old guys ranched up together down home, Earl and Rich. They was the joke of town, even though they were pretty tough old birds. Anyway, they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They took a tire iron to him, spurred him up and drug him around by his dick till it pulled off.
Jack: You seen this?
Ennis: Yeah, I was, what, nine years old? My daddy, he made sure me and my brother seen it. Hell, for all I know, he done the job. Two guys livin’ together? No way.

Way?

Ennis: Now, we can get together…once in a while, way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, but…
Jack: Once in a while? Every four fuckin’ years?
Ennis: If you can’t fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it.
Jack: For how long?
Ennis: For as long as we can ride it. There ain’t no reins on this one.

This was 50 years ago. And a long, long way from New York or San Francisco.

Alma: You know, I used to wonder how come you never brought any trouts home. You always said you caught plenty, and you know how me and the girls like fish. So one night I got your reel case open…night before you went on one of your little trips – price tag still on it after five years – and I tied a note to the end of the line. It said, “Hello, Ennis, bring some fish home. Love, Alma.” And then you come back lookin’ all perky and said you’d caught a bunch of brownies and you ate them up. Do you remember? I looked in the case first chance I got and there was my note still tied there. That line hadn’t touched water in its life.
Ennis: That don’t mean nothin’, Alma.
Alma: Don’t try to fool me no more, Ennis, I know what it means. Jack Twist.

And we certainly do.

Ennis: You ever get the feelin’… I don’t know, er… when you’re in town and someone looks at you all suspicious, like he knows? And then you go out on the pavement and everyone looks like they know too?
Jack [casually]: Well… maybe you oughta get out of there, you know? Find yourself someplace different. Maybe Texas.
Ennis [sarcastically]: Texas? Sure, maybe you can convince Alma to let you and Lureen to adopt the girls. And we can just live together herding sheep. And it’ll rain money from LD Newsome and whiskey’ll flow in the streams - Jack, that’s real smart.
Jack: Go to hell, Ennis. If you wanna live your miserable fuckin’ life, then go right ahead.

Options. It always comes down to that. It's not what you want so much as can you get it.

Jack: You know friend, this is a god damn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation. You used to come away easy. Now it’s like seein’ the Pope.
Ennis: Jack, I gotta work. Huh? Them earlier days I just quit the job. You forget what it’s like bein’ broke all the time. You ever hear of child support? I’ll tell you this, I can’t quit this one. And I can’t get the time off. It was hard enough gettin’ this time.

See what I mean?

Ennis (approaches till he’s in Jack’s face.): Well, have you been to Mexico, Jack? ‘Cause I hear what they got in Mexico for boys like you.
Jack: Hell yes, I been to Mexico. Is that a fuckin’ problem?
Ennis: I’m gonna tell you this one time, Jack fuckin’ Twist. And I ain’t foolin’. What I don’t know, all them things that I don’t know, could get you killed if I come to know them. I ain’t jokin’.
Jack: Yeah well, try this one, and I’ll say it just once.
Ennis: Go ahead.
Jack: Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together, fuckin’ real good life, had us a place of our own. But you didn’t want it, Ennis! So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everything’s built on that. That’s all we got, boy, fuckin’ all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rest.
Ennis: God damn it.
Jack: You count the damn few times that we have been together in nearly 20 years. Measure the short fuckin’ leash you keep me on, and then you ask me about Mexico and you tell me you’ll kill me for needin’ somethin’ I don’t hardly never get. You got no idea how bad it gets. And I’m not you. I can’t make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year. You are too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch. I wish I knew how to quit you.
Ennis (stricken, weeping): Then why don’t you? Why don’t you let me be, huh? It’s because of you, Jack, that I’m like this. I’m nothin’. I’m nowhere.
(Jack attempts to hug Ennis but is pushed away)
Ennis: Get the fuck off me!

So, how much is beyond your control in your own life?

Lureen [to Ennis]: He always said he wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but I wasn’t sure where that was. I thought Brokeback Mountain might be around where he grew up. Knowing Jack, it was probably some pretend place, where bluebirds sing and there’s a whiskey spring…

Maybe in the next life...

Lena Mathers is easily one of the most fascinating and repulsive characters you are ever likely to bump into up on the screen. She might be described as a schizophrenic, amoral nihilist with a June Cleaver complex.

Here is someone who as a child is stuck out in the middle of nowhere. Her family and friends are born and bred for the Heartland but she is aiming for something better. So she decides to reinvent herself. She decides to become as far removed from that as it is possible to go. She trades in her drop dead gorgeous looks for a far more sophisticated and cultured persona. Then she sets out to trade that in for a man.

And this poor son of a bitch has hell to pay when he starts to question his own part. His part being Ward Cleaver, apparently.

This one has dasein written all over it. But it explores the frame of mind of someone who becomes more fully aware of just how our identities do become fabricated in the past. And not by us. But in doing so they come to figure out how in turn they can also be refabricated into the future. Then the only question [here] is this: just how fucking nuts is she?

Here’s the thing about Lena. She has come to understand her own identity in a particular way. It seems reasonable to her to think of identity in this manner. She can’t just think of it in another way instead. But here it also becomes apparent that Lena is malevolent. Even malicious to those who try to rescript the narrative.

Now, try to imagine that she is not malevolent and malicious. They almost never create characters like that though.


Dream Lover

Ray: Can I come up, I mean just for five minutes?
Lena: It wouldn’t take five minutes.

More like five hours. And that's just the first time.

Lena [to Ray]: Look, just cause I’m halfway pretty guys look in my eyes and think they know me. Like I’m their fantasy. I’m just a regular screwed-up person. So when you say I’m beautiful it’s like you’re not seeing me at all.
Ray: Yes I am.
Lena: No.
Ray: “Only God, my dear, can love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair.” Yeats.
[Lena smiles]

And it won't be for the last time.

Ray: Two years.
Lena: I never thought…it would be possible for me to have such a normal life. I mean doesn’t life feel at times like a very strange dream?

Off to the carnival!

Ray: Have I met Debby?
Lena: No, but she’s great. It’s her husband. He’s an unusual combination. He’s a psychopath and he’s boring.

Debby? Lena actually hired her to play her best friend at the wedding.

Ray [showing a photo]: Do you know her?
Buddy: Sissy. Hope she’s nothin’ to you.
Ray: She’s my wife.
Buddy: Figures. Did she run off and leave you?
Ray: No.
Buddy: Well, give it time.
Ray: Is that what she did to you?
Buddy: She did things to me I can’t even pronounce.

Talk about an actor who "looks the part"!

Ray [to Lena]: I’m in the CIA?

No, really, that's what Lena told Mom and Dad.

Ray: You’re parents seem like perfectly decent people. Why’d you hide them?
Lena: They’re stuck. In Texas, in poverty. Can’t you feel it. This weight dragging me down. If I’d stayed there I would have married that guy Buddy. I would’ve had his kids, would have drunk beer every night till I got fat, ugly and bored. So I invented myself. I made up Lena Mathers and I became her. They say you replace every molecule in your body every seven years. I changed my name eight years ago. No more Thelma Sneeder. Aren’t you going to give me credit for it? Doesn’t it seem brave that I became this completely different person.
Ray: It makes me look at you in a completely different way.
Lena: Me or you? Isn’t the real question, who are you? Are you really Ray Reardon, or is that the name your parents hung on you? Oh, you’ve always been a good boy. You’ve always gone along with who Ray was supposed to be, done what Ray was supposed to do, but who are you?

See what I mean? It’s a fascinating way to look at life…at the roles you play in it. But you can clearly see all sorts of ways that can be abused.

Ray: You hired a temp to be your friend?
Lena: A person’s supposed to have friend, right? Everyone has friends.

So, how much do you pay your friends?

Lena: You see, it wans’t just that I became Lena and Lena happened to meet you. I chose you. I first saw you five years ago in New York. I saw you at a party. I saw you and somehow I knew.
Ray: So you pretended to…
Lena: Just a few things. Just the outside. It’s like putting on new clothes or a new perfume.
Ray: Personality is a perfume?
Lena: Sure. Perfume is something you use to attract somebody but it’s not the thing you fall in love with…is it?
Ray [bewildered]: I don’t know.
Lena: Is this the end?
Ray: I can’t keep opening my heart to you and getting…
Lena: Isn’t that what love is? I don’t mean passion. Love. Isn’t an act of faith loving someone despite having to put up with things which are intolerable. Opening your heart again and again?

New thread?

Ray: You threw away the bill.
Lena: What bill?
Ray: HOTEL CHANTECLEER EVERY FUCKING WEDNESDAY!
Lena: I threw it away.

Cool, calm and collected...as always.

Ray: What about the kids? Are they mine? Do you know?
Lena: Of course I do.
Ray: Whose are they? I loved them and I raised them.
Lena: Yes, you have. But I’m still not going to tell you.
[he punches her]

And then just like that everything changes. She’s got him. At least for now. But there’s a flaw in her plan.

Ray: What if I fly into a rage and attack you?
Lena: You’re sedated.
Ray: I am? I don’t feel sedated.
Lena: That’s because you’re crazy.

Maybe, but there's still that flaw in her plan.

Lena: I just want to say that in spite of everything, I love you. I really, truly love you. You’ve seen who I really am…more than anybody ever. And you kept on loving me.
Ray: You’re a psychopath.
Lena [sighing]: Probably. A psychopath can still love somebody, can’t they?

That's logical, right?

Lena: I came because of a bullshit call from Elaine. There’s a flaw in my plan?
Ray: Speaking of plans, are really going to New Zealand with Larry?
Lena: Larry? When I’m done with him, he’ll wish he was you.

I guess we'll never know. Why? Because he follows through with his plan.

Lena: You still don’t have the faintest clue who I am or what I do.
Ray: Likewise. I’ve been sleepwalking my whole life and you’ve woken me up, and I feel alive now.
Lena: You’re fucked.
Ray: Yes, but I’m alive and inspired. You saw your plan with such clarity, such ruthlessness. And you deserve to know the flaw in your plan. You were so good at it. And you might want to do it again.
Lena: Okay, tell me.
Ray: Kiss me first. Kiss me and I’ll tell. Only it has to be a real kiss…something to remember.

Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Lena: You don’t have the guts. What about the consequences?
Ray: There are no consequences. That’s the flaw in your plan. I’m crazy. You’ve driven me crazy.
Lena: That was the whole idea.
Ray: Well, crazy people aren’t responsible. Crazy people aren’t legally responsible.

It's true, of course. And she pays the ultimate price because of it. Of course, what he hadn’t counted on is that, in order to defeat her, he had to become her.

Materialism

“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” Bertrand Russell

Next up: the lucky ones who can't afford them?

“Nothing teaches us about the preciousness of the Creator as much as when we learn the emptiness of everything else.” Charles Spurgeon

Not to mention...oblivion?

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for—in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.” Ellen Goodman

The human condition. At least until the wokers of the world unite. Only next time not around Trump.

“The reality of loving God is loving him like he's a Superhero who actually saved you from stuff rather than a Santa Claus who merely gave you some stuff.” Criss Jami

Killosophy, let's call it.

“If money’s the God people worship, I’d rather go worship the Devil instead.” Jess C Scott

Pick two:
1] Donald Trump
2] Elon Musk
Now put them in the right order.

“Constantly exposing yourself to popular culture and the mass media will ultimately shape your reality tunnel in ways that are not necessarily conducive to achieving your Soul Purpose and Life Calling. Modern society has generally ‘lost the plot’. Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually aware life.” Anthon St. Maarten

Remember when that didn't include what we do?

Words

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.” John Greenleaf Whittier

And what might that be?

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Rudyard Kipling

Of course?

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” Aldous Huxley

Not counting mine, of course.

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino

Name one.

“I like good strong words that mean something…” Louisa May Alcott

Name one.

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” Arundhati Roy

If not flat out loathe you.

Biggie

Pagan

“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.” George Gordon Byron

Next up: those who deny everything and doubt nothing.

“I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent” Arthur Rimbaud

Most wouldn't listen anyway.

“...and Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.” Herman Melville

In other words, come Judgment Day?

“The first time I called myself a 'Witch' was the most magical moment of my life.” Margot Adler

And no more burning them at the stake. At least not around here. At least to the best of my knowledge.

“I know it's late, but could you find a book for me? It's called The Slavs: Study of Pagan Tradition by Osvintsev."
Barabas sighed dramatically. "Kate, you make me despair. Let's try that again from the top, except this time pretend you are an alpha."
"I don't need a lecture. I just need the book."
"Much better. Little more growl in the voice?"
"Barabas!"
"And we're there. Congratulations!” Ilona Andrews

Now that's bullshit. Unless, of course, it's not.

“Professor Langdon,' called a young man with curly hair in the back row, 'if Masonry is not a secret society, not a corporation, and not a religion, then what is it?'
'Well, if you were to ask a Mason, he would offer the following definition: Masonry is a system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.'
'Sounds to me like a euphemism for "freaky cult." '
'Freaky, you say?'
'Hell yes!' the kid said, standing up. 'I heard what they do inside those secret buildings! Weird candlelight rituals with coffins, and nooses, and drinking wine out of skulls. Now that's freaky!'
Langdon scanned the class. 'Does that sound freaky to anyone else?'
'Yes!' they all chimed in.
Langdon feigned a sad sigh. 'Too bad. If that's too freaky for you, then I know you'll never want to join my cult.'
Silence settled over the room. The student from the Women's Center looked uneasy. 'You're in a cult?'
Langdon nodded and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. 'Don't tell anyone, but on the pagan day of the sun god Ra, I kneel at the foot of an ancient instrument of torture and consume ritualistic symbols of blood and flesh.'
The class looked horrified.
Langdon shrugged. 'And if any of you care to join me, come to the Harvard chapel on Sunday, kneel beneath the crucifix, and take Holy Communion.'
The classroom remained silent.
Langdon winked. 'Open your minds, my friends. We all fear what we do not understand.” Dan Brown

Yep, that Dan Brown.

Words

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been'.” John Greenleaf Whittier

And what might that be?

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Rudyard Kipling

Of course?

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” Aldous Huxley

Not counting mine, of course.

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” Italo Calvino

Name one.

“I like good strong words that mean something…” Louisa May Alcott

Name one.

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” Arundhati Roy

If not flat out loathe you.

Rachel Cusk from Outline

“As it happened, I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even self-definition. I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read something I admired, I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.” Rachel Cusk.

Let alone the fucking bots.

Sometimes it has seemed to me that life is a series of punishments for such moments of unawareness, that one forges one’s own destiny by what one doesn’t notice or feel compassion for; that what you don’t know and don’t make the effort to understand will become the very thing you are forced into knowledge of.

MAGA and DOGE being just the latest.

The human capacity for self-delusion is apparently infinite – and if that is the case, how are we ever meant to know, except by existing in a state of absolute pessimism, that once again we are fooling ourselves?

Not to mention all the suckers.

There was a great difference, I said, between the things I wanted and the things I could apparently have, and until I had finally and forever made my peace with that fact, I had decided to want nothing at all.

Here? Considerably less than that, for starters.

People are least aware of others when demonstrating their own power over them.

Let's explain that.
Again.

'You could spend your whole life’, she said, ‘trying to trace events back to your own mistakes'.

Or God's.

The head and the heart. So near yet so far. Sometimes, as Woody Allen once quipped, they refuse to speak at all. To each other, in other words. We find ourselves being tugged emotionally towards those we know in our head we must keep at a distance. And to explore the dynamics of this is often futile. We simply cannot know the lives that others live.

But then we begin to grasp how the feelings we have for others are predicated by and large on who we have come to think they are. And who they think they are may well be the genuine embodiment of introspection. They are sincere in their beliefs. Beliefs that you [and many others] find repulsive. Does that make it better or worse?

This is about love. Easily one of the most complex exchanges we can engage in. Either intellectually or emotionally. All the more so here because their lives are at a distance in so many ways…ways neither of them are really able to come to grips with. Michael in particular. Gender, age, class, education, experience.

And then the war…

An entirely new kind of present. And it will reconfigure forevermore [and for millions upon millions] the relationship between the past and the future. But the past and the present are experienced differently by each of us. It all gets tangled up in perspective, in options, in the past before that, in conflicting narratives about the future.

It’s a strange world. He knows she is guilty of being a part of a terrible crime but not in the manner in which she allows herself to be accused. She is convicted of being in charge only because she is too ashamed to admit to the court that she is illiterate. The others get four years. She gets life. He knows all this but says nothing to the court. Why? Then the audio books, the letters he refuses to respond to.

And then she is to be released. But then she doesn’t make it. Through of her own volition. In part because of Michael’s reaction.

This is a tough one. There is what she did. There is the manner in which she rationalized it. And there are the judgments from the rest of them.

Before Hanna commits suicide by hanging in her prison cell, the books that Michael read to her are used as a platform. IMDb


The Reader

Hanna [to Michael]: So. That’s why you came back.

Certainly one of the reasons.

Teacher: The notion of secrecy is central to western literature. You may say, the whole idea of character is defined by people holding specific information which for various reasons, sometimes perverse, sometimes noble, they are determined not to disclose.

Of course, you might disclose something altogether different.

Michael: I didn’t mean to upset you.
Hanna: You don’t have the power to upset me. You don’t matter enough to upset me.

Watch that change.

Michael [to Hanna]: I don’t know what to say. I’ve never been with a woman. We’ve been together four weeks and I can’t live without you. I can’t. Even the thought of it kills me.

Watch that change.

Hanna [to Michael]: We’re changing the order we do things. Read to me first, kid. Then we make love.

Little does he know...

Michael [reading to Hanna]: “Lady Chatterley felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her…”
Hanna: This is disgusting. Where did you get this?
Michael: I borrowed it from someone at school.
Hanna: Well, you should be ashamed.
[pauses]
Hanna: Go on

Next up: come again!

Judge: Your name is Hanna Schmitz?
Hanna: Yes.
Judge: Can you speak louder please?
Hanna: My name is Hanna Schmitz.
[it is then that Michael realizes it is his Hanna.]
Judge: Thank you. You were born on October 21st, 1922? At Hermannstadt. And you’re now 43 years old?
Hanna: Yes.
Judge: You joined the SS in 1943?
Hanna: Yes. I was working at Siemens when I heard the SS was recruiting.
Judge: Did you know the kind of work you’d be expected to do?
Hanna: They were looking for guards. I applied for a job.
Judge: And you worked first at Auschwitz?
Hanna: Yes.
Judge: Until 1944. Then you were moved to a smaller camp near Cracow?
Hanna: Yes.
Judge: You then helped move prisoners west in the winter of 1944…in the so-called death marches.

Part two. And it’s an entirely different movie.

Professor Rohl: Societies think they operate by something called morality, but they don’t. They operate by something called law. You’re not guilty merely by working at Auschwitz. 8000 people worked at Auschwitz. Precisely 19 have been convicted, and only 6 of murder. To prove murder you have to prove intent. That’s the law. The question is never “Was it wrong”, but “Was it legal”. And not by our laws, no. By the laws at the time.

Let's run this by Donald Musk and Clarence Roberts.

Judge: Did you not realise you were sending these women to their deaths?
Hanna: Yes but there were new arrivals, new women were arriving all the time, so of course we had to move some of the old ones on.
Judge: I’m not sure you understand…
Hanna: We couldn’t keep everyone. There wasn’t room.
Judge: No, but what I’m saying: let me rephrase: to make room, you were picking women out and saying `You you and you have to be sent back to be killed.’
Hanna: Well, what would you have done?

Even from the perspective of an SS guard there is the reality of options. To make room for new arrivals some will be killed. Some must be killed. If Hanna had not made the selection the selection is still made. No one is spared once the policy is in place…and then enforced.

Ilana Mather [testifying in court]: Each of the guards would choose a certain number of women. Hanna Schmitz chose differently.
Judge: In what way differently?
Ilana Mather: She had favourites. Girls, mostly young. We all remarked on it, she gave them food and places to sleep. In the evening, she asked them to join her. We all thought - well, you can imagine what we thought. Then we found out - she was making these women read aloud to her. They were reading to her. At first we thought this guard…this guard is more sensitive… she’s more human…she’s kinder. Often she chose the weak, the sick, she picked them out, she seemed to be protecting them almost. But then she dispatched them. Is that kinder?

They railroad her.

Dieter: Six women locked three hundred Jews in a church, and let them burn. What is there to understand? Tell me, I’m asking: what is there to understand? I started out believing in this trial, I thought it was great, now I think it’s just a diversion. You choose six women, you put them on trial, you say They were the evil ones, they were the guilty ones'. Brilliant! Because one of the victims happened to write a book! That's why they're on trial and nobody else. Do you know how many camps there were in Europe? People go on about how much did everyone know? Who knew?’ What did they know?' That isn't the question. The question is How could you let it happen?’ And - better - `Why didn’t you kill yourself when you found out?’ Thousands! That’s how many. There were thousands of camps. Everyone knew!!

Yeah, what about that?

Professor Rohl: You have been skipping seminars.
Michael: I have a piece of information, concerning one of the defendants. Something they are not admitting.
Professor Rohl: What information? You don’t need to tell me. It’s perfectly clear you have a moral obligation to disclose it to the court.
Michael: It happens this information is favorable to the defendant. It can help her case. It may even affect the outcome, certainly the sentencing.
Professor Rohl: So?
Michael: There’s a problem. The defendant herself is determined to keep this information secret.
Professor Rohl: What are her reasons?
Michael: Because she’s ashamed.
Professor Rohl: Ashamed of what? Have you spoken to her?
Michael: Of course not.
Professor Rohl: Why “of course not”?
Michael: I can’t. I can’t do that. I can’t talk to her.
Professor Rohl: What we feel isn’t important. It’s utterly unimportant. The only question is what we do. If people like you don’t learn from what happened to people like me, then what the hell is the point of anything?

Essentially? Well, what if there isn't one?

Hanna [as an old woman, to Michael]: It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter what I think. The dead are still dead.

Sure, just leave it at that.

Ilana: People ask all the time what I learned in the camps. But the camps weren’t therapy. What do you think these places were? Universities? We didn’t go there to learn. One becomes very clear about these things. What are you asking for? Forgiveness for her? Or do you just want to feel better yourself? My advice, go to the theatre, if you want catharsis. Please. Go to literature. Don’t go to the camps. Nothing comes out of the camps. Nothing.

Next up: Elon Trump's camps. What will come from them?

Julia [seeing a name on a gravestone]: Hanna Schmitz. Who was she?
Michael: That’s what I wanted to tell you. That’s why we’re here
Julia: So tell me.
Michael [going back]: I was fifteen. I was coming home from school. I was feeling ill. And a woman helped me…

...to, uh, lose his virginity?

The personal is political. And at no time was that point being driven home more forcefully than in 1968. And the years just before and after. And it was only a matter of time before the cinema began taking its cues from this. And then coming up with cues of its own. On and off the screen. How does that really work though?

And, sure, it is always going to include the chunks of feckless naivete that is idealism. Especially for a brother and a sister who live largely in a made-up world. They spout all the right political slogans and embrace the revolution swirling about them out in the world. But they are not really a part of it at all.

The New Wave. In Europe. For music it began in the 1980s. For film, it began in the 1960s. Whatever the hell “new wave” really means.

And more about sex and love. Sometimes between the three of them. And sometimes between the two of them. Between the brother and sister. Between the brother and sister and their newfound friend.

What does it mean to go too far though?

In any event, back in 1968, if you put three passionate and opinionated young people together alone in a house for days on end [with this sort of sexual dynamic] there is bound to be friction. And because they discuss so many different subjects [politics, the arts, the war, religion] the friction may not be contained. It might boil over into [or create] its own reality. How else to explain Isabelle turning on the gas.

First film since Orgazmo (1997) that was released theatrically in the US with a NC-17 rating. Even with its NC-17 rating, major theater circuits like Regal and AMC agreed to show this film.

There were scenes in the script depicting much more blatant sexual relations between the characters of Matthew and Theo, but they were not filmed. Director Bernardo Bertolucci said, “The gay sex was in the first script, but I had a feeling that it was just too much stuff. It became redundant.” Actor Michael Pitt said in an interview, “It was in the script and it’s what I’d signed to do. But they said we weren’t going to do that.”

Director Bernardo Bertolucci was so impressed how the actors so naturally acted naked, he penned an uncredited lengthy extra scene in the script where all three main actors are overtly nude. It ended up on the cutting room floor. IMDb



The Dreamers

Matthew [voiceover]: The first time I saw a movie at the cinématèque française I thought, “Only the French… only the French would house a cinema inside a palace.” The movie was Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor. Its images were so powerful, it was like being hypnotized. I was 20 years old. It was the late '60 s and I’d come to Paris for a year to study French. But it was here that I got my real education. I became a member of what in those days was kind of a free masonry. A free masonry of cinephiles…what we’d call “film buffs.”

Buck naked film buffs as often as not.

Matthew [voiceover]: I was one of the insatiables. The ones you’d always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they’d been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist’s cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us…from the world.

Hey, whatever works.

Matthew [voiceover]: I could hear my heart pounding. I don’t know if it was because I’d just been chased by the police… or because I was already in love with my new friends. As we walked, we talked and talked and talked about politics, about movies, and about why the French could never come close to producing a good rock band.

That's true, isn't it?

George [father]: When we look around us, what is it we see? Complete chaos. Yet viewed from above…viewed, as it were, by God… everything suddenly fits together. My children believe that their demonstrations and sit-ins and happenings…what, they believe that these possess the capacity… not only to provoke society, but also to transform it.
Theo: What is it you’re saying? If Langlois is dismissed, we shouldn’t do anything? If immigrants are deported, if students are beaten up, we shouldn’t do anything?
George: What I’m saying is that a little lucidity would not go amiss.
Theo: So, uh, everyone’s wrong but you? In France, in Italy, Germany, America?
George: Listen to me, Theo. Before you can change the world… you must realize you yourself are part of it. You cannot stand outside looking in.
Theo: You’re the one who stands outside. You’re the one who refused to sign a petition against the Vietnam War.
George: Poets don’t sign petitions. They sign poems.
Theo: A petition is a poem.
George: Yes! And a poem is a petition. Thank you, but I’m not gaga yet. I don’t need you to remind me of my own work!
Theo: That’s right. A petition is a poem, a poem is a petition. Those are the most famous lines you ever wrote. And now look at you.

So, who won? Well, anyway, we know who pays all the bills.

Theo: Do you want to use my toothbrush?
Matthew: Uh, no.

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

Theo [reading from a book]: “The difference between Keaton and Chaplin…is the difference between prose and poetry…between the aristocrat and the tramp…between eccentricity and mysticism… between man as a machine and man as animal.” Not bad, huh?
Matthew: That’s good. Except for me, there’s no comparison.
Theo: Why? 'Cause Chaplin’s incomparable?
Matthew: No. Because Keaton is incomparable.
Theo: Keaton?! You think Keaton’s greater than Chaplin?
Matthew: Absolutely I do. In the first place, you can’t deny that Keaton’s funnier than Chaplin.
Theo: Yes, I can.
Matthew: You don’t think that Keaton is funnier than Chaplin?
Theo: I don’t think anyone’s funnier than Chaplin.
Matthew: Keaton is! Even when he’s not doing anything, he’s funny. And he looks like Godard. Keaton is a real filmmaker. Chaplin, all he cares about is his own performance… his own ego.
Theo: That’s bullshit. You Americans understand fuck-all about your own culture!

Let's run this by Rod Serling.

Theo: Listen, when Chaplin wanted to have a beautiful shot, he knew how. Better than Keaton, better than anybody. You remember the last shot of City Lights? He looks at the flower girl, she looks at him… and don’t forget, she’d been blind… so she was seeing him for the very first time. It’s as if, through her eyes, we also see him for the very first time. Charlie Chaplin, Charlot, the most famous man in the world… and it’s as if we’ve never really seen him before.

All fractured and fragmented as it were.

Theo and Isabelle [in the manner of Freaks]: We accept you, one of us! One of us! One of us!

To wit: https://youtu.be/39Bnk6VU53Y?si=HPmJkQSfvET9kkyk
Next up: the equivalent of that here?

Theo: Don’t you have any brothers or sisters?
Matthew: I have two older sisters.
Theo: Didn’t you ever want to strangle them?
Matthew: Of course I did! But I never masturbated in front of them, and I never… They never forced me to do anything I never wanted to do.
Theo: You think Isabelle forced me, do you?

So, what could she force you to do?

Isabelle [finding her photograph wrapped around his nearly erect penis]: Oh how sweet of you Mathew to keep my image next to your heart.

So, where would you keep it?

Matthew: I thought you had many lovers. I mean when I saw you for the first time, at the Cinématheque, you and Theo, you looked so cool, so sophisticated. Like a movie star.
Isabelle: I was. I was acting, Matthew.

A dame to kill for, as it were.

Matthew [about Theo]: Has he never been inside of you?
Isabelle: He’s always inside of me.

All in the family as it were.

Theo: Clapton is God, Mathew.
Matthew: I don’t believe in God, but if I did, he would be a black, left-handed guitarist. This is not Chaplin and Keaton. This is Clapton and Hendrix.
Theo: Matthew, Clapton reinvented the electric guitar.
Matthew: Clapton plugs in a guitar, he plugs in an electric guitar and he plays it like an acoustic guitar. Hendrix plugs in an electric guitar, he plays it with his teeth. There are soldiers in the Vietnam War right now. Who are they listening to? Clapton? No, they’re listening to Hendrix. The guy who tells the truth.

Hendrix and the Doors of course.

Matthew: I don’t want to be loved very much. I want to be loved.
Isabelle: You know what someone once said? “There’s no such thing as love. There are only proofs of love.” Are you ready to give us proof of your love?

Oh yeah!

Isabelle: It’s just a game!
Matthew: A game, Isabelle? A game? Think about it. Think about it. Is this something you do to each other? You want to shave my pubic hair? You want me to be a little boy for you? A little prepubescent Theo at six, who you can play games with? You can touch peepee. I’ll show you mine. You show me yours. Come on! Come on!
Theo: Just calm down. We hear you.
Matthew: Theo, think about it. Think. You sleep in the same bed together, every night. You bathe together. You pee in the john together. You play these little games. I wish you could step out of yourselves and just look.
Isabelle: Why? Why are you so cruel?
Matthew: Because I love you.
Isabelle: You have a strange way of showing it.
Matthew: No, I love…I really love you. Both of you. And I admire you. And I look at you, and I listen to you and I think…you’re never gonna grow. You won’t grow like this. You won’t. Not as long as you keep clinging to each other the way that you do.

Unless, of course, it's all scripted.

Matthew [voiceover]: When I looked at the TV screen I remembered the battle of the Cinemateque. Except this time the demonstrators weren’t film buffs. They weren’t even just students any longer. It was hard to figure out what was happening…but it looked like shops had closed their doors, factories had gone on strike. And it was beginning to spread all over Paris.

Now what's spreading all over Paris? And Germany too. In fact the whole fucking world for that matter.

Theo [reading aloud from a book]: A revolution isn’t a gala dinner. It cannot be created like a book, a drawing or a tapestry. It cannot unfold with such elegance, tranquility and delicacy. Or such sweetness, affability. Courtesy, restraint and generosity. A revolution is an uprising, a violent act by which one class overthrows another.

And that’s it for him: words in a book. To wit:

Theo: You’re a big movie buff, right?
Matthew: Oui.
Theo: Then why don’t you think of Mao as a great director…making a movie with a cast of millions. All those millions of Red Guards marching together into the future with the Little Red Book in their hands. Books, not guns. Culture, not violence. Can’t you see what a beautiful, epic movie that would make?
Matthew: I guess, but it’s easy to say, “Books, not guns.” But it’s not true. It’s not books. It’s “book.” A book. Just one book.
Theo: Shut up. You sound just like my father.
Matthew: No, no. No, listen to me. The Red Guards that you admire…they all carry the same book…they all sing the same songs… they all parrot the same slogans. So in this big, epic movie everybody is an extra. That’s scary to me. That gives me the creeps. I’m sorry to say it, but for me there is a distinct contradiction. If you really believed what you were saying you’d be out there.
Theo: Where?
Matthew: Out there, on the street.
Theo: I don’t know what you mean.
Matthew: Yes, you do. There’s something going on out there. Something that feels like it could be really important. Something that feels like things could change. Even I get that. But you’re not out there. You’re inside, with me, drinking expensive wine, talking about film. Talking about Maoism. Why?
Theo: Okay. That’s enough.
Matthew: No, tell me why. Ask yourself why.
Theo: That’s enough!

Let's run this by Sartre and Camus.

Matthew: Listen to me for a second, okay, Theo? Violence is what they do. It is not what we do.
[Matthew points to his head]
Matthew: We use this. We use this.
[he kisses Isabelle]
Matthew: We do this.
[he kisses Theo]
Theo: Stop it!
Matthew: Isabelle. Come on. Isabe…

Oh the fucking irony. Gas in the house. Gas on the streets. And a check from Papa.

Marshall McLuhan

“Some days, I wish the whole fucking world would just 'phone in sick'.”

Then going all the way back to the Big Bang.

Someone asked me if I really believed there was life after death. I replied: Do you really believe there is any life before death?

Kind of, sure.

Our permanent address is tomorrow.

And how about now, Marshall?

There is an impression abroad that literary folk are fast readers. Wine tasters are not heavy drinkers. Literary people read slowly because they sample the complex dimensions and flavors of words and phrases. They strive for totality not linearity. They are well aware that the words on the page have to be decanted with the utmost skill. Those who imagine they read only for "content" are illusioned.

I suspect some more than others.

The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.

So, how close to that have you ever gotten?

I expect to see the coming decades transform the planet into an art form; the new man, linked in a cosmic harmony that transcends time and space, will sensuously caress and mold and pattern every facet of the terrestrial artifact as if it were a work of art, and man himself will become an organic art form.

Really? Imagine then his reaction to Donald Musk.

This is the world we live in. Children [orphans here] with almost nothing having to rely on the money their benefactor might be able to wrangle from some billionaire thousands of miles away. In other words, a world where the suffering endured by all chilren afflicted with poverty could easily be vanquished if only those who run the world had the political will to vanquish it. Especially since God doesn’t seem inclined to.

Not that the point here is to focus on extraneous stuff like that. It’s got a more important aim: to explore the trial and tribulations swirling about a family bursting at the seams with affluence.

But Jacob [who runs the orphanage on the brink of bankruptcy in the Indian hellhole] comes from that world. The two worlds could not be farther removed. Or given the context of our global economy more closely linked. But this is a whole different relationship between the personal and the political.

Over and over and over again people find themselves in predicaments like this. They confront “goods” that are at odds and they must somehow stuff the life that they live into the least calamitous leap. Someone will be hurt [even devastated] no matter what is done. And so they choose one set of consequences rather than the other. Or they somehow manage to bring the two goods into an alignment of sorts. But here they must have the cooperation of others who refuse any commitment other than “the right thing to do”. Or one in which this involves only what is in it for them.

Meanwhile Pramod and all the orphans back in that Indian hellhole? Their calamities seem to pale by comparison. After all, the check has already been written.


After the Wedding

Pramod: Are there only rich people where you are going?
Jacob: Yes. But some have more than others.
Pramod: If I was rich, I’d be happy.
Jacob: I know you would, Pramod, but people there are very ignorant.
Pramod: You hate all the rich, Mr Jacob. Is it because the houses are far apart that people are far apart?
Jacob: Yes.

It's actually a bit more convoluted.

Christian: Jorgen’s fantastic. He’s brilliant, really brilliant. People often fear him, but I don’t.
Jacob: Good.
Christian: He’s worth over a billion but started out flat broke…but you can’t tell.
Jacob: That he started flat broke?
Christian: No, no.
[nervous laughter]

Then he gets caught fucking around. By Anna no less.

Jorgen: You have a video that can give me a sense of what goes on in the orphanage?
Jacob: It will take more than a video to show you that.
Jorgen: Meaning?
Jacob: Bombay has over a million child prostitutes. Four or five times that suffer from malnutrition. Then there are those who die every day from minor illnesses, minor infections that could be cured for tiny sums if only the government had the will.

Jorgen is quickly bored with all this though. But then the fuss here is over paternity. For some this can be the really, really important thing.

For others, however, even more so.

Helene: We thought he was dead. We didn’t think he existed.
Anna: You’re still lying.
Helene: I'm not lying. Jorgen tried to find him in India lots of times. Jacob was a big, immature child! He fucked everything with a pulse. He was drinking himself to death. He did drugs. He had grand ideas, but did nothing. He probably means well, but you can’t trust him. He wants to save everyone, but…
Anna: I don’t care if he fucked a goat. I have a right to know who my father is.

A natural right some call it.
But not everyone.

Jacob: 12 million dollars?
Jorgen: 12 million dollars. That will cover a whole year for 65,000 children. Including room, board, school and administration. 65,000 children. That’s more than are born in Denmark in a year.

On the other hand, what's the catch?

Jacob: Jorgen’s offer is very generous but he keeps dragging it out. I want to know what’s going on. If it’s one of your games, I want it to stop.
Helene: Stop being paranoid. You don’t have to be poor to have good intentions. There are people with money and ideals.
Jacob: Really? I’d like to meet one.

No, really, me too.

Helene: You can’t die!
Jorgen: We don’t get to decide that.

We still don't.

Jacob: You don’t know shit about me!
Jorgen: I know all about you. You’re a good person. Naive, but well-intentioned. Except for water projects and some schools in Banglagore not one of your projects has succeeded in the last 15 years. You’re good at finding people to help, but not at financing it. Your orphanage has to close. All your sweet little kids will be out on the street again.
Jacob: You fat pig. Is it fun playing God you fat pig?!

All of what Jorgen says may be true, but the bottom line remains the same: the world that we live in. A world of obscene inequality and corrupt governments bursting at the seams with the stench of crony capitalism.

[Jorgen is rich, powerful and, at 48, about to die]:
Jorgen [in the throes of despair]: I’m so damned pathetic. I don’t want to…I don’t want to die! I don’t, Helene. I don’t want to, damnit! I don’t want to die! I don’t! Damnit! God damn it! I don’t want to die, Helene. Why…?

That’s the thing about having it all though. Death has just got to be all the more agonizing. Especially for those who die this relatively young.