Philosophy Now Forum

The other Internal Affairs. Not the Chinese Internal Affairs. Not the one that is not the Internal Affairs that The Departed is a remake of.

Of course, for some folks it will always be the other way around.

This one is about dirty cops and clean cops too. But the focus is not on moles or rats. Though it’s still about money. And power. That will almost certainly never change.

IAD. The "cops of the cops”. So most IA officiers are both hated and feared by the cops who are not in IA. And this is Los Angeles. Now, the IA commander claims that “contrary to popular opinion” LA cops are some of the cleanest in the nation. But others have their suspicions about that. Besides, what does that really mean anyway?

Some of the shit these cops pull seems okay by me. They skim a little off the top with respect to all the millions of dollars floating around in the drug trade. Or with respect to organized crime. And it’s not like they’re making a bundle just being a cop. Or they pull some strings and get their buddies a job. Mostly misdemeanor stuff in my book.

But then there is Dennis Peck. I know it’s all just scripted here but one suspects that every major police force has a few like him around. He is wired into everything. And he knows everybody. On both sides of the law. You don’t fuck with him though unless you are prepared to be fucked with back. And he hasn’t got what most call moral scruples. Though he is a lot more complex than many would like to admit. Or can admit.

For one thing, he’s got nine kids [from three different marriages] to support. And he loves them. He really does. But it costs a hell of a lot to raise nine kids.

Richard Gere and Andy Garcia reportedly did not get along during filming. Some of the scenes in which they were required to hit each other, particularly the confrontation in the elevator, were allegedly for real. Garcia subsequently refused to attend the wrap party. IMDb

And does it ever show.


Internal Affairs

Dennis [planting a knife on a dead perp]: It’s up to you.

Do the right thing?

Van [weeping]: I didn’t know it was going to be like this.
Dennis: How many cops you know, huh? Got nothing. Divorced, alcoholic, kids won’t talk to them anymore, can’t get it up. Sitting there in their little apartments, alone in the dark, playing lollipop with a service revolver?

Uh, defund them anyway?

Amy: What Oakes said about your fellow officers respecting and honoring you is, as you probably know, complete crap. Most of the cops hate our guts. To the extent that they credit us with having any. They think we’re climbers who went into I.A.D. for the promotions, which is true, not that we necessarily get them. So, they’re polite because they’re afraid of us. That’s all.

Some blue lives matter more than others.

Amy [to Raymond]: You know all the friends you have from the force? You don’t have them anymore.

To say the least.

Arrocas [who wants to hire Dennis to kill his parents]: Can I trust you?
Dennis: Of course you can trust me.
[he leans over and whispers in his ear]
Dennis: I’m a cop.

Think Killer Joe.

Amy [to Raymond]: I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you and Peck both whip them out and I’ll decide whose is bigger.

Officially as it were.

Dennis [regarding Kathleen]: She’s very pretty too. A little skinny for my taste, but they say the skinny ones give good head so…
[Raymond punches him to the ground]
Dennis: OK, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m gonna fuck her for a while and teach her how to come.
Raymond: Get up!
Dennis: Then that way, she can show you what she likes!
[Raymond decks Dennis again]
Dennis: They said you’re a pretty good boxer, Raymond. You’re pretty fucking good.
[coughing blood]
Dennis: Not bad!
Raymond [throws a handkerchief at Peck]: Clean yourself up.
Dennis: Give my best to Kathleen!

Tick, tick, tick...

Dennis: You know what she really wanted? You know? Yeah, I should have guessed. She liked it in the ass, Raymond. That’s right. Right in the fucking ass! Drove her crazy. She came so much, for a second I thought she was going to pass out on me.
[decks Raymond again]
Dennis: You know what they say about Latin fighters, Raymond? You know what they say? Too fucking macho! That’s right. Too fucking macho! They don’t backpedal when they have to. So they’re used up. Young.
[dangles a pair of panties in front of Raymond, then gives them to him]
Dennis: Yeah, why don’t you clean yourself up with that. That’s right. Clean yourself up.

...tick, rick, tick.

Raymond: Get off my bed!
Dennis [about shooting Amy]: Sorry about the dyke, Raymond. Cute little ass.
[Raymond belts him]
Dennis: You’re so fucking easy, Raymond. Like a big baby with buttons all over. I push the buttons.

For real, apparently.

Dennis [draws a knife]: I’m going to miss my children. Gonna miss them.
Raymond: Put the knife down!
[Dennis doesn’t, so Raymond shoots him]
Dennis [to Kathleen]: You think he was aiming for my leg?
[to Raymond]
Dennis: That’s pretty good. You’re pretty good there, Raymond.
Raymond: I’m taking you in.
Dennis: Fuck you! You’re so correct. You don’t feel…
[attempts to get up]
Dennis: …because you do not have children!
[gets up]
Dennis: You don’t know what it’s like. Everything changes when you have children. You don’t think about yourself anymore. You think about nothing but them. You’d go around the world for them, you selfish yuppie!

That's certainly true. He's still a scumbag, of course, but even they can make good points.

I didn’t particularly like either one of them. But I’m not Maureen. Did she pick the right one? Well, let’s just say I think she didn’t pick the wrong one. And that’s about as close as I can come to choosing sides here.

What is amazing though is the transformation that Maureen goes through to reach the point of choosing at all. Before and after the dope? Or before and after Eddie? It’s really remarkable. You hardly recognize her as the same person.

And then there’s Eddie before and after the mental institution. Did they fix him? Put it this way: He thinks he was in there for three month but he was really in there for ten years.

They’re both basically wild and wacky [and somtimes wretched] renegades. It’s just that’s Eddie’s bent takes him out of town from time to time. Only this time it sets into motion some much bigger consequences. Among other things, it changes everything. Or, rather, it puts everything on hold for years to come.

It’s all about love barely able to keep from toppling over and love so well grounded it makes you wish that it would topple over. Though, sure, a lot more complicated than that. I guess you could say they were made for each other.

Word to the wise: Don’t order a Siberian Mist.


She's So Lovely

Maureen [on phone]: Hey, Georgie, it’s me. Yeah. Any sign of him? No?! I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch!! I swear to God, it’s three days again!

If only she knew what was coming...

Shorty: Maureen, I love you, and I know you’re bent, but how many times you gonna do this? It’s not like he’s never disappeared before. You know the drill. Wait it out. All the rest is just blowin’ smoke, baby.

Let's just say she's bent in other ways too.

Eddie: Three dollars. She’s got three dollars in her pocket. She goes to the doctor with a bum carburettor. She’s pregnant, and falls over. It’s all I ever get, Chinese stories. Fables to cover foibles.

He just blurts out things like this...

Eddie [in a cab]: That perfume stinks! I’m not kidding. That perfume reminds me of too many things.
Maureen: Like what?
Eddie: Like a good smell to cover a bad smell. Older women, sweat, my mother…I don’t know. Some other thought, like, something else is goin’ on…another guy or something.
Maureen: Come here. Kiss me, you wacko.

Birds of feather. Only he's got a "condition". And it's 3 or 4 times more debilitating than hers.

Eddie: When you think about it, what an interesting thing a woman is. Tits and ass and… lips, and th…this kills me…hair. Where the fuck did hair come from? What is hair?
Maureen: It’s like nails. Same as nails.
Eddie: Nails? Nails? What kind of nails you got? I don’t have any hair on my nails.

They could go on for hours like this, one suspects.

Eddie: I wanna ask you a question. Don’t answer me until I ask unless you’re clairvoyant. Which you could be, but you haven’t been up until now. You’re just pretending to understand to be polite. You can’t see my thoughts. You can’t understand…You can’t understand my obscurity. Unless you have infrared vision, which…Do you? Can you see in infrared? Can you type 170 words a minute? Can you sew? Can you cook? Can you dance? What can you do? Nothin’. I wanna know. It’s a simple question. What happened to you?
Maureen: I fell.

On Kiefer's fist as I recall.

Eddie: You’re gonna play games with me? Somebody beats you up, and that’s OK? You come in here with your eyes all bloody, and I’m supposed to love you when everything inside me is telling me I’m bein’ lied to! I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch, and that’ll be the beginning and the end of everything.

For ten years, in fact.

Eddie: I’m in trouble. The world’s controlled by a computer and seven women. One has brown hair, one has blonde hair, blue hair, black hair, green hair, one has no hair. Is that seven?
Shorty: What’s the matter, Eddie?
Eddie: Love is so difficult. It’s like horse racing. It’s like perfume. It’s like fog. It’s like kissin’. There is no end to love. Cigarettes, you smoke 'em, you put 'em out.

Like I said, on and on and on he goes, though what he means nobody knows.

Eddie: Jesus Christ. I had a premonition. You know what that is? It has to do with the occult. It was all so clear. There were seven working-class ministers, all in miniskirts. They were working on their computers. Psalm one, psalm two…
Shorty: Eddie. Eddie.
Eddie: Psalm three…
Shorty: Eddie, you know I’m Catholic. You know I don’t like that kind of talk.
Eddie: I’m talking about women, you asshole! I’m talkin’ about nuns! Priests! I’m talkin’ about bad news. I’m talkin’ about love. But there can’t be any love…'cause there aren’t any people. It’s all temporary. I know. I’ve seen it. You get a cold. They turn you in. Did you see how that guy sneezed? Why the hell doesn’t he go home to sneeze? What the fuck is he doing, sneezing in public? He’s got the flu. He’s got cancer. He’s got T.B. He’s got “shititis.” His blowhole is out. Do you know what they do when your blowhole’s out? Nobody wants ya. OK. I wanna buy a drink for everybody. Siberian Mists for everybody. Make mine a double.

Yo, Eddie! Put a lid on it!!

Eddie [in a straitjacket…to Maureen]: I think we ought to start out life old. We have all the pain, and we’re feeble, and we look at our friends, and they’re feeble. But every day we get younger and we have something to look forward to. You start out old and then you get young. You can’t take care of yourself, but…there’s hope. And then, when you reach nineteen, twelve, ten, every day is really a new day…and it’s really a miracle. And then you’re a baby, and you don’t know your life is endin’. You just suck on your mother’s tit and then you die.

That sounds familiar...

Psychiatrist: And your wife? How do you feel about her?
Eddie: I love her.
Psychiatrist: Even though she was the one to turn you in?
Eddie: Yeah.
Psychiatrist: She hasn’t visited you.
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: She hasn’t written?
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: If your wife were to have divorced you, how would that make you feel? Eddie?
Eddie [weeping]: Well, I don’t know how I’d feel. I haven’t seen my wife for a long time, and I don’t know what she’s doing.
Psychiatrist: The reason I’m asking you this is it’s very important for us to know you won’t leave here with any active hostility towards your wife.
Eddie: No.
Psychiatrist: No enmity whatsoever?
Eddie: No, what you…None of what you said.
Psychiatrist: And if your wife were to have stopped loving you, what would you do?

Let’s just say his face says it all.

Maureen: Look, I turned him in, divorced him, married you. I’m just going to talk to him a little bit. Joey, I love this guy, OK? I love you too, but I love him more, and I told you that. Come on. I’m happy with you now. Don’t rock the boat.
Joey: Don’t rock the boat? Oh-ho, that’s too uptown for me, honey. I can’t live like that. What are you sayin’? I love you. Thank you for takin’ me out of the fuckin’ gutter, but I love my first husband more? So please don’t call him because you might rock the boat! What the fuck is that? Rock what…Rock whose boat? Hey, I’m the guy you married, remember? You had a smile, you wore a veil, you said the vows. We didn’t have those babies by osmosis.

You know this can't possibly end well for him.

Joey [to his daughter]: Jean, you want to meet your daddy?
Jean: You mean my real daddy?
Joey: Sure. Everyone should meet their daddy.
Maureen: You’re making a big mistake here, buddy.

It's actually bigger than that.

Joey: All the…All the times you held me. All the fuckin’ laughs we had…All the things we did together. Come on! You can’t tell me you was passin’ time. You can’t tell me that. 'Cause I won’t believe it.
Maureen: Believe it.

Exactly: He rocks the boat.

Eddie: Who is this guy? What do you think of him, Shorty?
Joey [pulling out a gun]: What do you think of this?
Shorty: Hey, Joey. What the hell are you doin’? We came here for dinner. Nobody brought a piece. What are you pullin’ a piece for? It’s not that kind of an evening.

Though it's not like these things are easily predictable.

Jeanie: Hey Daddy, what are you doing?
Joey: Shut up and drink your beer!

And it's not even Miller time.

Maureen [about to leave her family to go off with Eddie]: I’ll get my coat.
Joey: Bullshit! Looks like a lot of fuckin’ bullshit!
Eddie: Hey, don’t blame her! What difference does it make what she says, what she feels, what she thinks? For whatever reason, she belongs to me.

And off they go...

Spy vs. spy. But they are all on the same side here in one important respect: capitalism won. No one is out to bring the system down. There are no communists with manifestos and nuclear warheads. Instead, they are all capitalists intent on spying on each other. Actually, destroying each other.

Cheating in other words. But they all do it and capitalism is nothing if not amoral. Money is money is money. Power is power is power. And this “regular guy” gets to play James Bond. Or so he programed himself to think.

This is the world of high-tech. Information [the right information] is worth its weight in gold. So, folks are hired to get it. But then other folks are hired to stop them from getting it. And that means spies infiltrating the companies that have it and spies intercepting the other spies in order to turn them into [expendable] double agents.

Or that is what we are led to believe is going on.

But then things can get complicated. Really complicated. Suddenly we are in the world of science fiction. Meaning the kind of stuff that generally revolves around “things are not what they seem”. Not even close. And it goes without saying: TRUST NO ONE. Not even yourself. You’re probably not who you think you are anyway. Will this become the nature of “identity” just a few short years [decades] from now?

Fifty years ago, you’d watch a film like this and think, “no way, these things can’t really happen.” Now you watch it and think, “it’s probably already happening.” This is surely what the folks behind the curtains at the NSA are in hot pursuit of. And then the AI components.

The character of Virgil C Dunn would appear to be a reference to the Latin poet Virgil, specifically in Dante’s Divine Comedy it was Virgil who was the guide to Hell and Purgatory, as a non-Christian he was unable to enter Heaven. IMDb


Cypher

Mr.Finster: The stakes in this line of work are very high.
Morgan: I understand.
Mr. Finster: You will be sent to conventions across the country. You will record the speeches. You will have to deceive other people about what you do for a living.
Morgan: Yes. That’s been made very clear.
Mr.Finster: Even your own wife.
Morgan: Yes.
Mr. Finster: You don’t mind lying too much?
Morgan: No…I don’t mind.

After all, our very own fabulist-in-chief already wrote the book here.

Morgan [after receiving his new identy card as Jack Thursby]: What’s he like? What’s his personality?
Mr. Finster: He’s whoever you want him to be.

Not unlike most of us here.

Rita: I do health inspections of hotel restaurants.
Morgan: That sounds interesting.
Rita: No it doesn’t.
Morgan: Do you have an answer for everything?
Rita: Yes.

Let's just say he's in way, way over his head. Though probably no more so than we are.

Morgan: What is really going on?
Rita [with a very long needle]: If you want answers take the shot.

The red needle or the blue needle, as it were.

Morgan: I want to see Rita.
Callaway: That’s not possible.
Morgan: Why not she works for you.
Callaway: She does not work for us.
Morgan: Who does she work for?
Callaway: He works for Sebastian Rooks.
Morgan: Who is Sebastian Rooks?!
Callaway: Sebastian Rooks is a freelance operative who we hired to find out how Digicorp was getting their agents past our neurographs. Then we asked him to send us an agent who wasn’t brainwashed. He delivered you.

On the other hand, who wouldn't be entirely confused by now.

Callaway: I’m sorry, Morgan, but that’s your vision of Jack Thursby, not Digacorps.

On the other hand, who wouldn't be entirely confused by now.

Rita [to Morgan]: As they copy the Sunways files digicorp will think they have won a major victory against their greatest rival. In reality Digicorp is the loser. Sunways is feeding them corrupt data that will sabotage their operations. But make no mistake Mr. Sullivan, Sunways is just as ruthless as Digacorp. Once the operation is complete, they will eliminate you.

My guess: with extreme prejudice.

Rita [to Morgan]: Please, you can trust me.

"So easy to look at, so hard to define", as it were.

Mr Finster [to Morgan]: Remember, I’m the only one you can trust.

Well, that's probably bullshit.

Virgil: You wouldn’t believe the number of times Digacorp has tried to hack into this.
Morgan: Have they ever succeeded?
Virgil: Hell no. This place is tighter than a nun’s asshole.

Tell that to the bots!

Callaway: Did you get a look at him? Did you see Rooks’ face?
Finster: Just Morgan Sullivan, our pawn.
[then it dawns on him]
Callaway: Jesus, he’s Rooks!

No, no, you are entirely justified in being confused.

Words

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape." Michael Ondaatje

The right words, anyway.

Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.” Steve Martin

See what he means?

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." Carl Sagan

Books. Remember them?

“Don't gobblefunk around with words.” Roald Dahl

A made-up word sure. But arern't they all originally.

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.” M.L. Rio

Every other one on some posts.

“We live and breathe words.” Cassandra Clare

When we're not choking on them.

As movies that make you think go, this one is just a light snack. But a really delicious light snack.

And it’s a very clever movie. It’s an independent movie about the making of an independent movie. An independent “horror” film here. One that has a fantastic plot twist at the end.

I didn’t see it coming myself but then I don’t spend much time trying to figure these things out in the course of actually watching a film. I want to be surprised. Just as I want to be amazed in the presence of a great magician.

Four “struggling actors” [in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere] set out to write a screenplay in order to make a film – one like all the other great independent productions they have come to love. And, sure, if it becomes another Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, all the better.

Here’s the thing though: The screenplay that they are writing starts to come true. And before long they are all scared shitless. Or, rather, three of them are.

Then comes the law of unintended consequences.


Baghead

Matt: How did you make the movie so cheap?
Jett: Well, I used my parents camera, a mini dvd camera, shot it in my town, shot it with real light. Hollywood has us convinced that it takes a 100 million dollar budget to make a qualtiy piece of art and that’s a bunch of crap.

And getting crappier all the time.

Michelle Oh, no, Chad and I are just friends.
Catherine: Does he know that?

Nope.

Matt: That’s it! A guy running around in the dark with a bag over his head killing people!

And, as it turned out...

Chad: Swear on your left gonad that you will not have sex with Michelle.
Matt [grabbing his left gonad]: I sear that I am not going to fuck her.
Chad: Fuck who?
[Matt stammers]
Chad: See? You’re all ready trying to…You’re like Bill Clinton!

On the other hand, is Bill Clinton like Jeffery Epstein?

Matt: If someone is playing a fucking trick, they better fess up right now!

Wink, wink.

Jett: This wasn’t supposed to happen!

No, really, it wasn't.

Chad: Matt’s dead…

What do you think? Is he?

Stupidity

“When you will not fly into a [rage] people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies.” Frances Hodgson Burnett

Unless of course the fools deserve it.

“Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.” Terry Pratchett

If you get his drift. And I think I do.

“'I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew that you were second-rate. But I loved you. It's comic when I think how hard I tried to be amused by the things that amused you and how anxious I was to hide from you that I wasn't ignorant and vulgar and scandal-mongering and stupid. I knew how frightened you were of intelligence and I did everything I could to make you think me as big a fool as the rest of the men you knew. I knew that you'd only married me for convenience. I loved you so much, I didn't care. Most people, as far as I can see, when they're in love with someone and the love isn't returned feel that they have a grievance. They grow angry and bitter. I wasn't like that. I never expected you to love me, I didn't see any reason that you should. I never thought myself very lovable. I was thankful to be allowed to love you and I was enraptured when now and then I thought you were pleased with me or when I noticed in your eyes a gleam of good-humored affection. I tried not to bore you with my love; I knew I couldn't afford to do that and I was always on the lookout for the first sign that you were impatient with my affection. What most husbands expect as a right I was prepared to receive as a favor.” W. Somerset Maugham

Let's run this by Charlie Kauffman.

“Irony is wasted on the stupid” Oscar Wilde

Not unlike philosophy, he chortled.

“An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.” Victor Hugo

Anyone here know for sure?

“There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let's name names. You first.

It’s all about the magic.

They are citizens of the United States. But they also inhabit a tiny community out in the vastness of a desert locale in the American Southwest. What some might even call a wasteland. They are, in other words, a colorful and idiosyncratic lot.

But they haven’t seen anything yet: Jasmin Münchgstettner is in, uh, town. And they already have Brenda.

And then the look on Brenda’s face when Jasmin first walks up to the Cafe. Jasmin’s face wet from sweat, Brenda’s from tears.

I think when push comes to shove the film tries to depict what some are talking about with respect to “love and magic” between people. Or maybe not. Of course this is all scripted. And how many people are there in the whole wide fucking world like Jasmin? So, really, it’s just a fairy tale. I mean, come on.

Anyway, you still wish we could live in a world where all folks come [eventually] to interact like this. Unless of course you are, say, one of the Ubermen. But here no one talks about things like race and IQ. It never even occurs to them.

This film also features one of the most beautiful [haunting] songs ever written: https://youtu.be/oCLpLWcX2cg?si=XfHkFRdjj7O4ITL0


Bagdad Cafe [Out of Rosenheim]

Brenda [to Sal]: Mind if I ask you a question? What is that thing up on your shoulders?

Let's just say he is but one of many "colorful characters" here.

Brenda: Sal Sal Sal…you’re such a child. Only problem is I got two children. I don’t need a third.

In one ear and out the other, as I recall.

Jasmin: The center?
Brenda: What center? The shopping center?
Jasmin: Of Bagdad.
Brenda: Of Bagdad? This is it. This is Bagdad.

No, not that one.

Brenda: Don’t tell me that was it, Arnie! I mean, you gotta be kidding! That what I had you come up here for? I don’t believe it! I mean she, she shows up outta nowhere without a car, without a man. She ain’t got nothing but a suitcase filled with men’s clothing. How come? How come she act so funny like she was gonna stay here forever? And with no clothes?! No! I don’t like it! It don’t make no sense at all! No, no, no, no, no! IT DON’T MAKE NO SENSE!!

What did you make of it?

Jasmin: That’s not coffee, it’s brown water.

Don't ask.

Brenda: Go play with your own kids!
Jasmin [softly]: I don’t have any.

Softly. It makes all the difference in the world.

Brenda: Jesus, I hate things that don't make sense.

You know, at first.

Jasmin: Goodbye Miss Brenda.
Brenda: Bye Miss Jasmin.

Back to Germany? Or marry Rudi?

Rudi: Will you marry me?
Jasmin: I’ll talk it over with Brenda.

Of course she marries him.
She did, didn't she?

Brenda: Now why would you want to leave?
Debby: Too much harmony.

No, that's actually a real thing.

He teaches them, they teach him. They change him, he changes them. Well, some of them. And sort of.

He is the grizzled set in his way senior citizen. The curmudgeon.

And conservative as hell. On the other hand, he is an atheist. Or he seems to be. But God does manage to sneak back in at the end.

He still lives in the “old neighborhood”. But this ain’t the 1950s anymore. The neighborhood has, uh, changed. For example, right next door is a family of Hmong immigrants. Or as Walt prefers to call them “swamp rats”. Or gooks. Or chinks. Or slopes. Or zipperheads. And then there are the thugs. And the thugs are everywhere here. Mexican. Asian. Black.

And then there is Sue Lor. She just wants to mind her own business and make something of herself in the world. But the thugs won’t let her.

In other words, a clash of cultures intertwined with a culture transported to America such that the younger family members are willing [or able] to absorb the new culture more fluently. And it all takes places in a run down working class neighborhood. So it is hardly “universal”.

How far-fetched is it? It’s pretty far-fetched. I mean, suicide by thugs?

Then this part:

Clint Eastwood has stirred controversy by claiming that people should “just fucking get over” racially sensitive remarks made by presidential candidate Donald Trump. IMDb

Next up: Trump and the Hmong people?

When Walt is at the Hmong’s party, he pats the head of a young Hmong girl passing through, causing the family members to audibly gasp. In Hmong culture, the human head is believed to house the soul, and any touching of the head is believed to jeopardize this, and is thus considered very disrespectful.

Open casting calls for Hmong actors were held in Hmong communities in Detroit, Michigan; Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Fresno, California. Only Doua Moua had been in a film before.

Clint Eastwood encouraged the Hmong actors to ad-lib in Hmong.

Walt fires a weapon only once in the movie, accidentally. IMDb


Gran Torino

Mitch: Look at the Old Man glaring at Ashley. He can’t even tone it down at Mom’s funeral?
Steve: What do you expect? Dad’s still living in the ‘50s. He expects his granddaughter to dress a little more…modestly.

Among other things, I'm guessing.

Ashley: Grandpa Walt, can I help you with the chairs.
Walt: No, I’ll take care of it. You probably just painted your nails.

Well, that's thoughtful of him.

Ashley: Wow, Grandpa, when’d you get the vintage car?
Walt: 1972.
Ashley: I never knew you had a cool old car.
Walt: It’s only been in here since before you were born.
Ashley: So, what are you, like, going to do with it, like, when you die?

No fucking way that she'll get it, right?

Walt [answering the door]: Who the hell are you?
Thao (very quietly): I’m Thao, I live next door.
Walt: What?! Speak up, boy, get the shit out of your mouth. What do you want?
Thao: Do you have jumper cables? My uncle’s car is old and…
Walt: No. And have some goddamned respect, zipperhead, we’re in mourning here.
[Walt slams the door in his face]

There, it’s all set up. All that’s missing now is the gang of thugs.

Walt [aloud to himself]: Why the hell did the chinks have to move into this neighborhood for?

Just to piss him off, of course.

Walt [to his buddies in a bar]: Oh, I’ve got one. A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, “Get the fuck out of here.”

I suspect he just made that up.

Father Janovich: I promised your wife I’d get you to go to confession.
Walt: Jesus Christ, why’d you do that?
Father Janovich: She was very insistent. She made me.
Walt: You sure are fond of promising people stuff you can’t deliver on.
Father Janovich: Let’s talk about something else.
Walt: Like what?
Father Janovich: Life and death.
Walt: What would you know about it?
Father Janovich: I’d like to think I know a lot. I’m a priest.
Walt: You stand at the altar and preach on and on about life and death without knowing anything other than what you learned in priest school. Everything you say sounds like it’s out of the Rookie Preachers Handbook.
[Walt quotes from the priest’s sermon]
Walt: ‘Death is bittersweet? Bitter in the pain, sweet in the salvation.’ That’s what you know of life and death? Good God, it’s pathetic.

Of course, that won't stop him.

Walt [to Father Janovich]: I think you’re an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life.

He makes their day, as it were.

Father Janovich: Why didn’t you just call the police?
Walt: Well, you know, I prayed for them to come but nobody answered.

That ever happen to you?

Martin: There. You finally look like a human being again. You shouldn’t wait so long between hair cuts, you cheap son of a bitch.
Walt: Yeah. I’m surprised you’re still around. I was always hoping you’d die off and they got someone in here that knew what the hell they were doing. Instead, you’re just hanging around like the doo-wop dago you are.
Martin: That’ll be ten bucks, Walt.
Walt: Ten bucks? Jesus Christ, Marty. What are you, half Jew or somethin’? You keep raising the damn prices all the time.
Martin: It’s been ten bucks for the last five years, you hard-nosed Polack son of a bitch.
Walt: Yeah, well keep the change.
Martin: See you in three weeks, p****.
Walt: Not if I see you first, dipshit.

Bantering, let's call it.

Duke [a thug]: What you lookin’ at old man?
Walt: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have fucked with? That’s me.

Him and the script?

Walt [reading aloud from the newspaper to his dog]: “Your birthday today, Daisy. This year you have to make a choice between two life paths. Second chances comes your way. Extraordinary events culminate in what might seem to be an anticlimax. Your lucky numbers are 84, 23, 11, 78, and 99.” What a load of shit.

Unless, of course, you hit the jackpot.

Sue Lor: All the people in this house are very traditional. Number one: never touch a Hmong person on the head. Not even a child. The Hmong people believe that the soul resides on the head, so don’t do that.
Walt: Well…sounds dumb, but fine.
Sue Lor: Yeah, and a lot of Hmong people consider looking someone in the eye to be very rude! That’s why they look away when you look at them.
Walt: Yeah. Anything else?
Sue Lor: Yeah…some Hmong people tend to smile or grin, when they’re yelled at. It’s a cultural thing, it expresses embarrassment or insecurity. It’s not that they’re laughing at you or anything.
Walt: Right, you people are nuts.

You decide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people

Walt [to Thao]: Take these three items, WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone.

And nowadaus the occasional woman?

Thao [practicing how to talk like a man]: Excuse me Sir, I need a haircut…if you ain’t too busy you old Italian son of a bitch p****. Boy, does my ass hurt from all of the guys at my construction job.

He's just starting out, of course.

Walt [in a rage over his responsibility for Sue’s rape]: You rotten fuck…
[begins punching the doorframe]
Walt: You rotten fuck!
[overturns his kitchen table]
Walt: YOU ROTTEN FUCK!
[drives his fist through the plate glass cabinetry]

And then armed only with the script he goes after the thugs. A bloodbath for sure, we’re thinking. And it is. But not the way most expected I’m sure.

Walt [in church]: I’m here for a confession.
Father Janovich: Oh, Lord Jesus what have you done?!

He voted for Trump?

Lawyer [reading from Walt’s will]: And I’d like to leave my 1972 Gran Torino to…
[the lawyer pauses and looks up at Ashley, who smiles expectantly]
Lawyer: …my friend…Thao Vang Lor. On the condition that you don’t chop-top the roof like one of those beaners, don’t paint any idiotic flames on it like some white trash hillbilly, and don’t put a big, gay spoiler on the rear end like you see on all the other zipperheads’ cars. It just looks like hell. If you can refrain from doing any of that…it’s yours.

A big gay spoiler: https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=f ... =608&dpr=1

Rachel Cusk from Outline

I mean, you never hear someone say they wanted to have an affair but they couldn’t find the time, do you?

Eureka!

That’s writing for you: when you make space for passion, it doesn’t turn up.

So, what often doesn't show up here? I mean, besides philosophy.

'Music,' she said, in a languorous and dreamlike manner. 'Music is a betrayer of secrets; it is more treacherous even than dreams, which at least have the virtue of being private.'

Like that will ever stop me from listening to it from dawn to dusk. Even if they are true.

I would like, she resumed, to see the world more innocently again, more impersonally, but I have no idea how to achieve this, other than by going somewhere completely unknown where I have no identity and no associations.

Some, of course, came here.

I probably didn’t share his feelings – he hoped, really, that I didn’t – but he was no longer interested in socialising; in fact, increasingly he found other people positively bewildering. The interesting ones are like islands, he said: you don’t bump into them on the street or at a party, you have to know where they are and go to them by arrangement.

So, where are you?

It is interesting how keen people are for you to do something they would never dream of doing themselves, how enthusiastically they drive you to your own destruction: even the kindest ones, the ones that are most loving, can rarely have your interests truly at heart, because usually they are advising you from within lives of greater security and greater confinement, where escape is not a reality but simply something they dream of sometimes.

That's me now. well, more or less.

For most, there is only “before” and “after” they tumble down into a hole this big. And you really get a close up look at just how the personal and the political can become intertwined. And how discussions of morality can get tied into altogether different kinds of knots. After all, this is a matter of life and death. And sexual freedom.

And then there’s the part about dollars and cents. And the part about egos.

This all unfolds at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. The disease was brand new, and the symptoms were so strange and atypical the medical community was scrambling just to get a grip on anything at all that might help them to treat the patients. Or even to tell them what it is they had. But unfortunately, the disease started to spread at the dawn of the Reagan administration as well. Many of the reactionaries here could not even bring themselves to say the word homosexual.

Then related to this is the gap between what can be “irrefutably proven by science” and the way in which the politicians [and the moneymen] can twist this into anything that might expediently protect their own vested interests.

Produced despite heavy misgivings in the film industry. When film star Richard Gere accepted a small role, he broke the taboos - at grave risk to his career - about both the subject and major film stars taking small parts in TV productions. Subsequently Steve Martin, Alan Alda, Phil Collins and Anjelica Huston were willing to appear.



And the Band Played On

Dr. Dritz [at the dawn of the disease]: Last night we lost another one. In less than three weeks, this handsome young guy turns into the elephant man. Which we found out was caused by some rare parasite that only sheep get. So I called a vet, to ask what they do when sheep get it. They shoot them he said.

Gay sheep?

Don [looking at his new “lab”]: Hopeless I can live with but this is ridiculous.

Let's imagine if Donald Trump was in the White House back then. He would make Ronald Reagan look like a Communist.

The Choreographer: They got a name yet for this disease?
Mary: The gay press calls it gay pneumonia or gay cancer. And the straight press doesn’t mention it at all.

Next up: you need a blood transfusion.

The Choreographer [staring out the window at a man dressed up as the Grim Reaper in the Halloween gay pride parade]: The party’s over.

Next up: bird flu?

Congressman Burton: I’ll introduce a bill. But if all the angels came dancing down to earth like the Rockettes, even they couldn’t get a dime out of this administration for anything with the name “gay” on it.

Incredibly enough, gay is not on Elon Trump's list of evil words!

Don [to Harold]: What do we think? What do we know? What can we prove? I’m so sick of that. The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know anything. Which also happens to be the only thing we can prove. We think. Or do we know? Or do we think we know? I don’t even know what the hell it is.

Bummer.

Don [watching Harold play Pac-Man]: Something’s gobbling up the t-cells…

Let's run this by Ms. Pac Man.

Eureka?

Chip [a patient afflicted with AIDS]: 666…
Dr. Darrow: Excuse me?
Chip: …that’s my room number.

The Devil made God do it?

Don [to Harold regarding the relationship between sex and AIDS]: When your house is on fire you don’t wait for scientific proof that it is on fire before you start to put it out.

Let's run this by RFK junior.

Eddie: Let me tell you people something, no matter what happens here today, if you try to close my joint, I’ll sue the ass off you.
Don: Doesn’t it bother you knowing that the people who have sex in your bathhouse are playing Russian roulette?
Eddie: Please just cut out this bullshit. We’re all in this for one thing: money. I make it when the guys come in. You doctors, you make it when they go out.

Pick one:
1] too cynical
2] not cynical enough

Bobbi: Now for years and years and years people in my hometown were telling me I was a freak because of my sexual orientation, until I came to San Francisco, and I found a community of freaks just like me. We stood together. We stood together! And it took a long time. But we finally forced this one tiny spot of the universe, the Castro, to realise that how we choose to have sex, and where, is our own damn business. Which to all other people who haven’t gone through what we’ve gone through sounds funny and they may laugh, but I know speaking for most of us, I would rather die as a human being than continue living as a freak.
Dr. Silverman: Clearly there’s a lot of strong feeling on the subject…
Voice in the crowd: What good is all the gay rights in the world if we are all dead?

The bath house syndrome?

Bobbi Campbell: Well, you know, if the gay community doesn't start raising hell, do you think Reagan is going to do a damn thing?
The Choreographer: I wish I had your courage.
Bobbi Campbell: Courage... no. I'm scared to death. I just have this absurd determination to live. Don't you?

August 15th, 1984: the day he died.

Dr. Dale Lawrence: I'm really sorry about this but I got some questions which are... well, embarrassing but... I gotta ask them. Has he ever had sexual contact with another man?
Woman in Denver: I don't understand the question. I mean, he's a man. How can a man have sex with another man?

Back then...precariously.

Don: It’s in the bloodstream…

An example of how thorny the moral/political thicket could become: conflicting goods.

Dr. Curran [at a hearing linking AIDS and the nation’s blood supply]: One option is to establish guidelines to keep people who are at high risk from donating blood.
Black man at hearing: Banning homosexuals from giving blood won’t protect the blood supply. What it will do is stigmatize them. Reminds me of blood banks rejecting donations from blacks for fear of syphilis.
Man at hearing: Do you have any idea of the implications for civil rights if…
Woman at hearing: Civil rights my ass. My son’s a hemophilliac and if homosexuals are infecting the blood supply why not keep them from donating?
Man at hearing: The entire gay community? Then what? Separate drinking fountains?! One for gays! One for humans!
Woman at hearing: Don’t start that gay rights crap! There are 20,000 hemophiliacs in this country and GRID [AIDS] has become the second leading cause of death amongst them. We have rights too. And one of them is the right to stay alive.

Talk about conflicting goods!

Blood Bank executive: Is the CDC seriously suggesting that the blood industry spends $100M a year to use the test for the wrong disease because we have a handful of transfusion fatalities and eight dead hemophiliacs?
Don: How many dead hemophiliacs do you need? How many people have to die to make it cost effecient for you people to do something about it? A hundred? A thousand? Give us a number so we won’t annoy you again until the amount of money you begin spending on lawsuits make it more profitable for you to save people than to kill them.

It's as though Don never heard of the medical industrial complex. Or capitalism, for that matter.

Dr. Donohue: Let me ask you this, when the doctors start acting like businessmen, who do the people turn to for doctors?

Wall Street?

Dr. Gallo: All right, explain one thing to me. Ten times ten times ten, my name is in every book ever written on the human retrovirus. Why would you get in bed with the French instead of me?
Don: Is it you against the French? I thought we were all against the virus. If you go to court now, everybody loses. You, the people who die while you quibble…
Dr. Gallo [Interrupting]: What do you want?
Don: I want to stop you from turning a holocaust into an international pissing contest!

Next up: pissing contests here.

Roger Lyon: This is not a political issue. This is a health issue. This is not a gay issue. This is a human issue. And I do not intend to be defeated by it. I came here today in the hope that my epitaph would not read that I died of red tape.

He means blue tape, right?

Marshall McLuhan

...if it works it's obsolete...

Every once in a while I understand this.

...they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing...

Imagine his reaction then to the exchanges between the objectivists here.

The artist is always engaged in writing a detailed history of the future because he is the only person aware of the nature of the present.

In other words, whatever that means.

Advertisements constitute the only 'good news' in the newspaper.

And which newspaper might that be?

To see a man slip on a banana skin is to see a rationally structured system suddenly translated into a whirling machine.

You tell me.

All through his life, he swung between the ridiculous and the sublime...

Actually, it was more the other way around.

Thelma and Louise are easy on the eyes. Hell, some would call them gorgeous. But then you almost have to be when you’re discovering feminism out there in Hollywood. Especially 20 years after the women’s movement had tried to take us in exactly the opposite direction with respect to all that beauty shit.

And then there’s that J.D. dude. He’s kinda gorgeous too.

But then this is what some in the women’s movement call “bourgeoise feminism”. It’s all about personal freedom and not taking any more shit from men. It’s funded for example by resorting to crime. And it doesn’t come anywhere near grappling with patriarchy in a more, say, systemic manner?

They do get around to the part about money though. How so much of the gap between what you want to do and what you can do seems always to be dependent on your access to it.

And there aren’t a whole lot of men in the film that are not either grievously pathetic or complete fucking assholes. Though I suppose there might be any number of women who would insist they got that part right.

Of course, once Louise shot and killed Harlan, there wasn’t but one way this one was going to end.

Then struggling actor George Clooney auditioned five times for Ridley Scott for the part of J.D. that went to Brad Pitt.

For the raunchier sex scenes between Brad Pitt and Geena Davis, director Ridley Scott had assumed that a body double would be needed for Geena. Shortly after he’d begun auditioning prospective doubles, Davis learned of Scott’s intentions and insisted that no doubles were needed in those steamy scenes.

Why? Take a wild guess.



Thelma and Louise

Louise: I’ve never seen you this way. You’re usually more…sedate.
Thelma: Well, I’ve had it up to my ass with sedate.

Me? Up to my fucking eyeballs.

Louise [in the parking lot outside the bar where Harlan is attempting to rape Thelma]: Get away from her you fuckin’ asshole or I’m gonna splatter your ugly face all over this nice car.
Harlan [getting off of Thelma]: Easy, we’re just having a little fun.
Louise: Sounds like you got a real fucked up idea of fun. Turn around. In the future, when a woman’s crying like that, she isn’t having any fun!

Next up: not having fun here.

Thelma: Shouldn’t we go to the cops? I mean, I think we should tell the police.
Louise: Tell them what?! What, Thelma? What do you think we should tell them?
Thelma: I don’t know. Just tell 'em what happened. All of it. That he tried to rape me.
Louise: Only about a hundred people saw you cheek to goddamn cheek with him all night, Thelma! Who’s gonna believe that?! We just don’t live in that kind of world.

We still don't.

Thelma: I had a plan, I said we should go to the police, but you didn’t like that.
Louise: Well what’s the rush, Thelma? If we wait long enough, they’ll come to us.

Oh, yeah.

Louise: I don’t want to go that way. Find a way that we don’t have to go through Texas.
Thelma (looking at map): Wait. What? You want to go to Mexico from Oklahoma and you don’t want to go through Texas?
Louise: You know how I feel about Texas. We’re not going that way.
Thelma: I know, Louise, but we’re running for our lives! Don’t you think you could make an exception just this once?! I mean, look at the map. The only thing between Oklahoma and Mexico is Texas!

I just checked. It's true.

Louise [to Thelma]: Look, you shoot off a guy’s head with his pants down, believe me, Texas ain’t the place you want to get caught.

Let's explain that.

Thelma: Jimmy! Hello, stranger. What in the world are you doin’ here?
Jimmy: Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.
Thelma: Good answer. Same goes double for me.

Me? Double it again.

J.D. [to Thelma]: Well, I’ve always believed that if done properly, armed robbery doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience.

Now you're talking. You know, theoretically.

Thelma: Hey Louise, better slow down, I’ll just die if we get caught over a speeding ticket. Are you sure we should be driving like this, I mean in broad daylight and everything?
Louise: No we shouldn’t, but I want to put some distance between us and the SCENE OF OUR LAST GOD DAMNED CRIME!

Damned if they do and damned if they don't, let's say.

Thelma [after Louise tells her the police probably tapped Darryl’s phone]: Tap the phones? What’re you talking about?
Louise: Come on, Thelma, murder 1 and armed robbery.
Thelma: Murder 1? We can’t even say it was self defense?
Louise: Well it wasn’t, we got away, we were walking away.
Thelma: Yeah but they don’t know that. It was just you and me there. I’ll say he raped me and you had to shoot him, that’s almost the truth.
Louise: Won’t work.
Thelma: Why not?
Louise: There’s no physical evidence, we can’t prove he did it, we probably can’t even prove by now that he touched you.
Thelma: God, the law is some tricky shit isn’t it? Hey, how do you know about all this?
Louise: Besides, what’re we going to say about the robbery? There’s no such thing as justifiable robbery.
Thelma: Alright Louise…
[she sees a white cowboy hat in the backseat]
Thelma: …where’d you get this?
Louise: Stole it.

Figures.

Thelma [with her gun to the state trooper’s head]: I swear 3 days ago neither one of us would’ve ever pulled a stunt like this, but if you’d ever meet my husband you’d understand why.

We met him and we do.

Louise: Should’ve gone to the police in the beginning, why didn’t I?
Thelma: You said why before.
Louise: What’d I say?
Thelma: That nobody would believe us. You know that jerk was really hurting me, and if you hadn’t come along when you had he would’ve hurt me even worse. And probably nothing would’ve been done with him because I was dancing with him all night and everybody saw it and they’d figure I had it coming. My life would’ve been ruined a whole lot more than it is now, now I’m having fun. I’ll tell you something else, I’m not the least bit sorry that creep is dead, I’m just sorry it was you who did it and not me.

Any creeps here?

Hal [on phone]: At least you’re still on the face of the earth.
Louise: Well, we’re not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.

Now, that's clever. And then there's the virtual equivalent of that.

Louise [on the phone]: Certain words and phrases just keep drifting through my mind, things like, “incarceration”, “cavity search”, “death by electrocution”, “life in prison”, shit like that, know what I’m sayin’, so do I want to come out alive? I don’t know. I’m gonna have to think about that.
Hal: Louise, I’ll do anything. I know what’s making you run. I know what happened to you in Texas.

No use, Hal.

Thelma: But, umm, I don’t know, you know, something’s, like, crossed over in me and I can’t go back. I mean I just couldn’t live.
Louise: I know, I know what you mean. I just don’t wanna end up on the damned Geraldo show.

Let alone Jerry Springer.

Thelma: Now what?
Louise: We’re not giving up, Thelma.
Thelma: Then let’s not get caught.
Louise: What are you talkin’ about?
Thelma (indicating the Grand Canyon): Go.
Louise: Go? You sure?
Thelma: Go.

Going, going, gone.

Love and human remains. Indeed and times three here. Delia, the battered wife and mother of three from the Catskills, Greta, the successful but sometimes unfaithful editor from the big city and Paula, the wayward soul on the run from a tragedy, stumbling into a new one.

It shows just how different individual lives can be in terms of the factors that shape them. And how different the narratives can be in piecing them together.

Of course, the characters do share one thing in common – their uncommon beauty. And you know me: always compelled to point this out. Though I'm still not entirely sure why.

This time the focus is on forks in the road. Some reach them and some don’t. For those that do it is crunch time. It suddenly all comes boiling down to an opportunity…an opportunity to choose another direction. Of course, they really don’t have the capacity to determine the right choice any more than the rest of us. It just depends on how you construe yourself within the context of the, uh, human condition. But, hey, come on, some directions seem clearly more constructive than others. Still, there are always trade-offs here. We do the best we can. Or, if we are not able to do that, at least there might be a possibility for choosing a direction affording us the least amount of further damage.

The film is extremely effective in the way it shows these women as inhabiting a world we can more or less imagine and yet making it crystal clear that we can never really know what it must be like for them to see themselves and their world around them as they do. We can share things with them but then the distance just becomes too great. Just as it would be if the three of them tried to share things with each other.

This film had a whopping $125,000 budget. So, it probably never made it to all of the 3800 odd screens out there in the American heartland.

Or wasteland?



Personal Velocity: Three Portraits

Delia

Narrator: Delia Shunt was 34. She had fine, dirty-blond hair and a strong, heavy ass… which looked excellent in blue jeans. And Delia was tough. She beat up a guy in a bar once, just for grabbing her ass. He hit her back, and she broke a chair over his head.

Actually, it didn't seem that "strong and heavy" at all to me.

Narrator: Delia was embarrassed to be seen, because she had recently grown breasts. No one else in class had them, and they were huge. She felt separated from her breasts, and kind of awed by them. They were magical objects…and definitely not Seventh-Day Adventist material.

Actually, they didn't seem "huge" at all to me.

Narrator: “Shunt” rhymes with “****.” That’s not the reason Delia became the school slut, but it didn’t hurt. Plus, she loved kissing.

Let's run this by...Kevin Bacon?

Narrator: Delia married Kurt because he asked her. He asked her because he couldn’t stand the idea of any other guy with his hands on Delia. Her ass, especially. That beautiful, ripe ass. Delia could stop traffic with that ass. So, he married it.

That and those huge breasts.

Narrator: It was her kids’ pain that finally broke through her inertia. Listening to her babies screaming and pleading…and being unable to comfort them, was like being murdered slowly. After two hours, it didn’t matter that she loved her husband. It didn’t matter that she had no place to go. She was taking her kids away.

Those things ever matter to you?

Delia: It must be nice doing good 24 hours a day.
Pam: I don’t know. Some days, I don’t think it makes any difference.
Delia: Does that get you down, Pam?
Pam: We all have problems, Delia.
Delia: You ever been in love with a man who hits you?
Pam: No.
Delia: Do you have any kids?
Pam: I don’t.
Delia: Then leave me alone. I’m sick of seeing your face every fucking day…smiling like you just took the greatest shit of your life.

Just out of curiosity, what actually does make some dumps greater than others?

Narrator: Delia was a good waitress. She worked fast, remembered everything…and frightened the customers just enough to keep them in line…while inciting their lust, if they were men…and wariness, if they were women. If anyone was rude to her, she spat in their food. It seemed fair. She never did it when she had a cold.

Good to know?

Greta

Thavi [to Greta]: My friend Felicia Wong said you were great at trimming fat.
Narrator: Felicia Wong had written short stories at Harvard. Greta was the editor of The Advocate. She had an eye for the inessential. The writers called her “The Grim Reaper”… but they all wanted her to comb through their work.
Patricia [to Thavia in a flashback]: She’s a castrating bitch. You’re a lying bastard. You deserve each other.
Thavia [to Greta]: I have a tendency to overwrite. I need someone to kick my ass.
Greta: I can kick your ass.

On the other hand, how strong and how heavy is it?

Narrator: Oscar had been a suitor of Greta’s at Harvard, but she would not sleep with him. Now, there was a gentle neutrality in Oscar’s tone. He was speaking to her as if she was mentally ill, or had cancer. She knew why, too. It was because she had turned out to be a loser.

I guess she should have slept with him.

Narrator: The next week was a tangle of wedding preparations and subterfuge…what with traveling uptown to see Max, and downtown to see Lee. The fittings…the fucking… the bachelorette party…It didn’t occur to Greta to call the marriage off because she was having a torrid affair. She kept the two narratives distinct in her mind. They coexisted, as if in twin universes…separated by vast fields of space.

As well they should be?

Party Guest: She’s played dead all these years, and now look at her.
Dad: Everyone has their own personal velocity.

He wondered then what happened to his.

Greta [voiceover]: How could he still love me? If he does, it’s because he doesn’t know me. I’m rotten with ambition, a lusty little troll, the kind of demon you’d find at the bottom floor of Hell pulling fingernails off the loansharks.

I once knew her as Jacqueline Kennedy. If only in the House of Yes.

Paula

Paula: You’re my first hitchhiker.
Narrator: She had known he was a sign…

Turned out to be a rather bad one.

Mom: What happened to you?
Paula: I was in an accident. I was with this guy, and he got run over.
Mom: Oh, my God.
Paula: We’d just switched places. Sixty seconds earlier, and it would have been me.

See how it works?

Paula: I used to write. Then I used to paint. I think I’m going to be one of those people with a lot of potential who never really takes off.
Norwegian Man: Those are always the best people.

How does he figure that? I guess we'll never know.

Paula: And we were walking and talking…and this car drove by, and muddy water splashed all over me.
Man [in flashback]: I’m sorry. My fault.
Paula: He apologized, and he said that the man should walk on the outside…so the woman doesn’t get dirty. So we switched. And then I heard a noise, like a shot. I said, “Is that a shot?” He said, “No, it’s a car.” Then we kept walking. And then there was a smack on my arm. And he vaporized, next to me.

Or something like that.

Paula [to the hitchhiker looking at his arm]: Oh, my God…
Narrator: She saw the edge of a wound, bruises.
Paula: We’re going to the hospital. That’s it.
[the boy bolts from the car]
Wait! Get back here. Wait! Please stop!
[she catches up to him]
Paula: I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We don’t have to go to the hospital, okay? I promise. We’ll go to a pharmacy. We’ll just get some disinfectant and some gauze, okay? And then I’ll let you go on your way.

Little does she know...

Vincent [on the phone]: Where are you?
Paula: I’m in a hotel.
Vincent: What’s the problem?
Paula: I don’t know. I was driving down the road, and there was this boy on the road. He looked so cold. I picked him up. And I found out he was really badly beaten. It looks like somebody tied him to something, and tortured him. It’s so awful…He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s just a baby, Vincent. Can’t we take him home? Just back to Brooklyn, just for a little while?
Vincent: Are you crazy? We’ve got no space. You don’t know this kid.
Paula [weeping]: Please. Please, honey. Don’t make me leave him. I can’t.

So, he leaves her.

Paula [on phone] Listen…something happened. I was with this guy, and he got hit by a car. We’d just traded places.
Vincent: Your mother just told me.
Paula: I don’t know what all of this means…but it’s got to mean something, don’t you see that? If he hadn’t been with me, he wouldn’t be dead.

And then there’s the part about the boy stealing her car…after all that she has done for him. And then there is her reaction. What does that mean?

I was addicted to Shameless. Emmy Rossum [and not the old man] is [along with Jeremy White] Shameless. Emmy Rossum stars in this film. You do the math.

I suspect that some of the kids in this film are more in touch with what can be the existential agony embedded in “how ought I to live my life?” than many of the mental maturbaters that pass themselves off as “intellectuals” here.

He said with a [sort of] contemptuous grin.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of teens figuring all this stuff out. Think of Heathers if they had played it straight.

This is also about being an actor. And in part that is like being a philosophyer. Which is to say you can mouth all the right words in the right order but unless you have a whole lot of well earned experiences “out in the world” to back them up they are probably just going to sound hollow and/or shallow. At least with respect to some, well, really important things.

Otherwise, this one too is bursting at the seams with all the usual tropes ingested by American Youth. Anyway, those endemic to the upper middle class.

And then there is Ben and Johnny. Floating around out there in the middle of their own social [and psycho-sexual] angst.

In other words, you can easily imagine American Youth from “the hood” thinking, “I should be so lucky to have their problems.” But our bullshit consumption culture is still largely the common denominator:

Johnny: Where are your parents?
Courtney: They’re at the beach house partying.

These things do get...complicated?


Dare

Doctor: You’re not sexually active, are you?
Alexa [after pondering that]: I’m sorry, but why did you just assume that I wasn’t…sexually active?
Doctor: Well, I did just perform a pelvic examination.

Damn, I missed that.

Gabby: Excuse me Ms. Davis… um… I talked to my mom, and she said to tell you I’m really not comfortable playing Donna’s girlfriend in some lesbian play.
Ms. Davis: Please tell your mother that ‘The Children’s Hour’ is a famous piece of literature, not some lesbian play.

On the other hand, how famous?

Grant [on the stage]: What were you doing up here?
Alexa: I was trying to show how Blanche feels about Stanley.
Grant: Uh-huh. And what does Blanche feel about Stanley? Hm?
Alexa: I think that she is afraid. I think that she feels threatened. At the same time, I think she is still drawn to him. It’s his brute strenght versus her femininity, her power of seduction.
Grant: Okay, you’re smart, so that’s not the problem. But tell me something, Alexa, have you ever felt threatened?
Alexa: I feel a little threatened right now.
Grant: No, I mean have you ever been afraid of being hurt, destroyed…raped?
Alexa: No.
Grant: Have you ever fucked anyone?
Alexa: Sorry, but I don’t think that has anything to do with…
Grant: It has everything to do with it! You shouldn’t be playing Blanche Dubois, honey, you’re a child. Acting is not about making up how you think someone else feels, it’s about having something to draw on. A feeling of your own.

And, of course, the philosophical equivalent of that here.
Right?

Grant: Have you ever been hungry for something?
Alexa: I don’t know…I’m not sure I know exactly what…
Grant: Hungry. Like wanting something or needing something so badly that you will do anything to get it.

You first.

Courtney [to Ben]: Alexa has really lost her mind. I guess that’s what happens when you discover the power of a dick.

You first.

Grant [to Alexa]: Look, life’s going to be easy for you. You’re pretty. You’re smart. You got it real good. So be a doctor or a lawyer. Or better still, marry one.
Alexa [enraged]: You have no fucking idea who I am!
Grant: This is what it’s about, right now, the feeling you want to slap the shit out of me!
[boom. it dawns on her]
Alexa: I’ll learn it. I’ll start with the Stanislavsky book.
Grant: No book in the whole world can teach you how to feel. You gotta figure that shit out for yourself.

Blah, blah, blah, let's say.

Alexa: What’s wrong with you?
Ben: Me? Nothing. What’s wrong with you?
Alexa: What?
Ben: What are you doing, Alexa? You ditch me to play with the really cool kids. You put this streak in your hair…and all of a sudden you’re with Johnny?

The bad boy.

Alexa: Why are you being such an asshole? This has nothing to do with you.
Ben: You can try and play all mature and worldly, but you’re not. You’re still the same scared, pathetic, perfect little girl.
Alexa: And you’re still the same bitter, lonely loser. You can’t stand to see me have a life because you never had one.

So, who won?

Ben: I had my first kiss tonight.
Alexa: What? With who?
Ben: I also gave my first blowjob.

Yep, that's exactly what he means.

Alexa: So, who was it?
Ben: Johnny.

The bad boy? Yep.

Johnny: Where’s my dad?
Mom: Belgium.
Johnny: Why did you even marry him? He’s never around. What’s the point?
Mom: Because, Johnny, not all of us have the luxury of doing whatever the hell we want and never suffering the consequences.

What, even here?

Actor: So, are you in the ensemble?
Alexa: Uh, no.
Actor: So, who are you supposed to be?

I guess we'll never know.

Richard Yates from Revolutionary Road

Oh, you’ll what? You’ll leave me? What’s that supposed to be—a threat or a promise?

Providing, of course, you can actually tell them apart.

It depressed him to consider how much energy he had wasted, over the years, in the self-denying posture of apology. From now on, whatever else his life might hold, there would be no more apologies.

Allowing others to apologize for him. At least in theory.

The hell with this aching, suffering, callow, half-assed delusion that he was in "love" with her. The hell with "love" anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.

Click, of course.

As an intense, nicotine-stained, Jean-Paul Sartre sort of man, wasn't it simple logic to expect that he'd be limited to intense, nicotine-stained Jean-Paul Sartre sorts of Women?

Well, one for sure.

Wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow, he said.
Don't, then. Stay home.
No. I guess I've got to go.

After all, the bills aren't going to pay themselves.

Don't worry, I can't be bothered! You're not worth the trouble it would take to hit you! You're not worth the powder it would take to blow you up. You are an empty, empty, hollow shell of a woman. I mean, what the hell are you doing in my house if you hate me so much? Why the hell are you married to me? What the hell are you doing carrying my child? I mean, why didn't you just get rid of it when you had the chance? Because listen to me, listen to me, I got news for you - I wish to God that you had!

So, are her answers more or less impressive than his questions?