From the movie No Country For Old Men. Well worth the effort to transcribe. Some of the best writing and acting I’ve ever seen that encapsulates the #americant nightmare that is Disney and/or sparkles blowing out of a unicorn’s a$$ or somewhere there’s a rational person trying to figure out how your country got so fcuked even before fascism started showing its greedy, mighty, blood soaked, shot in the neck, head. (Shot in the neck because I just had a flash thought of the movie Taxi Driver.) It’s all cause you been putting up your whole life, you just don’t know it. Yea, baby.

Btw, a kinda follow-up/continue post from this post is here.

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Putting Up Or The Gas Station Scene from the movie “No Country For Old Men”.

Scene

Anton Chigurh has stopped at a dusty gas station in the late afternoon or early evening.

Chigurh is in the gas station.

Chigurh stands at the counter across from the Owner. He holds up a bag of nuts.

Chigurh: How much?
Owner: Sixty-nine cent.
Chigurh: This. And the gas.
Owner: Y’all getting any rain up your way?
Chigurh: What way would that be?
Owner: I seen you was from Dallas.

Opening a bag of nuts; Chigurh pours some into his hand.

Chigurh: What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?
Owner: I didn’t mean nothin by it.
Chigurh: Didn’t mean nothin.
Owner: I was just passin the time.
Chigurh: I guess that passes for manners in your cracker view of things.
Owner: Well sir I apologize. If you don’t wanna accept that I don’t know what else I can do for you.

The owner works the register and puts change on the counter.

Owner: Will there be somethin else?
Chigurh: I don’t know. Will there?
Owner: Is somethin wrong?
Chigurh: With what?
Owner: With anything?
Chigurh: Is that what you’re asking me? Is there something wrong with anything?

The old man is becoming more and more uncomfortable.

Owner: Will there be anything else?
Chigurh: You already asked me that.
Owner: Well… I need to see about closin.
Chigurh: See about closing.
Owner: Yessir.
Chigurh: What time do you close?
Owner: Now. We close now.
Chigurh: Now is not a time. What time do you close?
Owner: Generally around dark. At dark.
Chigurh: You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?
Owner: Sir?
Chigurh: I said you don’t know what you’re talking about. What time do you go to bed?
Owner: Sir?
Chigurh: You’re a bit deaf, aren’t you? I said what time do you go to bed.
Owner: Well… I’d say around nine-thirty. Somewhere around nine-thirty.
Chigurh: I could come back then.
Owner: Why would you be comin back? We’ll be closed.
Chigurh: You said that.
Owner: Well… I need to close now.
Chigurh: You live in that house behind the store?
Owner: Yes I do.
Chigurh: You’ve lived here all your life?
Owner: This was my wife’s father’s place. Originally.
Chigurh: You married into it.
Owner: We lived in Temple Texas for many years. Raised a family there. In Temple. We come out here about four years ago.
Chigurh: You married into it.
Owner: If that’s the way you wanna put it.
Chigurh: I don’t have some way to put it. That’s the way it is.

Pause

Chigurh: What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a coin toss?
Owner: Sir?
Chigurh: The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.
Owner: I don’t know. I couldn’t say.

Chigurh digs a quarter out of his pocket; he tosses it. He catches it and slaps the coin onto his forearm but keeps it covered.

Chigurh: Call it.
Owner: Call it?
Chigurh: Yes.
Owner: For what?
Chigurh: Just call it.
Owner: Well… we need to know what it is we’re callin for here.
Chigurh: You need to call it. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t even be right.
Owner: I didn’t put nothin up.
Chigurh: Yes you did. You been putting it up your whole life. You just didn’t know it. You know what date is on this coin?
Owner: No.
Chigurh: Nineteen fifty-eight. It’s been traveling twenty-two years to get here. And now it’s here. And it’s either heads or tails, and you have to say. Call it.

Pause

Owner: Look… I got to know what I stand to win.
Chigurh: Everything.
Owner: How’s that?
Chigurh: You stand to win everything. Call it.
Owner: All right. Heads then.

Chigurh checks the coin.

Chigurh: Well done.

He pushes the coin across the counter.

Chigurh: Don’t put it in your pocket.
Owner: Sir?
Chigurh: Don’t put it in your pocket. It’s your lucky quarter.
Owner: Where you want me to put it?
Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it’ll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

-end-

Rant on.

-T

Beckett the killer pug was taking me for a walk the other day while I listened to a podcast or three. After a few hours of peeing on trees and licking the dew from morning grass and counting the barges that traverse the Rhein, I decided enough was enough and told the old mutt to take me home. He did. He then fed me a late morning breakfast and proceeded to find a place on the couch to take a late morning nap. Motivated from a podcast and after consuming too much post nap coffee I decided to re-watch the movie Wag The Dog. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it. But I’ve seen it at least once before going back to the early 2000s. I think I might have tried to watch it a second time after that but gave up on the film. I remember when the movie came out around 1997/8. It was somewhat of a hit within the stretched minds of German intellectuals–who always get a kick out of laughing at my beloved #americant. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t remember what the film was about. But I vividly remember that other 90s political film Primary Colors. Um.

Something obviously motivated me to re-watch Wag The Dog. Damn podcasts! So I purchased a rental verison of it via Apple’s krappy streaming system and by 5pm had consumed it. Then I realised something.

Say, this would be a good movie to watch with my über intellectual better-half.

I was sure she hadn’t seen it and since we’ve been going back and forth about Trump and #americant politics lately, this would be a good show starter for an evening of dilemma or love. Indeed. Since I was late at preparing dinner, I jumped to the task and whipped up something delicious (as usual). After feeding my better-half, I surprised her with…

Hey, baby. How ’bout a film?

Being the stoic German female she’s always been, I had to first inform her a bit about the movie, which I proceeded to do. Her skepticism aside, I poured her a glass of Spanish red wine, put the cheese and cracker plate on the table next to her couch and then hit the play button on the really, really stupid little aluminium Apple remote control device. Within the first twenty minutes she was bitten. By the time it was over she had loved both my cheese plate, the wine and was asking:

1. Why hadn’t I seen it before?
2. Why hadn’t I told her about it?

Short story long. It was a nice marital bonding evening. I guess. And so…

By the next morning the movie had triggered something in my mind. It took me back to the 90s when the world had learned the specificities of things like blowjobs and protein stains on blue dresses. In the film the president allegedly had an affaire with an underage girl. Technology in the form of network connected gadgets was gonna take us into the future. At the beginning of the movie there is a Palm Pilot device. And in order to be famous you should make a sextape with your gadgets that features blowjobs because in the future those sextapes, morally and ethically, will pale in comparison to what a broken society can be made to do after it’s been so thoroughly manipulated. Even though the sextapes have nothing to do with Wag The Dog, thinking of the 90s just brought that out of me. Indeed. While watching a film I was re-living a past worth forgetting and there were these titillating images of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and a few stupid white people haunting humanity.

Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because a dog is smarter than its tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog. (-BS from the beginning of the movie)

Back to the present.

How is it that a movie like Wag The Dog can be so misinterpreted so many years after its inception? Easy. It’s the same as with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy is ok as long as it stays funny. Go beyond funny…. That show was about one thing and one thing only. Make fun of politics. I’m sure its audience thought it was funny, too. You know, people thought that the show was actually political–or about politics and those stupid white men who are in it. But consider this, dear worst-reader. Making fun of something is no different than dismissing it. Dismissing something also means that you run from it. The grave error of Wag The Dog–or the error of people putting such a film on any kind of pedestal–is that in the end all one does is avoid reality. Another by-product of reality avoidance, btw, is conspiracy theorising.

In the podcast that motivated me to re-watch Wag The Dog, the film is lauded as a work of genius that fortold the future about how the #americant public can be easily manipulated. This fortelling, of course, is embodied in Robert DeNiro’s character who plays a kind of political spin-doctor for the president but actually looks like a professor that lost tenor. The podcast also mentioned how DeNiro & Co, in order to manipulate further, come up with things like The B-3 Bomber and a military special unit called The 303. The podcast was comparing all the krapp from the movie with what Trump is doing and, of course, how conspiratorial it all is. Oh my. This use of the number three, btw, is supposed to have some kind of conspiracy theory significance about the fate of the world–and more importantly the fate of #americants that both can’t pay their mortgage because they can’t afford the rest of their gluttonous credit card consumption or their God fearing sex practices that linger in their minds while being sexually repressed to the hilt. Oh my.

But before I get too off subject. The movie Primary Colors left a bit more of an impression on me because it didn’t have to use so much innuendo and conspiracy theorising to tell its story. It was basically the same movie but it got a bit closer to the self inflicted misery of a greed society run amok and how that society elects its politicians. It’s also a bit clearer about how those politicians actually behave in a game facilitated by an inept and ignorant society. Indeed. John Travolta deserved more recognition as President than Dustin Hoffman got as Producer. But then again, what do I know about movies?

And here’s the catcher that worst-writer should have been worst-writing about the whole time in this post.

David Mamet was in a bit of a feud over who should get screen writing credits for Wag The Dog. That about says everything about this film. Well, that and the fact that Primary Colors was pretty much being made at the same time says something, too. Mamet is without a doubt a brilliant writer but he also a money grubbing shitbag that thinks just like a faux newz old white man that never really found a place to put his cock or his misery so he puts it on others in the name of some kind of political ideology that, according to California, treads on me. Or maybe not.

Nomatter. I think I’m gonna re-watch Primary Colors in the hope that it will purge the nonsense of Wag The Dog from my system.

Rant on.

-t

You are not a victim of Bertolucci’s film making. Or are you? Wait! Let me put that another way: When will the left learn? When will liberal thinking people grasp reality? The pathway to right above wrong is not traversed through political-correctness but through those who don’t give a fcuk. But there is a way to get to the ice-cream truck where butter flavoured joy awaits us all and the one who will serve you should be Marlon Brando.

Warning: minor spoiler alerts to a film I highly recommend even though it’s not Bertolucci’s best.

Bernardo Bertolluci is a brilliant film maker. Even though it’s not one of my favourite films, Last Tango In Paris is a really cool movie. In fact, I used to own the novel version of it. That little paperback has since become one of those rare books I lent to someone and never got back. Gee, I wonder why. Could it be because I highlighted the butter scene in it? No. That can’t be why Giuseppe never gave it back to me. Remember when they wrote novel versions of movies, dear worst-reader? Oh, they only do that these days with Star Wars because there really is no place for a butter scene in such a story. Or?

The thing about Last Tango In Paris is that I always compared it to Hitchcock’s Psycho. I saw both movies in the early 80s. Hitchcock desperately needed one thing in all his movies: sex; more scary sex. Bertolucci needed one thing in his movies: less scary, a lot less scary. And so, we have one of the scariest characters ever filmed and guess who gets to play him? Mr. Scary himself, hence take note of the letter on his shirt in the pic above. No. Wait. What should the world do with bored, confused, middle-aged white men who get a kick out of objectifying objects and who are scary, really scary? Indeed. Make movies about them. But I digress.

The moment in Last Tango In Paris where Paul’s wife is revealed in a state of decomposition really through me for a loop. Like I said, having seen Psycho only a few weeks prior, the imagery was uncanny. Nothing else in the film really got to me. The sex was kinda titallating and the actress was hot, even if she did have a jungle-forest “down there”. And the moment with the butter? My first thought was: is butter the best choice for what’s about to happen? But all kidding aside. Let’s quote Marlon:

It’s just a movie.

And you know who else pulled off scenes that were just as fcuking great! For all you believers in purple unicorns and tasty rainbows–for all you who can’t face reality and hide behind your false sense of righteousness and shiny über-glorified pussies (i.e. grabbed vaginas)–just check out the brilliant sex in The Dreamers or Stealing Beauty. For those of you don’t know, Bertolucci is obsessed with sex in his movies. It is inevitable that such an obsession deal with rape as much as deflowering. Indeed. A rape scene in a work of fiction, as traumatic as it was for the actress to portray, means that it’s now time to ridicule the story teller? Or will Maria Schneider finally press charges? Cause I’m about fed-up with all this talk without the walk. Anywho.

Now that the world must face the consequence(s) of political correctness in the form of sexually degenerate American presidents and a renewal of anti-feminism, what’s left? Are we gonna now dismantle one of the greatest film makers of all time? Bertolucci’s depiction of sex, especially in Tango, is innocent by today’s Internet standards. Not to mention the fact that we now live in a world where one president makes blow-jobs with White House interns dinner table fanfare and another president makes… Well, you get the grabbing picture.

A rape scene in a piece of fiction from forty years ago is NOT the same as the abuse you experienced while living among the broken-ness of #americant or getting caught up in a no-means-yes frat-party or worrying about your pussy being grabbed–by your fcuking presidential imagination.

Oh well. The good thing is, at least all this uproar will mean that a few politically-correct-obsessed young people might see a great movie that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Either that or Bertolucci needs some money from DVD or iTunes sales of Last Tango. Go get’em politically correct nut-bags. Go grab something.

Link that motivated this post:

• Celebreties express disgust over non-consensual rape scene in ‘Last Tango In Paris’ | HuffPost

Rant on.

-t