Idiot

I'm the asshole for riding my 1974 Vespa Ciao to my IRS job, Missouri folk yelling at me from their V8 trucks pulling empty landscaping trailers as you try to cut me off and I swerve into traffic to avoid you and you try to hit me with your truck door. "IDIOT!" Yeah, I'm the idiot you fucking cunt who gets 8 mpg as I have eggs and milk tied in a basket balanced on my head and a bag of flour lashed to the handlebars and bananas and diced dates bouncing around in the cooler I have as my rear rack. I'm the idiot because Illinois is $123 billion in debt. Yeah, what a fucking asshole I am for trying to live by my own standards, one person with one cylinder in a city congested with hate and fuel runoff into the Mississippi. Go to hell you proper punk asshole and may you end up living in Los Angeles where absolutely no one walks or rides bicycles or mopeds and everyone drives alone in a huge V8 truck with empty trailers and it takes 45 minutes to go three blocks. That's your idea of paradise and I pray that you find it you fucking cunt.

Atlas Shrugged

Finding a fair and impartial juror for this film has to be impossible. Only someone too young to want to watch it will be innocent of the weighty prejudices that come with reading even some of Rand's books and essays and having at least one extended argument with someone at a coffee shop over the viability of her theories. So, as a movie I think this is disposable. There's very little in her books that demands reenactment. "We The Living" is a better epic romance, "The Fountainhead" is easier to follow with fewer players, "Anthem" says the same thing "Celebrate the Ego" but it does so with fewer words. Why not make Anthem a movie? Don't ask me how Harry Potter and Hunger Games and Twilight garner billions of dollars for budgets while Atlas Shrugged seemed to have been put together with Final Cut and popcorn revenue. I think an objective investor would see this as a bad investment because no one wants to sit down and be lectured to about principles. The story line is way too transparent and underneath is Rand's pro-capitalism philosophy shining through in all its unglamorous mess. I love her books but this movie was a bit painful to sit through. I realize a book as popular as Atlas Shrugged demands a movie adaptation but because the subject matter is so heady then being so blunt is not going to work. As a screenwriter, I puzzled for years over how this could be successfully adapted. Many many screenwriters tried to adapt this book for over 50 years and in the end they just transcribed it note for note. I don't think that does the book justice because it doesn't romanticize the book's theme: "the role of man's mind in existence" maybe in 50 years a screenwriter will get some creative license with this book and celebrate it properly. Furthermore, personal computers didn't exist in 1957 but everyone in the movie has them, and cell phones. Don't you think John Galt would target telcom moguls and Dell executives before bankers? Oh, wait, the telcom industry exists because of govt. (druids and moochers) funded defense spending. Ooops.

Oggy as The Third Man

HARRY (O.S.)
            ...in general. Nobody thinks in
            terms......of human beings. Governments
            don't, so why should we? They talk
            about the people, and the
            Proletariat... I talk about the
            suckers and the mugs...
            It's the same thing. They have
            their five-year plan, and so have I.

                         HARRY
            I still do believe in God, old
            man... I believe in God and Mercy
            and all that... The dead are
            happier dead. They don't miss much
            here...

                         HARRY (O.S.)
            ...poor devils.

                         HARRY
            What do you believe in?

                         HARRY
            Well, if you ever get Anna out of
            this mess, be kind to her.

                         HARRY
            You'll find she's worth it.

                         HARRY
            I wish I had asked you to bring me
            some of these tablets from home...
            Holly, I would like to cut you in,
            old man. Nobody left in Vienna I
            can really trust - and we have
            always done everything together.
            When you make up your mind, send me
            a message... I'll meet you any
            place, any time. And when we do
            meet, old man, it is you I want to
            see, not the police. Remember that,
            won't you?...

                         HARRY
            Don't be so gloomy...After all,
            it's not that awful. Remember what
            the fellow said...

                         HARRY
            - in Italy, for thirty years under
            the Borgias, they had warfare,
            terror, murder, bloodshed, but they
            produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo
            Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In
            Switzerland, they had brotherly
            love. They had five hundred years
            of democracy and peace, and what did
            that produce?...The cuckoo clock.
            So long, Holly.



Film Noir...learning something you wish you didn't learn. I think I learned that I can't act. This is another good monologue every aspiring actor should learn. Like the Ricky Roma "All train compartments smell vaguely of shit," monologue from Glengarry Glen Ross. The whole movie is pretty good. But this one scene is very good. The monologue starts at 3:40.