Ape or Machine?

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On evilness • You see mister Gittis, most humans did not have to face the fact that in the right place and in the right time, they are capable of anything. Noah Cross. ’Chinatown’. Teaching Gittis a lesson in Humility. Noah Cross is truly a bad man in this film. Among the many things he did, he raped his daughter Evelyn and had a daughter(?) with her (maybe she should be called a granddaughter?). The name of the daughter/granddaughter is Katheryn. Gittis is a detective. Cross asks Gittis were is Katheryn which is ’The only daughter I have left. I lost Evelyn a long time ago’. Gittis asks: ’Who do you blame? Her?’ (Namely Evelyn). The above quote is the answer of Cross. ’I dont blame myself, You see mister Gittis, most humans did not have to face the fact that in the right place and in the right time, they are capable of anything.’ Sorry to say Cross is right. For example, in a very dangerous situation, when your actual life is in danger, most people will behave like monsters. If Cross does not blame himself it is because he knows almost all humans are like him. They just have the luck to not know it. Guy • ”Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule”. Friedrich Niechtze Among all quotes here, this is the deepest and most true. I aways say: ’If everybody thinks only on himself/herself you can not sustain civilization’. When you are in a group you are embolden to think only on your group. If others agree with us, for some strange reason it makes us feel just. Well, slavery used to be legal in the USA and the huge majority thought its just. When we have the protection of ’most people think this way’, instead of checking ourselves, we get vane. Do not recognize ’the other’. Make a monster out of your rivals. This happens every day when some human defend an indefensible act of his country This sickness. Blind patriotism. The reasons that we have so many wars is because every country and other groups only thinks on themselves. Thinking only on yourself has consequences. Eventually our world will be destroyed by atomic bombs. Its not a question of if, but of when. We did it to ourselves. You have two choices, and I mean it: Grow up, and act like adult, and think also on other people but you or your group, or the other option is die. We all will die. Guy

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• Mien Furer, I can Walk!!!! Dr Strangelove speaking. Portrayed by Peter Sellers. • When you try to kill the monster, be careful not to become one yourself. Friedrich Niechtze Many wars that took place in the 20’th century deserve the above quote. • The problem is that everybody has reasons. Jean Renoir from “The Regle De Jeaux” (namely, the film ’The rules of the game’ from 1938, a year before WWII started). The excuses evil people need when they do their evil stuff. Why dont they ever say: I do it because I am evil. You dont like it? I dont care. At least they will be telling the truth. But no. They also have to show they are morally superior. Give me a break. • Forget it Jake; Its Chinatown. The win of fatalism and evil and Noah Cross in the end of the movie “Chinatown”. Cross gets control over his daughter/granddaughter Katheryn. Evelyn is murdered. The film was directed by Roman Polanski. The masterful script (perhaps best ever written) is by Robert Town. • No one declares himself evil. From Jewish tradition Note: this saying is another way to say ’The problem is that everybody has reasons’ They say the same thing with different words. • The movie ’Midnight express” takes part in a Turkish prison. Worse then Hell. Billy, an America young person is sent there for trying to smuggle hashish. Later after a violent event he is moved to the prison for the criminally insane. A western inmate appears (uninvited) and explains to Billy. that they deserve to be there. People being born is like items that come from a ’factory’. Some people are damaged good, but they do not know that they are damaged good. After they send these people to prison, at the end they ’understand’ that they are bad machines. They understand that they belong in prison. Billy in the ’criminally insane’ part of the prison is obviously a broken machine. But the broken machines dont know they are broken machines. Billy does something trivial (an not so important) that angers the other inmates. The western fellow comes to Billy and says: ’Why my American friend? Why are you angry?’ Billy goes away furious. The western person looks at Billy and says: ’The bad machine does not know its a bad machine right?’ My quote is what Billy answers: 2

’But I know. I know you are a bad machine. You know why??! I am from the factory! I make the machines!’ I do not usually present opinions unless asked (I dont want to make people angry). Some of my opinions will be considered crazy to the left opinions. Some of my opinions will be considered crazy to the right opinions. Other opinions may insult everyone, Liberals and Conservatives. I can unite them :-). Let me explain the above quote by a conversation I had that made me angry (this is rare). Of course I was insulted countless times for my opinions. I almost got used to it. In one of my previous work places in which most workers were women they asked me about my recent (first) born child. ’How do you feel now?’ I said that it seems to me that dealing with a new baby is very very hard. It is like part of your life ends, you loose a lot of your freedom. I was simply ’down’ emotionally, at the beginning, and said I am down. I claimed that ’society does not say out loud how hard is to get used to a first baby, as they want ’everybody to marry and have children’. Most people are obedient and because they were brought up this way, they think babies are sacred. Responding to my answer, one girl told me: ’You are a sick person’. I got really angry (why did I get so angry in this case and not in the other thousands cases I was insulted? I should search within). In answer, I cited the above quotation but refused to explain what it means, and just left. What does it mean? The western person took the part of ‘god’. He decides who are the bad machines. What makes him so certain is that society agrees that those who are in the prison, in the insane asylum department, are broken machines. You always feel better if the majority agrees with you. It gives you power. Society thinks babies are sacred. So this lady felt she has the right to call me sick. The truth is that, if for reasons of hunger only, most couples should stop having babies. I dont recognize the right of this western man and of the above woman and of society at large to decide who is a broken machine and who is not. The opinions of these people are supported by society. So what? See what Friedrich Niechtze said above on insanity of society. Probably the fact that you think like most people is an evidence for hypocrisy. That is all. Because of this, its probably more likely that I am from the factory (I am right) and not all those people that ’cite society’. • Sure, he was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were. From ’All my sons’. A fabulous play by Arthur Miller. Mister Joe Keller has a business that sells parts to airplanes of the the USA army. Its second world war time. One day he has a huge deal. His business and his family would collapse if he does not finish this deal. What Keller is mostly proud of is his son Larry. ’My only accomplishment is my son’ he says in the play. And he says ’I’m his father and he’s my son, and if there’s something bigger than that I’ll put a bullet in my head!’ 3

There is a problem with the crucial deal above. The cylinders he is about to sell to the army are faulty. And Joe knows that. But if he does not go on with the deal, he will go bankrupt, and will have no money to provide for his family and his son Larry. They will not have even money to buy food. With heavy heart, Joe goes on with the deal. But tragedy strikes. Twenty one pilots crash over Australia because of the faulty cylinders. When Larry hears that his father is guilty of killing 21 pilots, he can not live with such a terrible notion and commits suicide (by crashing his plane. Larry was a combat pilot as well). Many years after this, Mr Keller still denies he did anything wrong (says he was not at work the day this sale of the faulty cylinders took place. A lie that becomes evident later when Joe says that he never missed a days work). He certainly does not take responsibility for what Larry did, and certainly would not be able to live with the fact that he is responsible for his son death. Joe just says: Larry is reported missing. Maybe he is alive? All the family still has hope that Larry is alive. At the end it becomes clear that Keller was on work in that fateful day. He lied. He cause the lives of 21 pilots. But worse: he caused the death of Larry. His son. Keller realizes what I always say: ’If everybody thinks only on himself/herself, they is no way to maintain civilization’. Keller says that he did what he did for his son and the rest of the family. To save them. For Larry. But admits ’Sure, he (Larry) was my son. But I think to him they were all my sons. And I guess they were, I guess they were.’ His wife tells him: Don’t take it on yourself. Forget now. Live! But the play ends with Joe Keller committing suicide. • I could have saved one more! Schindler, in ’Schindler’s list’ by Steven Spielberg. • I can’t listen too much to Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland. Woody Allen • My grandmother never gave me presents. She was too busy being raped by Kozaks. Alvi (Woody Allen) in ’Annie Hall’. • Death is no solution. Fritz Lang. In ’The contempt’. ’The contempt’ is a film by the ultra liberal Goddard. Fritz Lang appears as himself in the film and says the above line. • No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. Abraham Lincoln He was ugly but smart :-)

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• In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo De Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce.? The cuckoo clock. This quotation is from the film ’The Third Man’. The character talking is the corrupt Harry Lime, portrayed by Orson Wells. A very disturbing quote, because its true. Guy. • At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols. Aldous Huxley • ’The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing the world it does not exist”. Virgil from the movie: “The usual suspects’. But he does exist. I dont know if god is on earth, but I know the devil is. Guy. • The following speech is from the film Nuremberg trials, which speaks about the most evil thing done in the 20 century, the Jewish Holocaust. Thus the character Ernest Janning is fictional. But looking on the real accused in the Nuremberg trials, precisely ones who where judges after the 1935 laws were in place, we see that their story is remarkably close to the fictional story of Janning. I think the film, and especially the speech of Janning in the film, explains some things better than all the documentaries on the Holocaust that I have seen. In the film, Ernest Janning was known since the 19 century as a freedom fighter. As a promoter of justice and rights for minorities. He wrote books on this subject. He finally became a judge. Many of the judges in the real Nuremberg trials, had practically identical lives before the Nazis came to power. A bit after the 1935 laws, that forbid for example marriage between Aryans and Jews, they put to trial an old Jew called Feldenstein. Feldenstein was a father figure to some “Aryan” girl” of age 16. Some German in the building did not like the fact that Feldenstein has such an influence on the girl (played by Judy Garland!) and on the fact that the girl admired Feldenstein. So the neighbors accused him for no reason of violating the Nuremberg laws by having sexual relations with the 16 years old girl. Feldenstein was completely innocent even according to this monstrous Nuremberg laws. The only things he gave her were candy, attention and a lot of love. So for no reason at all, Feldenstein was put on trial under the claim that he slept with the little girl. The girl denied it with all she had. The judge in the trial was Ernest Janning. The Nazis failed to convince the girl to state their sexual version as truth. Regardless, Ernest Janning verdict was the death penalty to the old Jew. And two years in prison for the 16 years old girl, for purgery!. For that and other deeds Janning was put to trial in the so called Nuremberg trials.

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The floor is now given to Ernest Janning as he spoke during the (film) Nuremberg trial. Janning: I wish to testify about the Feldenstein case because it was the most significant trial of the period. It is important not only for the tribunal to understand it, but for the whole German people. But in order to understand it, one must understand the period in which it happened. There was a fever over the land, a fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all there was fear, fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us, because he said to us: ”Lift your heads. Be proud to be German. There are devils among us, communists, liberals, Jews, gypsies. Once these devils will be destroyed your misery will be destroyed.” It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb. What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country. What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase. It is only a stage we are going through. It will be discarded sooner or later. Hitler himself will be discarded – sooner or later. The country is in danger. We will march out of the shadows! We will go forward. FORWARD is the great password. And history tells how well we succeeded, Your Honor. We succeeded beyond out wildest dreams. The very elements of hate and power about Hitler that mesmerized Germany, mesmerized the world. We found ourselves with sudden powerful allies. Things that had been denied to us as a democracy were open to us now. The world said, ”Go ahead. Take it. Take it! Take Sudetenland! Take the Rhineland! Re-militarize it! Take all of Austria! Take it!” And then, one day we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual begun in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a ”passing phase” had become the way of life. Your Honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name, until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him do it. He has done it, here, in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the 16 year old girl after all. Once more, it is being done – for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it – whatever the pain and humiliation. I had reached my verdict on the Feldenstein case before I ever came into the courtroom. I would have found him guilty, whatever the evidence. It was not a trial at all. It was a sacrificial ritual in which Feldenstein, the Jew, was the helpless victim. 6

Hans Rolfe: Your Honor, I must interrupt. The defendant is not aware of what he’s saying. He’s not aware of the implications! Janning: I am aware. I am aware! My counsel would have you believe we were not aware of the concentration camps. Not aware. Where were we? Where were we when Hitler began shrieking his hate in Reichstag? Where were we when our neighbors were being dragged out in the middle of the night to Dachau?! Where were we when every village in Germany has a railroad terminal where cattle cars were filled with children being carried out to their extermination! Where were we when they cried out in the night to us. Deaf, dumb, blind!! Hans Rolfe: Your Honor, I must protest! Janning: My counsel says we were not aware of the extermination of the millions. He would give you the excuse: We were only aware of the extermination of the hundreds. Does that make us any the less guilty? Maybe we didn’t know the details. But if we didn’t know, it was because we didn’t want to know. Emil Hahn: Traitor! Traitor! Judge Haywood: Order! Order! Order! Put that man [Hahn] back in his seat and keep him there. Janning: I am going to tell them the truth. I am going to tell them the truth if the whole world conspires against it. I am going to tell them the truth about their Ministry of Justice. Werner Lammpe, an old man who cries into his Bible now, an old man who profited by the property expropriation of every man he sent to a concentration camp. Friedrich Hofstetter, the ”good German” who knew how to take orders, who sent men before him to be sterilized like so many digits. Emil Hahn, the decayed, corrupt bigot, obsessed by the evil within himself. And Ernst Janning, worse than any of them because he knew what they were, and he went along with them. Ernst Janning: Who made his life excrement, because he walked with them. This was what Janning said. Some of the most condemning words against the Germans for their crimes. • ”And god smelled the fine smell. And god told his heart: I will no longer punish every living as I did. Because, the urges of the heart of humans, is bad, from its youth’. Its an old testament quote spoken by god. I simplified the fancy words a bit. This is what god said after the ’Flood’. The Noah story and the Ark. After this ends and the flood ends god feels regret (a hugely terrible logical contradiction for people of faith. How can god regret? He does not know the future?) and then said he is not going to do more floods. The point is what god says at the end: ’Because, the urges of the heart of humans, is bad, from its youth’. Translation: ’We are born evil’. Dont blame me. God said it. Guy.

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• ’Well, it would be sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?’ Scout the little brave girl to her idealistic father Atticus Finch. I think usually, this book is taught in schools in the USA (at one stage or another). The book is called ’To kill a mockingbird’. I will take a quote from the film, which has many many differences from the book. And I recommend both to read the book and to see this classic film. This quote from the film says it better. The name Atticus perhaps was chosen because it sounds like ethics. Atticus is an idealistic lawyer. There is a very bad man in this story called Bob Ewell. Very close to Evil, isn’t it? Atticus tels his children about hunting. Its the south. Everybody hunts. So Atticus expect Scout and her brother Jem to be hunters (one day) but only warns them: ’You can shoot certain birds but it is ’a sin to kill a mockingbird’ - a songbird that harmlessly exists only to give pleasure.’ Other birds destroy stuff. But mockingbirds don’t eat people’s gardens, don’t nest in the corncribs. They just sing. Beautifully.’ Another character in the book/movie is the reclusive and apparently hugely shy neighbor, ”Boo” Radley (Boo. like you say when you want to scare someone). A black man named Tom Robinson is put to trail, unjustly, for a crime he did not commit. Accuse of raping a white girl named Mayella Violet Ewell. In fact she tried to seduce Tom (it was illegal at the time for a black person and a white person to have sex. Thus Robinson got very scared and run away). The girls has many bruises. But they were inflicted by her evil father Bob Ewell. Her father regularly hits her. Atticus proves the innocence of Tom (how: to know that you will need to read the book). But this does not help. Its the south. Tim is found guilty and later is shot trying to escape. But evil Bob Ewell feels Atticus embarrassed him. His revenge, he attacks Scout and her brother Jem! Jem is seriously injured. But then the recluse Boo Radley hears the noise and helps the two children and kills Ewell. Scout leads Radley into their home, but he hides in the shadows. Idealistic Finch says Boo will have to go to trial but its a clear self defense. The sheriff Tate is strictly against that and says (as far as he is concerned) that Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed himself. I wont go for a trial with such a shy person as accused. Atticus does not agree. Finally its Scout who convinces her father to cooperate. Scout: Mr. Tate was right. Atticus: What do you mean? Scout: Well, (putting Boo on trial) it would be sort of like shooting a mockingbird, wouldn’t it? Guy: I sympathize with this, I really do. But for me NOT putting Boo on trial is like killing a mockingbird. A person that killed another person must go for a trial even if its almost sure that he will be found not guilty. You have to observe the law unless its some sort of fascist law. Putting a person that killed another person on trial is not only not a fascist act, but is also an absolute must. Lies kill people. The Vietnam war started by a lie (Johnson claimed an American ship was attacked. It was not). I can easily name ten more wars that started based upon lies. 8

If you dont have to obey the law, then the government does not have to obey the law and then these is no stopping its power. Recently the USA had a government that simply ignored the USA law and certainly ignored and had contempt for the international law. It did not end good, now did it? At the end this president had like 20% approval rating. Sorry to disagree with such a nice girl like Scout. Recently in the school of my daughter they performed the play version of ’To kill a mockingbird’. My daughter played Scout. Of course this makes no difference to me. Boo will be harmed, yes, as he is very shy. Yes. But you cant defend people with lies. It would be like shooting a mockingbird. • A perhaps sad remark to end this segment: Above we use the line: ’The usual suspect’ (it was in fact a name of a movie). It seems that quite a few Americans would not know what ’The usual suspects’ means. Where does it come from. But people need to know their own culture. Therefore as another example of a film that talks about evil let us reproduce the last moments of ’Casablanca’: The Nazi Major Strasser is determined to stop the freedom fighter Victor Laslo that is on the departing airplane. Rick (Richard Blane played by Bogart the hero of the film Casablanca): ’I was willing to shoot Captain Renault, and I’m willing to shoot you,’. The Nazi major tries to halt the plane by phone to the radio tower. Rick warns him to stop. The Nazi pulls out a gun and fires at Rick. Rick fires back. Strasser dies. A car pulls up. Five policemen appear. Captain Renault says: ’Major Strasser has been shot! And after a long pause says: Round up the usual suspects!’ Renault: Well, Rick, you’re not only a sentimentalists, but you’ve become a patriot. Rick: Maybe, but it seemed like a good time to start. Renault: I think perhaps you’re right. Renault throws a Vichy wine bottle into the trash. The plane takes off with Victor Laslo. Rick, the USA and The anti Nazi French movement have won! Renault: It might be a good idea for you to disappear from Casablanca for a while. There’s a Free French garrison over at Brazzaville. I could be induced to arrange a passage. Rick: My letter of transit? I could use a trip. But it doesn’t make any difference about our bet. You still owe me ten thousand francs. Renault: And that ten thousand francs should pay our expenses. Rick: Our expenses?? Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship! On fascism and other horrors • One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is statistics. Stalin

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• When you cut trees saw dust falls. Stalin. This means that when you are trying to apply a so call ’ideal’ of making the world so called ’just’, by bringing ’Communism’ everywhere, its much more important than a few millions here and there that have to die for the cause in Siberia working hard labor. They are not the trees. Only saw dust. As Rumsfeld called the Iraqi civilians accidently killed In the so called Iraq war: ’collateral damage’. Stalin killed more people than anyone in history and certainly more than Hitler. He should have gone to LA. There they give awards to people that have the largest record, no matter what the subject is. • Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism. Benito Mussolini I surely agree that Fascism is a religion. Guy. • Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by power and by force, whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual. Albert Einstein • ’The horror. The horror’. From the movie Apocalypse now. Captain Benjamin L. Willard is sent to kill a once model soldier Colonel Walter E. Kurtz that has gone rogue. The Colonel built his own legion and empire inside a jungle in Cambodia. Willard arrives there and meets Kurtz. Kurtz tells Willard a story in which he details his fascist believes. Kurtz: I’ve seen horrors... horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that. But you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face. and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces. seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized like I was shot. like I was shot with a diamond bullet right through my forehead. 10

And I thought, my God. the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love but they had the strength to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling. without passion. without judgment. without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us. Later Willard kills Kurtz and his dying words are The horror... the horror... You see, everybody has reasons. Kurtz had to explain why he behaves like he does and still can take the high moral ground. Why did Kurtz say ’The horror The horror’ when he dies? The movie is clear in showing Kurtz wanting to die. So Kurtz is not talking about the horror of him dying, but is reminding Willard that in his opinion only by Fascism you can win this war. Its true. The American had a choice: embrace ideas such as Kurtz or loose the war. They chose to loose the war. • ’One shoot! From the film ’The dear hunter’. This is the story of Michael and Nick. We start the day before they have to go and fight in Vietnam. They are all from Western Pennsylvania. They believe in god and guns (hunting) and are steel workers (they probably vote Republican). They go hunting. Nick loves hunting and explains: ’I like the way the trees are on the mountains, all different. The way the trees are.’ Michael is quite a ’Masocho’ and says to Nick that ’A true hunter takes down a deer by ONE SHOOT. ’Two shoots is pussy’ Michael says. This hunting trips ceremonies on the mountains are what defines (the man) in the group. A cut to the war. In the war scene Michael, and Nick and others are captured . Their sadistic guards make them play Russian roulette (they bet on the outcome). Now, Michael gets over his Masocho ’One shot’ mentality. Symbolically, this is what saves him. He puts 3 bullets (50 percent chance to die) and not ’one shot’ (namely, one bullet) in his pistol. He both wins this 50 percent chance and uses these 3 bullets to free himself and Nick and another friend. When Mike comes home he goes hunting with his friends that did not go to Vietnam. Michael follows a nice deer and awaits to the perfect one shot - his primary ’religious’ philosophy. But Michael has changed. he does not shoots the deer (killing is futile, he learned). He shoots to the sky, sparing this deer and shouts to the world ”OK?” This ’OK?’ shouts echoes for a very long time. He overcame is ’One Shot’ semi-fascist mentality. But it is too late. His ’One shot’ philosophy will bring a Greek Tragedy ending to the film. Nick stays in Vietnam, becomes crazy and on drugs and keeps playing, without anybody forcing him, Russian roulette. When Michael understand that, he goes to Vietnam to save him.

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Michael finds Nick but Nick by now, does not know who Michael is. Whatever Mike says, Nick does not remember. Nick behaves like a stranger. Thus Mike plays Russian roulette against Nick. And tells Nick: Michael: Do you remember the trees? Do you remember all the different ways of the trees? Do you remember that? Do you remember? The mountains? Do you remember all that? Now comes an acting moment that I may only describe as one of the best acting moments I have ever seen. Nick starts to remember something. His doubts are seen all over his face. He is not sure what he seems to remember. Finally Nick remembers something and says: Nick: One shot!! (He smiles and laughs in recognition.) Michael: (Very happily) One shot, one shot! What this film goes against is ’Masochism’ and senseless violence which can be seen as a form of fascism. Masochism can be dangerous. Nick remembers Michael’s Masocho line. But this line kills him. Mike tries to prevent Nick from taking another shot to head head, by trying to hold the gun. Even as he partially recognizes Mike, Nick takes the gun away from Mike and takes one last ’One Shoot’ (the gun has one bullet) to his head and blows his brains out with this last ’one-shot’. The ’one shot’ ideology has won. • ’Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told. But when he don’t, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain’t gonna allow that in any of you. Not one.’ Sargent Barnes. From Platoon by Oliver Stone. The hero of the story Tyler goes to Vietnam. He meets Sargent Barnes. Barnes is a total monster. He is truly a sadist scam that kills civilians for fun. At the last scene the hero (main protagonist) of the film, Taylor shoots and kills Barnes. Because the army and the USA failed to treat his the sadistic nature of Barnes. The director Oliver Stone conveys the following message: The country is corrupt, the army is corrupt. So we the good guys (who are these good guys?) should serve as judge jury and executioners. Barnes being a monster is made for us not to feel guilty. Also since its Tyler its OK. To the hell with fair trail. Tyler has a ’right’ to shoot him, because Stone prepared us for this moment so well. We (at least the critics) do not even understand that shooting Barnes is pure evil. The end justifies the means. Many things were said about this obnoxious film, but the most important thing has rarely been said. This film is Fascist. On religion • God is not a bad fellow. He is just an underachiever. Woody Allen in a brief Summary of the masterpeace ’The seventh seal’ by Ingmar Bergman that is a film of a religious man that wonders why does god keep silent with all the terrible things that go around. Allen gives a possible answer. This line is from the movie ’Love and death’. 12

• ’The world behaves in its usual way’ There is only one way for the Jewish religion not to be silly. The religion has to be rational. The above is the central idea in such rational religion. As god declares at the end of the book of Jov (after almost all his family is killed and Jov himself becomes a leper): ’I dont owe explanations’. Our world is our world. God is outside our world and does not intervene. A person that thinks he knows what god thinks is simply an ape. We can not know what aliens look like and they reside in our world. So to know the thought of an abstract entity that is * outside * our world is so idiotic. It means the person stating this gave up on its intelligence. And then he is like an ape, is he not? Whatever you do in religion is for the sake of faith and faith only. No reward whatsoever. No afterlife (in the old testament, definitely, there is no afterlife a thing that is usually not stated). Thus you can not expect anything from god but more than that you ARE NOT ALLOWED TO expect anything from god. The core of the Jewish religion are 613 rules of ’do this’, and ’dont do this’. If you are a religious Jew, you have to fulfil those ‘Mitvot” (commands) and not expect anything in return. God does not punish the bad. God does not help the good. God does not save the weak. He is outside this world and never influences our world in a way that we can grasp. If we claim to know what kind of influence god has in this world, we are nothing but apes. He did not really talk to any human prophets or not. God does not talk to humans. He does not talk. God does nothing we could understand. If you ask why should I try to do and not do 613 things, among them difficult stuff (like not turning the light, or not use a car on Saturday) you are confused. Why you ask? Its not that you should. Its a choice. An ethical choice you make. Its an individual decision. You may feel it is something that represents your values. Like, say, the 10 commandments. In this sense the Jews that ask ’How come the Jewish Holocaust happened’ ? are very confused and so so childish and to me, annoying. Grow up! God does not intervene. Period. Even if someone kills a million Jewish children. You are angry with god for that? Well in that case you can not call yourself a Jew (by definition, at least for me, a Jew is a religious Jew). You do not become a religious Jew to transform god into your agent. You think he works for you?? Give me a break. The world should be explored with science. Evolution happened. Yes, the above line implies all of that because it takes god fully out of this world. And in this world the method to analyze things is science. The story about 7 days in which god created the world does not give you information (come on, what is a day. The son was created in day 4 or something like that so how can you have days anyway?). The story of creating is a parable. The prophets did not predict the future. They are not some clowns that do some cheap tricks of guessing the future in some Cheap fair like monkeys. To say that the prophets predicted the future is a huge insult to the Jewish religion. The prophets just said how the future * should * look like. And so on and on and on. Our 13

world will always go about its business as usual. Many genocide will still take place in the future. Child prostitution exists now in our world (in Thailand more than other places) and probably will exist for many many years from now. Children will continue to die of hunger. Sorry. No miracles, in rational religion. Miracle do not happen. There is no such thing. If you read the old testament and say: ’But here it says that god did a miracle!’. You are confused. Everything written in the old testament is ’coded’ in a sense that it does not give you information but rather is discussion on morality by parables. It is up to us to make the world a more civilized place. Of course we will not do that. We are too busy thinking only on ourselves. As we choose not to grow up, we are doomed. • Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. Blaise Pascal • Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires. Sigmund Freud For me there is nothing wrong with rational religion, except that it is childish. Guy. • Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. Sigmund Freud When you grow up, and see that your father whom you thought to be all powerful, is only human. Is not perfect. You invent yourself a substitute. A god. A perfect god. This is done mainly because we can not cope with the fact that we are going to die some day. Believing in god, unless rationally, means you never did grow up. As I told you the other possibility is just to die. I know you would have sooner or later. But this will make it much sooner. • God, you gave us insufficient evidence. Bertrand Russell answering a woman that asks what if he is wrong and will meet god after death. • One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer’s and has forgotten we exist. Lily Tomlin • As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. Protagoras This represent my opinion. A person like this is called an Agnostic. Guy.

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• Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends. Woody Allen • Voltaire was an author and philosopher. When he was dying, a priest came (of course) to his bed. The Priest asks Voltaire if he denounces Satan. His answer was: Voltaire: ’Now Now my good man. This is no time to make enemies....’ On illusions and dreams, and the ’American dream’: • Sandy ’Where are my dream?’ This is from a movie called ’Blue Velvet’ by a very strange person called ’David Lynch’. It has perhaps the most terrible villain in history of cinema. ’Frank Booth’. The story of a deranged man call Frank Booth that is extorting sexual favors from a sexually masochistic girl named Dorothy Vallence. He kidnaps her small son. Dorothy lives in Lincoln street. The name of Frank Booth reminds you of something? I of course hint to John Wilks Booth, the killer of Lincoln. This film has such a hint every two minutes. A College boy Jeffrey and a high school girl Sandy try to help Dorothy. And in the end, indeed Jeffrey kills Frank Booth. Dorothy gets little boy back. This film fiercely attacks our myths. They are nothing but illusions, the film says. The myth of ’the good hearted American from small towns’. The myth that they are the ’real Americans’. The myth of the city people not ’the real American’. Frank Capra in a series of films helped create this myth of ’the kind small town people’. And at least in two films, ’Mister Deeds goes to town’ and ’Mister Smith goes to Washington’ showed evilness of city people versus kindness of little town people. Capra films like ’You cant take it with you’, ’Meet John do’, ’Its a wonderful life’ all hail the people from the small town. Capra truly believed in it and he is fully in his right to do movies that reflect his beliefs. Now to the ultimate film about the ’kind people from small towns’. The name Dorothy is a hint to the film ’The wizard of Oz’ (Blue velvet is full with citation of ’The wizard of Oz’ and even has the yellow brick road, if you really look for it carefully. On the road the separation line is broken quadrangular yellow signs. Its the quadrangular yellow strip down the middle of the two-lane road. There you have ’yellow brick road’. The hat of the boy is a reference to ’The Wizard of Oz’ and so are the shoos of Dorothy). The wizard of Oz is the ultimate very phoney film about the good people in small towns. This is an ugly film that lies to children (as you can tell from some quotes I gave from this obnoxious film). Lynch attacks this film (without mentioning it explicitly) truly fiercely. A person that helped in igniting the myth of the ’good people from small towns’ is John Ford, the true believer. He explains his point best in the film ’The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’. As you can see this person is not only called Valance almost as Dorothy but his first name Liberty is a hint to ’The slaves liberator’ Lincoln. 15

The film ’The man who shot Liberty Valance’ is on a gang of outlaws led by a gunfighter Liberty Valance. They hold up stagecoach. On this stagecoach is an idealistic layer Stoddard. Valance bits him brutally. Now, meet Tom Doniphon. He is a ’good’ gunman that thinks that Stoddard is highly outclasses in his fight to control Valence. Valence persist with his bullying and eventually, Stoddard has to accept a challenge to a gun dual. But Stoddard is a complete incompetent with guns and Valance an expert. Still, Stoddard miraculously wins and kills Valance with one shot. So Stoddard is hailed as ’The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’. But he feels really bad about it. To make him feel better, Doniphon tells Stoddard the truth. It was he, Doniphon not Stoddard that shot and killed Valance from the other side of the street. Years later Stoddard tells a newspaper reporter the truth about the killing of Valance. The newspaper man burns his notes stating: ”This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”. On a train in the final scene, a train employee says ’It is an honor for me to serve ”The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” ’. Lynch thinks the above film is dangerous. Maybe obnoxious. Lynch pokes fun on our myth from the first picture of the film. In the opening scene. the Kitsch is way way too ideal to be credible. Very very white fences. Idea fence. Vet very warm red and yellow flowers. Fire fighters waving in slow motion. Just like heaven. The huge exaggeration means that we are talking on an illusion. saying: ’No, this town is not pure at all’. This myth is a lie. Sandy (this name was chosen as it sounds like sandman) tells Jeffrey about a dream she had with love birds; Robins. At the end we see the failure of this dream: A robin eating an insect (the film is full with insects throughout as a symbol for evil). Dorothy Vallance complains herself the Jeffrey ’put his disease in me’. In my opinion his decease is the false hope that people are good. Sandy sees what Booth does to Jeffery and asks ’Where are my dream?’ She says are and not is for some reason. A song called: ’In dreams’ is performed twice in the film. Its simply a summary of ’Blue Velvet’. In dreams A candy-colored clown they call the sandman Tiptoes to my room every night Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper Go to sleep. everything is all right. I close my eyes, then I drift away Into the magic night. I softly say A silent prayer like dreamers do. Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you. In dreams I walk with you. in dreams I talk to you. In dreams you’re mine. all of the time we’re together In dreams, in dreams. But just before the dawn, I awake and find you gone. I can’t help it, I can’t help it, if I cry. I remember that you said goodbye. It’s too bad that all these things, can only happen in my dreams Only in dreams in beautiful dreams.

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The Sandman, mentioned so many times in the film, is related to the obvious Freudian interpretation of the film with a primal scene and all (a boy watching his parents have sex. See Freud and the story of the Wolves Man). Lynch knew and cites a long story called ’The Sandman’ by Hoffman that speaks of the terrible Sandman that sells false eyes and the child that is afraid his father and the Sandman will work against him to take his eyes off, and sell them (in Freud language removing eyes equals castration). Dorothy Vallance threatened Jeffery with castration by her own right. The words ’I have to cry’ of the above song ’In dreams’ tells the failure of the dreams. Lynch does not give up. He will still look for Blue Velvet (purity). The last line heard in the movie is ’And I still can see blue velvet, through my tears’. The search for true goodness (Blue velvet) is still on but the last word heard in the film is ’tears’. • ’When will I ever wake up?’ Dell Griffith from the film ’Planes trains and Automobiles’. American main stream films are Christian I said. But certainly not Catholic. Being rich is portrayed many times as a good thing. Straying from pure Christianity also happens when someone kills your father. Then your redemption is revenge (’The lion King’, ’Daredevil’ ’Batman’). Maybe we better call the main stream American films, conservative. Therefore, the family is their main subject. Even in ’Blue Velvet’ discussed above the subject is family (Booth tells Jeffery ’you are like me’, and kisses him before he bits him. His own father and the father of Sandy are two other father figures of Jeffery. Dorothy is a mother figure and someone even asks Jeffery when he sees Vallance: ’Is this your mother?’). The family can no be a true conservative family if the father is not perfect (like in ’To kill a mockingbird’). It is very surprising to see how many main stream American films have a problem with the father in the family. Take comics. Superman parents are killed in the explosion and his father on earth died by a heart attack. The parents of Batman are murdered by the joker when Batman was a child. In the film ’Watchman’ the main female character has no father as she is a result of rape. Spider man has no parents but his father figure, his uncle is murdered in the first film. The father of the ’Daredevil’ is killed when the boy is young. In ’The Hulk’ (the two versions) the father is a monster. For films based on special effects: Star Wars has an obvious son father fight. In Armageddon the father dies. In the politically correct ’Independence day’ a drunk father commits suicide to save the human race. In ’War of the worlds’ the father and son have terrible relation. In ’Twister’ the father dies in the first scene. In ’2012 ’ the father is divorced from the mother. In ’Jurassic park, the main protagonist hates children but learns to love them later and becomes a father figure for them. In ’Back to the future’ the father is a doormat. As for lucrative films: In Lion King its the story of Hamlet: the uncle kills his brother and the son later kills the uncle. In ET, there is no father and neither there is one in Titanic. In the Godfather all the film is about a father (that dies in the end). Why so many bad fathers? Like Mike in ’Godfather II’ that kills his own brother! That is the conflict. Main stream films, being conservative (so much for liberal Hollywood) 17

put the father in the center. Sometimes they are even conservative and preachy as in ’Fatal attraction’, for example in which the cheating father is a doormat (he cant even kill properly the crazy lady. His wife has to do it). If the father is not the hero (as in ’Shane’ in which the boy admires Shane and not his father) then conservative values suffer. This myth may have come from the cinema of the old days. The father in the most important person in the family as depict, in the classical films of Capra and Ford and Howard Hacks (the directed of ’The red river’). A problematic father, in any case is like an original sin. Without a functioning father, you can not achieve the ’American dream’. Then the dream is certainly an illusion. Back to reality for a second. This concept of ’The American Dream’ is somewhat amusing. Its a promise given to poor people or low middle class people that if they will work hard they will become rich, which is the only value everyone agrees in the USA. This is nonsense (but nonsense that makes sure that the poor and middle class do not rebel). If they will work hard, the rich will be more rich. The USA is one of the most, if not the most, socially rigid country. Your chances of climbing the social ladder are essentially none. The rich defend themselves and make sure this nobody else will become rich. They think of themselves as the chosen race. They have slaves in Congress that are bought and payed for, that make them more and more reach. They always have a burning desire to be more rich, whatever they achieve. It will never be enough because they problem is not that they do not have enough money. They problem is that they are sick. The sickness is called greediness. Now, in America, only rich people can become rich (I mean children of rich people). The largest company in the USA, GE payed no taxes (got a refund) after making 14 billion dollars last year. Almost no one that stats poor can get rich. Its a lie. As there is no death tax anymore, which is the only tool for social mobility. Companies like IBM and Microsoft are expanding. Yes! But in India. The middle class loose their jobs because its better to exploit the low salary given to those unfortunate people from India and China. Its better to have slaves. These are the ’patriots’ ?? In what? Now for ’Planes Trains and Automobiles’. The masterpeace ’Planes Trains an Automobiles’ has two middle age man, that are completely opposite. Its a road movie. The two try to get from NY to Chicago. One of the two men looks from the outside as having the picture perfect ’American dream’. His family is perfect. His wife is perfect, his job is perfect. After all the director John Hughes is a very conservative director. This man called Neal Page. His companion in the road travels is called Del Griffith. The man that plays Del Griffith is the late John Candy. I dont think he is acting. I think he is being himself. Because of that there are moments of sublime acting by Candy. Neal is a cold cynical mean person, that for no coincidence works in advertising. His work is phoney, his perfect family is a phoney notion as he works in NY and his family is in Chicago. All his life is an ILLUSION. In a Christian film, a mean cruel person that is the only father in the film surely needs redemption. A father can not act his conservative part as the Christian father if he is not kind. 18

Del? Well he could not be more far away than the sleek self-confident, ’I am better than others’ Neal. Two days before Thanks giving (in this holiday everybody must return home) A cab is hard to reach. Neal races against Kevin Bacon (in a strangely uncredited appearance) to a taxi and looses because he falls over a huge suitcase that he later find out belongs to Dell. Then he pays a lawyer money to give up his cab just to see Del entering unknowingly the cab, without noticing he ‘stole’ it as Neal says later. In the airport Del finds out that he stole the cab. He is really has empathy. Feeling sorry to learn he stole his cab, he tries to do some favor for Neal that condescendly refuses. Destiny makes them seat together in the plane. Destiny will make sure they never will separate as Neal wishes. Del speaks all the time and tells stories with no point, driving Neal crazy albeit, Neal at this stage manages the hide his contempt for Del, the idiot slob. Their plane is diverted to Wichita. Del knows best. The first thing he does is order a room in a hotel. All flights get cancelled and all hotels are booked, so Del kindly offers Neal to share the room he ordered. Neal has no choice. All rooms are already booked. It turns out they have to share a bed in the room and there we see Del in his all clumsy, reckless dirty self. He does so many irritating things that at the end Neal snaps and lashes at Del: your stories have no point, you talk too much, you are a slob. Dirty. You smoke. Being with you is worse than attending insurance. seminars for days. So far a typical viewer would have contempt for Dell as he is a walking disaster zone. But in the best moment in the career of Candy, we see by his face how much he is hurt by what Neal just said. And Del says: ’You want to hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I’m an easy target. Yeah, you’re right, I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you... but I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings. Well, you think what you want about me; I’m not changing. I like... I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. ’Cause I’m the real article. What you see is what you get.’ Now the viewer feels ashamed for the way he though on Del. Even Neal regrets a bit. But Neal is Neal. He does not like what he thinks of as ’ordinary people’. He certainly does not think of himself that way. He hates surprises. His always is organized like a machine. He’s lives in a cocoon of arrogance and cruelty. Del loves people, and more of everything he loves his wife Marie: ’Love is not a strong enough word for what I feel toward Marie’ he says. The fact that Del is a 3 dimensional person elevates the film, and at the end it touches the sublime. Next morning, Neal is not changed a bit. Neal says that they should split. As their money was stolen Del is left with no way whatsoever to continue. Again Candy acts great showing a truly hurt face, for this cold act by Neal. Del does not have credit cards like Neal. Neal leaves Del without an means to go on. But later they meet again. Its a density. They will meet until Neal will learn to be human. Neal 19

cant shake Dell. He tries to rent a car, but the car is not there and then Del almost runs him over with a car he rented. Then they continue the ride together. Together again. And the disasters Del puts Neal into continue. One time Del gets confused and drives on a highway in the wrong direction! They see two tracks coming towards them. They barely survive. Del burns the car by accident (via his cigarette) and Neal discovers that Del payed for the car with Neal’s credit card!. The payment for the burned car is on Neal! Neal had enough. They go to a motel. Neal rents a room. Del is freezing in the car with no money. Now, Neal’s starts his redemption. Neal asks himself: what did I ever do to end up with this guy? He starts thinking about his actions and about the kind of person he is. Del makes the following emotional speech. Well, Marie, once again, my dear, you were as right as rain. I am, without a doubt, the biggest pain in the butt that ever came down the pike. I meet someone whose company I really enjoy, and what do I do? I go overboard. I smother the poor soul. I cause him more trouble than he has a right to. God, I got a big mouth. When am I ever going to wake up? Wish you were here with me right now. But I guess... that’s not going to happen. Not now, anyway. Del is lonely. He lives the ’American nightmare’, not the ’American dream’ This is why he says ’When will I ever wake up?’ Wake up from the nightmare. If at least he could have made Neal a friend, he will feel some redemption for the disaster zone he is. Dell is too cruel on himself. Dell is great with people. Loves them, gets along with them. Is kind. Being kind is also a Christian requirement. If we could insert the personality of Del into Neal, we finally would get the perfect father that American movies look for so much. After that the redemption of Neal is in full motion. He looks at Del and says: ’You are going to Freeze to death in there’, and invites him to share the room. And they become friends. They continue, and its time now to point out that when talking earlier Neal says he was not at home enough lately (he misses the show with his daughter as part of his punishment toward redemption). Dell says: I haven’t been home in years... But later says its just a figure of speech. On the subway to Chicago they part with a hug. Relieved Neal feels like a huge burden has been lifted from his shoulders. He stars thinking on the 3 days he went through, and finds in himself, maybe for the first time in his life, some kindness. He remembers Del saying: ’I haven’t been in home for years.’ In a kind act he returns to the station. Del is still in the station. Neal says: ’You said you are going home. Why did you not go home?’ In a very strongly emotional moment Del says: ’I dont have a home. Marie has been dead for eight years now.....’ 20

Neal, that was transformed by the previous three days insists Dell will spend thanks giving with his family. Neal was saved. The father in the film learned from Del how to be kind. Del is also saved as he makes a truly hard to achieve act of making Neal a friend, and in the last shot, we see Del smiling. On Love: Here is a problematic subject for quotes. So many Chinese fortune cookie lines, which people think are ‘wise’ lines. Why? Because they feel the line, and not think about it. Chinese fortune cookie lines are not wise. See later an idiotic quote by John Lennon. • ’You must remember this A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply As time goes by.’ This is a (part of a) song is called, ’As times go by’ and is my second reference to ’Casablanca’. It was war times. War to the death. A possibility of Nazis may take over. Richard Blane meets Ilsa for a second time (after their affair in Paris. She left him suddenly with no goodbye, and he became bitter). The second time they meet they agree to not ever separate. To stay together. Ilsa does not love Victor Laslo, the freedom fighter. She admires him. She loves Rick. Can you blame her? However the day after they made the agreement Rick tells Ilsa: Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong. Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I... I... Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louie? Captain Renault: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist. Ilsa: You’re saying this only to make me go. Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. Ilsa: But what about us? Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night. Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you. Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. [Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry] Rick: Now, now... [Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet] Rick: Here’s looking at you kid. Remark: The song (in the context of the movie) means what Rick said, namely: The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. A kiss may be important, love may be important, but when you fight the Nazis, winning is more important. 21

The sad part is that Richard Blaine is right. If we look at the song without its reference to Casablanca it means that the days of crazy love, when you just meet, are not the essentials. It always winds down. A kiss is just a kiss. In time, the essentials will determine if your marriage (for example) will work. It is essential that you stay each others best friends. It is essential that you still will care for your wife (and wise versa). It is essential that you respect each other. It is essential to remember your deep commitment to your children. Do you understand you can not leave just because you are 40 and met a pretty 20 years old girl? A kiss is just a kiss. Its perfectly true that, say, persisting loyalty (I mean emotional loyalty) is much more important than the initial ‘high’ we get when we first fall in live. Guy • In the film Annie Hall, Alvi (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) are lovers for a long time. Then they split. She moves to LA (Alvi of course is in NY). After a few months, they meet accidently: Annie came back to NY. They eat lunch together. This is what happens next: Alvy and Annie shake hands and kiss each other friendly like. Annie crosses the street, Alvy watching her go. Then he turns, and slowly walks down the street off screen. His voice is heard over the scene: ALVY’S VOICE-OVER After that it got pretty late. And we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again, right? I realized what a terrific person she was and how much fun it was just knowing her and I thought of that old joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, ”Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, ”Well, why don’t you turn him in?” And the guy says, ”I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much how I feet about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd... but I guess we keep going’ through it because we need the eggs. • Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. - Einstein. Get it? To fall. A ball falls down from a table due to gravity. But with falling in love, gravity takes no place. A humor of a mathematician? • ’All we need is love’. John Lennon. From the (Beatles) song, ’All you need is love’. The only line that I hate in all quotations in this file. I wanted to show one quote that has the wisdom of a Chinese fortune cookie. Its very famous quote by Lennon, but of course its not true. You need many other things (money, good health). With love and a brain cancer, will you be cheerful? But since John said it, it became very famous. Lets have two better ones by Paul. • ’I dont care what they say I wont stay in a world without love’ Paul McCartney. From his (Beatles) song a world without love. This line seems to suggest suicide. Yes, but in a world without love at all? A Wall Street world based on money only? A word with no mother love for her children? Not 22

the love of pairs that grow old together? Not even love for fine art? For pets? What should we be live for? The main success of this quote is that it is not a Chinese fortune cookie line. About love they have tons of Chinese fortune cookie lines. Search the web. • ”And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make.” Paul McCartney. From the (Beatles) song ’The End’. This is not true but it should be what we aspire to. If not to love, why dont we try to hate less. Hate minorities less. Hate homosexual less. Hate knowledge less. Hate science less. • ’Dont knock up masturbation. Masturbation is sex with someone I love. Woody Allen. • ’Thank you, for loving ME’. Beth Cooper to Denis Cooverman. I do here a first. Quote from a bad teen American movie, But I have an excuse (see later). Teen movies are the worst (’American pie’ and if we take a movie that was raved but is totally phony: ’The breakfast club’). Every once in a while I try to see a movie one of my daughters told me she saw. Its rare, first because I dont want to spy, but mainly because most times I last 5 minutes. I want every now and again to see what poison is injected to my daughters via Hollywood. In ’I love you Beth Cooper’ I watched it all, to my shock. Its a first time I watched one of these movies my daughter likes till the end (of course besides the many times I have taken them to cinema when they were younger). I was even more surprised as its a bad movie. A person like me that likes Bergman? Watching such a film? This ’comedy’ is weak but somewhat surprising. The movie had at least 9 moments of pure honesty (I never saw so much honesty in an American teen film, as far as I remember, unless it is an arty film like ’Rebels Without Cause’). At his high school graduation, Denis Cooverman speaks (look how close his name is to Cooperman. The man of Cooper). He is a leading candidate to speak because he is the leading geek. Captain of the debate club. Denis decides to tell a few true thing. This never should be done. The teenager world is already as phony as the one of the adults. He mainly says that for the last seven years he loves Beth Cooper. She is the queen of the class. Leading cheerleader. During the speech, he also hints that his (only) friend Rich is gay. Rich does not live in this world, anyway, so this does not matter. Instead of speaking he keeps uttering movie-quotes (’Scarface.’ ’Easy rider’, ’True grit’, ’Dead poet society’, and even ’Casablanca’). Denis speech angers everyone but Rich and Beth. Beth thinks the speech was ”sweet”. Denis invites her to a party at his house. Beth has a boyfriend, an off duty army soldier named Kevin who is build like a monster and is totally on drugs and want to literally kill Dennis. 23

The party of Denis has Denis and Rich only (of course). Beth shows up with her friends Cammy and Treece. Why? see later. Kevin comes and assaults Denis. Beth help Denis and Rich get away. Denis discovers that Beth drives like a true maniac and enjoys this. Gets into almost accidents all the time, on purpose, because she likes the rush (and for another reason. See later). Beth manages to buy Beer by ’eating the face’ (kissing strongly) the salesman. That the only way to convince him, as she is not 21. Disappointed Denis says: ’She is not Beth Cooper’. An honest moment right there. The girl of your dreams is never what you think. Ask Lacan. The group heads to a party. Denis enters the party but of course Beth would not be seen with him. Kevin is there and beat Denis again. Beth then crashes Kevin’s car into the house and saves Denis an Rich again. They go to the high school the girls head to the showers. Beth shows her full naked body, on purpose, to Denis (’dont be shy!’). Thats what she knows. The only value she has, Beth thinks, is her sexuality. She was treated as a sex object for so long that she got convinced she is a sexual item with no other value. Kevin arrives again and beats Denis one more time. Rich fights him with a towel (he is a specialist) and wins. The group escapes. Beth reveals that they showed to his party to make fun of Denis! (I would say this is a true honest moment. Teenagers, generally speaking are simply cruel). They go to Treece’s father’s cabin. Beth goes out with Denis to watch the sunrise . They talk about the future. Beth thinks that her life will be ’Ordinary’ from now on. But Denis being a genius ’would have a great life’. Denis says its bullshit. She is the most alive person he knows (’Your life will be a bit crazy. But never boring. You will always seek life’ he says. Very kind honest words). Beth: ’How do you know that?’ Denis: ’Because I am a very smart boy’ Denis kindness finally breaks through the shield of Beth. They kiss. Back at the cabin Cammy and Treece can not get Rich to admit he is gay. The decide to test this by having sex with Rich (opposed to the movie in the book, Rich is almost not involved. When the two drink too much they simply are inclined to lesbian acts). Cammy is discovered to a be a brilliant girl that hides that fact. Denis goes home. Says goodbye to Beth by kissing her as a school boy (in the chick). Beth grabs him and gives him a huge French kiss. She says: ’You are getting better in that!’. Denise: ’I was bad before??’ Beth starts to laugh but then hugs Denis and says: ’Thank you. For loving me’. Denis says: see you at the reunion (10 year later!). Honest moment: 1) Beth says to Denis that she took Kevin as her boyfriend because the way the other girls looked at her (the strong army boy chose me!). Kevin is an asshole but Beth says: I kept making excuses for him as ’It is nice to feel wanted’

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2) In an unsettling moment Treece’s drinks in her dad’s cabin from a cup that says ’world greatest dad’. She says ’I never gave this to him’. How pathetic and sad and maybe scary should be the life of a person that buys this cup by himself? 3) Cammy is quite brilliant and knows Shakespeare and more. Rich asks her why did she hide it, and she says: ’social survival’. You cant get much more honest than that. Its so true. 4)Beth tells Denis that: ’Guys tell her they love her all the time. But they will only love me or want me for one night’. She is a sex item for them. Beth never felt loved before by any boy. Never felt that she has anything to offer but her body. 5)Beth is discovered to be nothing like Denis thought. She is reckless to the point of danger, she is hugely wild. She is so alive. But a maniac. 6) Denis asks Beth about her brother that died (her brother died at 12 when Beth was 2 years old) She visited him in the hospital but of course does not remember anything. Denis says it was important to her brother. It is nice to hear kind words in a teenage movie, which are almost always cruel. Denis is simply kind. 7) Inside Beth is sad, with low self esteem, and runs wild just to forget about it. That is another reason why she drives the way she does. She asks Denis why he did the speech. He says ’I just wanted to talk to you, and realized its my last chance’ 8) Beth realizes something shocking and amazing, for her. She realizes that for the first time in her life, a boy (Denis) loves her not for her body but but just because of what she is. This gives her a strange new strange feeling: she is not worthless! Grateful to Denis, almost shocked, she hugs Denis and says: ’Thank you. For loving ME’. 9) Denis has no illusions and tells Beth that they will meet 10 years from now (in the reunion). It is unlikely even after all they went through, that she will have the courage to be seen with him as her buy friend. Sad. But very honest. He is still a geek. He says he will try to invite her to a date via facebook. But I am almost sure she will refuse. Its a cruel world, the world of teenagers. Thats my point. A two stars movie with 9 surprisingly honest moments. • I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. J. D. Salinger On every subject that he spoke about, this genius got it in the best way. Guy. Silliness is underrated • ’For us English, American Beer is too much like making love in a canoe. Too fucken close to water!’ Erik Idle From Monty Python in Hollywood.

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• Gentleman, you can not fight here. This is the war room! The president (Peter Sellers) in “Dr Strangelove” • Over?! Was it over when the Germans attacked Pearl Harbor??! Pluto in “Animal House” • Where do the ducks go in winter when the lake is frozen? Holden Caulfield; The catcher in the rye • Jewish women are OK, they just dont believe in sex after marriage. Woody Allen • Before I start speaking, I want to say something. Graucho Marks. • I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don’t know. Mark Twain • Because, you see, I feel that life’s a game. You sometimes win or loose, and though I may be down right now, at least I don’t work for Jews” The cleaning lady, from “The meaning of life”. Monty Python group. Trashing political correctness and the Phoniness it brings. After this insult a Frenchman over apologizes as if this lady just killed someone. Toxic political correctness does not appear in Python comedy. They have killer babies, killer grandmothers, cross dressers judges, homosexual lamber jack, homosexual soldiers, French insulting king Arthur for being English and much more. • I think it would be a good idea. Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization • ’When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep – not screaming, like the passengers in his car.’ • Children really brighten up a household - they never turn the lights off. Ralph Bus • ’English - Who needs that? I’m never going to England!’ Homer Simpson • The gods too are fond of a joke. Aristotle • I told my wife that a husband is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. The next day, she locked me in the cellar. • You guys line up alphabetically by height.” - Bill Peterson, Florida State football coach

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• I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Gaucho Marx • There are heterosexual, homosexual and bisexual, and also people that do not have sex at all. They become layers. Woody Allen • La is so clean because they dont have to throw up their trash. They make it into a TV show. Woody Allen • Two women talking at a resort vacation Woman 1: The food here is terrible!! Woman2: Yes! And they never give you enough! This seemingly silly joke is not a joke and its not silly. Woody complains about life like he did in all of his films. (food is a symbol of the earthly part of life, in his film). But Allen also said once: ’I dont want to be immortal for my work, I want to be immortal by not dying.’ This means that life is terrible, but they dont give you enough. With all the atrocities of life, it has a list of things that may make it worth while living. See the list of Allen at the end of his quite old film ’Manhattan. What Holden Caulfield said about the ducks is not silly at all. It shows that he wants to remain a child (this question about the duck is very childish. Children ask strange questions. They loose their curiosity when they grow up). Many of the above silly things are only seemingly so. Guy On happiness • You see George, you really had a wonderful life! Clarence the angel talks to George Bailey. From “Its a wonderful life”. • There are no happy loves. George Brassens. He has a song with this name. It is performed in the end of the movie ’Eight Women”. • What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind.

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William Wordsworth’s poem ”Ode on Intimations of Immortality” From “Recollections of Early Childhood” Its probably about a pet that he had, and died. • Happiness is a warm gun John Lennon makes fun of the NRA before his meeting with Mark Chapman that took “The Catcher in the Rye” too far. • Heaven, I’m in Heaven.... John Coffey, the innocent and kind and miracle worker Prisoner (from the 1999 film: “The green Mile”) seconds before his execution starts to sing the the first words of the song: ”Cheek to Cheek” music and words by Irving Berlin Heaven... I’m in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek. Heaven... I’m in heaven, And the cares that hung around me through the week, Seem to vanish like a gamblers lucky streak, When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek. Oh, I love to climb a mountain, And to reach the highest peak. But it doesn’t thrill me half as much As dancing cheek to cheek. Oh, I love to go out fishing In a river or a creek. But I don’t enjoy it half as much As dancing cheek to cheek. Dance with me! I want my arms about you. The charms about you Will carry me through to... Heaven... I’m in heaven, And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek, When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.

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Remark: This song is from the legendary film ’Top Hat’. Watching one film before his death was the only present the kind, innocent and lives saving John Coffey asked before his execution. He has never seen even a single movie! Seeing this film Coffey says about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: ’They are like angels. Just like them angels from heaven’. And for one brief moment, his face is the incarnation of happiness. • I remember the times I knew what happiness was. From the song ’Memories’ in the musical ’Cats’. I remember too. The exact last date (in which I was happy). A very honest quote. Some people (many) become miserable at older age. Most of them had a happy time when young. Guy. • People in life are divided into the sad and the miserable. So if you are sad it should make you happy as you are relatively better off Woody Allen • ’Hell is other people’. From No exit. A play by Jean-Paul Sartre. 3 (dead I think) people, a coward man, a manipulative lesbian blond, and a high society woman are trapped in a room with no windows. They wait for the Valet (probably Satan) to take them to hell. But this does not happen and their relationship deteriorate. They understand that they are already in hell. When you can not escape from Poisonous relation (the door is locked and they cant sleep) then ’Hell is other people’. To be fair to him, he did not mean that relationship are always bad. But when you have a no exit bad relation with other people, they are your hell. On Greed • ’If I would not have been so rich, I could have been a great man’. Charles Foster Kane in the movie ’Citizen Kane’. The film Citizen Kane (directed by Orson Wells that also co-wrote the script and produced the film), is based on the life of William Randolph Hearst or at least so they say. This is not fully precise (John Hughes and even Ford can take part of the credit). Through the rise of Hearst’s yellow journalism, he was blamed by many for the SpanishAmerican War. He was powerful and by that time was unhinged. The war was over the freedom of Cuba. One of his reporters wanted to go back to the USA claiming Cuba is quiet. Hearst said the following famous line: ”Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” This exact line is repeated in Citizen Kane to show what power abuse is. Evil wars will happen if the citizens do not grow up and prevent them. Kane spent his last dying days in a huge mansion called Xanadu. The first shot is of a sign ’No Trespassing’ outside Xanadu. (Hearst had a similar mansion which today is a tourist attraction). In the movie Charles Foster Kane is adopted as young boy by a banker named Tatcher. Tatcher is your worse type of greedy wall street guy. Going with Tatcher meant leaving 29

his mother. Charles Foster Kane will never get over the separation from his mother (she gave him to Tatcher because his father used to bit him up). While playing with a snow sledge, in a very snowy day, Charley gets the horrible news, and the separation from his mother causes an unrepairable trauma. This has nothing to do with Hearst that was not adopted or anything like that. What is true both for Kane and Hearst was that their families both owned a mine. This mine was sold by Hearst and launched his yellow journalism career, while the mother of Kane sells the mine and gives it to Tatcher so he would adopt Kane. Since Tatcher has money, Kane has money as well, when he turns 21. He chooses to run yellow journalism newspaper. Charles Foster (Foster like a foster family) Kane became rich and influential. He too asks from his journalists to fabricate news if it does not exist. Exactly like Hearst. He use to fabricate no less photos of his huge nemesis Stalin and put them in his paper! Before Kane dies he says a single word ’Rosebud’. And then drops a crystal ball held in his hand. This ball was enclosing a winter scene and make-believe it contains snow. The ball is broken into many pieces. Hearing Rosebud from a face of a person that his lips cover the entire screen may have been painful for Hearst. This was the nick name he gave to the private part of his mistress Marion David, replaced in the movie with a character called Susan Alexander. I would be happy to understand how did Wells got this information. But in any case, at that stage Wells hated Hearst. In one of the dinners Hearst gave and in which Wells was present, Hears said that bull fighting, a hobby of Wells, is stupid and cruel. Wells could not hold himself and asks Hearst if the animals in his zoo are happy (Kane also has a zoo). I think this moment made Wells decide to shoot ’Citizen Kane’. One journalist goes out to find what does ’Rosebud’ means. (not in the above sense. It has a real meaning in the film, but we find out about it in the last shot). Nobody knows. Nobody inside the picture will know even when the film ends. But we will. This information is going to be visually given to us in the last shot (see the movie!). Who was Charles Foster Kane? He had everything but due to bad conduct lost it all, almost. Why did he behave so Stubbornly? So corruptly? What drove him to build an empire, the buy thousands of statues to fill his mansion, to cause the SpanishAmerican war, to visit Hitler in 1934, to divorce his first wife for a ’common’ girl, Susan Alexander, knowing the scandal will devastate him? The problem is the Orson Wells succeeded in doing something rare. Presenting a portrait of a complex enigmatic individual. Its very hard to say why he did what he did (buying statues is a hint, almost a prophesy. Wells says the American should not only buy things but also manufacture things by their won). The reporter that tried to find out what Rosebud is, states that ’A single words (the word ’Rosebud’ Kane said before he died) can not explain all the complexities of a complicated individual like Kane’. Of course not. I agree. But two words can: the two words ’No Trespassing’ we saw in the first shot. The sign tells us, you want to know who Kane is? Forget it. Its too complex. When the film starts, we get a documentary ’News on the March’. The official story of Kane’, which we later see is far from true. One thing that is true in ’News on the 30

March’ both for Kane and Hearst is the way they treated Hitler. Hearst started more liberal, but turned more to the right as time went by. He supported Hitler no less. At that time (1934) William Hearst’s outlook was already ultra-conservative, nationalist and anti-communist. His politics were the politics of the extreme right. In 1934 he travelled to Germany, where he was received by Hitler as a guest and friend. In 1938 Hearst got disappointed by Hitler exactly because what he did to the Jews. In citizen Kane they also show Kane visiting Hitler and say that some people he supported and then denounced. With this respect Kane and Hearst were identical. The photo of Hearst and Hitler in the balcony is replaced by a photo of Kane and Hitler in the balcony. I am not sure the photo with Hearts is true though. There are documented cases in which actors replaced the leaders. I suspect that Wells felt that the Hearst and Hitler photo was falsified and is of two actors. After all Hearst falsified photos of Stalin in his papers. This is another reason he gives for life being complex. Some of the information given to us is just not true. A joke, or homage on this photo of Hearst (and Kane) with Hitler is shown in the film ’Zelig’ by Woody Allen when Zelig arrives to Germany and is photoed with Hitler on the balcony. They say that Wells and Hearst once went down an elevator and Wells had the guts to invite Hearst to a screening of ’Citizen Kane’. Hearst refused and apparently Wells told him: ’Charles Foster Kane would have accepted the invitation!’ What is clear is that an unhinged person like Hearst waged a battle against the film and almost destroyed ’Citizen Kane’. The movie was very close to not being shown! Hearst wanted to buy all negatives and burn them. But Wells won at the end. However, the fight against Hearst and the next movie of Wells: ’The magnificence of the Ambersons”, even though it was a masterpeace, completely ruined the career of Wells that did only 12 films in his entire life (so did Kubrick, by the way). The above line on being a great man is said by Kane to Tatcher his ex legal guardian. Tatcher asks Kane what would he want to be (if he was not so rich and would have been a great man) and Kane answers ’Everything you hate’. Indeed at the beginning of his news paper career, Kane saw himself as a defender of the weak people in society (by the way, Hearst too). He betrayed this promise (Hearst too!). Everybody has an opinion on Kane. He is called a Communist (by Tatcher) a fascist and more. No one agrees on what he was. The story of Kane is told in flashbacks by 5 characters. The characters speak on scenes they could not possibly know, which should make you truly question if there is any validity to their words. Their descriptions are not contradicting as many critics like to say (critics can be amazingly clueless). We especially do not get answers for the self destructive way he acted. Why cheats on your ’Royal’ wife (the niece of the president!) with such a common girl like Susan Alexander? Understanding a man’s life is complex. Equated in the film to a jigsaw puzzle. His second wife, Susan Alexander is obsessed with these puzzles and spends most of her time trying to fill these puzzles. 31

But this film is a double sword one. I apologize for that but the film is a strong accusation of the citizens of the USA. The USA citizens (on average of course) are accused of being childish. For example, seeing their country as the definition of good, even if its actions do not merit that (remember the Spanish American war? The citizens supported it, of course). Not accepting the concept that some things can not be termed ’good’ or ’bad’ instantly in a talk show. There are very complex things in life. There are questions in math for example that took hundreds of years to solve. A person that is not a child should know that life is complex. The worst thing is that at the end the viewers will know what is Rosebud (by the visual trick I mentioned). Its the sled Kane played with when his mother left him (his trauma). This is why the crystal ball had snow in it. In fact the downfall of Kane starts in the moment he met Susan. He was on his way to pick that sled (this is the key moment of this film and should explain to watchful person that his mother trauma is the reasons for some of his daemons). But there is a problem: nobody inside the world of the movie will know what ’Rosebud’ means. Its not only that to understanding the life of a person is complicated. Its the worse. Many times simply lack crucial facts. Every line in ’Citizen Kane’ is meant to speak in a dual language. About Kane and about the USA. Translating the main line above said by Kane we get ’Unless the USA was so rich and powerful, it could be a great country’. Most Americans think the USA as a great country. Trust this genius, Welles. It could have been so much more. It just needed and needs to stop building an empire. Stop trying to rule the world. Instead reconstruct (I am talking about what goes on now) your middle class. An adult has to understand: what the USA does (like any other country) is ONLY for serving the USA. Not what other countries want. In the movie this is expressed by a friend of Kane that says about Kane: ’He never gave you anything. He only gave you a tip’. Susan says: ’You never give me something I really want’. Of course this is true for any country and the USA in particular. Or like Kane says ’The only point of view of a person is its own’. Adults should that what the USA gives to other countries, is in many cases, not what they want but just some sort of a tip. Am I being theoretical? No. What can the USA do to stop being an empire? Lets see: First step: Take the 50000 troops of Germany and another 50000 from Japan. Cut by a huge margin your military budget. Many of the things in this budget are only good for times of the past: for the cold war. By now you cant afford helping every country on earth (even if it makes you feel good). Not with a debt that approaches the total GDP of the USA. The USA saved the French twice. Do you see any love to the USA coming from their side? Most of them hate American. Kane wanted to be loved and so left tips. But he ’Talks about people like he owns them’ a friend of his says. He never cared for ’The people’. He did what he

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did for selfish reason: Wanted to be loved. Kane never was loved. Most Americans hated him. The USA has to stop being policeman of the world. An adult should know that powers have limits. The citizens of the USA by letting their government do whatever it likes in foreign affairs, behave (on average) as children. Like children, they dont know almost anything about foreign affairs. It is worse when the citizen let their government become like Kane. Become corrupt. Like the Iraq war. Adults should ask questions before they support such an evil war (I can give you so many evidence that the Iraq war was not what Bush said it was. But thats politics. Boring.) In Jewish tradition it says you must love your peers as much as you love yourself. This also means NOT MORE than you love yourself. Dont try to rescue everybody. Dont try to build nations. Not Iraq and not Afghanistan. Its not your job. Trust the UN more with all its corruption (the experts that visited Iraq are not ’The UN’. They have international names in the academic world that they hold very dear. They said Hussein had no W.M.D. And they were right. We could have expected that. Politicians sell they souls. But researchers from prestigious places? much less). Dont destroy yourself. What the USA does is exactly what Osama Been Laden wanted. The USA took the bate. I saw many things in my life but one things remains firm: the terrorist always win the propaganda war. See what goes on in Airports. An adult should accept the fact that nobody can make him 100% safe. The practices in airports should not have been changed. Why, why let Osama win? Even without change in airports the probability that you die in a car accident would be much larger than by terrorism. An adult should know that. Citizen Kane is a cure against those things. First, by being by itself a complex film. Second, by telling us to finally, ’grow up’. Can we do this? I highly doubt it.So let me remind you. My own suggestion (and of Bill Mahr) is: ’Grow up or die’. I have a suggestion to make future presidents better. A president should see (and explained) Citizen Kane before he enters office. Together with ’A Clockwork Orange’ (that certainly should be explained). This should be a prerequisite. This may teach them the limits of power. And it can teach him one or two things about how complex issues can be. Then the USA can become a much greater country if we follow the advises of Orson Wells. • ”Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”. Mahatma Gandhi • “Greed, for a lack of a better term, is good. Greed works” Gordon Gecko (The capitalistic pig from the film Wall-street portrayed by Michael Douglas). Some 30 years ago, seven years before the film “Wall-street” was playing (1987), there was a president that the difference between his affect on the country and the way he is valued is incomprehensible. In all aspects. Ronald Reagan. He convinced the USA 33

that greed is good, the government is the problem, and regulations are not required. Reagan is directly responsible for the last market collapse. • For greed all nature is too little Seneca • You show me a capitalist, and I’ll show you a bloodsucker. Malcolm X. Remark: I am a social democrat, which means capitalism with strong regulation (but yes, health care for all and retirement funds for all). Hence I dont agree with Malcolm X. But there are the capitalistic pigs, and they are abundant. Ruthless Uncontrolled one. Nothing is enough. The craving never ends. They deserve the above line. • ”You cant take it with you” In this film by this title (by one of the many one-sided friends, Frank Capra) the “good person” in the film explains the “capitalistic pig” of the film why all the money in the world some times will not make you happy. And then says: “You cant take it (your money) with you” (when you die that is....). How true. Guy On hypocrisy • He put his disease in me Dorothy Valence. From Blue-Velvet Answering the other Dorothy (the one from Oz). The dream about good people from small time is a lie. • I detest that man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks for another. Homer. (No I do not mean Homer Simpson. There was an Homer before him. The one that wrote ’The Odyssey’ and other books). • Some phony quotes from “The wizard of Oz”: Wizard of Oz: Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma. (Gives a diploma to the Scarecrow) Scarecrow: The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh joy! Rapture! I got a brain! How can I ever thank you enough? The Wizard (to the Cowardly Lion]: As for you, my fine friend . you’re a victim of disorganized thinking. You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you 34

run away from danger, you have no courage. You’re confusing courage with wisdom! Back where I come from though we have men who are called heroes. Once a year, they take their fortitude out of mothballs and parade it down the main street of the city. And they have no more courage than you have. But . They have one thing that you haven’t got! A medal! Therefore, for meritorious conduct, extraordinary valor, conspicuous bravery against Wicked Witches, I award you the Triple Cross. You are now a member of the Legion of Courage! (Gives the Lion a medal). Cowardly Lion: Oh... Shucks, folks, I’m speechless! This wizard film is for me simply a disgusting film that lies to children. But beyond that it had the amazing power, maybe unique in history (besides perhaps “The godfather”). It managed to hurt and it is still hurting a whole nation (the USA). The Republican party in essence is a party whose motto is not only USA is the best (there is no place like home) but rather, the USA can do no harm. Adults can be children as well. On fear • Living is easy with eyes closed. The Beetles. From the song ’Strawberry fields for ever’. The words are by the late John Lennon. • In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. Martin Luther King Jr. He is a hero of mine. Guy. And he was religious (I am agnostic). I dont disapprove of religious people just because of that. Far far from that. Its not even a detail that interest me. Guy. • The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963 How true! Guy. • Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it. Plato, The Republic • God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Voltaire Nobody captured god better, than this line (it should be explained but lets not spoil it). • In time we hate that which we often fear. William Shakespeare 35

On patriotism: • ”Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Samuel Johnson. This is putting it very very mildly. Guy. • Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarreled with him? Blaise Pascal • I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. Socrates, from Plutarch, Of Banishment I have two formal citizenship given to me by two different countries. I don’t consider myself a citizen of either country. For me I am a citizen of the world. Guy • Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw Well put. Guy. • From Animal house: Otter : Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests - we did. (winks at Dean Wormer). But you can’t hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg - isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. Gentlemen! (Leads the Deltas out of the hearing, all humming the Star-Spangled Banner). On honesty • Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Spoken by the character Holden Caulfield One of the best book passages to ever be written. Guy. A Remark is in place: Mark Chapman read the exact above passage as his explanation of why he shot John Lennon. 36

I could imagine him talking will Holden Caulfield a day before the murder. What would Holden say to him? Holden: “You are probably right that John is a phony and all. But, I mean that does not mean you should shoot him and all. I mean not in my name at least. By the way, Mark, I was wondering about this question for some time. Do you know were the ducks in central park go in winter when the lake is frozen?” I bet after this talk the delusional Chapman would have spared Lennon. • No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see. F. Scott Fitzgerald • Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child. Mary MacCracken • On people that think they are god. A song: By Georges Brassens Beware the gorilla Peeping through the cast-iron gate Many a girl of the neighborhood Examined a powerful ape Without hope, ’twill be understood. Brazenly with no shame each maid Even looked at a certain spot Which, because of my mother orders To say it out loud I cannot. Beware the gorilla ! All at once, the prison, well-closed, Where the glorious animal dwelled Opened; dont know why (I suppose They didn’t lock the door so well). And, eschewing mendacity ”Today’s the day I’ll it lose!” The ape referred to his chastity, You’ll divine, if you’re not parvenus. Beware the Gorilla ! The zoo master, irresolute Cried in distress, invoked Gods name 37

”I’m afraid as the big brute Has never even known a dame.” As soon as all the female crew Learned the innocence of the ape Far from tempting the ingenue Run away and to far have escaped Beware the Gorilla ! The very same gals that, hereto Wolfed him down whole with their glance Fled, proving they had not a clue How great can be such a romance. Fatal error, we should insist For a gorilla’s ziggurat Can better a man’s in the lists. Many a girl will tell you that. Beware the Gorilla ! Everyone run as hell From the reach of the ape in heat Save a certain wrinkled old belle And a young judge dressed for his seat. Seeing all retire from the field The quadrumane chartered his shag By the flapping gowns that revealed The magistrate and the old hag. Beware the Gorilla ! ”Bah, whispered the hundred-year-old, This will not constitute my demise Cause if its intent is to touch me It will be just a pleasant surprise His honor considered calmly: ”To believe I am a she-monk He’d have to be quite balmy”... An idea the facts will debunk. Beware the Gorilla !

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Now suppose one of your genera Like this poor beast were compelled to Violate a judge or a grandma, Which would he choose here to do? If a likewise election, One of these days should be mine, It is, I’m sure, the direction Of the dame I’ll take every time. Beware the Gorilla ! But, sadly, if the big primate In the game of love’s worth his toll. It seems he’s indiscriminate Both in his taste and with his soul. Now, instead of choosing the gal’s robe As would anyone else but he, He seized the judge by the earlobe And dragged him into the trees Beware the Gorilla ! The rest would be more than jolly. Alas, it is not here for me To tell and believe me I’m sorry I’m sure it would give you much glee. For the judge, at the Moment of Truth Called ”Mama!”, shed many tears, and cried Like the man this day he had earlier sent off to the Chair to be fried! Beware the Gorilla ! Remark: In the USA the States(s) kill people and call it the rule of law. I am not killing anyone, but just wishing that every judge to ever confuse himself with god, and to ever send even a single person to death (by the way: many of whom are sent to death were innocent, but committed the ultimate USA crime: they were poor) even if this person was guilty, shall endure an experience as the above. After all 39

it does not kill you. Just a wish. Just a wish. A controlling body (like a state) is evil by definition (because power corrupts). The power of states should be reduced to the absolutely minimum necessary. States or institutions should never get the power to kill people and call it law. I will make you pro death people a deal. If a prisoner is convicted it is because his guilt is beyond any reasonable doubt, right? So lets have a rule: as the judge and jury are so sure so lacking in doubts, and godlike let me humbly propose that if later after the execution it turns out that the prisoner was innocent, the state has to kill both the judge and the jury (as they are now no doubt, murderers). I want to see a judge and jury that will have no doubt at all under this new rule. How many of them will feel godlike? • When the government lies Comments on the last song: “The flesh Failure” (“Let the sunshine in”) from “Hair”. ”The Flesh Failures/Let The Sunshine In” “We starve; look; at one another, short of breath walking proudly in our winter coats” ** The song stars with the soldiers. They feel starved, they feel afraid (short of breath). The “walking proudly in our winter coats” line is ironic. In summary, these two lines show the obvious alienation the soldiers feel ** “Wearing smells from laboratories Facing a dying nation” ** The smell of Laboratories explains the de-humanization of the soldiers that are treated as machines (see the way they walk and dress so uniformly). They even have the smell of machines. Who is the dying nation? Well its not Vietnam. Its the USA. And the death is because of the lies. Its a moral death. ** “Of moving paper fantasy Listening for the new told lies With supreme visions of lonely tunes” ** The image that describes the situation in the song are cartoons (moving paper fantasy). The way the leaders talked to the Americans then is like to children; Black and white reasonings and explanations of the level of cartoons. Treating the public like people are stupid or childish. Their “supreme” vision of lonely tunes” combines loneliness and cartoons. The loneliness part was: all the world is about to become communist (the domino theory). We are all alone. We must stop that. ** “Somewhere inside something there is a rush of greatness Who knows what stands in front of Our lives I fashion my future on films in space” ** The ones justifying the war do not simply talk. They shout. And they do not give specifics; Facts and details are not a good weapon of a war oriented president (like the 40

song goes: “somewhere” Or: “inside something....” No exact details). Or they say: If we do not act something terrible will happen... (Or as the song puts it: “Who knows what stands in front of Our lives”) The best line in this song comes here: ** “I fashion my future on films in space. ** This line relates the politics practiced back then to absolute good versus absolute evil science-fiction like movies. The dark side of the force is the Soviets. The childish way of describing the world in black and white resembles cheap science fiction movies with the aliens as the villains that prevailed in the fifties... ** “ Silence tells me secretly Everything; Everything....” ** It is always a good thumb rule: those who speak quietly, and with reason are more likely to be correct. Silence does not mean you are not right...** “ Manchester England, England Manchester England, England Across the Atlantic Sea... And I’m a genius genius, I believe in God And I believe that God Believes in Clod That’s me, that’s me... that’s me...” ** From the soldiers, we go to a mixture of soldier and hippy. Clod looks like misplaced. Like a tourist. He comes from the south. Many of the soldiers came from the south. Many were poor. Many many where black. Clod is compared to someone that came from over the ocean. Almost an alien. But the hippies and the soldiers did suffer from a common enemy An enemy that should have made them united in anger and not turned against each other. Their government. Symbolically, Clod is replaced by Berger. Berger says: “Clod, that me. Thats me”. And indeed, the fate of the soldiers and hippies was one. They were both deceived by a cynical government. ** “..The rest is silence...the rest is silence..” ** Once the war starts there is nothing to say... The muses keep quiet. The above line recalls the “May rest in silence” line said in the behalf of a dead person at a funeral. Indeed Berger died in Vietnam. This is the story of one person. Thats true. But we knew him so well... It may be that this also relates to the Hamlet tragedy (the line “The rest is silence” is taken from Hamlet. From the fifth act). Hamlet is well suited here: a story of madness uncontrolled ambitions and especially, various deaths... In the “war cabaret” film “What a lovely war” there is a breath-taking scene at the end. One mother cries over the grave of her child. We see the mother in a closeup. Then the camera takes a few steps back. We see that this grave is only one of thousands and thousands of graves in the same graveyard... ** Now, the song returns to the soldiers: “We starve; look; at one another, short of breath walking proudly in our winter coats Wearing smells from laboratories Facing a dying nation Of moving paper fantasy Listening for the new told lies With supreme visions of lonely tunes” 41

Now we go entirely to the hippies: “Singing; our space songs on a spider web sitar Life is around you and in you Answer for Timothy Leary, Dearie” ** The “films in space” part is contrasted here by the Hippy “ideology”. These lines recall the strong influence of the Indian philosophy (and eastern philosophy in general) on the Hippy movement. The eastern philosophy such as Nirvana and Buddhism in general (among others) was the thing that made the hippy ideas a so called “profound” movement and not just a movement of people trying to have fun. Music played a large part in the revolution. The music of the Beetles in particular (Harrison more than the rest) was influenced by Indian music at that time. In one of their concerts the Beetles invited a Indian sitar (an Indian music instrument) player named Ravi Shankar to perform with them (see the sitar in the above lines). Two more things refer to the spiritual nature of the hippy movement. The title (the failure of the flesh...) and the line: life is around you. One more main thing of the revolution (besides music and eastern philosophy) was the ideology driven use of drugs. The lines above recall the (now forgotten?) Timothy Leary “guru”. In his time (mainly the sixteens) he was a famous person. He was a scientist (had a position in Harvard) and a psychiatrist, but a very controversial one. In the sixteens he was known as the LSD guru. He recommended the systematic use of psychedelic drugs (like LSD) in order to reach higher mode of conscience . Many of the “hippies” followed him. He was fired from Harvard after giving LSD to undergraduate students(!) and few years later he was sent to prison and escaped(!) (later he was arrested again.) All his life he experimented with drugs that effect the brain. A truly unconventional fellow. A true rebel. Not to be phony, I admit that all this eastern philosophy ideas of the hippies is a bunch of crap from my view point. Taking drugs is even worse: its a form of self-abuse... But other ideas of the hippies are held dear in my world. Free love is better than expensive hate... Between the hippies and the soldiers, perhaps the both of them should want the politicians to: “Let the sunshine Let the sunshine in The sunshine in...” ** Sunshine here means love, understanding and the other similar ideas. Or in other words, the last lines close a circle with the first song (Aquarius) of “Hair”: “Harmony and understanding Sympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derision Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the minds true liberation Aquarius! Aquarius!” ** I deeply love this film. Guy.

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2

The 22 films I like most

This is not intended at all to say that these are best films or something like that. I should not rank art. I just chose the films that I love, and do not claim all of them are best films in any sense. Remark: I recommend these films but one. The exception is the best (in my opinion) of my 22 loved movies in my opinion: ’The seventh seal’. If you will see it with a lecture before or after, sure. A two hours talk may be needed (the film is shorter). I may write an analysis of this film one day (but will not put it on the web). The Seventh Seal will be an amazing experience with a lecture. Otherwise almost everyone, if not everyone will not understand, unfortunately. I will say usually very few words on the films. 1. The life of Brian. Monty Python. 1979. My favorite film, hands down. I wrote (in Latex) a 118 pages analysis that explains why. This is why I cant put a long comment. I am not going to insert 118 pages here. Hands down, the bravest film I ever saw. 2. Dr Strangelove, 1964: A comedy about the end of the world. The only film that shows how idiotic wars are in a strong enough way. The insults that the war mongers get, are really strong. Really insulting. Sexual insults in nature, that make the war mongers look like horny teenagers. The film is very funny but the laughs should get stuck in our throats. Because this film is a prophesy. The end of the world by atomic bombs will happen and not long from now. The film was directed by the late Stanley Kubrick. The fact that it works, is a miracle. How can you make a funny film about the end of the world? Kubrick managed it. Even Orson Wells (that hated almost all directors including Fellini the provincial, Bergman the strange, Rosolini the amateur, Hitchcock whose films will not survive, William Willer whom he described as a non-director, and Eisenstein whose film ’Ivan the terrible’ he hated) said Kubrick was a genius. Dr Strangelove is a previous Nazi civil servant. As he is a civil servant, he does not mind working now for the Americans. Morality does not exists in his world. The chance of a nuclear war brings him happy memories from its Nazi time (because if the Nazis would have won, the world would have been destroyed). He also can not control his right hand that does a Zeig Haul salute all the time. More a machine than human. He keeps calling the president, by mistake ’Mein Furer’. Like in the last line in the film: ’Mein Furer, I can walk!’. 3. Chinatown. 1974 The movie was made in the time was the Vietnam war, and the Watergate scandal. But the story takes place around 1930. A story of a rich old influential man, Noh Cross, that gets away with murder, incest, and takes control over the San Francisco valley. This way he wins the ’future’ as he calls it. A private detective Jake Gittis tries to stop him. He fails very badly. The final showdown is in Chinatown. Chinatown in Los Angeles is described as a place controlled by criminals. A place there is no chance 43

for any honesty justice or hope. If you are a policeman there, you have to do ’as little as possible’, because if you try to steer the boast you will fail. Try to arrest a criminals, you may die or in the better case, get fired. Cross raped his daughter Evelyn and had a daughter (granddaughter?) Kathryn. Cross makes the police kill Evelyn at the end of the film in Chinatown, and gets custody of Kathryn (with some strong hints that the incest may continue with Kathryn). After Cross wins, the police lets Jake walk away. He starts doing so, but then turns again towards Cross. One of his assistance reminds him: ’Forget it Jake. Its Chinatown’. There are places in which the the rick corrupt rule no matter what. So forget going after Noah Cross. No chance. Its Chinatown, namely, not possible. I think the situation in the USA today with big cooperations that further their interests using bribes (it is innocently called giving money to campaigns) is not better than in the film ’Chinatown’. Maybe worse. The politician certainly return a favor and make the rich people ever so much more rich. But the rich will never be happy. Most of them are simply sick with an illness with no cure: greediness. 4. ’Its a wonderful life’, 1946. Again, its really a miracle that this works. The sweetness is cut many times by scenes that are borderline cruel. France Capra said on life: ’Life is full with happy endings’. He conveys the above message that the particular life of George Bailey was wonderful, in a way that probably makes this film the prettiest (I dont mean best) I have ever seen. Clarence says: ’You see George, you really had a wonderful life’. Great line. At the end, if you are somewhat human, you may cry. 5. The Seventh Seal, 1957. The title is from the book of revelation that talks on the end of the world. A film by Bergman on the meaning of life. He was touched by the gods when he did it. Deep, brilliant, sad, touching, thoughts provoking, genius. If you understand the film (and without a lecture I do not even recommend seeing it) you will find one of the great works of arts, among all art in general. Some amazing sights in the film and many other details make is spell bounding. But try to see this film only if an expert can explain it to you. 6. Annie Hall. 1977. Its charming to the extent I dont know that any other film to ever reach. And so inventive. People in the street talk to the hero Alvi all of a sudden. Alvi produces all of a sudden Marshall Mcluhan in person, to settle an argument with some intellectual. Alvi hates intellectuals, actually. They are formal and cold. The beautifully story of the impossible love between Alvi and Annie Hall, and the breakdown of that relationship. They never had a chance. But its not the end that counts here. Its the journey. To those who saw the movie, or read the quotes: ’Do you need the eggs’ ? 7. Touch of Evil. Orson Wells. Yes, I saw ’Citizen Kane’ like 30 times. Yes I can give a lecture of 3 hours on Citizen Kane. But I choose here the movies that I like, not the best movies. This is a great film too (I dont mean to say its better than Citizen Kane.

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Its less good). But I love this one more. The first 4 minutes alone make me love this movie more than ’Citizen Kane’. 8. The long goodbye. Altman. Amazing film and direction. Magical atmosphere throughout the film. Marlowe never looked more of a slacker than here. It looks like he does not care. But at the end he kills his best friend. A homage to ’The third man’. Its harder to get how great is the direction of this this film unless an expert explains. You should see it combined with a lecture. 9. Una Vita Difficile (A hard life). The best Italian comedy. Without Italian comedies (Nino Rizi is the director here) our world would have been worse. Italian comedies are very sad, usually. Italian comedies are the best genre ever invented. Easy to watch, even if breaks your heart a bit. 10. The policeman. An Israeli film, about a policeman called Azulay that knows everything except how to be a cop. Its a comedy in the Italian sense: its very sad. Very touching. Very funny. Very compassionate. Its possible to do this but you need one of the best actors that ever lived: ’Saike Ofir’ and the best satire writer of all times, Efraim Kishon, that also was a great director. This film has one of the best film endings of all times. 11. But where is Daniel Wax? By Hefner, 1972. An Israeli film. Israel had once ideals, but the lies in Israel are by now false lies. A false lie is a lie you do not believe in. The USA is filled with true lies. Full of people that do not pay attention and believe what they are told. The Israelis dont believe anything they are told. The perspective of the director on the dreams on Israel versus the sad reality is painfully honest. The end when the hero returns to the USA gives you a sense of great loss. Israel lost its way. 12. Paris Texas. Redemption was never more beautiful as here. Most non-independent American films are about redemption. Because they are Christian (more precisely, conservative) films. Even the ones made by Jews (Spielberg). A person has a dark secret from the past and wants to be saved. And I did not find even one independent film that deserves to be on the list. Travis Henderson and Jane Henderson had a family once. They had a little child named Hunter. But as it happens some times, the relations between Travis (his name is a hint to ’Taxi Driver’ and indeed he is somewhat crazy at the beginning) and Jane deteriorated, and Travis run away. Jane became a striper and decides she can not raise Hunter. So she gave Hunter to the brother Walt of Travis. This brother and his French wife Anne care for Hunter for four years. They legally adopt him. All these four years, nobody knows where Travis is. Even though they look for him. Walt and his wife still have contact with Jane three of the four years. But Jane, does not dare ask for Hunter back. She is not sure she can give him a proper environment. Moreover for the last full year, she stops calling. They have no idea where is she.

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The film starts with Travis seen in Texas at the Mexican border at the desert. Winders, the director admires the films of John Ford. The setting is reminiscent of Monument Valley. This is the place where John Ford shot Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956). The characters of Travis and Ethan from ’The searchers’ are related: both save a female that lost her way. Travis is dirty. No expression on his face. It appears that he was in the wilderness for a long time. Walt his brother is informed that ’They found Travis’. Walt travels to Texas to retrieve his brother. They drive in Walt’s car and Walt asks question but Travis has the same expression on his face and does not answer. Travis appears to be catatonic. Until he says something strange. He asks Walt: ’Have you ever been to Paris?’. Walt has been there and says so (his wife is French). But then Travis then asks: Can we go there now? It looks at a first impression that Travis went mad. He thinks that they need now to cross the ocean just to visit Paris? But Travis holds a photo. It turns out that he is talking about, and the photo is of, the city Paris in the American state of Texas. This is the place their parents met. The old photo is of Paris in Texas (this place is real. It exists, albeit the photo does not match the real city because the real city is not a desert. Call it artistic freedom). Travis bought some land there. This means that he has dreams to unify his family, and be a better family, like the family of his parents. He wants all this to take place in the the place his life began (it seems). After a while Travis seem to get his senses back and slowly but surely gets the trust of Hunter, his son. Albeit Winders is German and so because of WWII, every son-father pair in his films have to fight at least once. Winders resented what his parents and great parents did. In one scene Travis drinks and Hunter very strongly complains about it (in other films of Winders like ’Kings of the road’ the fight is much more fierce). Its no coincidence that Travis says that Paris Texas is a place closed to ’The red River’. ’The red River’ is a Western that shows the many fights between a father (John Wayne) and a son (Montgomery Cliff) when they are trying to move cattle. Paris Texas itself resembles a Western (with the lonely hero) even though, more than all its the favorite type of film by Winders: A road movie. The goal of Travis is reunite Hunter with his mother Jane. The last twenty twenty minutes of the film are mesmerizing. Travis and Hunter go to search for Jane. Hunter finally finds Jane in a peep show. In a very emotional scene, he tells unsuspecting Jane the story of THEIR life. They are separated by a one-way-mirror glass, which means that he can see her, but she cannot see him. Jane does not know she is talking to Travis. Travis turns his face away from the mirror. Now no one of the two can see each other. Travis tell their story which is quite long. At first Jane suspects nothing. She thinks some stranger want to tell her his life story. For quite a long time, she does not understand its her story. But then things start being familiar. She realizes its Travis telling the story of their life and separation. They now, for a brief moment have reunited. Jane turns on the light in her room and Winders frames them as conjoined images. The body of Jane but the face of Travis. They are together again. Travis realizes that he Jane and Hunter will not be able to be a good family. He has 46

to give up the dream about them becoming a family again at Paris, in Texas. Too painful memories. Unpredictable an probably bad consequences. After all Jane and Travis are a bad match. So Travis decides to leave Hunter with Jane who is now willing to take care of Hunter. He looses his son, but at least, he gets redemption for his past sins. He was saved. 13. The nights of Cabiria. Not the best movie but the most moving movie of Fellini. Breaks your hurt. The last scene is peerless. Only an Italian could pull this off. 14. The good, the bad and the Ugly. The spaghetti westerns show how films can be of some importance in the at least to a certain extent in the life of a child. I was born in a Kibbutz. Back then a Kibbutz was the realization of communism, except that you can choose to leave any day and go to the city, which we did when I was 6. We did not have a TV at home back then, and no cinema theater. In fact, there was only one TV in all the Kibbutz, and you could almost never get to watch. The first time I saw TV in colors, I was about 12. My festivity day was when my father took me to the big city, Tel-Aviv, to watch a film and drink soda(!) (we always went to the same theater. But this theater is now long gone). The fact I drunk orange flavored soda may seem a small thing to you, but we were poor in the Kibbutz and only had water. I felt like in a dream when I was taken to Tel-Aviv by my father. I was fascinated by the black and white Tarzan movies. But they did not really have a lasting affect. He film that I saw later, when I was about 5 stayed with me till today. I saw in one of these festivity days a film called “For a handful of dollars more” and I saw Clint Eastwood for the first time. I thought that Lee Van-Cliff was a magical actor. In this movie he plays a good guy. So many things in the film amazed me (this was not true for the Tarzan movies). The story tells the case of two bounty hunters. A Colonel named Mortimer and a second character portrayed by Eastwood. There was a very scary villain (at least for a 5 years old) named ’El Indio’ (the Indian). There was the hats scenes (Van-Cliff and Eastwood shooting at their hats making them fly away). I knew there was something special about these characters but I did not know the name for it. There is no name for it in Hebrew. The characters were cool (they simply use the word cool in Israel to describe a cool person). Yes, the characters were cool! I learned what cool is decades before Tarantino (all the films of Tarantino are about how to be cool). And some things caught my eyes. The movie had a flashback! The first that I have ever seen. I did not know its possible. To go to the past? How can this be? In the flashback we see that the villain, Indio raped the sister of the Colonel. This caused her to commit suicide during the act. She had a special watch (that made music) and Indio stole it. The Colonel looked for Indio for years and has an identical watch. What other things do cool characters do? They dont talk much. I noticed that some times they are asked a question and they did not answer. I was 5 and I did not know this can happen. I never saw before that a person is asked a question and he/she 47

does not answer. I was puzzled: Why dont they answer? When Indio is asked by some member of the gang why is the watch (the one he stole that makes music) so important for him he simply does not answer and then we go to the flashback (with Indio raping the sister of the Colonel). Later Colonel Mortimer tells Indio: This is colonel Mortimer speaking. Do you know who I am? Indio does not answer! Again this. And it appears he knows exactly who the Colonel is and who was his sister. And they go at it to the final duel won, of course, by Mortimer. Mortimer was not really a bounty hunter. He was in a revenge mission. He leaves all the money to Clint Eastwood. So later I saw the two other spaghetti westerns in the trilogy. I saw that these characters come from nowhere and go nowhere. I found this very strange. They did not at times even have a name. No names? I did not know that a person can have no name. The character of Eastwood in “For a few dollars more” did not really have a name. They called him El Manco (I think it means the white). In the “Good bad an ugly” movie he is simply called “Blondy”.... No name cowboy. I was impressed. In ’The good, the bad and the ugly’, I saw that gun showdown are not always with two people as I thought. This one had three in this showdown scene. Cool! These films explained to me that there is a world out there I dont know anything about. Among the three spaghetti westerns I choose, ’The good, the bad and the ugly’, to be represented as a favorite film, as I cant choose all three. ’The good the bad and the ugly’ its the best of the three in my opinion. Many lines in this western are remembered by the public but no line more than the line by Tucko: ’If you want to shoot, Shoot. Dont talk’. I heard it quoted so many times later.... 15. Mon Senior Verdaux, Chaplin. I usually do not like Chaplin, but this movie is a definite exception. Another exception is ’The great Dictator’. In Mon Senior Verdaux Chaplin plays a truly bad man. A serial killer of women he marries and murders. The idea was of Wells but Chaplin never credited Wells for it. Here Chaplin not only does slapstick. There are ironic jokes which are so missing in his films usually. 16. Bread and Chocolate. Franco Brusati. Another Italian comedy. This means that its very sad, not only funny. I could fill most of the 22 films by Italian comedies (and I ask from the Italian comedy ’We all loved so much’ my apology that it is not chosen). This film, reminds you of Chaplin at his best. The Italians seem to love him dearly. At the end, the hero leaves a train and is stuck in the road between Italy and Switzerland, not knowing what to do. 17. Schindler’s list list. Its a problematic film, no doubt. The Israeli version is much stronger than the American because of the music. But hey, I do not argue with love. 18. ’The last picture show’. This one is a bit too much for me. I did not see it too many times because it hurts. It will not hurt for many others, I am sure. But the sight of the small village full of life, loosing all its energy is hard to bear. Such a honest film. 48

Amazing. Done by the ex critic: Bogdanovich. Could it be that he learned one or two things from his close friend Orson Wells? As he said in ’American Beauty’: ’Some times there is so much beauty in the world that I cant take it’. He could have been talking on ’The last picture show’. Indeed, the only cinema in the village is also closed because the village is slowly dying. The last picture show (I mean, the last film shown before the theater is closed) is a good one at least: ’The Red river’. Remember this film, discussed in my comment on ’Paris Texas’ ? Its a classic film. But ironically, one of the two boys that go the the last picture show says: I have already seen this film before. Indeed, maybe it is really the time to close this cinema. 19. Hair. My favorite musical. I love the songs too much to be objective. Again the last scene is mesmerizing. 20. The beauty and the beast. Cocteau. By far, the most moving and best fantasy film ever made (way better than E.T.). Cocteau was a genius. But he had to agree to make a film with a real script, to touch the sublime. The line from American Beauty suits here too. Perfectly. ’Some times there is so much beauty in the world, that I cant take it’. 21. ’Shane’. Mythology in the making, with the movie that influenced most the westerns that came in the 60’s and 70’s and more (the spaghetti westerns for example). Shane comes from nowhere. Stevens the director gives us the pure myth of the American god fearing, hard working people in a small (very small) village. Shane ’had’ to appear as the family would not have survived without him. This family is very basic: a father and a mother and a small child (all very white. There are no blacks in this myth). Shane had to come as the family is threatened by a professional gunman, and Shane is the best professional gunman there is. He will save this family. Gun people are the past. Family and god, are the future. So Shane belongs to the past. He kills the professional gunman that threaten this perfect white family. After that, he has to leave. Because two thing that happen are not allowed in the American myth. The small boy admires Shane and not his father, and the Mother is attracted to Shane which is even much worse. So after the final showdown Shane leaves, with the mythological scene of the boy shouting to him: ’Shane comeback’. He cant. He does not fit. Some even say that Shane dies at the end of the film, but he and his horse is too far to know this for sure. In any case his way of life has to die in order to allow the white American dream in which there are no gunman from the old wild west, but law and order. 22. Barton Fink. The Cohen brothers. It has the best film ending of all times. Also, opposed to all other films by the brothers, you almost care about the protagonists. Its a pleasure to watch this film (no emotions here. Their films have no emotions except for contempt to some of the characters). What gives the good feeling is the 49

knowledge that such geniuses exist in our world. The brothers are the only ones who in part can continue the legacy (visual more than all) of Kubrick and Orson Wells. The best directing team around.

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