Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Sex

“A man fishes for two reasons: he’s either sport fishing or fishing to eat, which means he’s either going to try to catch the biggest fish he can, take a picture of it, admire it with his buddies and toss it back to sea, or he’s going to take that fish on home, scale it, fillet it, toss it in some cornmeal, fry it up, and put it on his plate. This, I think, is a great analogy for how men seek out women.” Steve Harvey

So, what do you think?

“I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late start without me.” Tallulah Bankhead

Fair enough.

“Someday every woman will have orgasms like every family has color TV and we can all get on with the business of life.” Erica Jong

Nope, we're not quite there yet.

“Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.” Henry Miller

Of course, he's only paraphrasing Max Cady.

“I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.” Karen Marie Moning

Who doesn't?

“Music is much like fucking, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent.” Charles Bukowski

He should know?

[iambiguous]

Men and women. Love and Lust. That goes as far back into human history as anything can possibly go.

But these relationships…evolve. Especially within the context of “Western Civilization”.

Consider, for example, this excerpt from The Magus:

"We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did."

It is from the same author who wrote the novel the film below is based on.

Here though we go back even further in time. The “rules of behavior” will overlap in some respect…but not in others. In particular, the options afforded women over the course of this historical span.

And that is basically the conceit here. A film is being made about the relationships between men and women in the 19th century…while exploring the relationship between the actors playing those characters in the 20th century. The point being [perhaps] that not nearly as much has changed at all. Except for the parts that clearly have.

But the reality of class is always a constant it seems. If there is an upstairs, there will be a downstairs. As there will in turn be the murky labyrinths into which human psychology can take us. In other words, getting “inside the head” of another. Trying so fitfully, futilely to grasp “reality” as he or she does.

Here though the focus is only on a particular culture – England. So the extent any of this is relevant to the historical evolution of relationships in other cultures is necessarily problematic.

The original novel does not feature the subplot of the actors playing the parts in a modern day film. The novel did, however, feature three alternate ending from which readers could choose their favorite. Creating two parallel story lines allowed the filmmakers to include two of those endings, one happy and one tragic.

The Cobb is the old harbor wall at Lyme Regis where we see “that scene” as Sarah / Anna stands on the harbor wall as the waves crash around her. It was deemed too dangerous for Meryl to get up onto the Cobb while the waves were crashing. So any distance shots actually have one of the art directors standing in for her. The close ups were done in the safety of the studio.

The role of Charles was first offered to James Fox, then returning to acting after a decade working for an Evangelical Christian movement. He turned the part down “for moral reasons”. IMDb

"I left Hollywood for Jesus", he said.


The French Lieutenant's Woman

The Vicar: Miss Woodruff! You know you cannot stay here any longer. Miss Duff has made no provision for you in her will. The cottage is to be sold. How much money do you possess? Miss Woodruff, I think I know someone who might take you in. Mrs Poulteney from the Grange. Sarah: Does her house overlook the sea?
The Vicar: Yes, it does, yes.

I'll take her in. And then some.

Charles: Oh, yes, he was very respectful of what he called my position as a scientist and a gentleman. In fact, he asked me about my work. But as I didn’t think that fossils were quite in his line I gave him a brief discourse on the theory of evolution instead.
Ernestina: How wicked of you!
Charles: Yes, he didn’t think very much of it. In fact he ventured the opinion that Mr Darwin should be exhibited in a cage in the zoological gardens. In the monkey house.

That again.

Charles: Good Lord! What on earth is she doing?
Ernestina: Oh. It’s poor “Tragedy”.
Charles: “Tragedy”?
Ernestina: The fishermen have a grosser name for her.
Charles: What?
Ernestina: They call her “the French lieutenant’s…woman”.

If you get their disgusting drift.

Charles: Tell me, who is this… French lieutenant?
Ernestina: He is a man she’s said to have…
Charles: Fallen in love with?
Ernestina: Worse than that.
Charles: Ah. And he abandoned her. Is there a child?
Ernestina: I think not. Oh, it’s all gossip.
Charles: What’s she doing here?
Ernestina: They say she’s waiting for him to return.
Charles: How banal.

Can't say that about Jesus Christ though, right?

Mrs Poulteney: You stand on the Cobb and look to sea. I’m led to believe that you’re in a state of repentance but I must emphasise that such staring out to sea is provocative, intolerable and sinful.
Sarah: If you consider me unsuitable for this position do you wish me to leave the house?
Mrs Poulteney: I wish you to show that this person is expunged from your heart!
Sarah: How am I to show it?
Mrs Poulteney: By not exhibiting your shame!

Good point? Back then I mean.

Anna [reading from a book] Mike, listen to this. In 1857, it’s estimated there were 80,000 prostitutes in the county of London.
Mike: Yeah?
Anna: Out of every 60 houses, one was a brothel.
Mike: Hoo, hoo, hoo.
Anna: At a time when the male population of London of all ages was one and a quarter million, the prostitutes were receiving clients at a rate of two million per week.
Mike: Two million?

You know, rounding it off.

Anna [of her character Sarah]: Well, that’s what she’s really faced with. This man says that hundreds of the prostitutes were nice girls, like governesses, who’d lost their jobs. You offend your boss, you lose your job, you’re out on the streets. That’s the reality.
Mike: The male population was one and a quarter million?
Anna: Yeah.
Mike [doing calculations on paper]: Well, if we take away a third for children and old men that means that, outside of marriage your Victorian gentleman could look forward to 2.4 fucks a week!

You know, rounding it off.

Charles: Permit me to insist. These things are like wounds. If no one dares speak of them, they fester. If he doesn’t return he was not worthy of you. If he returns…
Sarah: He will never return.
Charles: You fear he will never return?
Sarah: I know he will never return.
Charles: I do not take your meaning.
Sarah: He is married.

Right, like that changes anything.

Charles: Why don’t you go to London, make a new life?
Sarah: If I went to London, I know what I should become. I should become what some already call me in Lyme.
Charles: My dear Miss Woodruff…
Sarah: I am weak. How should I not know it? I have sinned. You cannot imagine my suffering. My only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins. Why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman?
Charles: That question were better not asked. Envy is…
Sarah: Not envy! Incomprehension.

Exactly!

Charles: Palaeontology is my interest. I gather it is not yours.
Doctor: When we know more of the living, it will be time to pursue the dead.
Charles: Yes, I was introduced the other day to a specimen of the local flora that rather inclines me to agree with you. A very strange case, as I understand it. Her name is Woodruff.
Doctor: Ah, yes. Poor “Tragedy”. We know more about your fossils on the beach than we do about that girl’s mind.

Cue Henrik Nygaard?

Doctor [to Charles]: A German doctor called Hartmann has divided melancholia into various types. One he calls “natural”, by which he means that one is born with a…a sad temperament. Another he calls “occasional” by which he means springing from an occasion. And the third class he calls “obscure melancholia” by which he really means, poor man, he doesn’t know what the devil caused it.

Define obscure. You know, philosophically.

Doctor: I was called in to see her, oh, ten months ago. She was working as a seamstress, living by herself. Well, hardly living. Weeping without reason, unable to sleep, unable to talk. Melancholia as plain as the pox. I could see there was only one cure. To get her away from this place. But no, she wouldn’t have it. She goes to a house that she knows is a living misery…to a mistress that sees no difference between a servant and a slave. And she will not be moved.
Charles: But it’s…incomprehensible.
Doctor: Not at all. Hartmann has something very interesting to say about one of his patients: “It was as if her torture had become her delight.”

Let's skip that part.

Sarah [of the French Lieutenant to Charles]: He seemed overjoyed to see me. He…he was all that a lover should be. I had not eaten that day. He took me to a private sitting room, ordered food. But…he had changed. He was full of smiles and caresses, but I knew at once that he was insincere. I saw that I had been an amusement for him. Nothing more. I saw all this within five minutes of our meeting. Yet I stayed. Soon he no longer bothered to hide the nature of his intentions towards me. Nor could I pretend surprise. My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. I could tell you that he overpowered me, he drugged me. But it was not so. I gave myself to him. I did it so that I should never be the same again…so that I should be seen for the outcast I am! I knew it was ordained that I should never marry an equal, so I married shame.

Among other things, cue dasein.

Sarah [to Charles]: It is my shame that has kept me alive…my knowing that I am truly not like other women. I…I shall never, like them, have children and a husband and the pleasures of a home. Sometimes I pity them. I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame, can touch me. I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing. I am… hardly human any more. I am the French lieutenant’s…whore!

Unless, of course, it was really just another "condition".

Charles: I was…the first?
Sarah: Yes.
Charles: Why did you lie about the Frenchman?
Sarah: I don’t know.
Charles: Does he even exist?
Sarah: Oh, yes, he exists. I did follow him to Weymouth, to the inn. As I drew near I saw him come out with a woman. The kind of woman one…cannot mistake. When they had gone, I… walked away.
Charles: But then why did you tell…
Sarah: I don’t know. I cannot explain.

And don't expect me to.

Sarah: Do what you will. Or what you must. Now that I know there was truly a day upon which you loved me, I can bear anything.

So, just out of curiosity, does anyone here not love me?

Ernestina [to Charles]: You are a liar! My father will drag your name, both your names, through the mire! You will be spurned and detested by all that know you! You will be hounded out of England!

Etcetera...

Mr. Grimes [detective]: Now, Mr Smithson, I shan’t pretend to you that it’s going to be an easy task. But I have four good men, and they’ll go on the job at once. We’ll try the educational boards of all the church schools. We shall also investigate these new female clerical agencies. And we shall investigate all the girls’ academies in London. I shall also be examining the Register of Deaths.
Charles: Very good. Try everything, Mr Grimes.
Mr Grimes: One last question, sir, for the moment. Does the lady wish to be found, would you say, or not?

Sort of?

Attorney [reading from a legal document]: I, Charles Henry Smithson, solely by my desire to declare the truth, admit that one: I contracted to marry Miss Ernestina Freeman. Two: I was given no cause whatsoever to break my solemn contract. Three: I was fully and exactly apprised of her rank in society, her character, marriage portion and future prospects before my engagement to her hand. Four: I did break that contract without any justification whatsoever beyond my own criminal selfishness and lust. Five: I entered into a clandestine liaison with a person named Sarah Woodruff. Six: My conduct throughout this matter has been dishonourable. By it I have for ever forfeited the right to be considered a gentleman.

Big deal?

Telegram from the detective [three years later]: SHE IS FOUND UNDER NAME MRS. ROUGHWOOD.

I knew it!

Charles: My solicitor was told you lived at this address. I do not know by whom.
Sarah: By me.

Oh...

Charles: Are you saying that you never loved me?
Sarah: I could not say that.
Charles: But you must say that! You must say “I am totally evil. I used him as an instrument. I do not care that in all this time he hasn’t seen a woman to compare with me…that his life has been a desert without me…that he sacrificed everything for me.” Say it!

Would you?

[iambiguous]

Judgment Day

“Old woman, you don't thump the Bible at me- you beat it like a drum."
"That's because along with being hardheaded, you are apparently hard of hearing."
Charlotte pushed off her rocker so hard it slammed against the wall. Nothing irritated her more than having religion shoved down her throat. And no one carried a bigger shovel than Lettie.
"Baptists are like fleas!" Charlotte flared. "Impossible to get rid of and irritating as hell!"
"On Judgement Day," Lettie said smugly, "I have no doubt the burn will take your mind off the itch.” Paula Wall

To say the least, eh?

“Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgement by that name; in reality it is a constant court in perpetual session.” Franz Kafka

Every day approximately 150,000 people die on average around the globe. That's about 6,250 souls a day. Or 105 souls each and every miniute. And that's just on this planet. You tell me how He manages to pull that off!

“Yes, it is my sole aim to brainwash you people. To make your minds, hearts and spirits pure and acceptable to Christ for Judgement Day.” Gillian Dance

Has she gotten around to you yet?

“Football teams that lost their matches can have many other chances to play in successive seasons; but a soul that is lost through death may not have the chance to justify its potential again!” Israelmore Ayivor

Who really knows though, right?

“In God's infinite wisdom if He sends you to Heaven or Hell should you love Him any less?” Stanley Victor Paskavic

So, what do you think?

“Many pastors criticize me for taking the gospel so seriously. But do they really think that on Judgment Day, Christ will chastise me and say, “Jonathan, you took me way too seriously”?” Jonathan Hayashi

Anyone here know for sure?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Yes, of course.

[Phil8659]

Real Quote. I had this freaky girl after me, so I decided a really quick and easy way to get her off my trail.

I looked at her really seriously and said; "I use to be just like you."

She looked surprised and wanted to know more.

I said. " Yep, just like you, until I got my sex change operation."

Well, that really freaked her out and she never tried to get on my trail again. She was, in my opinion, a despicable person, and she did not understand it.

[iambiguous]

Suicide

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax. This won't hurt.” Hunter S. Thompson

And he meant it.

“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.” Sylvia Plath

My own thoughts were considerably more heated.

“By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.” Warren Ellis

It's not as easy as you think though.

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.” Franz Kafka

See, I told you.

“You might be looking for reasons but there are no reasons.” Nina LaCour

Just excuses.

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.” Erica Jong

Me first?

[iambiguous]

A battle of wits. That’s how many described the “historic encounter” between Richard Nixon and David Frost.

But something is either witty or not depending on how you react to it, say, politically. If you agree with the point being made it is deemed profound, and if not it can be seen as anything but profound. Even, perhaps, as complete bullshit.

And that is presuming the discussion itself focuses in on the things that you feel are the most important aspects of the Nixon presidency.

Watergate? Many saw this “scandal” as but a trivial pursuit next to the real crimes of this administration. Instead, they focus in on the direct historical link between the “secret government” that Nixon installed [operation cointelpro, operation chaos etc.]…the Iran Contra scandal that enveloped the Reagan administration…the draconian post 9/11 agenda pursued by the Bush/Cheney administration…and all the way up to the sort of things being exposed by folks like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

I watched this film looking for this particular narrative. In other words, the extent to which Nixon came to embody America being run as a “national security state”; and one deeply intertwined in the military industrial complex, the war economy and the corporate media.

Here though the focus is clearly less on that and more on the manner in which we get to explore Richard Nixon’s “psyche”. The beam is always focused on Nixon "the man". The so-called “drama” revolving around whether or not Frost is able to “nail” him. To expose him. A clash of “personalities”, as it were. That’s where the “drama” is said to be.

In other words, what Frost asked or how Nixon answered was almost incidental. What really counted was who had “won” each round. Who had managed to pin the other to the mat by outfoxing him. The idea then was to “rope the dope”. And at first it appeared that Nixon was all but thumping Frost. Could Frost come back? That was where the “drama” resided here: Would Frost finally “get” him?

Thus the most important factor here [by far] was in getting Tricky Dick Nixon to at last admit that, yes, he did know about the coverup right from the beginning. That he was a crook. That he did put the nation “through two years of needless agony”. That only then could he and the nation ever achieve, uh, closure.

Even while off-camera, all of the actors would remain in character and continue the Frost/Nixon rivalry by bickering and making fun of each other.

Both Frank Langella and Michael Sheen repeat the roles they created on stage. Ron Howard would only agree to direct if the studio would allow both actors to appear in the film version.

In an article called ‘Stopping the Rot’ in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) on May 3, 2008, Ian Munro quoted James Reston Jr., Frost’s Watergate adviser: ‘I was in army intelligence … and the Mutt and Jeff, good cop-bad cop thing is usually two people, but Frost, he did both roles.’  IMDb


Frost/Nixon

Jack Brennan: I remember his face. Staring out the window. Down below him, a liberal America cheered, gloated. Hippies, draft dodgers, dilettantes, the same people who’d spit on me when I got back from Vietnam. They’d gotten rid of Richard Nixon, their bogeyman.

Now those were the days!

Birt: So who is it?
Frost: Richard Nixon.
Birt [laughing]: Richard Nixon?!
Frost: Well, come on, don’t look like that.
Birt: Well, how would you expect me to look? I spent yesterday evening watching you interview the Bee Gees.
Frost: Weren’t they terrific?

Whatever works.

Birt: So, okay, so what kind of interview?
Frost: A full, extensive look-back over his life, his presidency.
Birt: And?
Frost: And what?
Birt: Come on, David. Surely the only thing that would interest anyone about Richard Nixon would be a confession. A full, no-holds-barred confession.
Frost: Well, we’ll get that, too.
Birt: From Richard Nixon?
Frost: Come on, John. Just think of the numbers it would get. Do you know how many people watched his farewell speech in the White House? Four hundred million.

You know, just to put it all in perspective. And I know I did.

Swifty Lazar: I got $500,000.
Nixon: Is that good?
Swifty Lazar: Mr. President, it’s a half a million dollars for a news interview. It’s unprecedented.
Nixon: Yeah? Well, what’s the catch?
Swifty Lazar: With Frost? None. It’ll be a big wet kiss. This guy’ll be so grateful to be getting it at all, he’ll pitch puffballs all night and pay a half a million dollars for the privilege.
Nixon: Well, you think you could get 550?
Swifty Lazar [to the camera] : I got 6.

Money talks, let's say.

Birt: David, how could you have done that? $600,000. That’s a fortune. My God. Most Americans think he belongs in jail. You’re making him a rich man. Plus, by outbidding them, you’ve already made enemies of the networks.
Frost: They’re just jealous.
Birt: They’re already sounding off about checkbook journalism. And if the networks are against you, syndication’s always going to be a struggle. No syndication, no advance sales. No advance sales, no commercials. No commercials, no revenue.

Again, just to put it all in perspective.

Frost: You were never part of the show in New York, but it’s indescribable. Success in America is unlike success anywhere else. And the emptiness when it’s gone. And the sickening thought that it may never come back. You know, there’s a restaurant in New York called Sardi’s. Ordinary mortals can’t get a table. John, the place was my canteen! Birt: You know, I’d be happier if I heard some kind of vision that you had for this interview.

He'll think of something.

Nixon: You know, it’s a funny thing that I’ve never been challenged to a duel before. I guess that’s what this is.
Frost: Yeah, well, not really.
Nixon: Of course it is. And I like that. No holds barred, eh? No holds barred.

Of course, we have a few holds barred here.

Nixon: I bet you it did.
Brennan: What?
Nixon: Come out of his own pocket. You know, he couldn’t look me in the eye.
Brennan: Well, I hear the networks aren’t biting. Without the networks, the ad agencies don’t want to know. So if you ask me, there’s a good chance this whole thing may never happen.
Nixon: Really? So that meeting we just had might have cost him $200,000?
Brennan: Correct.
Nixon: Had I known that, I would have offered him a cup of tea.

Or two.

James Reston Jr.: You know right now, I submit it’s impossible to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon. He devalued the presidency, and he left the country that elected him in trauma. The American people need a conviction, pure and simple. The integrity of our political system, of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it.

This is the classic “love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal” approach to Watergate. Barely scratching the surface in terms of exposing the nature of “the sytem” Nixon embodied in the White House.

Brennan: We start taping at the end of March.
Nixon: Really? Now, that’s terrific. How much time is devoted to Watergate?
Brennan: 25%. Just one of four 90-minute shows.
Nixon: What are the other three divided into?
Brennan: Domestic Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Nixon the Man.
Nixon: “Nixon the Man”? As opposed to what? Nixon the horse?

In other words, the tricky dick segment.

Zelnick [impersonating Nixon, discussing Jack Kennedy]: That man, he screwed anything that moved, fixed elections, and took us into Vietnam. And the American people, they loved him for it! Whereas I, Richard Milhous Nixon, worked around the clock in their service, and they hated me! Look. Look. Now I’m sweating. Damn it! Damn it! And Kennedy’s so goddamn handsome and blue-eyed! Had women all over him! He screwed anything that moved, and everything. Had a go at Checkers once. The poor little bitch was never the same!

Would you be?

[Reston has swore to Zelnick earlier he would never shake Nixon’s hand]
Nixon [extending his hand to Reston]: Pleasure to meet you.
Reston [after a pause, he shakily extends his own hand]: Mr. President…
Zelnick [after Nixon leaves]: Oh that was devastating, withering. I don’t think he’s ever going to get over that.
Reston: Fuck off.

Next up: Shaking Trump's hand?

Brennan [voiceover]: Well, in boxing, you know, there’s always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger’s face. It’s that moment that he feels the impact from the champ’s first jab. It’s kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost’s face. If he didn’t know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President’s first answer.

Actually, as I recall, it was halfway though the second question. If at all.

Zelnick[ after the disastrous first segment]: David, we have some fundamental problems in our approach that I think…
Frost: Don’t worry, Bob. I’m on it. We can use some of the Kissinger stuff.
Zelnick: Yeah, but we need to discuss it sooner rather than later…
Frost: Look, I’m disappointed, too. But I wonder, could we possibly spare the post-mortem for now? I don’t mean to minimize it. It’s just I’ve got to get back to LA to meet some people from Weed Eater. Thanks, everyone! Great work! I’ll see you soon. God bless!
Zelnick: What the hell is Weed Eater?
Birt: It’s a horticultural mechanism. One of our sponsors.
Reston: What happened to Xerox? What about General Motors or IBM?
Birt: I gather that not all of the blue-chip accounts came through. We do have Alpo.
Reston: Dog food?

Wow, that will take some of us back.

Zelnick: Are we close, John?
Birt: I believe we’re at 30%.
Reston: To go? Or 30% sold?
Birt: Sold, 30% sold.
Reston: Jesus…
Zelnick: I thought we were practically fully financed.
Birt: We were. But the financing was always conditional on advertising sales, and no one predicted that they’d fall apart like this.
Zelnick: Well, why have they fallen apart? Based on what?
Reston: Credibility of the project. What else are advertising sales based on?

Bullshit, right?

Birt [to Frost]: Look, I’m serious. You have got to make it more uncomfortable for him. You can start by sitting forward. You’ve gotta attack more. If he starts tailing off, bang, jump in with another question. Don’t trade generalizations. Be specific. And above all, don’t let him give these self-serving, 23-minute homilies. Right. And keep your distance before the tape starts running. He was toying with you yesterday. All that shit about Ben-Hur and struggling to raise the money. Those are mind games. Don’t engage. Never forget, you are in there with a major operator.

However disgraced he might seem?

Frost: But one of the principal justifications you gave for the incursion was the supposed existence of the “headquarters of the entire Communist military operation in South Vietnam,” a sort of “bamboo Pentagon” which proved not to exist at all.
Nixon: No, no. Wait a minute there. No, I was…
Frost: And by sending… And by sending B-52s to carpet bomb a country, wiping out whole civilian areas, you end up radicalizing a once moderate people, uniting them in anti-American sentiment and creating a monster in the Khmer Rouge that would lead to civil war…

Oh, yeah, that part. Now, let's back back to Watergate.

Nixon: Whenever I have had my doubts I remembered the construction worker in Philadelphia because he came up to me and he said ‘Sir I got only one criticism of that Cambodia thing; if you’d gone in earlier you might’ve captured the gun that killed my boy three months ago’. So you’re asking me, do I regret going into Cambodia? No, I don’t. You know what, I wish I’d gone in sooner. And harder!

Ah, the killing fields.

Zelnick: What “revolution,” David? You just let Richard Nixon claim the country was in a state of revolution? What, with protestors “bombing” and “assaulting” police officers? That’s not how I remember it. What I remember is people protesting peacefully and legitimately against the Vietnam War! That’s what I remember.
Reston: By the end, wiretapping students and breaking into journalists’ homes was beginning to sound like a rational response.

Let's run that by MAGA.

Nixon [on the phone]: That’s our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us.
Frost: I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nixon: Yes you do. Now come on. No matter how many awards or column inches are written about you, or how high the elected office is, it’s still not enough. We still feel like the little man. The loser. They told us we were a hundred times, the smart asses in college, the high ups. The well-born. The people who’s respect we really wanted. Really craved. And isn’t that why we work so hard now, why we fight for every inch? Scrambling our way up in undignified fashion. If we’re honest for a minute, if we reflect privately, just for a moment, if we allow ourselves a glimpse into that shadowy place we call our soul, isn’t that why we’re here? Now? The two of us. Looking for a way back into the sun. Into the limelight. Back onto the winner’s podium. Because we can feel it slipping away. We were headed, both of us, for the dirt. The place the snobs always told us that we’d end up. Face in the dust, humiliated all the more for having tried. So pitifully hard. Well, to hell with that! We’re not going to let that happen, either of us. We’re going to show those bums, we’re going to make 'em choke on our continued success. Our continued headlines! Our continued awards! And power! And glory! We are gonna make those motherfuckers choke! Am I right?
Frost: You are. Except only one of us can win.
Nixon: Yes. And I shall be your fiercest adversary. I shall come at you with everything I got, because the limelight can only shine on one of us. And for the other, it’ll be the wilderness, with nothing and no one for company but those voices ringing in our head. You can probably tell I’ve had a drink. It’s not too many. Just one or two. But you believe me, when the time comes, I’m gonna be focused and ready for battle. Good night, Mr. Frost.
Frost: Good night, Mr. President.

You tell me.

Nixon: These men, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, I knew their families, I knew them since they were just kids. But you know, politically the pressure on me to let them go, that became overwhelming. So, I did it. I cut off one arm then I cut the other and I’m not a good butcher. And I have always maintained what they were doing, what we’re all doing was not criminal. Look, when you’re in office you gotta do a lot of things sometimes that are not always in the strictest sense of the law, legal, but you do them because they’re in the greater interest of the nation.
Frost: Alright wait, wait just so I understand correctly, are you really saying that in certain situations the President can decide whether it’s in the best interest of the nation and then do something illegal…
Nixon: I’m saying that when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!
Frost: I’m sorry?

Now, that certainly sounds familiar.

Frost: And the American people?
Nixon: I let them down. I let down my friends, I let down my country, and worst of all I let down our system of government, and the dreams of all those young people that ought to get into government but now they think; ‘Oh it’s all too corrupt and the rest’. Yeah…I let the American people down. And I’m gonna have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life. My political life is over.

There really are people [millions of them] who still believe this is indeed what we needed to hear. That this reflected the heart and the soul of “corruption” in his administration. And that the “secret government” narrative of the left was just [is still just] a fantasy dreamed up by deluded conspiracy theorists. Next up: the Epstein files?

Reston [in interview]: You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, stretches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.

But in no real substantive manner does this typical liberal narrative overlap with my own.

Birt [to the camera]: The Nixon/Frost interviews were wildly successful. I think they attracted the largest audience for a news program in the history of American television. David was on the cover of Time magazine and Newsweek magazine. And even the political press corps, the hard-bitten political press corps, called David up with messages of contrition and congratulation.

The more things change, as they say.

Nixon [to Frost at their last meeting]: Can I get something for somebody? Yes. Would you like some tea or champagne? Hey, you know, we got that caviar the Shah of Iran sent me.

Think about that for a while.

[iambiguous]

Umberto Eco from Foucault’s Pendulum

Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.

See, I told you.

What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.

Right, like God is fooled.

The Rosicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn't exist.

Hmm, have I ever met one?, he wondered.

The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.

Here? Let's name names.

Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

Not much that doesn't leave out. If only "here and now".

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty....It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos.

Next up: Epstein's island.

[iambiguous]

First off, we imagine all of the folks we would like to have met had we lived when they lived. In other words, “back then”. Folks a whole lot more, say, stimulating to be around. Folks that make those we interact with in the here and the now pale by comparison.

For example, suppose we popped into ILP at midnight and instead of the usual gang, we were somehow able to exchange posts with historical figures that had always most fascinated us.

Well, not that we ever could of course. But this is one of those “fantastic” films that allows us to imagine it. Just the thought itself of being on our very own fantasy island. For instance, on mine, there is not an objectivist to be found.

The point of it all? Well, it seems to revolve around a theme that virtually every Woody Allen film eventually gets around to: figuring out the best way to cope with the fact that while human existence is essentially meaningless and absurd [and full of misery] we still have no choice but to make the best of it.

Summed up best perhaps by Gertrude Stein: We all fear death and question our place in the universe. 

The artist’s job then is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

Remember Isaac going down his list at the end of Manhattan? Something like that.

Of course it always helps to find someone who is most like you to share these things with. And someone to love and to fuck. But in that regard, let’s just say that here Gil and Inez are not that couple.

Probably inspired by the Moberly-Jourdain incident in 1901 in which two academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, claimed to have experienced a timeslip into pre-revolutionary France on the grounds of Versailles.

The movie’s key art incorporates Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting “Starry Night.” Interestingly, the character of van Gogh does not appear in the film, though he could well have done so in the “Belle Epoque” sequence.

Hemingway and Gil visit Gertrude Stein, who is arguing with Picasso. In the background there is a portrait of her on the wall, painted by Picasso in 1906.

Woody Allen won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for this film. The Oscar was Allen’s fourth and the first he had won since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) 25 years earlier. Allen received two Oscar nominations for this movie, the other being for Best Director, they being his 22nd and 23rd nominations. Additionally, this is his first film since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) to earn a Best Picture nomination. IMDb


Midnight In Paris

Gil: This is unbelievable! Look at this! There’s no city like this in the world. There never was.
Inez: You act like you’ve never been here before.
Gil: I don’t get here often enough, that’s the problem. Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!

Here we go…

Helen: John hates French politics.
John: They’ve certainly been no help to the United States.
Gil: Well, I mean, you can’t exactly blame them for not following us down that rabbit hole in Iraq, with the whole Bush…
Inez: Please, let’s not get into that discussion yet again.
Gil: Honey, honey, we’re not getting into…By the way, it’s fine for your father and I to disagree. That’s what a democracy is. Your father defends the right wing of the Republican Party, and I happen to think you’ve almost got to be, like, a demented lunatic to do that, but it’s like…
Inez: Okay, okay!
Gil: No, but it doesn’t mean we don’t respect each other’s views. Am I right?

The look on John’s face? Priceless.

Gil: Paul is such a pseudo-intellectual.
Inez: Ah, Gil, I hardly think he’d be lecturing at the Sorbonne if he’s a pseudo-intellectual.

On the other hand, look at all the lectures we get here. 

Paul [to Gil and Inez]: Nostalgia for the past is denial - denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in - it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.

Sounds like a psuedo-intellectual to me. That and a pedant.

Gil: Yeah, actually, she’s right. I recently read a two-volume biography on Rodin, and Rose was definitely the wife, Camille the mistress.
Paul: You read that? Where did you read that?
Gil: Yeah, I just read it. I was surprised because I mistakenly thought, like you, that it was the other way around. It’s an easy mistake.
[after Paul is out of earshot]
Inez: When did you read a biography on Rodin?
Gil: Me?
Inez: Yeah.
Gil: Why would I read a biography on Rodin?

So, which is it?

Gil: Can I ask you the biggest favor in the world?
Hemingway: What is it?
Gil: Would you read it?
Hemingway: Your novel?
Gil: Yeah, it’s like looking for, you know, an opinion.
Hemingway: My opinion is I hate it.
Gil: I mean, you haven’t even read it.
Hemingway: If it’s bad, I’ll hate it because I hate bad writing, and if it’s good, I’ll be envious and hate it all the more. You don’t want the opinion of another writer.

Let alone a screed.

Gil: Were you scared?
Hemingway: Of what?
Gil: Of getting killed.
Hemingway: You’ll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?
Gil: Yeah, I do. I’d say probably, might be my greatest fear actually.
Hemingway: It’s something all men before you have done, all men will do.
Gil [glumly]: I know, I know…

Gil now being 89 years old.

Hemingway: I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave…It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds…until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again. Think about it.

I guess even the great writers tumble over the edge from time to time.

[Intellectuals and artists doing their thing]:Gertrude Stein [to Gil and Hemingway] :I’m glad you’re here. You can help decide which of us is right, and which of us is wrong. I was just telling Pablo that this portrait doesn’t capture Adriana. It has a universality, but no objectivity.
Picasso: No, no, no. You don’t understand correctly. You don’t know Adriana. Look at the motion, the painting. It’s exactly what she represents!
Gertrude Stein: No. You’re wrong. Look how he’s done her: dripping with sexual innuendo, carnal to the point of smoldering, and, yes, she’s beautiful, but it’s a subtle beauty; an implied sensuality. He’s made a creature of Place Pigalle. A whore with volcanic appetites.
Picasso: No, no! It’s true if you know her!
Gertrude Stein: Yes, with you, in private, because she’s your lover, but we don’t know her that way! So you make a petit-bourgeois judgment and turn her into an object of pleasure. It’s more like a still-life than a portrait.
Picasso: No. No. I do not agree!

So, who won?

Helen: We saw a wonderfully funny American film last night.
Inez: Who was in it?
Helen: Oh, I don’t know. I forget the name.
Gil: Wonderful but forgettable. It sounds like a film I’ve seen. I probably wrote it.

I wonder what he is hinting at here? Or who?

Paul: Here’s a superb Picasso. If I’m not mistaken, he painted this marvelous portrait of his French mistress Madeleine Brissou in the '20s.
Gil: Paul, I’m gonna have to differ with you on this one. If I’m not mistaken, this was a failed attempt to capture a young French girl named Adriana, from Bordeaux, if my art history serves me, who came to Paris to study costume design for the theater. I’m pretty sure she had an affair with Modigliani, then Braque, which is how Pablo met her. Picasso. Of course, what you don’t get from this portrait is the subtlety of her beauty. She was just a knock-out.
Inez [incredulous]: What have you been smoking?
Gil: I’d hardly call this picture marvelous, it’s more of a petit-bourgeois statement on how Pablo sees her. Saw her. He’s distracted by the fact that she was an absolute volcano in the sack.

Well, that makes at least two of us then.

Adriana: I keep forgetting that you are a tourist.
Gil: That is putting it mildly.

Back again to “the theme”:

Gil [to Adriana]: You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.

It's certainly not Baltimore.

Gil: Here. Take this.
Zelda Fitzgerald: What is this?
Gil: It’s a Valium. It’ll make you feel better.
Adriana: You carry medicine?
Gil: No, not normally. It’s just since I’ve been engaged to Inez, I’ve been having panic attacks, but I’m sure they’ll subside after the wedding.
Zelda: I’ve never heard of Valium. What is this?
Gil: It’s the…the pill of the future.

Really? Tell that to the VA.

Man Ray: A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!
Luis Buñuel: I see a film!
Gil: I see insurmountable problems.
Salvador Dalí: I see a rhinoceros!

No, really, what was it?

Inez [to Gil]: You always take the side of the help. That’s why Daddy says you’re a communist.

And then the idiotic descriptions we come upon here.

Gil: Oh, Mr. Buñuel. I had a nice idea for a movie for you.
Luis Buñuel: Yes?
Gil: A group of people attend a very formal dinner party. At the end of dinner, when they try to leave the room, they can’t.
Luis Buñuel: Why not?
Gil: They just can’t seem to exit the door.
Luis Buñuel: But why?
Gil: Well, when they’re forced to stay together, the veneer of civilization quickly fades away, and what you’re left with is who they really are: animals.
Luis Buñuel: But I don’t get it. Why don’t they just walk out of the room?
Gil: All I’m saying is just think about it. Who knows? Maybe when you’re shaving one day, it’ll tickle your fancy.
Luis Buñuel: But I don’t understand. What’s holding them in the room?

He'll come around to it.

Adriana: Let’s never go back to the '20s!
Gil: What are you talking about?
Adriana: We should stay here. It’s the start of La Belle Epoque! It’s the greatest, most beautiful era Paris has ever known.
Gil: Yeah, but about the '20s, and the Charleston, and the Fitzgeralds, and the Hemingways?
Adriana: I mean, I love those guys. But it’s the present. It’s dull.
Gil: Dull? It’s not my present. I’m from 2010.
Adriana: What do you mean?
Gil: I dropped in on you the same way we’re dropping in on the 1890s.
Adriana: You did?
Gil: I was trying to escape my present the same way you’re trying to escape yours, to a golden age.
Adriana: Surely you don’t think the '20s are a golden age!
Gil: Well, yeah. To me they are.
Adriana: But I’m from the '20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is La Belle poque.
Gil: And look at these guys. I mean, to them, their golden age was the Renaissance. You know, they’d trade Belle Epoque to be painting alongside Titian and Michelangelo. And those guys probably imagined life was a lot better when Kublai Khan was around.

New thread?

Gil: I had a dream the other night, where it was like a nightmare, where I ran out of Zithromax. And then I went to the dentist, and he didn’t have any Novocaine. You see what I’m saying? These people don’t have any antibiotics.
Adriana: What are you talking about?
Gil: Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you’ll start imagining another time was really your…You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that’s what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying.
Adriana: That’s the problem with writers. You are so full of words.

Them and all those fucking clouds.

Gertrude Stein [to Gil]: Hemingway did have one plot suggestion - he doesn’t quite believe that the protagonist doesn’t see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes.
Gil: With…?
Gertrude Stein: The other character. The pedantic one.

Pick one:
1] Hint, hint
2] wink, wink

Inez: Gil, your brain tumor is acting up again.

How could she tell?

[iambiguous]

Being invisible. Some complain about the fact that to others they are invisible. While others complain about the fact that to others they are not invisible enough.

I’m the latter. It has reached the point where, other than online, I make myself as invisible to others as possible. If only because, for most of my life, I was always surrounded by people: raised in a big family, growing up in bustling communities, schools, the steel mills, the shipyards, the army, college, a new family, political organizations, on the job. So, when I was finally able to drop out of all that I craved nothing more than being invisible. Solitude. I still do. But: It’s not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just something folks like me have come to crave. And something that others come to dread. Blame it on dasein.

Of course being invisible in a Coen brothers production is going to be a bit more problematic. And in the tradition of film noir, “nothing goes as planned and nothing is ever really what it seems”.

In other words, being invisible can revolve more around concealing who you really are by projecting a bogus “persona” to the public. Sometimes even to those you are nearest and dearest to. Or in just letting them see the tip of the iceberg. Though for some of course the tip is really all there is to see.

The year is 1949. Ed’s a barber. And a laconic barber if you can believe it. Not so much invisible as extremely low key. Not inclined toward, say, the banality of existence. But that seems to be everywhere. But [just as with everybody else] there’s the part about needing dough. And the part about getting more than you need. And the part about all the stuff that goes on in the shadows. The truth here being whatever you can convince others to believe it is.

Billy Bob Thornton jokingly made it look like Ed Crane had an erection in one of the scenes where he’s watching Scarlett Johansson’s character playing the piano. Only one of the prop guys noticed during production. When the Coen Brothers later found out, they made it clear that Ed would not be aroused in the scene.

Because he trusted the quality of Joel Coen's and Ethan Coen’s work, Billy Bob Thornton agreed to do the movie before even reading the script.

The name of the German theoretician that Riedenschneider struggles to remember is Werner Heisenberg.

The title is taken from the William Hughes Mearns poem “Antigonish”.

You know the one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigonish_(poem)


The Man Who Wasn't There

Ed [voiceover] Frank Raffo, my brother-in-law, was the principal barber, and man could he talk. Now maybe if you’re 11 or 12 years old, Frank’s got an interesting point of view.

And if you're not?

Ed [voiceover]: Frank’s father left the shop to Frankie free and clear. And that seemed to satisfy all of Frank’s ambitions: Cutting the hair and chewing the fat. Me, I don’t talk much. I just cut the hair.

Of course, that is what he's paid for.

Ed [voiceover]: Being a barber is a lot like being a bar man or a soda jerk. There’s not much to it once you’ve learned the basic moves. For the kids, there’s the butch, or the heinie, the flattop, the ivy, the crew, the vanguard, the junior contour…and occasionally the executive contour.

The heinie? I had all the others though,

Ed [voiceover]: Doris and I went to church once a week. Usually Tuesday night.
Priest: B-9. I-29.
Ed [voiceover]: Doris wasn’t big on divine worship, And I doubt if she believed in life everlasting. She’d most likely tell you that our reward is on this earth, And bingo is probably the extent of it.

Of course, now casinos everywhere.

Big Dave: Japs had us pinned down in Buna for something like six weeks. Well, I gotta tell ya, I thought we had it tough, but, Jesus, we had supply. They were eating grubs, nuts, thistles. When we finally up and bust off the beach we found Arnie Bragg, kid missing on recon; the Japs had eaten the sonofabitch, if you’ll pardon the, uh… And this was a scrawny, pimply kid too, nothin’ to write home about. I mean, I never would’ve, ya know, so what do I say, honey? When I don’t like dinner, what do I say? I say, ‘Jesus, honey, Arnie Bragg again’?

Turns out that’s a bit of an exaggeration.

Ed [voiceover]: Dry cleaning. Was I crazy to be thinking about it?

Isn't everyone? Besides, the dry part, it turns out, is bullshit,

Ed: Frank.
Frank: Huh?
Ed: This hair.
Frank: Yeah.
Ed: You ever wonder about it?
Frank: Whuddya mean?
Ed: I don’t know… How it keeps on coming. It just keeps growing.
Frank: Yeah, lucky for us, huh pal?
Ed: No, I mean it’s growing, it’s part of us. And we cut it off. And we throw it away.
Frank: Come on, Eddie, you’re gonna scare the kid.
Ed: I’m gonna take his hair and throw it out in the dirt.
Frank: What the…
Ed: I’m gonna mingle it with common house dirt.
Frank: What the hell are you talking about?
Ed: I don’t know. Skip it.

Later…

Ed [voiceover]: I thought about what an undertaker had told me once - that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, “What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it’s gone?”

A new thread to say the least. 

Ed [voiceover]: The barber shop. Doris and Frank’s father had worked years to own it free and clear. Now it got signed over to the bank, and the bank signed some over to Frank. And Frank signed the money to Freddy Riedenschneider. Who got into town two days later…

The film noir part. Well, along with all the rest of it. 

Ed [voiceover…watching people walk up and down the street]: There they were. All going about their business. It seemed like I knew a secret, a bigger one even than what had really happened to Big Dave. Something none of them knew. Like I had made it to the outside somehow, and they were all still struggling way down below.

Whatever that means?

Ed [voiceover]: Of course there was one person who could confirm Doris’s story. Or plenty of it. The dry-cleaning pansy. But he’d left the hotel, skipped out on his bill. He’d also disappeared from the residence he gave me, owing two months’ rent. How could I have been so stupid? Handing over $10,000 for a piece of paper. And the man gone, like a ghost. Disappeared into thin air vaporized like the nips at Nagasaki. Gone now. All gone. The money gone, Big Dave gone, Doris going. How could I have been so stupid?

Actually, he may well just be getting started.

Ed [voiceover]: Most people think someone’s accused of a crime, they haul 'em in and bring 'em to trial. But it’s not like that. It’s not that fast. The wheels of justice turn slow. They have the arraignment, then the indictment, and they entertain motions to dismiss and postpone and change the venue… And alter this and that and the other. They impanel a jury, which brings more motions. Then they set a trial date, and then they change the date. And then, often as not, they’ll change it again.

Anyone here actually know why?

Reidenschneider: They got this guy, in Germany. Fritz Something-or-other. Or is it? Maybe it’s Werner. Anyway, he’s got this theory, you wanna test something, you know, scientifically - how the planets go round the sun, what sunspots are made of, why the water comes out of the tap - well, you gotta look at it. But sometimes when you look at it, your looking changes it. Ya can’t know the reality of what happened, or what would’ve happened if you hadn’t-a stuck in your own goddamn schnozz. So there is no “what happened”? Not in any sense that we can grasp, with our puny minds. Because our minds… our minds get in the way. Looking at something changes it. They call it the “Uncertainty Principle”. Sure, it sounds screwy, but even Einstein says the guy’s on to something.

More film noir stuff.

Reidenschneider: Science. Perception. Reality. Doubt. Reasonable doubt. I’m saying that sometimes the more you look, the less you really know. It’s a fact, a proven fact. In…In a way, it’s the only fact there is.

Let's find a few more.

Ed [voiceover]: I hired a new man for the second chair. I’d hired the guy who did the least gabbing while he came in for an interview, But I guess the new man had only kept quiet because he was nervous. Once he had the job, he talked from the minute I opened the shop in the morning until I locked up at night. For all I know, he talked to himself on the way home.

The second chair here?

Ed [voiceover]: I went to see a woman who was supposed to have powers of communicating with those who had “passed across” as she called it. She said that people who had passed across were picky about who they communicated with, not like most people you run into on this side.

I know I'll be.

Ed [voiceover]: They put me on 24-hour death watch, so that I couldn’t cheat justice like they said my wife had done. But in front of the jury, they had it that Doris was a saint. The whole plan had been mine. I was a svengali who had forced Doris to join my criminal enterprise. On and on it went, how I’d used Doris, then let her take the fall. That stuff smarted because some of it was close to being true.

Ask me how close.

Ed [voiceover]: And then it was Riedenschneider’s turn. I gotta hand it to him, he tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. He talked about how I’d lost my place in the universe; how I was too ordinary to be the criminal mastermind the D.A. made me out to be; how there was some greater scheme at work that the state had yet to unravel. And he threw in some of the old “truth” stuff he hadn’t had a chance to trot out for Doris. He told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make; that I wasn’t the kind of guy to kill a guy; that I was The Barber, for Christsake. I was just like them - an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a world that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a dry cleaner, sure. But not a murderer. He said I was modern man, and if they voted to convict me, well, they’d be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. He told them to look, not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning. It was a pretty good speech. It even had me going…

Me? Not for a second.

Ed [voiceover]: It’s like pulling away from the maze. While you’re in the maze, you go through willy nilly, turning where you think you have to turn; banging into the dead ends. One thing after another. But you get some distance on it, and all those twists and turns, why, they’re the shape of your life. It’s hard to explain. But seeing it whole gives you some peace.

Define peace?

Ed [voiceover…about to be executed]: I don’t know where I’m being taken. I don’t know what I’ll find, beyond the earth and sky. But I’m not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don’t have words for here.

Among other things, though, it's a fat fucking chance.

[Fairy]

“In silence your truth knocks at the door”

[accelafine]

“In silence your truth knocks at the door”

Why the quotation marks when you have obviously just made it up?

[iambiguous]

Talk about Kids!

Only the last thing in the world they are interested in is huffing and puffing philosophy. Nope, here it’s dope. And “partying”. And [of course] being part and parcel of American Youth. Not that they can really be blamed for it though. It is, after all, the only thing most of them have ever known – given the nature of the narcissistic, commodity culture they have been brought up in. And it’s not like, in their own way, their parents aren’t Kids too.

Well, they don’t call this “late capitalism” for nothing.

And this is L.A… Haute Couture. The parents here are far too busy indulging themselves [and their “lifestyle”] to give much thought to their children. And so these spoiled brats become the proverbial “poor little rich kids”. I guess you might say they never had a chance.

But everything starts out so splendidly. And then the inevitable title card: SIX MONTHS LATER…

Unfortunately, this film is not to the novel what American Psycho was to that novel. Only Julian and Rip are really worthy of it. But sometimes this sort of submental decadence is just what folks like me need to be reminded of: of how truly irrelevant we are.

Look for Robert Downey Jr. playing himself. Back then.

Brad Pitt was paid US $38 for his uncredited cameo appearance.

According to the the ‘Robert Downey Jr Film Guide’ web-site, “supposedly, the director [‘Marek Kanievska’] suggested Robert Downey Jr. and Andrew McCarthy should go out and party to ‘get into character’ which ended with Downey in the middle of Santa Monica Boulevard, howling at the moon, and McCarthy had to bail him out of jail”.

The party sequence with all the television screens was filmed at a real 1980s Hollywood nightclub in Los Angeles. IMDb


Less Than Zero

Clay: What’s the matter, Blair?
Blair: Nothing.
Clay: Blair.
Blair: I’m not going to college. I’m staying here.
Clay: Why?
Blair: I can’t leave now. I’m starting to get all the great jobs. I worked really hard for all this.
Clay: Modeling? Why don’t you try something more challenging, like being a game show host?

Or posting [as some do] here.

Clay: Do you girls know that you have televisions between your legs?

Probably?

Rip [with a vial of dope]: You look like you could use a little Christmas cheer.
Clay: No.
Rip: Come on, Clay. Old habits never die. They just hibernate.
Clay: Old dealers?
Rip: They go to jail, right? Play handball with the Wall Street guys. You don’t belong here. These people are assholes. Who gives a fuck about these people?
Clay: I don’t know, Rip. Good customers though, huh?
Rip: Bread and butter.

Click, of course.

Blair: You don’t understand. He tried so hard. That record deal fell apart. He lost the money his father gave him. But he wouldn’t give up. He borrowed money from Rip. He worked day and night. He did everything he could to keep it going. Nothing helped. Julian was so hurt. I don’t think he ever really, you know, failed before. He got high all the time.

Well, at least he had a reason.

Rip: Got a minute, sweetheart?
Julian: Surely.
Rip: We’ve got to talk business friend.
Julian: Relax. I’ll pay you. Just trust me.
Rip: I don’t want to trust you. I just want my 50K.
Julian: Patience is next to godliness. It’s the flip side of cleanliness, but it’s still pretty fuckin’ important.
Rip: What are we talking about, Julian?
Julian: You giving me a ‘‘G’’ on spec.

Actually, I think he does!

Clay: Are you happy, Blair? You don’t look happy.
Blair: But do I look good?
Clay: Always.

Let's just note it was the way he said it.

Clay: You OK?
Blair: It’s the cocaine…too much speed or something.
Clay: That’s a relief.
Blair: What?
Clay: Well, you’re fucked up, you look like shit, but hey no problem, all you need is a better cut of cocaine.

Let's just note it was the way he said it.

Julian [to Clay]: Blair was good to me. I was lonely, and I needed somebody. She was there. It was nice. It wasn’t exactly the World Series of love, though.

Let alone the World Cup.

Rip: You have something for me?
Julian: Man, I had it all worked out. Christ, I thought I did. I fucked up. I don’t have any money. I don’t know where I’m going to get it.
Rip: Julian, this cannot go on forever. You owe me a lot of cash. I’m carrying you like I’m stupid.
Julian: But if you just give me a chance—Please don’t cut me off. I’ll do whatever you want.
Rip: Listen, uh…I want you to do a favor for me.
Julian: Sure.
Rip: You’re going to work for me, just for a while, till we’re even-Steven.
Julian: Business? Like sales?

Nope.

Julian: I was wondering if I could stay at home tonight. I’d just really like to wake up and know where the hell I am for once, it’ll be a nice change of pace for me.
Benjamin [dad]: I can’t do that.
Julian: Well I wouldn’t ask, it’s just my options are really kinda limited right now.
Benjamin: Julian, we’ve been through this a hundred times.
Julian: Yeah, a hundred and one, actually.
Benjamin: You conned your way through rehab, you lied, you stole. And look what you’ve done to our family.
Julian: I know, but I just want you to give me a break, I need you to be my father for one goddamn day just… just help me. I mean, can’t you tell when I’m telling the truth?
Benjamin: No. Trust was the first thing you ruined.
Julian [starting to cry]: Yeah.
[pause]
Julian: Okay, well I’m gonna go. There’s this guy I owe a large sum of money to, yeah big surprise but, I’m gonna try and talk to him, I’m gonna try and do something right for once. I mean it. So I just want you to wish me luck, whether you believe me or not.
Benjamin [voice breaking]: Julian? Can you stay clean for one week? For one damn week? I’ll do everything I can to help you. But I need you to help me too.
Julian [with a blank stare]: I could try.

Take a wild guess.

Rip: Julian, who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? You’re a junkie.

What's that make Rip then?

Rip: Julian, make an effort. Give me a new excuse, at least. I’ve heard this shit before!
Julian: The difference is that I mean it this time.
Rip: Good. Are you ready to work for me tonight?
Julian: No, I’m not. Rip, how long have we known each other? We’ve been friends.
Rip: Yes, we are friends, aren’t we, Julian?
Julian: Yeah. For a long time. Please don’t make me do this. I can’t do it again.
[Bill fires up the grill]
Rip: I think you’d be surprised at what you can do, Julian.

You first?

Clay: Just leave with me! There’s no reason for you to stay. Not here, not in L.A.
Julian: Jesus! Do I look like I’m ready for homework?!!

Not even close.

[iambiguous]

To be or not to be?

And, out of the blue, this can become the center of the universe when someone you love – loved for years – is gone. But that will always be the part where love gets tricky. In other words, you can find it reconfiguring from the reason you want to go on living into the reason you want to stop living altogether. And each and every one of us [eventually] will have our own close calls.

Here things become all the more problematic still because the world is smack dab in the middle of an epic “moment of truth”: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Literally the fate of “all of us” hangs in the balance. If it is not resolved [as it was] literally tens of millions could die.

And then the part where others see the world we live in today as even more...doomed?

Trust me: only if you actually lived through it would you have even the remotest inkling of what I am talking about.

Which makes one individual’s reaction to the death of another individual seem all the more problematic. Just imagine how, if the world were once again on the brink of something calamitous – a huge asteroid set to strike, world war 3, say – that would impact your own teeny, tiny existential crisis.

Of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1962. And the man who has chosen “not to be” here is gay. And being gay back then is not the same thing at all as being gay today. For one thing, he is not permitted even to attend his partner’s funeral. That can still happen today, of course, but how much more it did happen back in 1962.

So, does he really want to commit suicide? Consider the scene where he has the gun in his mouth but he doesn’t pull the trigger because he can’t seem to get his head comfortably situated on the pillow. He is…torn.

The ending seemed [at first] rather predictable. He meets this gorgeous young stud. Kenny. Kenny is as iconoclastic as himself. And that helps him to “move beyond” Jim. Only that turns out not to be the ending at all.

Look for Julianne Moore to look remarkably like Rene Russo in some shots.

Mad Men’s Jon Hamm is the uncredited voice of Hank Ackerley, the man who calls Colin Firth’s character at the start of the film.

Several times, George and other characters refer to their “invisibility” as a minority (in their cases, as gay men in early 1960s American society). George is referring here to the concept of social “invisibility” of black people put forth by Ralph Ellison in his classic novel ‘The Invisible Man’, which was first published about ten years before the events of this movie take place.   IMDb


A Single Man

George [voiceover]: Waking up begins with saying “am” and “now”.
[long pause as he lays there anguished]]
George: For the past eight months waking up has actually hurt. The cold realization that I am still here slowly sets in. I was never terribly fond of waking up. I was never one to jump out of bed and greet the day with a smile like Jim was. I used to want to punch him sometimes in the morning. He was so happy. I always used to tell him that only fools greet the day with a smile, that only fools could possibly escape the simple truth that now isnʼt simply now: itʼs a cold reminder. One day later than yesterday, one year later than last year and that sooner or later it will come. He used to laugh at me and then give me a kiss on the cheek. It takes time in the morning for me to become George, time to adjust to what is expected of George and how he is to behave. By the time I have dressed and put the final layer of polish on the now slightly stiff but quite perfect George I know fully what part Iʼm supposed to play. Looking in the mirror staring back at me isnʼt so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Just get through the goddamn day.

Been there? Me too. Let's flip to see who goes first.

George [on phone]:Will there be a service?
Harold: The day after tomorrow.
George: Well I suppose I should get off the phone and book a plane flight.
Harold: The service is just for family.

And even then not all are welcomed. Politics let's call it. 

George [thinking of what he had seen the little girl do that morning]: Look around Grant…most of these students aspire to nothing more than a corporate job and a desire to raise coke-drinking, TV-watching children who as soon as they can speak start chanting TV jingles and smashing things with hammers.
Grant: Youʼre really scaring me today, George.

Not unlike me here, Mr. Objectivist? 

Grant: You seem to think this is all a joke. We're living in a world where nuclear war is a real threat. I donʼt understand how you canʼt be concerned.
George: You're serious arenʼt you?
Grant: Yes, I'm serious. George, did you even read the article that I gave you on bomb shelters? Ours is almost done. We had 3 different contractors work on it so none of them know what weʼve got, then weʼre having the outside of it landscaped so no one will know it is there.

Back to the Twilight Zone: https://youtu.be/pE1nQt_6Mp0?si=3C_rMWYdrrh9Owqs

Myron: Sir, on page 79, Mr. Propter says that the stupidest text in the Bible is: “they hated me without a cause.” Does he mean the Nazis were right to hate the Jews? Is Huxley an anti-Semite?
George: No. No, Mr. Huxley is not an anti-Semite. The Nazis were obviously wrong to hate the Jews. But their hating the Jews was not without a cause…But the cause wasnʼt real. The cause was imagined. The cause was fear. But let’s leave the Jews out of this just for a moment. Let’s think of another minority. One that…One that can go unnoticed if it needs to. There are all sorts of minorities, blondes for example…Or people with freckles. But a minority is only thought of as one when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority. A real threat or an imagined one. And therein lies the fear. If the minority is somehow invisible, then the fear is much greater. That fear is why the minority is persecuted. So, you see there always is a cause. The cause is fear. Minorities are just people. People like us.

To wit: homosexuality?

George [to his class]: Let’s just talk about fear. Fear, after all, is our real enemy. Fear is taking over our world. Fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. Itʼs how politicians peddle policy and how Madison Avenue sells us things that we donʼt need. Think about it. Fear that weʼre going to be attacked, fear that there are communists lurking around every corner, fear that some little Caribbean country that doesnʼt believe in our way of life poses a threat to us. Fear that black culture may take over the world. Fear of Elvis Presleyʼs hips. Well, maybe that one is a real fear. Fear that our bad breath might ruin our friendships…Fear of growing old and being alone. Fear that we’re useless and that no one cares what we have to say.

Fear here.

Jim [in a flashback]: Explain your friend Charlotte to me.
George: What would you like to know?
Jim: You seem very… I donʼt know… intimate I guess. Like you were once together. You havenʼt ever slept with her have you?
George: Yes. A few times when we were young. I donʼt mean to say that it didnʼt mean anything to me but, Iʼm afraid it meant a good deal more to Charley. It was a long time ago in London. It didnʼt work out very well. I love Charley and we are very close friends but thatʼs all.
Jim: Iʼm confused. If you sleep with women then why are you with me?
George: Because I fall in love with men. Because I fell in love with you. Anyway, doesnʼt everyone sleep with women when theyʼre young?
Jim: I havenʼt.
George: Youʼre joking.
Jim: No. Iʼm not. It was just never anything that interested me.
George: Well. Youʼre awfully modern arenʼt you? You know, that was the first thing that I noticed about you was how sure of yourself you were. How can you be so sure about everything at your age?

On the other hand, how can anyone really be sure of how sure we are?

Jennifer [the little girl with the hammer]: Would you like to meet Charlton Heston? He’s our scorpion. Every night we throw in something new to him and watch him kill it. Daddy says it’s like a Coliseum. Daddy says he wants to throw you into the Coliseum.
George: No kidding. Why?
Jennifer: Well, he says you’re light in your loafers. But you’re not even wearing any loafers.

Another “dasein” moment?

Carlos: No one has ever picked me up and not wanted something.
George: I think you picked me up. This is kind of a serious day for me.
Carlos: Come on. What could be so serious for a guy like you?
George: I’m just trying to get over an old love I guess.
Carlos: My mother says that lovers are like buses. You just have to wait a little while and another one comes along.

Next up: all the virtual buses here. 

Jim [in a flashback to the dog]: And just what do you want?
George: He wants to go out.
Jim: Of course he does. What a life he has. Donʼt you envy him?
George: Why, because he gets to sniff anyoneʼs ass he wants to?
Jim: Nice. I envy him because he just does what he wants…You should take a lesson from him. He doesnʼt stay up all night worrying. He lives in the moment.

Do they know that?

Charley: This is so nice lying here with you. Donʼt you ever miss this? What we could have been to each other? Having a real relationship and kids?
George (stunned): I had Jim.
Charley: I know, but I mean a real relationship. George, letʼs be honest, what you and Jim had was great but wasnʼt it really just a substitute for something else?
George [now angry]: Is that really what you think after all of these years? That Jim was just a substitute for real love? Jim wasnʼt a substitute for anything, and there is no substitute for Jim, anywhere! And by the way, what was so real about your relationship with Richard? He left you after 9 years! Jim and I were together for 16 years and if he hadnʼt died we would still be together! What the hell is not real about that!?

Of course, he's still going to Hell.

Kenny: Iʼve always felt this way. I mean we're born alone, we die alone. And while we're here we are absolutely, completely sealed in our own bodies. Really weird. Kinda freaks me out to think about it. We can only experience the outside world through our own slanted perception of it. Who knows what youʼre really like. I just see what I think youʼre like.
George: I'm exactly what I seem to be, if you look closely. You know the only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.

So they tell me. Still.

George [voiceover]: A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity, when for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

Or, perhaps, wholly determined to be?

George [voiceover]: And just like that…it came.

Uh, the heart attack?

[iambiguous]

Absurdity

“Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity.” Zadie Smith

Or rejection as the case may be. Not that it's ever likely to be. 

“There are only two consistent visions of ultimate reality: one stating that the source of all being is an act of omnipotent will, and one stating that the source of all being is a jolt of mindless absurdity. The main difference between the two is that the former is preposterously unfathomable, while the latter is unfathomably preposterous.” Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Next up: ultimate bullshit.

“I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.” David Lynch

Hollywood, let's call it.

“You may not be interested in absurdity," she said firmly, "but absurdity is interested in you.” Donald Barthelme

And, he suspected, not just philosophically.

“What else but a profound feeling of being excluded can enable a person better to see the absurdity of the world and his own existence, or, to put it more soberly, the absurd dimensions of the world and his own existence?” Václav Havel

Me? Exclude me all you wish. 

“Terror washed through him, and then was replaced by a sense of cosmic absurdity.” Stephen King

Maybe, but only if you are really, really lucky.