Beats Film Quotes

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists.

Do you like it?" I whisper. He pauses. "The film?" I'm thankful the shadows hide my blush. "I like it very much," he says. I risk a glance, and St. Clair stares back. Deeply. He has not looked at me like this before. I turn away first, then feel him turn a few beats later. I know he is smiling, and my heart races.

Till now, my conception of love has been based entirely on what I have seen in Hindi films, where the hero and the heroine make eye contact, and whoosh, some strange chemistry sets their hearts beating and their vocal chords tingling, and the next you see of them they are off singing songs in Swiss Villages and American shopping malls.

I think the reason novels are regarded to have so much more 'information' than films is that they outsource the scenic design and cinematography to the reader... This, for me, is a powerful argument for the value and potency of literature specifically. Movies don't demand as much from the player. Most people know this; at the end of the day you can be too beat to read but not yet too beat to watch television or listen to music.

OK, publishing a book and releasing a movie is all very well, but Tottenham beating Man. U. 3-2... priceless.

This never happens again," I said quietly. "You try to get to me through other mortals again and I'll kill you." Mavra's rotted lips turned up at one corner. "No, you won't," she said in her dusty voice. "You don't have that kind of power." "I can get it," I said. "But you won't," she responded, mockery in her tone. "It wouldn't be right." I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I said, in a very quiet voice, "I've got a fallen angel tripping all over herself to give me more power. Queen Mab has asked me to take the mantle of Winter Knight twice now. I've read Kemmler's book. I know how the Darkhallow works. And I know how to turn necromancy against the Black Court." Mavra's filmed eyes flashed with anger. I continued to speak quietly, never raising my voice. "So once again, let me be perfectly clear. If anything happens to Murphy and I even think you had a hand in it, fuck right and wrong. If you touch her, I'm declaring war on you. Personally. I'm picking up every weapon I can get. And I'm using them to kill you. Horribly.

So I think that life is sort of like a drumbeat. It has a rhythm and sometimes it’s fast and sometimes it’s slower, and maybe what’s happening is this drumbeat is just accelerating and it’s gotten to the point where I can’t hear between the beats anymore and it’s just a hum.

A good day's filming at last... John Horton's rabbit effects are superb. A really vicious white rabbit, which bites Sir Bor's head off. Much of the ground lost over the week is made up. We listen to the Cup Final in between fighting the rabbit -- Liverpool beat Newcastle 3-0.

Off To The Races" My old man is a bad man but I can't deny the way he holds my hand And he grabs me, he has me by my heart He doesn't mind I have a Las Vegas past He doesn't mind I have an LA crass way about me He loves me with every beat of his cocaine heart Swimming pool glimmering darling White bikini off with my red nail polish Watch me in the swimming pool bright blue ripples you Sitting sipping on your black Cristal Oh yeah Light of my life, fire of my loins Be a good baby, do what I want Light of my life, fire of my loins Give me them gold coins, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Ready for you My old man is a tough man but He's got a soul as sweet as blood red jam And he shows me, he knows me Every inch of my tar black soul He doesn't mind I have a flat broke down life In fact he says he thinks it's why he might like about me Admires me, the way I roll like a Rolling Stone Likes to watch me in the glass room bathroom, Chateau Marmont Slippin' on my red dress, puttin' on my makeup Glass film, perfume, cognac, lilac Fumes, says it feels like heaven to him Light of his life, fire of his loins Keep me forever, tell me you own me Light of your life, fire of your loins Tell me you own me, gimme them coins And I'm off to the races, cases of Bacardi chasers Chasing me all over town Cause he knows I'm wasted, facing Time again at Riker's Island and I won't get out Because I'm crazy, baby I need you to come here and save me I'm your little scarlet, starlet singing in the garden Kiss me on my open mouth Now I'm off to the races, laces Leather on my waist is tight and I am fallin' down I can see your face is shameless, Cipriani's basement Love you but I'm going down God I'm so crazy, baby, I'm sorry that I'm misbehaving I'm your little harlot, starlet, Queen of Coney Island Raising hell all over town Sorry 'bout it My old man is a thief and I'm gonna stay and pray with him 'til the end But I trust in the decision of the Lord to watch over us Take him when he may, if he may I'm not afraid to say that I'd die without him Who else is gonna put up with me this way? I need you, I breathe you, I never leave you They would rue the day I was alone without you You're lying with your gold chain on, cigar hanging from your lips I said "Hon' you never looked so beautiful as you do now, my man." And we're off to the races, places Ready, set the gate is down and now we're goin' in To Las Vegas chaos, Casino Oasis, honey it is time to spin Boy you're so crazy, baby, I love you forever not maybe You are my one true love, you are my one true love You are my one true love

Then, unprompted, Henry says into the stretching stillness, “Return of the Jedi.” A beat. “What?” “To answer your question,” Henry says. “Yes, I do like Star Wars, and my favorite is Return of the Jedi.” “Oh,” Alex says. “Wow, you’re wrong.” Henry huffs out the tiniest, most poshly indignant puff of air. It smells minty. Alex resists the urge to throw another elbow. “How can I be wrong about my own favorite? It’s a personal truth.” “It’s a personal truth that is wrong and bad.” “Which do you prefer, then? Please show me the error of my ways.” “Okay, Empire.” Henry sniffs. “So dark, though.” “Yeah, which is what makes it good,” Alex says. “It’s the most thematically complex. It’s got the Han and Leia kiss in it, you meet Yoda, Han is at the top of his game, fucking Lando Calrissian, and the best twist in cinematic history. What does Jedi have? Fuckin’ Ewoks.” “Ewoks are iconic.” “Ewoks are stupid.” “But Endor.” “But Hoth. There’s a reason people always call the best, grittiest installment of a trilogy the Empire of the series.” “And I can appreciate that. But isn’t there something to be valued in a happy ending as well?” “Spoken like a true Prince Charming.” “I’m only saying, I like the resolution of Jedi. It ties everything up nicely. And the overall theme you’re intended to take away from the films is hope and love and … er, you know, all that. Which is what Jedi leaves you with a sense of most of all.

Once, in a three-day taping that included several sadists, the material was so overwhelming that both the film crew and I got sick - I with a sinus infection, and the entire film crew with a flu so severe they had to delay their departure from the motel. Our immune systems had weakened, I believe, from the beating out souls had taken.

Imagine a young man racing along on his motorcycle, on a minor road. The wind is beating at his face. The young man closes his eyes, and opens his arms wide, just like they do in films, feeling himself completely alive and in communion with the universe. He doesn't see the lorry lunging out from the crossing. He dies happy. Happiness is almost always irresponsible. We're happy for those brief moments when we close our eyes.

She's a bright girl. She learned in her thirteenth year that you can get old films of Mae West or Marlene Dietrich (who is a Vulcan; look at the eyebrows) after midnight on UHF if you know where to look, at fourteen that pot helps, at fifteen that reading's even better. She learned, wearing her rimless glasses, that the world is full of intelligent, attractive, talented women who manage to combine careers with their primary responsibilities as wives and mothers and whose husbands beat them. She's put a gold circle pin on her shirt as a concession to club day. She loves her father and once is enough. Everyone knows that much as women want to be scientists and engineers, they want foremost to be womanly companions to men (what?) and caretakers of childhood; everyone knows that a large part of a woman's identity inheres in the style of her attractiveness. Laur is daydreaming. She looks straight before her, blushes, smiles, and doesn't see a thing... Laur is daydreaming that she's Genghis Khan.

Don't bury personal obsessions. Capitalize on them. ``The connection between personal obsession and the work you do is the most important thing.'' -- Be yourself. ``Singularity is what you need.'' -- Avoid self-censorship: ``We are very self-critical in a way that can be very destructive. In our culture there are voices in our head which have taught us to say, `Oh, I wouldn't do that if I were you.' Don't ever think about anybody peering over your shoulder.'' -- Don't be afraid to show off, even if you think, ``I'm very close to making a complete fool of myself.'' -- Don't be afraid to entertain. ``I want to entertain. I don't want to lose people. I feel responsible as I write to give people the best time I can.'' -- ``Love your failures'' instead of beating yourself up over them. -- ``Learn to love the process'' of writing. -- Just do it. Barker likes something director Stanley Kubrick said: ``If you want to make a film, pick up a camera.

As time passes, the cast and crew go the way of all flesh, though their celluloid echoes remain--walking, talking, fighting, fucking. After enough time, every person you see onscreen will have died, transformed through the magic of cinema into a collection of visible memories: light on a screen, pixels on a videotape, information on a DVD. We bring them back every time we start a movie, and they live again, reflected in our eyes. It's a cruel sort of immortality, I guess, though it probably beats the alternative.

When you need to escape life's rough edges for a few hours, nothing could beat seeing a great film.

as the rain beat the windows like an army trying to get in.

From the day a girl is born she's told she needs a love story to survive. It's everywhere: in poetry, in music, in films and books. She's told life is worthless without love. She's told she is worthless without love.' She lowers her voice. 'But what no one tells her, what no one talks about, is that it can kill her. That the very thing they say can save her can destroy her. Love is a trap, darling. It lures you in then digs its bony fingers into your chest, breaks open your ribs, and yanks out your bloody, beating heart, and still leaves you alive.

I won't be one of the hundreds telling you that being alive flows like a story you write consciously, deliberately, full of linear narrative, foreshadowing, repetition, motifs. The emotional beats come down where they should, last as long as they should, end where they should, and that should come from somewhere real and natural, not from the tyranny of the theatre, the utter hegemony of fiction.

Sinatra’s final radio days were filled with minor quarter-hours and one full-length series in which he was relegated to the role of a disc jockey. By 1950 people were writing his professional obituary. His public image had taken a beating, his personal life a succession of wives, scrapes, and alleged friendships with gangsters. It would take a 1953 film, From Here to Eternity, and a subsequent acting career to save him.

But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive. No longer young, no longer pretty, no longer loved, or sweet, or lovable, unmasked, writhing on the ground for all to see in my utter ingloriousness, there’s no telling what I might do. I could film my anger and sell it, I could do some unmasking of my own, beat the fuckers at their own game, and on the way I could become the best-known fucking artist in America, out of sheer spite. You never know. I’m angry enough to set fire to a house just by looking at it. It can’t be contained, stored away with the recycling. I’m done staying quietly upstairs. My anger is not a little person’s, a sweet girl’s, a dutiful daughter’s. My anger is prodigious. My anger is a colossus. I’m angry enough to understand why Emily Dickinson shut out the world altogether, why Alice Neel betrayed her children, even though she loved them mightily. I’m angry enough to see why you walk into the water with rocks in your pockets, even though that’s not the kind of angry I am. Virginia Woolf, in her rage, stopped being afraid of death; but I’m angry enough, at last, to stop being afraid of life, and angry enough—finally, God willing, with my mother’s anger also on my shoulders, a great boil of rage like the sun’s fire in me—before I die to fucking well live. Just watch me.

We are not going to confine women to the home, cover their heads, lengthen their skirts, or beat up gay people, prohibit alcohol, censure film, theater, and literature, and codify tolerance in order to respect the overly sensitive whims of a few sanctimonious persons.

Last month I was banging on about how books were better than anything—-how just about any decent book you picked would beat up anything else, any film or painting or piece of music, you cared to match it up with. Anyway, like most theories advanced in this column, it turned out to be utter rubbish. I went to a couple of terrific exhibitions at the Royal Academy (and that’s a hole in my argument right there—one book might beat up one painting, but what chance has one book, or even four books, got against the collected works of Guston and Vuillard?)...

If you're bored with something, act as if you're seeing it for the first time. Look at it with new eyes. Pretend you're seeing it as a film director, theme park designer or your Aunt Josie—anything that provides a change in perspective. To beat boredom, make the familiar unfamiliar.

All I know is that my life is filled with little pockets of silence. When I put a record on the turntable, for example, there`s a little interval-between the time the needle touches down on the record and the time the music actually starts-during which my heart refuses to beat. All I know is that between the rings of the telephone, between the touch of a button and the sound of the radio coming on, between the dimming of the lights at the cinema and the start of the film, between the lightning and the thunder, between the shout and the echo, between the lifting of a baton and the opening bars of a symphony, between the dropping of a stone and the plunk that comes back from the bottom of a well, between the ringing of the doorbell and the barking of the dogs I sometimes catch myself, involuntarily, listening for the sound of my mother`s voice, still waiting for the tape to begin.

I imagine, sometimes, that if a film could be made of one’s life, every other frame would be death. It goes so fast we’re not aware of it. Destruction and resurrection in alternate beats of being, but speed makes it seem continuous. But you see, kid, with ordinary consciousness you can’t even begin to know what’s happening.

Then, what are your considerations? We don't need to argue with rebuttals, because whoever dies will not be a hero. Whoever saved it was clear he would not die. Like in action films that we usually watch. The one who becomes the savior hero is he who until the end of the story will not die. At least he's the one who will beat the death.

I smile at my friends, but Mer and Rashmi and Josh are distracted, arguing about something that happened over dinner. St. Clair sees me and smiles back. "Good?" I nod.He looks pleased and ducks into the row after me. I always sit four rows up from the center, and we have perfectseats tonight.The chairs are classic red. The movie begins,and the title screen flashes up. "Ugh,we have to sit through the credits?" Rashmi asks. They roll first,like in all old films. I read them happily. I love credits. I love everything about movies. The theater is dark except for the flicker of blacks and whites and grays on-screen. Clark Gable pretends to sleep and places his hand in the center of an empty bus seat. After a moment of irritation,Claudette Colbert gingerly plucks it aside and sits down. Gable smiles to himself,and St. Clair laughs. It's odd,but I keep finding myself distracted. By the white of his teeth through the darkness.By a wavy bit of his hair that sticks straight out to the side. By the soft aroma of his laundry detergent. He nudges me to silently offer the armrest,but I decline and he takes it.His arm is close to mine,slightly elevated. I glance at his hands.Mine are tiny compared to his large,knuckly boy hands. And,suddenly,I want to touch him. Not a push,or a shove,or even a friendly hug. I want to feel the creases in his skin,connect his freckles with invisible lines,brush my fingers across the inside of his wrist. He shifts. I have the strangest feeling that he's as aware of me as I am of him. I can't concentrate. The characters on the screen are squabbling, but for the life of me, I don't know what about. How long have I not been paying attention? St. Clair coughs and shifts again. His leg brushes against mine.It stays there. I'm paralyzed. I should move it; it feels too unnatural.How can he not notice his leg is touching my leg? From the corner of my eye,I see the profile of his chin and nose,and-oh,dear God-the curve of his lips. There.He glanced at me. I know he did. I bore my eyes into the screen, trying my best to prove that I am Really Interested in this movie.St. Clair stiffens but doesn't move his leg.Is he holding his breath? I think he is.I'm holding mine. I exhale and cringe-it's so loud and unnatural. Again.Another glance. This time I turn, automatically,just as he's turning away. It's a dance,and now there's a feeling in the air like one of us should say something.Focus,Anna. Focus. "Do you like it?" I whisper. He pauses. "The film?" I'm thankful the shadows hide my blush. "I like it very much," he says. I risk a glance,and St. Clair stares back. Deeply.He has not looked at me like this before.I turn away first, then feel him turn a few beats later. I know he is smiling,and my heart races.

When the film Baise-Moi was banned from the screen, lots of women (men didn't dare comment on that subject) stood up to publicly declare, "How revolting, we absolutely must not consider that violence is an answer to rape." Why not? You never see news items about girls -- alone or in gangs -- biting off the dicks of men who attack them, or trailing their attackers to kill them or beat them lifeless...but women still feel the need to say that violence is not the answer. And yet, if men were to fear having their dicks slashed to pieces with a carpet knife should they try to force a woman, they would soon become much better at controlling their "masculine" urges and understanding that "no" means "no".

There’s the early marriage that ended in divorce when she was eighteen. Then the studio-setup courtship and tumultuous marriage to Hollywood royalty Don Adler. The rumors that she left him because he beat her. Her comeback in a French New Wave film. The quickie Vegas elopement with singer Mick Riva. Her glamorous marriage to the dapper Rex North, which ended in both of them having affairs

In it {a film Peter saw} a sadistic sergeant broke the spirit of soldier in a military prison by beating him up at systematically random intervals, from more than a day down to a quarter of an hour, so that the victim never knew when the next attack was coming, never felt safe. Life with Muriel, it seemed to Peter, had over the last seven or eight years turned into a decreasingly bearable version of that.

What sensitive, sane soul can stand in the presence of such insanity and do nothing? Yet to expose the slaughter of seals in Canada is to deliver oneself into the hands of a bureaucratic inquisition. To witness the killing of a seal is a crime. To film or photograph the slaughter is a felony. To oppose the massacre is to subject oneself to jail time, beatings, heavy fines, and officially sanctioned harassment. - Paul Watson

electrical wires dragged down by the weight of the ice and flickering balefully, a row of sleet-covered planes stranded in an airport, a huge truck that’s jackknifed and tipped over and is lying on its side with smoke coming out. An ambulance is on the scene, a fire truck, a huddle of raingear-clad operatives: someone’s been injured, always a sight to make the heart beat faster. A policeman appears, crystals of ice whitening his moustache; he pleads sternly with people to stay inside. It’s no joke, he tells the viewers. Don’t think you can brave the elements! His frowning, frosted eyebrows are noble, like those on the wartime bond-drive posters from the 1940s. Constance remembers those, or believes she does. But she may just be remembering history books or museum displays or documentary films: so hard, sometimes, to tag those memories accurately. Finally, a minor touch of pathos: a stray dog is displayed, semi-frozen, wrapped in a child’s pink nap blanket. A gelid baby

years through college in Mexico City. Her dreams had been populated by the same whipped current of ocean air, the same bright, liquid colors, the same thrumming beats and aromas of her childhood, the same languorous swaying of hips that had always defined the pace of life here in this place she knew so well. Sure, there had been new violence, an unfamiliar hitch of anxiety. Sure, crime was on the rise. But until that morning, the truth had felt insulated beneath the illusory film of Acapulco’s previous immunity.

When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the self-contemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism. The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them. In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent - not especially - but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Lear-sized yet sonnet-precise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void. Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned.

One reason Zumbado was determined to film everything in Memorial, regardless of its TV value, was that back in April 2000 he was the first cameraman in when the INS agents seized six-year-old Cuban Elián González. “The INS kicked and beat me, grabbed my camera, made me turn it off,” Zumbado recalled. “They later lied that they had roughed me up. And because I had turned my camera off, as ordered, I had no footage of what they did. They later tried to deny their actions. From that moment onward I decided to film everything. No more shutting off. Let the truth be seen.” 20

Most remember Hitchcock as a skilled storyteller, but what few know is that the director shot his movies using two separate scripts. The first, known as “the Blue Script,” was entirely functional. In it were all the tangible onscreen components, including dialogue, props, camera angles and set descriptions. The second script, which Hitchcock referred to as “the Green Script,” chronicled in fine detail the emotional arc, or “beats,” of the film he was shooting. Hitchcock relied on both scripts, but the Green Script reminded him how he wanted moviegoers to feel, and at what point,

The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and act in a way that would actually accomplish the things it professes to want. It is mesmerized by symbols: achieving superficial diversity in organizations, retelling history to focus on marginal and often minuscule groups, concocting inoffensive euphemisms to describe social reality, protecting young ears and eyes already accustomed to slasher films from any disturbing encounter with alternative viewpoints. Identity liberalism has ceased being a political project and has morphed into an evangelical one. The difference is this: evangelism is about speaking truth to power. Politics is about seizing power to defend the truth… If liberals hope ever to recapture America’s imagination and become a dominant force across the country, it will not be enough to beat the Republicans at flattering the vanity of the mythical Joe Sixpack. They must offer a vision of our common destiny based on one thing that all Americans, of every background, actually share. And that is citizenship. We must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals — including ones to benefit particular groups — in terms of principles that everyone can affirm. Ours must become a civic liberalism.

Taggart finally broke the pattern. "Can you at least explain why?" Jane growled. God, she hated being outnumbered. This was like riding herd on her little brothers, only worse because "I'll beat you if you do" wasn't an acceptable answer. "First rule of shooting a show on Elfhome." She grabbed Hal and made him face each of the two newbies so there was no way they could miss the mask of dark purple bruises across Hal's face. "Avoid getting 'The Face' damaged. Viewers don't like raccoon boys. Hal is out of production until the bruising can be covered with makeup. We've got fifty days and a grocery list of face-chewing monsters to film. We have to think about damage control." "Second rule!" She let Hal go and held up two fingers. "Get as much footage as possible of the monster before you kill it. People don't like looking at dead monsters if you don't give them lots of time seeing it alive. Right now we have got something dark moving at night in water. No one has ever seen this before, so we can't use stock footage to pad. We blow the whistle and it will come out of the water and try to rip your face off – violating rule one – and then we'll have to kill it and thus break rule two." "Sounds reasonable," Taggart said. "Would we really have to kill it?" Nigel's tone suggested he equated it to torturing kittens. "If it's trying its damnest to eat you? Yes!" Jane cried.

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows . It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are , it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. You're better than that.

You can see how easily entitlement and a sense of superiority (the trappings of ego) would have made the accomplishments of either of these men impossible. Franklin would never have been published if he’d prioritized credit over creative expression—indeed, when his brother found out, he literally beat him out of jealousy and anger. Belichick would have pissed off his coach and then probably been benched if he had one-upped him in public. He certainly wouldn’t have taken his first job for free, and he wouldn’t have sat through thousands of hours of film if he cared about status. Greatness comes from humble beginnings; it comes from grunt work. It means you’re the least important person in the room—until you change that with results.

Just down the street from his apartment, Allen discovered the perfect independent bookstore. It was the first in the country to sell nothing but paperbacks. Until that time, cheap paperback books were not sold in “real” bookstores, but instead were relegated to spinning racks in drugstores and bus stations. They were usually stocked without any regard for the quality of the literature, and finding a good book was hit or miss. This particular bookstore had been founded in 1953 by Peter Martin, the publisher of a little magazine christened City Lights in honor of the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. Martin had decided to open a store to subsidize the magazine, and while he was putting the sign over the door, a thirty-four-year-old man passed by and struck up a conversation.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around." "Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

Question number four: I read somewhere that you were an actor before you became an author. CC: That sounded more like a judgement than a question. MG: It was. Usually people pick a career in medicine or business to fall back on. With your chosen professions, it's like you decided to sail upstream without a paddle or a canoe. CC: Well, performing and writing have always been the same thing to me. You get to be a storyteller in both fields, and at the end of the day, I suppose a storyteller is what I consider myself the most. MG: Well, la-di-da. I know what you mean, though. I was an actress myself back in the golden days of Hollywood - you know, before all this streaming trash. CC: Would I recognize your work? MG: Did you ever see the film Gone with the Wind? CC: Of course! MG: I supplied the wind. CC: [A beat of silence.} How much longer is this interview going to take?

It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had “moods.” Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me. I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humoring and ignoring him. Humoring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterward I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry. It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smoldering like it was my own face smoldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterward my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too. When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.

There’s the early marriage that ended in divorce when she was eighteen. Then the studio-setup courtship and tumultuous marriage to Hollywood royalty Don Adler. The rumors that she left him because he beat her. Her comeback in a French New Wave film. The quickie Vegas elopement with singer Mick Riva. Her glamorous marriage to the dapper Rex North, which ended in both of them having affairs. The beautiful love story of her life with Harry Cameron and the birth of their daughter, Connor. Their heartbreaking divorce and her very quick marriage to her old director Max Girard. Her supposed affair with the much younger Congressman Jack Easton, which ended her relationship with Girard. And finally, her marriage to financier Robert Jamison, rumored to have at least been inspired by Evelyn’s desire to spite former costar—and Robert’s sister—Celia St. James. All of her husbands have passed away, leaving Evelyn as the only one with insight into those relationships.

Surely a one-and-a-half-year-old infant was unable to grasp what it meant for a man who was not his father to be sucking his mother’s breasts. That much was clear. So if this memory of Tengo’s was genuine, the scene must have been seared into his retinas as a pure image free of judgment—the way a camera records objects on film, mechanically, as a blend of light and shadow. And as his consciousness matured, the fixed image held in reserve would have been analyzed bit by bit, and meaning applied to it. But is such a thing even possible? Was the infant brain capable of preserving images like that? Or was this simply a false memory of Tengo’s? Was it just something that his mind had later decided—for whatever purpose or plan—to make up on its own? Tengo had given plenty of thought to the possibility that this memory might be a fabrication, but he had arrived at the conclusion that it probably was not. It was too vivid and too deeply compelling to be fake. The light, the smells, the beating of his heart: these felt overwhelmingly real, not like imitations. And besides, it explained many things—both logically and emotionally—to assume that the scene was real.

(From Chapter 9: Hearts and Gizzards) When I came back out there was a strange light in the kitchen, as if there was a film of silver over everything, like frost only smoother, like water running thinly down over flat stones; and then my eyes were opened and I knew it was because God had come into the house and this was the silver that covered Heaven. God had come in because God is everywhere, you can’t keep him out, he is part of everything there is, so how could you ever build a wall or four walls or a door or a shut window, that he could not walk right through as if it was air. I said, What do you want here, but he did not answer, he just kept on being silver, so I went out to milk the cow; because the only thing to do about God is to go on with what you were doing anyway, since you can’t ever stop him or get any reasons out of him. There is a Do this or a Do that with God, but not any Because. [...] But why did I need to pray, when God was right there, hovering above us like the Angel of Death over the Egyptians, I could feel his cold breath, I could hear the beating of his dark wings, inside my heart. God is everywhere, I thought, so God is in the kitchen, and God is in Nancy, and God is in McDermott, and in McDermott’s hands, and God is in the axe too. Then I heard a dull sound from within, like a heavy door closing shut, and after that I can remember no more for a time.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41: 10 NIV Nadin Khoury was thirteen years old, five foot two, and weighed, soaking wet, probably a hundred pounds. His attackers were larger and outnumbered him seven to one. For thirty minutes they hit, kicked, and beat him. He never stood a chance. They dragged him through the snow, stuffed him into a tree, and suspended him on a seven-foot wrought-iron fence. Khoury survived the attack and would have likely faced a few more except for the folly of one of the bullies. He filmed the pile-on and posted it on YouTube. The troublemakers landed in jail, and the story reached the papers. A staffer at the nationwide morning show The View read the account and invited Khoury to appear on the broadcast. As the video of the assault played, his lower lip quivered. As the video ended, the curtain opened, and three huge men walked out, members of the Philadelphia Eagles football team. Khoury, a rabid fan, turned and smiled. One was All-Pro receiver DeSean Jackson. Jackson took a seat close to the boy and promised him, “Anytime you need us, I got two linemen right here.” Then, in full view of every bully in America, he gave the boy his cell phone number. 16 Who wouldn’t want that type of protection? You’ve got it . . . from the Son of God himself.

Punishment cells were set up in the two-story cathedral ... Poles the thickness of an arm were set from wall to wall and prisoners were ordered to sit on these poles all day ... one's feet could not reach the ground. And it was not so easy to keep balance ... the prisoner spent the entire day just trying to maintain his perch. If he fell, the jailers jumped in and beat him ... Every little island and every little hillock of the Archipelago had to be encircled by a hostile, stormy Soviet seascape ... Escapes multiplied ... For half a year the sea was frozen over, but not solidly, and in places there was open water, and the snowstorms raged, and the frost bit hard, and things were enveloped in mists and darkness. And in the spring ... there were the long white nights with clear visibility over long distances for the patrolling cutters ... it was only when the nights began to lengthen, in the late summer and the autumn, that the time was right ... for those who were out in work parties, where a prisoner might have freedom of movement and time to build a boat or a raft near the shore ... and to cast off at night ... and strike out at random, hoping above all to encounter a foreign ship ... The whole long history of the Archipelago, about which it has fallen to me to write this home-grown, homemade book, has, in the course of half a century, found in the Soviet Union almost no expression whatever in the printed word. In this a role was played by that same unfortunate happenstance by which camp watchtowers never got into scenes in films nor into landscapes painted by our artists ...

Tommy, Ewoks suck. They’ve always sucked and they always will suck. Four has Peter Cushing in it. If in doubt, always go with a film that has Peter Cushing in it.” Petra appeared to be very smug in her victory. Tommy looked mortified. “But six has Jedi Luke and that awesome bit with the Emperor at the end.” “And Ewoks,” I said. “Who, I’m pretty sure I pointed out, suck.” “And to think I was going to get you your own lightsaber,” Tommy said in mock outrage. Petra’s face lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning. “You have your own lightsaber?” Tommy nodded. “Two of them.” “Why?” Kurt asked. “Why do you need a lightsaber? What can you possibly use it for?” “I think the question is,” Tommy said, “why wouldn’t I need a lightsaber? And as for what I can use it for, I use it to look awesome. Really, really awesome.” “You just don’t understand, my dear,” Petra told Kurt. Kurt didn’t appear to want or need to understand anytime soon. “So, you got beat up by some humans and a witch,” Tommy said, barely containing his laughter. “Do you have CCTV?” he asked Petra, who chuckled. “Are you both done?” I asked. They nodded in unison. “This witch used a huge amount of magic on me,” I informed them both. “To use runes to drain my magic is one thing, but an effete curse is a whole other league of power. That’s a decade of her life, right there.” “I don’t understand why anyone would ever use a blood magic curse,” Tommy said. “It’s not like it’s fun for the person casting it either.” “What do you mean?” Petra asked. “There are several different blood magic curses you can cast on another person, and a few you can cast on yourself,” I explained. “All of the curses do various things to the person they’re cast upon, but the caster has to take some of the curse back onto him- or herself. So, in this case, Sarah cast the effete spell, making me exhausted and utterly useless, but a small portion of that will bounce back onto her. How long was I out?” “Six hours,” Kurt said. “If I’d cast that spell, I could have expected maybe three or four hours of exhaustion. Witches are basically human, so she’s going to be about as much use as a chocolate teapot, for the best part of a day. It was a huge decision for her to make.

Auto-Zoomar. Talbert knelt in the a tergo posture, his palms touching the wing-like shoulder blades of the young woman. A conceptual flight. At ten-second intervals the Polaroid projected a photograph on to the screen beside the bed. He watched the auto-zoom close in on the union of their thighs and hips. Details of the face and body of the film actress appeared on the screen, mimetized elements of the planetarium they had visited that morning. Soon the parallax would close, establishing the equivalent geometry of the sexual act with the junctions of this wall and ceiling. ‘Not in the Literal Sense.’Conscious of Catherine Austin’s nervous hips as she stood beside him, Dr Nathan studied the photograph of the young woman. ‘Karen Novotny,’ he read off the caption. ‘Dr Austin, may I assure you that the prognosis is hardly favourable for Miss Novotny. As far as Talbert is concerned the young woman is a mere modulus in his union with the film actress.’ With kindly eyes he looked up at Catherine Austin. ‘Surely it’s self-evident - Talbert’s intention is to have intercourse with Miss Taylor, though needless to say not in the literal sense of that term.’ Action Sequence. Hiding among the traffic in the near-side lane, Koester followed the white Pontiac along the highway. When they turned into the studio entrance he left his car among the pines and climbed through the perimeter fence. In the shooting stage Talbert was staring through a series of colour transparencies. Karen Novotny waited passively beside him, her hands held like limp birds. As they grappled he could feel the exploding musculature of Talbert’s shoulders. A flurry of heavy blows beat him to the floor. Vomiting through his bloodied lips, he saw Talbert run after the young woman as she darted towards the car. The Sex Kit.‘In a sense,’ Dr Nathan explained to Koester, ‘one may regard this as a kit, which Talbert has devised, entitled “Karen Novotny” - it might even be feasible to market it commercially. It contains the following items: (1) Pad of pubic hair, (2) a latex face mask, (3) six detachable mouths, (4) a set of smiles, (5) a pair of breasts, left nipple marked by a small ulcer, (6) a set of non-chafe orifices, (7) photo cut-outs of a number of narrative situations - the girl doing this and that, (8) a list of dialogue samples, of inane chatter, (9) a set of noise levels, (10) descriptive techniques for a variety of sex acts, (11) a torn anal detrusor muscle, (12) a glossary of idioms and catch phrases, (13) an analysis of odour traces (from various vents), mostly purines, etc., (14) a chart of body temperatures (axillary, buccal, rectal), (15) slides of vaginal smears, chiefly Ortho-Gynol jelly, (16) a set of blood pressures, systolic 120, diastolic 70 rising to 200/150 at onset of orgasm . . . ’ Deferring to Koester, Dr Nathan put down the typescript. ‘There are one or two other bits and pieces, but together the inventory is an adequate picture of a woman, who could easily be reconstituted from it. In fact, such a list may well be more stimulating than the real thing. Now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions. Talbert’s library of cheap photo-pornography is in fact a vital literature, a kindling of the few taste buds left in the jaded palates of our so-called sexuality.

Give them an inch, and they take the whole playing field and then change the rules of the game to make sure it is only they who ever get to win. Above all, you cannot beat the Islamists at the long game. When it comes to sheer endurance they will always have the edge. The very definition of moderation is knowing when to stop. What all the Islamists have in common is that they never let up for a second. To quibble with Islam, or, more precisely, with what the Islamists define as Islam, has become the equivalent of advocating that the age of consent be abolished in a full session of the U.S. Senate. Once the Islamists take charge, all arguments must be carefully couched in Islamic terms. Such support as secular movements once enjoyed go up—at least publicly—in smoke. In August 2011, Malaysian activist Norhayati Kaprawi, the director of a documentary about the new stricter women’s dress codes in her country, said some women she interviewed had refused to show their faces in her film. They did so not on religious grounds, but because they feared reprisals. Malaysia is a country living in fear of the radical Islamists, she said. “If you don’t follow the mainstream you will be lynched,” she said, adding that people who hold more progressive or alternative views “don’t dare to speak up in public.”36

Neither the book nor the film has the guts — or perhaps the brains — to acknowledge Anastasia’s basest desire: money. Whenever she’s unsure about taking another beating, Grey buys her a car or shows her his enormous helicopter. It works, too.

One day a fellow countryman from Valencia, Jorge Esteban, arrived to stay with the sisters. He had a travel agency back home and was driving around West Africa collecting materials for a tourist brochure. Jorge was a cheerful, merry, energetic man, naturally convivial. He felt at home everywhere, at ease with everyone. He spent only one day with us. He paid no heed to the scorching sun; the heat only seemed to energize him. He unpacked a bag full of cameras, lenses, filters, rolls of film, and began walking around the street, chatting with people, joking, making various sorts of promises. That done, he placed his Canon on a tripod, took out a loud referee’s whistle, and blew it. I was looking out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. Instantly, the street filled with people. In a matter of seconds they formed a large circle and began to dance. I don’t know where the children came from. They had empty cans, which they beat rhythmically. Everyone was keeping the rhythm, clapping their hands and stomping their feet. People woke up, the blood flowed again through their veins, they became animated. Their pleasure in this dance, their happiness in finding themselves alive again, was palpable. Something started to happen in this street, around them, within them. The walls of the houses moved, the shadows stirred. More and more people joined the ring of dancers, which grew, swelled, and accelerated. The crowd of onlookers was also dancing, the whole street, everyone. Colorful bou-bous, white djellabahs, blue turbans, all were swaying. There is no asphalt or pavement here, so billows of dust soon began to rise above the dancers, dark, thick, hot, choking, and these clouds, just like ones from a raging fire, drew more people still from the surrounding areas. Before long the entire neighborhood was shimmying, shaking, partying—right in the middle of the worst, most debilitating and unbearable noontime heat. Partying? No, this was something different, something bigger, something loftier and more important. You had only to look at the faces of the dancers. They were attentive, listening intently to the loud rhythm the children beat on their tin cans, concentrating, so that the sliding of their feet, the swaying of their hips, the turns of their arms, and the bobbing of their heads corresponded to it. And they looked determined, decisive, alive to the significance of this moment in which they were able to express themselves, participate, prove their presence. Idle and superfluous all day long, all at once they had become visible, needed, and important. They existed. They created.

Manche Geschichten haben kein Happy End. Kein großes, wie im Film. Dafür gibt es dazwischen kleine Dinge, viele kleine Dinge, die gut ausgehen.

Scientist Welsh is holding some soil in his hand, pours it into a container. The ＥＸＥＣＵＴＩＶＥＳ burst in. ＴＯＤＤ Dr. Welsh, these cave-ins are getting worse. ＪＡＮＥ Can't we put something in the holes, to fill it in? ＤＲ．  ＷＡＬＳＨ Yes, yes. The best thing I can devise is this foam. It hardens, and can support as much weight as dirt. ＴＯＤＤ Oh. Great. They seem relieved. Then… ＲＯＮ Why don't we just build our new planet out of that foam? ＤＲ．  ＷＡＬＳＨ Well it's poisonous. No reaction. ＲＯＮ Also it costs more than dirt. ＡＬＬ Ahhhh. BEAT. ＲＯＮ What's the main ingredient? ＤＲ．  ＷＡＬＳＨ Poison foam.

While Prowse, given his penchant for revealing secrets, was kept in the dark, Hamill was debriefed by Lucas and then Kershner, who called over the actor not long before cameras rolled: “I met with Mark, and said, ‘Uh, you know that Darth Vader’s your father.’ ‘Wha—?’ ‘David Prowse will be saying stuff that doesn’t count, forget it. Use your own rhythm compared to what he’s doing.’ ” “They took me aside and said, ‘This is what he’s going to say,’ ” Hamill says. “ ‘You don’t know the truth, Obi-Wan killed your father.’ ” “I told Mark, ‘Don’t tell anybody—especially don’t tell David Prowse—but I want you to be able to know, to be able to act appropriately,’ ” Lucas says. “And then Kersh worked the scene with him.” “I love when Darth Vader says, ‘The only way you’ll ever beat me is with hate,’ ” Kershner says. “It’s a lie and the kids know it. The last thing Ben says is, ‘Remember, don’t use hate.’ It’s the most important thing in the film.

You know, if you don't use your dick, it will turn to stone and fall clean off your body.” I start cracking up and so does Riley. “I remember when Camden told us that when we caught him beating off in his room.” Riley says with a laugh, “I know I sure as hell never risked finding out if he was right.

All of our savings were consumed in the effort to bring my dog over. Steve loved Sui so much that he understood completely why it was worth it to me. The process took forever, and I spent my days tangled in red tape. I despaired. I loved my life and I loved the zoo, but there were times during that desperate first winter when it seemed we were fighting a losing battle. Then our documentaries started to air on Australian television. The first one, on the Cattle Creek croc rescue, caused a minor stir. There was more interest in the zoo, and more excitement about Steve as a personality. We hurried to do more films with John Stainton. As those hit the airwaves, it felt like a slow-motion thunderclap. Croc Hunter fever began to take hold. The shows did well in Sydney, even better in Melbourne, and absolutely fabulous in Brisbane, where they beat out a long-running number one show, the first program to do so. I believe we struck a chord among Australians because Steve wasn’t a manufactured TV personality. He actually did head out into the bush to catch crocodiles. He ran a zoo. He wore khakis. Among all the people of the world, Australians have a fine sense of the genuine. Steve was the real deal. Although the first documentary was popular and we were continuing to film more, it would be years before we would see any financial gain from our film work. But Steve sat down with me one evening to talk about what we would do if all our grand plans ever came to fruition. “When we start to make a quid out of Crocodile Hunter,” he said, “we need to have a plan.” That evening, we made an agreement that would form the foundation of our marriage in regard to our working life together. Any money we made out of Crocodile Hunter--whether it was through documentaries, toys, or T-shirts (we barely dared to imagine that our future would hold spin-offs such as books and movies)--would go right back into conservation. We would earn a wage from working at the zoo like everybody else. But everything we earned outside of it would go toward helping wildlife, 100 percent. That was our deal. As a result of the documentaries, our zoo business turned from a trickle to a steady stream. Only months earlier, a big day to us might have been $650 in total receipts. When we did $3,500 worth of business one Sunday, and then the next Sunday upped that record to bring in $4,500, we knew our little business was taking off. Things were going so well that it was a total shock when I received a stern notice from the Australian immigration authorities. Suddenly it appeared that not only was it going to be a challenge to bring Shasta and Malina to my new home of Australia, I was encountering problems with my own immigration too. Just when Steve and I had made our first tentative steps to build a wonderful life together, it looked as though it could all come tumbling down.

Then our documentaries started to air on Australian television. The first one, on the Cattle Creek croc rescue, caused a minor stir. There was more interest in the zoo, and more excitement about Steve as a personality. We hurried to do more films with John Stainton. As those hit the airwaves, it felt like a slow-motion thunderclap. Croc Hunter fever began to take hold. The shows did well in Sydney, even better in Melbourne, and absolutely fabulous in Brisbane, where they beat out a long-running number one show, the first program to do so. I believe we struck a chord among Australians because Steve wasn’t a manufactured TV personality. He actually did head out into the bush to catch crocodiles. He ran a zoo. He wore khakis. Among all the people of the world, Australians have a fine sense of the genuine. Steve was the real deal.

Judith slid the disk into the drive. Seconds later, the film began. Close-up of the actress, twentysomething years old, dark lipstick, Chanel suit, looking straight at the camera. Clearly, seeing this was not to the septuagenarian’s liking. Her features tightened in an anxious expression. After the scene of the slit eyeball, she grabbed up the remote and hit STOP. She stood up sharply and went outside to pour herself some more champagne. Sharko and Lucie glanced at each other, then joined her on the balcony. The old voice was harsh, dry: “What do you want?” Sharko leaned against the railing, his back to the port and the amateur sailors polishing their craft down below. A hellish sun beat against his neck. “So was that your last film?” She nodded, her lips still pressed together.

If you're bored with something, act as if you're seeing it for the first time. Look at it with new eyes. Pretend you're seeing it as a film director, theme park designer or your Aunt Josie—anything that provides a change in perspective. To beat boredom, make the familiar unfamiliar.

For writers, a beat works in a script much as a beat works in a piece of music. In a song, single beats are grouped to make up a measure. By adding more beats (thus more measures) you create a phrase, and eventually an entire melody. In the same way, single dramatic beats or moments, placed together, create a scene. And the beats in a scene, together, create the beats of an act, and the beats of an act, together, create an entire film.

In Sacramento in April 2017, for example, a twenty-four-year-old black man, Nandi Cain Jr., was stopped by police for jaywalking. The stop ended with an arrest, but not before a bystander had filmed police punching Cain eighteen times.7 The beating made national headlines. To make matters worse, it turned out that Cain was not even jaywalking; dash cam footage later showed that he was crossing legally in an unmarked crosswalk at an intersection. A follow-up investigation by the Sacramento Bee found that in the year prior to this incident, black residents had received 50 percent of the city’s jaywalking tickets, despite making up just 15 percent of the population.

I Do Believe You Ate My Salad Recently, I attended a luncheon at the George Lindsey (Goober of Mayberry fame) Film Festival at my alma mater, the University of North Alabama. Good manners and polite social behavior were at the top of my list, for I know how often business deals get made and people fall in love over meals--my goodness! Seated right next to me was my friend Buddy Killen, a legendary songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee. Everything seemed to be going fine until I looked over and saw that Buddy was eating my salad. I guess he forgot that your salad is always served on the right. Should I have ignored his faux pas? Skipped my salad to avoid making him uncomfortable? What was a Grits girl to do? I’ll tell you what: without a second thought, I turned to Buddy and said straight out, “Excuse me, sir, I do believe you ate my salad!” Never missing a beat, he waved the waiter over and said, “Sir, I’m afraid you forgot Edie’s salad!” With that, I got my salad and all honor was saved. Which just goes to show that being straightforward in a polite manner is never inappropriate. -Edie Hand

Key Elements of Five Year Plan ’77 What follows did not happen overnight. Among the guidelines set in February 1977 (remember, Fair Trade on alcohol was not finally ended until 1978): Emphasize edibles vs. non-edibles. I figured that the supermarkets would raise their prices on foods to make up for the newly reduced margins on milk and alcohol. This would give us all the more room to underprice them. During the next five years we got rid of film, hosiery, light bulbs and hardware, greeting cards, batteries, magazines, all health and beauty aids except those with a “health food” twist. We began to cut back sharply on soaps and cleaners and paper goods. The only non-edibles we emphasized were “tabletop” items like wineglasses, cork pullers, and candles. It was quite clear that we should put more emphasis on food and less on alcohol and milk. Within edibles, drop all ordinary branded products like Best Foods, Folgers, or Weber’s bread. I felt that a dichotomy was developing between “groceries” and “food.” By “groceries,” I mean the highly advertised, highly packaged, “value added” products being emphasized by supermarkets, the kinds that brought slotting allowances and co-op advertising allowances. By embracing these “plastic” products, I felt the supermarkets were abandoning “food” and the product knowledge required to buy and sell it. But this position wasn’t entirely altruistic. The plan of February 20, 1977, declared, “Most independent supermarkets have been driven out of business, because they stupidly tried to compete with the big chains in plastic goods, in which the big chains excel.” Focus on discontinuity of supplies. Be willing to discontinue any product if we are unable to offer the right deal to the customer. Instead of national brands, focus on either Trader Joe’s label products or “no label” products like nuts and dried fruits. This was intended to enable the Trader Joe’s label to pick up momentum in the stores. And it worked.

Maybe a film is just a diversion, a way to feel briefly better about our lives, the limitations and disappointments that define us, the things we cannot change. Most of us leave the theater, after all, and just go on being ourselves. Still, maybe something else is possible. Maybe in the moment when the music swells, and our hearts beat faster, and we feel overcome by the beauty of an image—in the instant that we feel newly brave and noble, and ready to be different, braver versions of ourselves—that we are who we really are.

For two decades, our escape defined me. It dominated my personality and compelled my every decision. By college, half my life had led up to our escape and the other half was spent reliving it, in churches and retreats where my mother made it a hagiograpihc journey, on college applications where it was a plea, at sleepovers where it was entertainment, and in discussion groups after public viewings of xenophobic melodrama like China Cry and Not Without my Daughter, films about Christian women facing death and escaping to America. Our story was a sacred thread woven into my identity. Sometimes people asked, But don't a lot of Christians live there? or Couldn't your mother just say she was Muslim? It would take me a long time to get over those kinds of questions. They felt like a bad grade, like a criticism of my face and body...Once in an Oklahoma church, a woman said, "Well, I sure do get it. You came for a better life." I thought I'd pass out -- a better life? In Isfahan, we had yellow spray roses, a pool. A glass enclosure shot up through our living room, and inside that was a tree. I had a tree inside my house; I had the papery hand of Morvarid, my friend nanny, a ninety-year-old village woman; I had my grandmother's fruit leather and Hotel Koorosh schnitzels and sour cherries and orchards and a farm - life in Iran was a fairytale. In Oklahoma, we lived in an apartment complex for the destitute and disenfranchised. Life was a big gray parking lot with cigarette butts baking in oil puddles, slick children idling in the beating sun, teachers who couldn't do math. I dedicated my youth and every ounce of my magic to get out of there. A better life? The words lodged in my ear like grit. Gradually, all those retellings felt like pandering. The skeptics drew their conclusions based on details that I had provided them: my childhood dreams of Kit Kats and flawless bananas. My academic ambitions. I thought of how my first retelling was in an asylum office in Italy: how merciless that with the sweat and dust of escape still on our brows, we had to turn our ordeal into a good, persuasive story or risk being sent back. Then, after asylum was secured, we had to relive that story again and again, to earn our place, to calm casual skeptics. Every day of her new life, the refugee is asked to differentiate herself from the opportunist, the economic migrant... Why do the native-born perpetuate this distinction? Why harm the vulnerable with the threat of this stigma? ...To draw a line around a birthright, a privilege. Unlike economic migrants, refugees have no agency; they are no threat. Often, they are so broken, they beg to be remade into the image of the native. As recipients of magnanimity, they can be pitied. But if you are born in the Third World, and you dare to make a move before you are shattered, your dreams are suspicious. You are a carpetbagger, an opportunist, a thief. You are reaching above your station.

We never made much use of being identical, did we JJ? Not when we were young. Once or twice, at school, and on the farm during the war, I’d managed to get out of trouble by sowing doubt. It must have been my brother. Not me. More often, we’d get a beating just the same. For being the same, for not being different, for causing confusion and unease among our peers. There’s a reason horror films are full of twins. Our early lives were not a riot of hilarious mistaken-identity japes.

A couple of weeks before, while going over a Variety list of the most popular songs of 1935 and earlier, to use for the picture’s sound track – which was going to consist only of vintage recording played not as score but as source music – my eye stopped on a .933 standard, words by E.Y. (“Yip”) Harburg (with producer Billy Rose), music by Harold Arlen, the team responsible for “Over the Rainbow”, among many notable others, together and separately. Legend had it that the fabulous Ms. Dorothy Parker contributed a couple of lines. There were just two words that popped out at me from the title of the Arlen-Harburg song, “It’s Only a Paper Moon”. Not only did the sentiment of the song encapsulate metaphorically the main relationship in our story – Say, it’s only a paper moon Sailing over a cardboard sea But it wouldn’t be make-believe If you believed in me – the last two words of the title also seemed to me a damn good movie title. Alvin and Polly agreed, but when I tried to take it to Frank Yablans, he wasn’t at all impressed and asked me what it meant. I tried to explain. He said that he didn’t “want us to have our first argument,” so why didn’t we table this conversation until the movie was finished? Peter Bart called after a while to remind me that, after all, the title Addie Pray was associated with a bestselling novel. I asked how many copies it had sold in hardcover. Peter said over a hundred thousand. That was a lot of books but not a lot of moviegoers. I made that point a bit sarcastically and Peter laughed dryly. The next day I called Orson Welles in Rome, where he was editing a film. It was a bad connection so we had to speak slowly and yell: “Orson! What do you think of this title?!” I paused a beat or two, then said very clearly, slowly and with no particular emphasis or inflection: “Paper …Moon!” There was a silence for several moments, and then Orson said, loudly, “That title is so good, you don’t even need to make the picture! Just release the title! Armed with that reaction, I called Alvin and said, “You remember those cardboard crescent moons they have at amusement parks – you sit in the moon and have a picture taken?” (Polly had an antique photo of her parents in one of them.) We already had an amusement park sequence in the script so, I continued to Alvin, “Let’s add a scene with one of those moons, then we can call the damn picture Paper Moon!” And this led eventually to a part of the ending, in which we used the photo Addie had taken of herself as a parting gift to Moze – alone in the moon because he was too busy with Trixie to sit with his daughter – that she leaves on the truck seat when he drops her off at her aunt’s house. … After the huge popular success of the picture – four Oscar nominations (for Tatum, Madeline Kahn, the script, the sound) and Tatum won Best Supporting Actress (though she was the lead) – the studio proposed that we do a sequel, using the second half of the novel, keeping Tatum and casting Mae West as the old lady; they suggested we call the new film Harvest Moon. I declined. Later, a television series was proposed, and although I didn’t want to be involved (Alvin Sargent became story editor), I agreed to approve the final casting, which ended up being Jodie Foster and Chris Connolly, both also blondes. When Frank Yablans double-checked about my involvement, I passed again, saying I didn’t think the show would work in color – too cute – and suggested they title the series The Adventures of Addie Pray. But Frank said, “Are you kidding!? We’re calling it Paper Moon - that’s a million-dollar title!” The series ran thirteen episodes.

Curse you then. However beat and done with it all I am, I must haul myself up, and find the particular coat that belongs to me; must push my arms into the sleeves; must muffle myself up against the night air and be off. I, I, I, tired as I am, spent as I am, and almost worn out with all this rubbing of my nose along the surfaces of things, even I, an elderly man who is getting rather heavy and dislikes exertion, must take myself off and catch some last train. Again I see before me the usual street. The canopy of civilization is burnt out. The sky is dark as polished whalebone. But there is a kindling in the sky whether of lamplight or of dawn. There is a stir of some sort—sparrows on plane tree somewhere chirping. There is a sense of the break of day. I will not call it dawn. What is dawn in the city to an elderly man standing in the street looking up rather dizzily at the sky? Dawn is some sort of whitening of the sky; some sort of renewal. Another day; another Friday; another twentieth of March, January, or September. Another general awakening. The stars draw back and are extinguished. The bars deepen themselves between the waves. The film of mist thickens on the fields. A redness gathers on the roses, even on the pale rose that hangs by the bedroom window. A bird chirps. Cottagers light their early candles. Yes, this is the eternal renewal, the incessant rise and fall and fall and rise again. And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death! The waves broke on the shore.

And so there were plenty of beats that didn’t end up in the finished film—including a moment when Draco throws Harry his wand for the final duel with Voldemort. Just imagine! There’s a roll of film somewhere showing Draco saving the day, but no one will ever see it.

Daniels began filming elite athletes, and he noticed something fascinating: they all tended to run at about 180 steps per minute—ninety per leg—whether going fast or slow. To accelerate, they just lengthened their stride without changing that 180-beat rhythm. Daniels then turned his attention toward new runners, and found they typically had a much slower cadence, more like 160. The mistake these beginners were making, Daniels realized, was confusing quick with hard.

For the entire four years we were there, we were fighting a battle with the locals encroaching on our project’s territory. They were constantly poaching fish, using whatever means they could—spears, cyanide—they even killed some of the cuttlefish we were studying. I hated it. Hated them. They were destroying everything we had built up, threatening our experiments, and my animals. “So what did I do about it? Did I try to understand what their needs were? Why they were doing what they were doing? Did I establish a relationship with the village elders? Did I reason with them? Did I try to work for a compromise? Did I reach out to anyone from my team for advice? No. None of those things. I was arrogant. I knew right from wrong: what I was doing was right, and what they were doing was wrong. So I set up camera traps, filmed them poaching, collected my evidence, and turned it over to the authorities.” “It’s what anyone would have done.” “No, Kamran. It’s what I did. Many people would have gone another way. Many people would have had different strategies. I had them all arrested. Dragged off to be beaten, tortured.” “It isn’t you who is guilty of those things—the beatings and the torture. It is the authorities.” “No, it is me. I am the one who had them hauled off by authorities I knew would abuse them.

On our single sheet of foolscap we’ve got the Big Beats. Now what? Fill in the gaps. David Lean famously declared that a feature film should have seven or eight major sequences. That’s a pretty good guideline for our play, our album, our State of the Union address.

I like to write, direct, and act... But, i would always volunteer to be an extra in a film if an extra person were needed. Sometimes you are the writer, sometimes you are the star, and other times just the person passing through a scene... Either way, its all important! Quotes from fortune-cookies that I often reflect upon: "Don't be afraid of opposition; remember, a kite rises against the wind" - "A man who trims himself to suit everybody will soon whittle himself away" - "A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why ships are built" Integrity - It has all to do, with what you do, when no one is looking... It matters most, when you are alone, and away from the human microscope. Bullies, will exist for as long as you do... They don't simply vanish after high school is over, and the age bracket for these type of weak people doesn't have a cut off. Sometimes, there is no rhyme or reason as to why they are doing it, its just a terrible thing that is done too often, and in many cases for too long... But... To beat them - you have to better you! Stop listening to others who are either trying to talk you out of doing something you love, or are belittling you to think differently about it... If what you are going after isn't hurting anyone or anything in the process, and it will further define you, find ways to ignore them. I'd like to die satisfied, not old or rich, but satisfied with Jason J. Tavares... Pleased to have been the man, and to have walked in his shoes.

I could see from the beginning how our wealth could grow. But when I told friends and colleagues what I was up to, Vivian was almost the only one who got it, despite what I had already done in gambling. Although she wasn’t a scientist or mathematician, she shared two qualities with the best of them: She asked the right questions, and she grasped the essentials. She had spent hours helping me film spinning roulette balls so I could make a machine to predict which number would come up, just as she had dealt thousands of blackjack hands so I could practice counting cards. And she helped me edit my books about gambling and the stock market and negotiate the contracts.

To be a bathroom singer, one need not have an enthralling voice, need not sing in tune or have the right rhythm or beat. All it takes to qualify is to have a love for music and enthusiasm. It is not rare to come across bathroom singers in one's own family whose genuine efforts to sing a popular song could come across as braying to others as they are often loud, out of tune and out of breath. What we overlook in such situations is that they are connoisseurs of music. Fans of Bollywood and Hollywood films have no problems accepting actors and actresses, who in their roles of common men and women sing in the shower in perfect pitch, like a nightingale or a cuckoo.

shit. I’ve just got back from the funeral of my best friend.  He died after being hit on the head with a tennis ball.  It was a lovely service. Death is nature’s way of saying ‘Slow down’. I intend to live forever……or die trying. What happens when you get scared half to death twice? A man has died after falling into a vat of coffee.  It was instant. A Chinese man faked his death but his family were suspicious.  They didn’t bereave him. I saw an ad for burial plots.  I thought to myself ‘That’s the last thing I need’. I met a Dutch girl with inflatable shoes last week and phoned her up to arrange a date.  Unfortunately, she’d popped her clogs. My grandad gave me some sound advice on his deathbed.  He said that it’s worth shelling out on good speakers. A friend of mine always wanted to be run over by a steam train.  When it happened, he was chuffed to bits. The man who invented Velcro has died. RIP. A Mexican stuntman died while making a film.  At his funeral, his mother approached the director and said ‘Jesus died for your scenes’. The Grim Reaper came for me last night and I beat him

The movie has Marty say "blues riff in B" and then WHAM, the entire band is playing Johnny B. Goode like they've done so for years.  It's amazing, and as a kid, I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out.  How was it possible that everyone knew what notes to play and when to come in??  The backup guitar and drums both hit a beat at the beginning of the song without any communication whatsoever.

I can see myself acquiring bad habits from living here. My little house is equipped with a TV, and I've watched a lot this week. At home I seldom switch on before 'The Nine O'Clock News', and usually it's later than that, for an arts documentary or a film. This week I've been watching TV while eating my solitary dinner, and leaving it on afterwards because when I switched it off the silence seemed so deathly, and I can't stand listening to music on my tinny transistor radio. I've seen all kinds of programmes I never normally watch, soaps and sitcoms and police series, consuming them steadily and indiscriminately like a child eating its way through a bag of mixed sweets. For simple mindless distraction you can't beat early evening television. No scene lasts more than thirty seconds, and the stories jump from character so fast that you hardly notice how cardboard-thin they are.

Nah, I’ma beat her hearing back into her before I do it so she can hear how she got me fucked up,

From the day a girl is born she’s told she needs a love story to survive. It’s everywhere: in poetry, in music, in films and books. She’s told life is worthless without love. She’s told she is worthless without love.” She lowers her voice. “But what no one tells her, what no one talks about, is that it can kill her. That the very thing they say can save her can destroy her. Love is a trap, darling. It lures you in then digs its bony fingers into your chest, breaks open your ribs, and yanks out your bloody, beating heart, and still leaves you alive.

There were plenty of beats that didn't end up in the finished film - including a moment when Draco throws Harry his wand for the final duel with Voldemort. Just Imagine! There's a roll of film somewhere showing Draco saving the day, but no one will ever see it,

Just before midnight the thin December fog came slithering down from the hills to the city streets and spread a sickly haze over the ugliness of South Main Street. It left a film over the darkened store windows, and brought enough damp cold to make the tinny saloons which dotted the neighborhood look warm and cheerful.