Drunk Movie Quotes

I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn't want conversation, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches. I didn't understand t.v. I felt foolish paying money to go into a movie theatre and sit with other people to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I hated the game-playing, the dirty play, the flirting, the amateur drunks, the bores.

And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do -- I love them -- but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at.

Evelyn: [drunk] You're wondering, 'What is a place like me doing in a girl like this?' Rick: Yeah, something like that.

Faster is fatal, slower is safe.

Hey—do you remember that movie when the girl waited around for the guy to ask her out, then made excuses when he didn’t? Then she slept with him when they were both drunk, and basically just hung around until they were kind of dating?

After this, you want to watch a movie?” Dominic asks. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love. We can crowd under that blanket that smells like…what’s that smell?” I choke on a fresh wave of fear. “Lavender,” I say as more tears stream down my cheeks. “Yeah. And I’ll let you watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.

Gillette--The best a man can get." I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help. My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred. I was a very long way from being the best a man can get.

I seem finally to have stopped worrying about Elinor, and age. She seems now to be perfectly normal -- about twenty-five, a witty control freak. I like her but I can see how she would drive you mad. She's just the sort of person you'd want to get drunk, just to make her giggling and silly.

My secret weapon is my anger. That's what stimulates me as an artist. I want change. I want it yesterday. I'm pissed off at America. Society. American movies. American TV. American culture. American politicians. Capitalism. I'm a little like my old man in that way only I'm a recovered drunk. He wasn't. I should have been dead years ago like my brother but somehow I dodged the bullet and it gave me something to say. Impatience and rage are always just beneath the surface for me.

But I’m going to need you to love me on the bus, dude. And first thing in the morning. Also, when I’m drunk and refuse to shut up about getting McNuggets from the drive-thru. When I fall asleep in the middle of that movie you paid extra to see in IMAX. When I wear the flowered robe I got at Walmart and the sweatpants I made into sweatshorts to bed. When I am blasting “More and More” by Blood Sweat & Tears at seven on a Sunday morning while cleaning the kitchen and fucking up your mom’s frittata recipe. When I bring a half dozen gross, mangled kittens home to foster for a few nights and they shit everywhere and pee on your side of the bed. When I go “grocery shopping” and come back with only a bag of Fritos and five pounds of pork tenderloin. When I’m sick and stumbling around the crib with half a roll of toilet paper shoved in each nostril. When I beg you fourteen times to read something I’ve written, then get mad when you tell me what you don’t like about it and I call you an uneducated idiot piece of shit. Lovebird city.

I was in the mood to make out in the back row of the movie theater with someone who did not know my first name. I wanted three guys to fight for the honor of buying me a drink

They say we have weak wills. Do you know about the two drunks who went to the film of The Lost Weekend. Came out staggering. "My God I'll never take another drink," said the first. "My God I'll never go to another movie." How's that for commitment?

The Victrola, the Movies, a lecture: such are the three American alternatives to Silence, Scandal and Squabble. Or else, get drunk. America knows no other devices to enable its inhabitants to endure either their own company or that of their fellow-creatures.

It's like we're all going up a flight of stairs together and at a certain point I say 'this is as far as I go'. And on that step, higher up, they're all happy and I watch them from below. Had he always been like that? It wasn't shyness or reserve or adolescence, as other people thought. He wasn't going to get over it. He could dance when he was alone, he could get emotional in his room with a book, but when the party started he disconnected, the others turned into a movie that he could watch but not participate in. So he acted like he was invisible, which wasn't hard when everyone was drunk. And he withdrew into his room, where he felt the purest kind of relief.

The family watched It's a Wonderful Life, which is a very beautiful movie and all I could think was why didn't they make a movie about uncle Billy?...Because he was a drunk and fat and lost all that money in the first place. I wanted an angel to come down and show us how uncle Billy's life had meaning

The best time to do anything, get drunk, surf, run, take a walk, gamble, make love, get high, watch a movie, read a book, is on a Monday, when everyone else is at work, as their depression will heighten your celebration, of not being them.

When she was forty, would she lament that she hadn't had sex with more people and partied more? But then, she didn't enjoy many people, and she had never gone to a party that she wasn't eager to leave. She hated being drunk, though she did enjoy smoking a joint every now and then. She liked playing games, seeing a foreign movie, a good meal. She liked going to bed early and waking up early. She liked working. She liked that she was good at her work, and she felt proud of the fact that she was well paid for it.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy 2. Submissive to everything, open, listening 3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house 4. Be in love with yr life 5. Something that you feel will find its own form 6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind 7. Blow as deep as you want to blow 8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind 9. The unspeakable visions of the individual 10. No time for poetry but exactly what is 11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest 12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you 13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition 14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time 15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog 16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye 17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself 18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea 19. Accept loss forever 20. Believe in the holy contour of life 21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind 22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better 23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning 24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge 25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it 26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form 27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness 28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better 29. You're a Genius all the time 30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Julian’s not at the house in Bel Air, but there’s a note on the door saying that he might be at some house on King’s Road. Julian’s not at the house on King’s Road either, but some guy with braces and short platinum-blond hair and a bathing suit on lifting weights is in the backyard. He puts one of the weights down and lights a cigarette and asks me if I want a Quaalude. I ask him where Julian is. There’s a girl lying by the pool on a chaise longue, blond, drunk, and she says in a really tired voice, ‘Oh, Julian could be anywhere. Does he owe you money?’ The girl has brought a television outside and is watching some movie about cavemen. ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘Well, that’s good. He promised to pay for a gram of coke I got him.’ She shakes her head. ‘Nope. He never did.’ She shakes her head again, slowly, her voice thick, a bottle of gin, half-empty, by her side. The weightlifter with the braces on asks me if I want to buy a Temple of Doom bootleg cassette. I tell him no and then ask him to tell Julian that I stopped by. The weight-lifter nods his head like he doesn’t understand and the girl asks him if he got the backstage passes to the Missing Persons concert. He says, ‘Yeah, baby,’ and she jumps in the pool. Some caveman gets thrown off a cliff and I split.

Finally,’ I said. ‘Something we agree on.’ ‘I bet we agree on a lot.’ He plucked a mangled maple-nut donut out and sat back, examining it in the fluorescent light. ‘Such as?’ ‘All the important stuff,’ Gus said. ‘The chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere, whether the world needs six Pirates of the Caribbean movies, that White Russians should only be drunk you’re already sure you’re going to vomit anyway.

Still, you can’t deny that, like goldfish and gummies, The Little Mermaid is fucking magical. I still feel sparkles in my stomach when I watch it. Despite Ariel wearing an ocean bra for most of that movie, and despite the fact that a man ultimately saves her from an evil plus-sized sea witch, and despite Ariel ditching her entire family for this man just because he’s a handsome prince, I gave in and showed The Little Mermaid to Mari on repeat. Those songs are also the shit. I’m a sucker for a drunk seagull best friend and since this is a safe space free of judgment: Ariel’s dad is kinda hot? I still find my feelings about King Triton confusing. He looks like Santa with abs and a tail.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I’m sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I’m trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. ...

So I began, feeling as if I was some elf in a Grim fairy tale climbing the corporate ladder of darkest whimsy, yet somewhere at the top lies the treasure of a pure maiden’s heart. Therefore it was my duty to do whatever it might take to win that pure maiden’s heart by returning that treasure to her hand. By the way, Spicoli, in the movie Fast Times at Ridge Mont High, said that people on ludes shouldn’t drive, that being shortly after crashing a car while he was high on ludes. Therefore, I will say this in advance, people still half drunk and stoned probably shouldn’t climb trees either.

What’s not to love about being expertly lit and drunk at two in the afternoon? But I’m going to need you to love me on the bus, dude. And first thing in the morning. Also, when I’m drunk and refuse to shut up about getting McNuggets from the drive-thru. When I fall asleep in the middle of that movie you paid extra to see in IMAX. When I wear the flowered robe I got at Walmart and the sweatpants I made into sweatshorts to bed.

Maybe she hated being out of control, knowing that someone or something else was dictating her fate. Because it's really not fair. A drunk driver runs a red light, and you end up dead. A guy in a movie theater coughs on you, and you catch some rare, fatal disease. You sit in class minding your own business, and there's the kid from sixth period holding a gun in his hand. Why should other people be in control? Why should someone else get to choose when you die?

 It’s weird being alone in the museum. It’s dark and eerily quiet: Only the after-hours lights are on—just enough to illuminate the hallways and stop you from tripping over your own feet—and the background music that normally plays all the time is shut off. I quickly organize the flashlights and check their batteries, and when I don’t hear Porter walking around, I stare at the phone sitting at the information desk. How many chances come along like this? I pick up the receiver, press the little red button next to the word ALL, and speak into the phone in a low voice. “Paging Porter Roth to the information desk,” I say formally, my voice crackling through the entire lobby and echoing down the corridors. Then I press the button again and add, “While you’re at it, check your shoes to make sure they’re a match, you bastard. By the way, I still haven’t quite forgiven you for humiliating me. It’s going to take a lot more than a kiss and a cookie to make me forget both that and the time you provoked me in the Hotbox.” I’m only teasing, which I hope he knows. I feel a little drunk on all my megaphone power, so I page one more thing: “PS—You look totally hot in those tight-fitting security guard pants tonight, and I plan to get very handsy with you at the movies, so we better sit in the back row.” I hang up the phone and cover my mouth, silently laughing at myself. Two seconds later, Porter’s footfalls pound down Jay’s corridor—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! He sounds like a T. rex running from Godzilla. He races into the lobby and slides in front of the information desk, grabbing onto the edge to stop himself, wild curls flying everywhere. His grin is enormous. “Whadidya say ’bout where you want to be puttin’ your hands on me?” he asks breathlessly. “I think you have me confused with someone else,” I tease. His head sags against the desk. I push his hair away from one of his eyes. He looks up at me and asks, “You really still haven’t forgiven me?” “Maybe if you put your hands onme, I might.” “Don’t go getting my hopes up like that.” “Oh, your hopes should be up. Way up.” “Dear God, woman,” he murmurs. “And here I was, thinking you were a classy dame.” “Pfft. You don’t know me at all.” “I aim to find out. What are we still doing here? Let’s blow this place and get to the theater, fast.

Mexican Loneliness" And I am an unhappy stranger grooking in the streets of Mexico- My friends have died on me, my lovers disappeared, my whores banned, my bed rocked and heaved by earthquake - and no holy weed to get high by candlelight and dream - only fumes of buses, dust storms, and maids peeking at me thru a hole in the door secretly drilled to watch masturbators fuck pillows - I am the Gargoyle of Our Lady dreaming in space gray mist dreams -- My face is pointed towards Napoleon ------ I have no form ------ My address book is full of RIP's I have no value in the void, at home without honor, - My only friend is an old fag without a typewriter Who, if he's my friend, I'll be buggered. I have some mayonnaise left, a whole unwanted bottle of oil, peasants washing my sky light, a nut clearing his throat in the bathroom next to mine a hundred times a day sharing my common ceiling - If I get drunk I get thirsty - if I walk my foot breaks down - if I smile my mask's a farce - if I cry I'm just a child - - if I remember I'm a liar - if I write the writing's done - - if I die the dying's over - - if I live the dying's just begun - - if I wait the waiting's longer - if I go the going's gone if I sleep the bliss is heavy the bliss is heavy on my lids - if I go to cheap movies the bedbugs get me - Expensive movies I can't afford - if I do nothing nothing does

Wanting All Husband, it's fine the way your mind performs Like a circus, sharp As a sword somebody has To swallow, rough as a bear, Complicated as a family of jugglers, Brave as a sequined trapeze Artist, the only boy I ever met Who could beat me in argument Was why I married you, isn't it, And you have beaten me, I've beaten you, We are old polished hands. Or was it your body, I forget, maybe I foresaw the thousands on thousands Of times we have made love Together, mostly meat And potatoes love, but sometimes Higher than wine, Better than medicine. How lately you bite, you baby, How angels record and number Each gesture, and sketch Our spinal columns like professionals. Husband, it's fine how we cook Dinners together while drinking, How we get drunk, how We gossip, work at our desks, dig in the garden, Go to the movies, tell The children to clear the bloody table, How we fit like puzzle pieces. The mind and body satisfy Like windows and furniture in a house. The windows are large, the furniture solid. What more do I want then, why Do I prowl the basement, why Do I reach for your inside Self as you shut it Like a trunkful of treasures? Wait, I cry, as the lid slams on my fingers.

Son of a bitch!” “What is it?” asked Coleman. “Our flight’s delayed!” “But only fifteen minutes,” said Coleman. “I’ve seen this movie before. ‘Fifteen minutes’ is code for ‘at least three to five hours.’ They know the plane’s stuck in Pittsburgh, where they wrestled another drunk pilot to the runway, but they don’t want an open passenger revolt, so they incrementally string us along fifteen minutes at a time, until you’re across the international date line.” Serge paced in front of the departure screen. Fifteen minutes later, Serge grabbed Coleman and pointed. “Sweet Jesus! They just added another fifteen minutes!

I can stand onstage all night talking to thousands of people about my most vulnerable and private feelings—like my thoughts on the last guy who was inside me, or the fact that I eat like the glutton in the movie Se7en when I’m drunk. But I really don’t do as well at parties or gatherings where I feel like I am obligated to be more “social.” Usually

When he was a kid, it used to feel like his parents disappeared when the got drunk. As the levels of their glasses went down, he could sense them pulling away from him, as if they were together on the same boat, slowly pulling away from the shore where Oliver was left stranded, still himself, still boring, sensible Oliver, and he'd think, Please don't go, stay here with me, because his real mother was funny and his real father was smart, but they always went. First his dad got stupid and his mum got giggly, and then his mum got nasty and his dad got angry, and so it went until there was no point staying and Oliver went to watch movies in his bedroom. He'd had his own VCR in his bedroom. He'd had a privileged upbringing, had never wanted for anything.

When she was forty, would she lament that she hadn’t had sex with more people and partied more? But then, she didn’t enjoy many people, and she had never gone to a party that she wasn’t eager to leave. She hated being drunk, though she did enjoy smoking a joint every now and then. She liked playing games, seeing a foreign movie, a good meal. She liked going to bed early and waking up early.

She said: “I’m so sick of this joint.” “Why?” “No freedom. I can’t go out. I can’t get drunk or gamble or wear swell clothes…” “They look swell to me.” “Shut up, honey. I’m trying to tell you something. I like to dance. I like good restaurants and night clubs, and movies. Here all I’m supposed to do is think about God. It’s getting me down.” “You don’t like God?” “I can take him or leave him.” I laughed.

The awe of a naked female body is different, I thought, completely different. Naked girls exist almost exclusively, and for the longest time, in pictures. Movies, ads, porn. Moving or still images revealing what can only be guessed, grazed, or mentally drawn. Sleeping with a girl is bringing the uncommon, the extraordinary, into the very common: your bed, your body, your hands. Sex with a man, I realized, is initially the opposite. The very common nakedness of guys, glanced at, studiously ignored, forced upon you in locker rooms, sleepovers and showers, is thrown at you in the most uncommon, the most extraordinary setting: a forbidden and overpowering sexual disorientation. When you first sleep with a girl, you get the affirming feeling you’ve arrived. When you first sleep with a guy, you are drunk with displacement.

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.

Getting drunk every Friday night and thinking that it's normal, only to get mad every Monday, looks normal only because most people are insane. It becomes abnormal when it affects your relationships and you push people you want away with a smile and cry when they're gone. That's when a person should question her own sanity. If that still doesn't make one question it, then that's a very deep stage of insanity. That's not life. That's the scenario for an apocalyptic movie.

Back in the time before Columbus, there were only Indians here, no skyscrapers, no automobiles, no streets. Of course, we didn't use the words Indian or Native American then; we were just people. We didn't know we were supposedly drunks or lazy or savages. I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries. We were told in movies and books that Indians had a sacred relationship with the land, that we worshipped and nurtured it. But staring at Nathan, I didn't feel any mystical bond with the rez. I hated our shitty unpaved roads and our falling-down houses and the snarling packs of dogs that roamed freely in the streets and alleys. But most of all, I hated that kids like Nathan - good kids, decent kids - got involved with drugs and crime and gangs, because there was nothing for them to do here. No after-school jobs, no clubs, no tennis lessons. Every month in the Lakota Times newspaper there was an obituary for another teen suicide, another family in the Burned Thigh Nation who'd had their heart taken away from them. In the old days, the eyapaha was the town crier, the person who would meet incoming warriors after a battle, ask them what happened so they wouldn't have to speak of their own glories, then tell the people the news. Now the eyapaha, our local newspaper, announced losses and harms too often, victories and triumphs too rarely.

Writing. It’s easy work. The equipment isn’t expensive, and you can pursue this occupation anywhere. You make your own hours, mess around the house in your pajamas, listening to jazz recordings and sipping coffee while another day makes its escape. You don’t have to be high-functioning or even, for the most part, functioning at all. If I could drink liquor without being drunk all the time, I’d certainly drink enough to be drunk half the time, and production wouldn’t suffer. Bouts of poverty come along, anxiety, shocking debt, but nothing lasts forever. I’ve gone from rags to riches and back again, and more than once. Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light. It’s not much different, really, from filming a parade of clouds across the sky and calling it a movie—although it has to be admitted that the clouds can descend, take you up, carry you to all kinds of places, some of them terrible, and you don’t get back where you came from for years and years.

In psychology, they call the holistic view you form about another person your global evaluation. As you can see, your global evaluation about the height or beauty of another person greatly affects your other estimations, but many other global evaluations can produce the halo effect. When it comes to your favorite bands, directors, brands, or companies, you often lie to yourself about their shortcomings. For example, if you really, truly love a particular musician or band, you will forgive their poorer works much more readily than will a less-devoted fan. You may find yourself defending their latest album, explaining the nuances to the uninitiated, wondering why they can’t appreciate it. Or maybe you absolutely love a particular director or author, and believe her to be a genius who can do no wrong. When critics slam her latest movie or book, how do you react? Like most fanatics, you probably see the dissenters as naysayers and nitpickers drunk on their own haterade. The halo effect nullifies your objectivity.

Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It's more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done. Sometimes

By eleven-thirty, Sadie was in her pajamas, teeth brushed and flossed, ready to go to bed. She wondered if this was what other twenty-three-year-olds' Friday nights were like. When she was forty, would she lament that she hadn't had sex with more people and partied more? But then, she didn't enjoy many people, and she had never gone to a party that she wasn't eager to leave. She hated being drunk, though she did enjoy smoking a joint every now and then. She liked playing games, seeing a foreign movie, a good meal. She liked going to bed early and waking up early. She liked working.

It starts, and we’re quiet for a while. Engrossed. Julie and I first watched this movie our freshman year, drunk after a bad party at a frat house. We huddled on the couch in our common room under layers of blankets. We shared a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. We stayed up until five a.m., talking about what a good movie it was and whether or not we’d ever date a widower. We theorized about the true weight of baggage in relationships we weren’t mature enough to have or experienced enough to understand. As I watch the movie again with her now, there’s a phantom taste of mint in my mouth.

We only have a little bit of time before I leave for Korea. Let’s not waste it.” Then I slide my hand in his, and he squeezes it. The house is completely empty, for the first time all week. All the other girls are still at the party, except for Chris, who ran into somebody she knows through Applebee’s. We go up to my room, and Peter takes off his shoes and gets in my bed. “Want to watch a movie?” he asks, stretching his arms behind his head. No, I don’t want to watch a movie. Suddenly my heart is racing, because I know what I want to do. I’m ready. I sit down on the bed next to him as he says, “Or we could start a new show--” I press my lips to his neck, and I can feel his pulse jump. “What if we don’t watch a movie or a show? What if we…do something else instead.” I give him a meaningful look. His body jerks in surprise. “What, you mean like now?” “Yes.” Now. Now feels right. I start planting little kisses down his throat. “Do you like that?” I can feel him swallow. “Yes.” He pushes me away from him so he can look at my face. “Let’s stop for a second. I can’t think. Are you drunk? What did Chris put in that drink she gave you?” “No, I’m not drunk!” I had a little bit of a warm feeling in my body, but the walk home woke me right up. Peter’s still staring at me. “I’m not drunk. I swear.” Peter swallows hard, his eyes searching mine. “Are you sure you want to do this now?” “Yes,” I say, because I really, truly am. “But first can you put on Frank Ocean?” He grabs his phone, and a second later the beat kicks in and Frank’s melodious voice fills the room. Peter starts fumbling with his shirt buttons and then gives up and starts to pull my shirt up, and I yelp, “Wait!” Peter’s so startled, he jumps away from me. “What? What’s wrong?” I leap off the bed and start rummaging through my suitcase. I’m not wearing my special bra and underwear set; I’m wearing my normal every day cappuccino-colored bra with the frayed edges. I can’t lose my virginity in my ugliest bra.

Science fiction creators taught me not to take the machine personally: the wear and tear, day in and day out, of microaggressions and weird looks and empty bank accounts, and off conversations and news reports and movies and some drunk guy trying to holla at me and another cop found not guilty for shooting a Black boy who wasn't even old enough to vote and our water tasting like rusty metal. While we do need to constantly unplug from the violence of the invisible machines, we aren't going to survive simply by boycotting products made in Isreali settlements or having multiracial babies. We aren't going survive by "voting with our dollars," and we aren't going to make a revolution through the purity of our lifestyles.

The key to the problem, I would come to understand, was this: I lacked both spiritual guidelines, and an ability to enjoy anything. But at the same time, I was also an excitement addict. This is such a toxic combination I can't even. I didn't know this at the time, of course, but if I was not in the act of searching for excitement, being excited, or drunk, I was incapable of enjoying anything. The fancy word for that is "anhedonia," a word and feeling I would spend millions in therapy and treatment centers to discover and understand. Maybe that's why I won tennis matches only when I was a set down and within points of losing. Maybe that's why I did everything I did. "Anhedonia," by the way, was the original working title of my favorite movie, the one my mother and I had enjoyed together, "Annie Hall". Woody gets it. Woody gets me.

Charlie’s body was on autopilot as she stirred bitters into old-fashioneds, and doctored abominable Smirnoff Ices with half shots of Chambored. Up on stage, a drag trio in sinister yet glittery Elvira-esque attire belted out songs from the nineties. Mixing drinks, she found herself glad of something to do with her hands, some distraction from the churn of her thoughts. In the hours before a job, adrenaline kicked in. She was alert, focused. As though she only truly came awake when there was a puzzle to solve, a potential triumph outside of the grinding pattern of days. Something other than getting up, eating, going to work, eating again, and then having a few hours before bed with which you could work out or do your laundry or have sex or clean the kitchen or watch a movie or get drunk. The grinding pattern was life, though. You weren’t supposed to yearn for something else.

By eleven-thirty, Sadie was in her pajamas, teeth brushed and flossed, ready to go to bed. She wondered if this was what other twenty-three-year-olds' Friday nights were like. When she was forty, would she lament that she hadn't had sex with more people and partied more? But then, she didn't enjoy many people, and she had never gone to a party that she wasn't eager to leave. She hated being drunk, though she did enjoy smoking a joint every now and then. She liked playing games, seeing a foreign movie, a good meal. She liked going to bed early and waking up early. She liked working. She liked that she was good at her work, and she felt proud of the fact that she was well paid for it. She felt pleasure in ordinary things—a perfectly efficient section of code, a closet where every item was in its place. She liked solitude and the thoughts of her own interesting and creative mind.

Jesus, he’s actually waiting for me like he wants to get beat up. The kid has a screw loose. Or I do. Because I prowl forward and the mechanical gates guarding his house start to open for me. He’s wet through, golden hair scraped off his forehead. I hate how sexy he looks. My shirt is soaked to my chest too. I realize as we stare at each other, we probably look like one of those teen fucking romance movies, where they do some shit in the rain. In every drunk or sober situation this shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t be looking at his mouth like I’m on death row and he’s a steak dinner. I’m not gay. My drunk-ass brain chants over and over until the lie is part of my taste buds. My hazy eyes focus. He presses into my chest before I know it and he tugs the front of my hair until my mouth is hovering over his. “Your move, Maverick.” He says with calm ease. Rain drips off his tempting lips. Goddamn.

Living in this niche therefore requires both individual and collective creativity, intensive cooperation, a tolerance for strangers and crowds, and a degree of openness and trust that is entirely unmatched among our closest primate relatives. Compared to fiercely individualistic and relentlessly competitive chimpanzees, for instance, we are like goofy, tail-wagging puppies. We are almost painfully docile, desperately in need of affection and social contact, and wildly vulnerable to exploitation. As Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, an anthropologist and primatologist, notes, it is remarkable that hundreds of people will cram themselves shoulder to shoulder into a tiny airplane, obediently fasten their seat belts, eat their packets of stale crackers, watch movies and read magazines and chat politely with their neighbors, and then file peacefully off at the other end. If you packed a similar number of chimpanzees onto a plane, what you’d end up with at the other end is a long metal tube full of blood and dismembered body parts.6 Humans are powerful in groups precisely because we are weak as individuals, pathetically eager to connect with one another, and utterly dependent on the group for survival.

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I’m standing on a tree stump so we’re eye to eye. It’s hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It’s been one of those days I don’t want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied. She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die. At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we could see & almost hold. I would risk everything I’ve ever known to know only this. I wanted to honour her in a way that was understandable to every part of me. It was as though I could distill the meaning of us into something I could pour into a porcelain cup. Our bodies on top of this city, rulers of love. Originally, we were celebrating the fact that I got into Concordia’s visual arts program. But the congratulatory brunch she took me to at Café Santropol had turned into wine, which had turned into a day for declarations. I had a sense of spring in my body, that this season would meld into summer like a running-jump movie kiss. There would be days & days like this. XXXX gone away on a sojurn I didn’t care to note the details of, she simply ceased to be. Summer in Montreal in love is almost too much emotion to hold in an open mouth, it spills over, it causes me to not need any sleep. I don’t think I will ever feel as awake as I did in the summer of 1995.

I thought about the aftermath of the 1862 war, when thirty-eight hastily condemned warriors had been hung in Mankato, in the country's largest-ever mass execution. Their bodies were buried in shallow graves and then dug up for study by local doctors, including Dr. Mayo, who kept the body of Cut Nose for his personal examination. I thought about my father losing his teaching job, about his struggle with depression and drinking. About how angry he was that our history was not taught in schools. Instead, we had to battle sports mascots and stereotypes. Movie actors in brownface. Tourists with cameras. Welfare lines. Alcoholism. 'After stealing everything,' he would rage, 'now they want to blame us for it, too.' Social services broke up Native families, sending children like me to white foster parents. Every week, the newspapers ran stories about Indians who rolled their cars while drunk or the rise of crack cocaine on the reservations or somebody's arrest for gang-related crimes. No wonder so many Native kids were committing suicide. But there was so much more to the story of the run. What people didn't see because they chose never to look. Unlike the stone monument in New Ulm, built to memorialize the settlers' loss with angry pride, the Dakhota had created a living, breathing memorial that found healing in prayer and ceremony. What the two monuments shared, however, was remembering. We were all trying to find a way through grief.

Galveston?” he asked in that amazing voice, still surprising me by keeping our conversation going. “Yeah. Staying at a beach house and everything. Totally slumming it and having a miserable time, you know?” I gave him a real smile that time. Rip just raised his brows. “I promised her I would go visit, and she promised she would come up too... What’s that face for?” I surprised myself by laughing. “I don’t believe it either. I’ll get lucky if she comes once. I’m not that delusional.” I didn’t imagine the way his cheek twitched again, just a little, just enough to keep the smile on my face. “I’m stuck making my own lunches from now on. I have nobody to watch scary movies with who’s more dramatic than I am screaming at the scary parts. And my house is empty,” I told him, going on a roll. “Your lunches?” was what he picked up on. I wasn’t sure how much he’d had to drink that he was asking me so many questions, but I wasn’t going to complain. “I can’t cook to save my life, boss. I thought everyone knew. Baking is the only thing I can handle.” “You serious?” he asked in a surprised tone. I nodded. “For real?” “Yeah,” I confirmed. “I can’t even make rice in an Instant Pot. It’s either way too dry or it’s mush.” Oh. “An Instant Pot is—” “I know what it is,” he cut me off. It was my turn to make a face, but mine was an impressed one. He knew what an Instant Pot was but not a rom-com. Okay. “Sorry.” He didn’t react to me trying to tease him, instead he asked, “You can’t even make rice in that?” “Nope.” “You know there’s instructions online.” Was he messing with me now? I couldn’t help but watch him a little. How much had he drunk already? “Yeah, I know.” “And you still screw it up?” I blinked, soaking up Chatty Cathy over here like a plant that hadn’t seen the sun in too long. “I wouldn’t say I screw it up. It’s more like… you either need to chew a little more or a little less.” It was his turn to blink. “It’s a surprise. I like to keep people on their toes.” If I hadn’t been guessing that he’d had a couple drinks before, what he did next would have confirmed it. His left cheek twitched. Then his right one did too, and in the single blink of an eye, Lucas Ripley was smiling at me. Straight white teeth. That not-thin but not-full mouth dark pink and pulled up at the edges. He even had a dimple. Rip had a freaking dimple. And I wanted to touch it to make sure it was real. I couldn’t help but think it was just about the cutest thing I had ever seen, even though I had zero business thinking anything along those lines. But I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t say a single word to mention it; otherwise, it might never come out again. What I did trust myself to do was gulp down half of my Sprite before saying, “You can make rice, I’m guessing?” If he wanted to talk, we could talk. I was good at talking. “Uh-huh,” he replied, sounding almost cocky about it. All I could get myself to do in response was grin at him, and for another five seconds, his dimple—and his smile—responded to me.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

Based on a 1934 play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, Merrily We Roll Along tells the story of three friends—Franklin Shepard, a composer; Charley Kringas, a playwright and lyricist; and Mary Flynn, a novelist—who meet in the enthusiasm of youth, when everything seems possible. The play traces what happens to their dreams and goals as time passes and they are faced with life’s surprises, travails, successes, and disappointments. The trick here is that the play moves chronologically backward. It begins on an evening in 1976 at a party for the opening of a movie Frank has produced. The movie is apparently a hit, but Frank’s personal life is a mess. His second wife, Gussie, formerly a Broadway star, was supposed to have starred in the movie but was deemed too old; she resents being in the shadows and suspects, correctly, that Frank is having an affair with the young actress who took over her part. Frank is estranged from his son from his first marriage. He is also estranged from Charley, his former writing partner—so estranged, in fact, that the very mention of his name brings the party to an uncomfortable standstill. Mary, unable to re-create the success of her one and only novel and suffering from a longtime unreciprocated love for Frank, has become a critic and a drunk; the disturbance she causes at the party results in a permanent break with Frank. The opening scene reaches its climax when Gussie throws iodine in the eyes of Frank’s mistress. The ensemble, commenting on the action much like the Greek chorus in Allegro, reprises the title song, asking, “How did you get to be here? / What was the moment?” (F 387). The play then moves backward in time as it looks for the turning points, the places where multiple possibilities morphed into narrative necessity.

Marlboro Man and I walked together to our vehicles--symbolically parked side by side in the hotel lot under a cluster of redbud trees. Sleepiness had definitely set in; my head fell on his shoulder as we walked. His ample arms gripped my waist reassuringly. And the second we reached my silver Camry, the temperature began to rise. “I can’t wait till tomorrow,” he said, backing me against the door of my car, his lips moving toward my neck. Every nerve receptor in my body simultaneously fired as his strong hands gripped the small of my back; my hands pulled him closer and closer. We kissed and kissed some more in the hotel parking lot, flirting dangerously with taking it a step--or five--further. Out-of-control prairie fires were breaking out inside my body; even my knees felt hot. I couldn’t believe this man, this Adonis who held me so completely and passionately in his arms, was actually mine. That in a mere twenty-four hours, I’d have him all to myself. It’s too good to be true, I thought as my right leg wrapped around his left and my fingers squeezed his chiseled bicep. It was as if I’d been locked inside a chocolate shop that also sold delicious chardonnay and french fries…and played Gone With the Wind and Joan Crawford movies all day long--and had been told “Have fun.” He was going to be my own private playground for the rest of my life. I almost felt guilty, like I was taking something away from the world. It was so dark outside, I forgot where I was. I had no sense of geography or time or space, not even when he took my face in his hands and touched his forehead to mine, closing his eyes, as if to savor the powerful moment. “I love you,” he whispered as I died right there on the spot. It wasn’t convenient, my dying the night before my wedding. I didn’t know how my mom was going to explain it to the florist. But she’d have to; I was totally done for. I’d had half a glass of wine all evening but felt completely inebriated. When I finally arrived home, I had no idea how I’d gotten there. I was intoxicated--drunk on a cowboy. A cowboy who, in less than twenty-four hours, would become my husband.

July 8, 2013 Review of Bargain with the Devil Author: Gloria Gravitt Moulder My interest in the death of Margaret Mitchell was sparked as a young child growing up in Georgia. I was born in 1953, 4 years after her death. Older relatives, neighbors and friends would sit around discussing her death as I was growing up and with the inquisitive mind of a young child; I found what they were saying interesting enough to listen in. They talked about how the taxi cab driver, Hugh Gravitt, (some of which knew him as this was a small southern town where everyone knew everyone) was not a drinker because of his health and how the newspaper articles had written he was drunk and speeding when it wasn’t true. I overheard many things about how the media was wrong regarding the circumstances of her death. Some speculated she committed suicide; others suspected her husband pushed her in front of the car Mr. Gravitt was driving. All commented that both Margaret and John were drunk and jaywalking across Peachtree Street. I read the book (Gone with the Wind) when I was 13 and went to see the movie in 1969 at the Fox theatre with friends. I cannot relate how this impacted me. I became interested in all I heard as a child again and over the years have read many articles on the subject of Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh. I never believed the stories about Hugh Gravitt being at fault in her death as a result of all those conversations I had overheard by my elders as a child. Gloria Gravitt Moulder, the daughter of Hugh Gravitt, has written the perfect book called “Bargain with the Devil” with facts derived from her own father on his death bed. I could not put this book down; I read it in one day. It has confirmed everything I heard from people who suspected in the few years after Margaret Mitchell’s death what actually happened. Thank you Mrs. Moulder, for your courage in bringing your father’s version to light after all his suffering from 1949 to his death. Also, for confirming my beliefs in what I heard growing up as this was only suspicion until I read about your father’s version. Kathy Whiten 621 Brighton Drive Lawrenceville, GA 30043 404-516-0623

Madison’s enthralled from the very first moment. I’m sitting on the blanket, my legs stretched out, while Kennedy lays down, her head in my lap. I cringe my way through the movie, absently stroking Kennedy’s hair. I glance down at her after a while, realizing she’s not watching the screen, her attention fixed on me. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” she says. “It’s just strange.” I caress her flushed cheek. “Being here with me?” “Yes,” she says. “Just when I was starting to doubt I’d ever see you again.” “You didn’t think I’d keep popping up every so often?” “Oh, sure, but that’s not you,” she says. “I knew that guy would keep coming back. I thought I’d be dealing with him for the rest of my life. Drunk, high, out of his mind… but I never thought I’d see you again, real you, yet you’re here. I thought it would always be him.” I know what she means as she motions toward the screen. I can tell I was strung out. It’s painful. “I’m here,” I say, “and I’m not going anywhere.” “I want to believe that.” “You can.” She smiles, and I don’t know if she believes it yet, but she looks content in the moment. I brush my thumb along her lips as they part, and I want to kiss her so fucking bad right now, but I know I’ll catch hell from my daughter if I try. “Ohhhh, Daddy!” Madison says, grabbing my attention, catching me off guard as she launches herself my way. Laughing, Kennedy sits up, moving out of the line of fire as Madison damn near tackles me, leaping on my back and trying to cover my face with her hands from behind. “You’re not supposed to do that!” “What?” I laugh. “I didn’t do anything!” “You’re kissing her!” she says as I pull her hands away from my mouth when she tries to cover it. I playfully pretend to bite her, making her squeal. “Stop, Daddy!” She flings herself on me, falling into my lap, as I glance up at the screen, realizing Breezeo is kissing Maryanne. I scowl, tickling Madison. “It’s just a movie. It’s not real.” She giggles, slapping my hands away. “You didn’t really kiss her?” “Well, yeah, but it doesn’t count.” “Why not?” “Because it’s Breezeo, not me.” “It’s still yucky,” she says, making a face. “You think kissing me is yucky?” I tickle her again, and she struggles, laughing, trying to get away, but I’m not going to let it go that easy. Grabbing ahold of her, pinning her to me, I nuzzle against her cheek as she shoves my face. “Help, Mommy!” “Oh, no, you’re on your own there,” Kennedy says. “You got yourself into that one.” “Ugh, no fair!” Madison says, slapping her hands over my mouth. “No kissing ‘till the end!” “Fine.” I let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “You win.” She sticks her tongue out at me. The girl seriously sticks her tongue out, gloating, as she leaps at her mother and kisses on her—planting big, sloppy kisses right on Kennedy, making sure I see it. She’s gone again then, right back to her movie now that the love scene is over. “Unbelievable.” I shake my head. “I get no love.” Grinning, Kennedy lays back down with her head in my lap. She stares at me, reaching up, her fingertips brushing across my lips. “You be good, and I’ll make it worth it for you later.” I cock an eyebrow at her. “Is that right?

Harvey didn’t set his phone to beep or buzz or vibrate like a normal person. Harvey’s phone screeched with a string piece from the Hitchcock movie Psycho, the scene with Janet Leigh in the shower, the knife rising and falling, the string section shrieking with short, staccato stabs, the lone violin slashing through the fermata with discordant glissandos, more violins joining the first, violas adding their teeth, mad strings schooling like orchestral sharks at a blood-drunk feast.

It might be said that this feeling for violence and brutality, for the pageant and panorama of fascism on the Continent, formed her principal disinterested aesthetic pleasure. She had few others. She read practically nothing: she did not respond to music or pictures: she never went to the theatre and very seldom to the movies: and although she had an instinctive ability to dress well and effectively when she desired, she did not even like pretty things. She only liked what affected her personally and physically and immediately – sleep, warmth, a certain amount of company and talk, drinks, getting drunk, good food, taxis, ease. She was not even responsive to adulation, save when, coming from a man, it promised to further these necessities. She was atrophied. She looked like a Byron beauty, but she was a fish.

On the day Roja released, Rahman’s younger sister Fathima was sitting in a theatre in Chennai with her friends, all set to watch the movie. The opening credits rolled, the film began and the first song—‘Chinna Chinna Aasai’ as you might guess—played with the movie’s heroine singing the song, scaling Chalakudy’s waterfall and playing in the verdant fields of the South Indian countryside. The song was already a hit and by the intermission, Fathima heard a very drunk man sitting in a seat behind her say, ‘Evano semayaa paattu pottu vachchurukaan da.’ (Whoever did the music for this has done a great job.) ‘That’s when I knew,’ she says with a laugh. ‘That’s when I knew my brother had got it right. I was so proud.

After this, you want to watch a movie? You can make that cheddar popcorn I love. We can crowd under that blanket that smells like.... what's that smell?" I choke on a fresh wave of fear. " Lavender," I say as more tears stream down my cheeks. "Yeah. And I'll let you watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.

Finally, it is my turn. It is 8 o’clock, and I have been waiting for six hours. It doesn’t seem like a long time because my mind has been flying from the oranges in front of me to my brother and then back to the oranges. I hand over the money I was going to spend on the movie and watch each orange being thrown into my bag. I try to count them, but I lose their number. I am drunk with the idea of oranges. I put the bag inside my coat, as if I want to absorb their warmth. They aren’t heavy at all, and I feel that this is going to be the best Christmas of my life. I begin thinking of how I am going to present my gift. I get home and my father opens the door. He is amazed when he sees the oranges, and we decide to hide them until dinner. At dessert that night, I give my brother the present. Everyone is silent. They can’t believe it. My brother doesn’t touch them. He is afraid even to look at them. Maybe they aren’t real. Maybe they are an illusion, like everything else these days. We have to tell him he can eat them before he has the courage to touch one of the oranges. I stare at my brother eating the oranges. They are my oranges. My parents are proud of me.

This was inevitable, and another unmistakable inkling tells me that I knew it well before now. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. It’s Cecelia’s call that stops me from embracing the dark snaking its way into me. Focusing on her, I allow myself the chance to tell her that briefly, she gave me a glimpse of a happiness I hadn’t thought I was capable of. “Cecelia,” I address firmly, my heart lurching into the rhythm she created. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Tobias attempts to cut in, calling my name, but I refuse him. “I’m talking to Cecelia.” “Yes?” she replies, voice shaking with fear. “After this, want to watch a movie?” Ignoring any outside noise beyond our exchange, I tell her of the memory that kept me going in France. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a time I felt complete and whole. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love, and we can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” “Lavender,” she releases in a shaky rush. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Of a life we might have had . . . if I didn’t have so many fucking monsters to slay. “Yeah, and I’ll watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.” Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. “We love rainy days, don’t we, baby?” “We do,” she croaks, voice breaking. Tilting my head at Matteo in challenge, I make my declaration clear to Tobias to ready himself. “We don’t fucking negotiate with terrorists.” Taking another step toward Matteo, Cecelia’s voice reaches me in elevated panic. “Dominic.” “What is it, baby?” “S’il te plaît, ne fais rien de stupide. Je t’aime.” Please don’t do anything stupid. I love you. “Je sais.” I know. Her declaration fuels me as I stand between her and the monster I swore to protect her from while her love sets me free. For a brief time, she was my solace—my reprieve. The only dream of a future I allowed myself to have, but she can’t be. Not anymore. Too many monsters. “Dominic,” Tobias orders gruffly. “Stand down, right fucking now. We’re still talking.” I feel the desperation in his order, in him, as he rattles behind me to stop and think it through. But I have, for far too long, and I’m finally ten steps ahead. Sorry brother.

Richard Linklater: First, we became a midnight film. We would play for an entire year at certain theaters. They would turn it into a mini-concert where you go in the theater and you could smell the pot smoke. Jason London: I heard stories about how we'd kicked Rocky Horror out of its venues because people wanted to get in to watch Dazed and Confused instead. Anthony Rapp: There was a thing called the Brew and View in Chicago where they served beer and put up a screen at different venues. And I don't know if it was as orchestrated as a Rocky Horror thing but every time Wiley [Wiggins] touched his nose, they drank [me: yeah we did]. Wiley Wiggins: That will kill you! Don't do that!

She was getting tired of movies, if the truth were told. She was tired of that little brat Adam, and that stinking drunk Chris. Most of all she was tired of waiting for Cirocco Jones to show up.

medication. If you take a step back and observe adults “having fun,” you may notice that many of the things we pass off as fun could also be described as numbing ourselves from our current reality. For example: getting drunk or high. Binging on movies or TV. Spending hours mindlessly scrolling.

Yeah. And I’ll let you watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.

By our seventh anniversary, we had five kids and weren’t done yet. Raven was blessed with easy pregnancies and could run around until the moment of delivery. Oh, and did those deliveries become legend. When River was born, the whole crew was laughing their asses off in the waiting room because of Raven’s profanity-laced rants. Our twins came two years later. During their deliveries, a drinking game started with the crew and club guys. Every time Raven screamed a cuss word, Tucker told the guys at the bar and they’d take a shot of whiskey. Half of the guys were wasted by the time Savannah was born. As Avery joined her sister, the other half of the bar was just as drunk off their asses. The obstetrician nearly begged Raven to use pain meds. She refused of course. No one was telling her what to do. For Maverick’s birth, the hospital moved Raven to a room at the end of the hall and kept the other laboring mothers as far away as possible. Another change the third time around was how Raven refused to allow the club guys free fun based on her laboring pains. To play the drinking game, they had to donate a hundred dollars into the kids’ college fund. We figured at least one of our kids would want to do the education thing. The guys donated the money and got ready for Raven to let loose. In her laboring room, she even allowed a mic connected to overhead speakers at the bar. Despite knowing they were all listening, my woman didn’t disappoint. One particular favorite was motherfucking crustacean cunt. When Maverick’s head crowded, she also sounded a little bit like a graboid from Tremors. Hell, I think she did that on purpose because we’d watched the movie the night before. Raven was a born entertainer. That night, we added a few thousand dollars to the kids’ college fund, the guys had a blast getting wasted to Raven’s profanity, and I welcomed my second son. Unlike his angelic brother, Maverick peed on me an hour after birth. I knew that boy was going to be a handful.

Surely a young beauty like yourself is lonely, too. It can be a part of the game, if you like.” “Get off,” she said, thoroughly done with this. His answer was to lean in closer. So she kneed him in the groin. As hard as she could. “Aw, ow, dammit!” He doubled over and thudded onto his knees. Jane brushed off her knee, feeling like it had touched something dirty. “Aw, ow, dammit indeed! What’re you thinking?” Jane heard hurried footsteps coming down the stairs. It was Mr. Nobley. “Miss Erstwhile!” He was barefoot in his breeches, his shirt untucked. He glanced down at the groaning man. “Sir Templeton!” “Ow, she kicked me,” said Sir Templeton. “Kneed him, I kneed him,” Jane said. “I don’t kick. Not even when I’m a ninja.” Mr. Nobley stood a moment in silence, looking over the scene. “I hope you remembered to shout ‘Ya’ when taking him down. I hear that is very effective.” “I’m afraid I neglected that bit, but I’ll certainly ‘ya’ from here to London if he ever touches me again.” “Miss Erstwhile, were you perhaps employed by your president’s armed forces in America?” “What? Don’t British women know how to use their knees?” “Happily, I have never put myself in a position to find out.” He stared at the prostrate Sir Templeton. “Did he hurt you?” “Frankly, your arm-yanking earlier was worse.” “I see. Perhaps you should retire to your chambers, Miss Erstwhile. Would you like me to escort you?” “I’m fine,” she said, “as long as there aren’t any other Sir Templetons lurking upstairs.” “Well, I cannot give Colonel Andrews a glowing reference, but I believe the way is safe.” She stepped closer to Mr. Nobley and whispered, “Are you going to out me to Mrs. Wattlesbrook for the servants’ quarters lurking?” “I think,” he said, nudging the prostrate Sir Templeton with his foot, “that you have suffered enough tonight.” Mr. Nobley smiled at her, the first time she had seen his real smile. She wouldn’t go so far as to call it a grin. His lips were closed, but his eyes brightened and the corners of his mouth definitely turned up, creating pleasing little cheek wrinkles on either side as though the smile were in parentheses. It bothered her in a way she couldn’t explain, like feeling itchy but not knowing exactly where to scratch. He was not particularly amused, she saw, but smiled to reassure her. Wait, who wanted to reassure her? Mr. Nobley or the actual man, Actor X? “Thanks. Good night, Mr. Nobley.” “Good night, Miss Erstwhile.” She hesitated, then left, Sir Templeton’s groans following her up the stairs. On the second floor, Aunt Saffronia was emerging from her room, clutching a white shawl over her nightgown. “What was that noise? Is everything all right?” “Yes. It was…your husband. He was being inappropriate.” Aunt Saffronia blinked. “Inebriated?” “Yes.” She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Jane.” Jane wasn’t sure if Aunt Saffronia was speaking to Jane the niece or Jane the client. For the first time it didn’t matter; both Janes felt exactly the same. She acknowledged the apology with a nod, went to her room, and locked the door behind her. She thought she was angry but instead she plopped herself down on her bed, put her face in her pillow, and laughed. “What a joke,” she said, sounding to herself like the movie incarnation of Lydia Bennet. “I come for Mr. Darcy, fall for the gardener, and get propositioned by the drunk husband.” Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow she would play for real. She was going to drive full force into the game, have a staggering good time, and kick the nasty Darcy habit for good. She fell asleep with the ticklish thought of Mr. Nobley’s smile.

The Monday night after Halloween, I made myself go to the college Bible study Willie was teaching. There were about six or seven other guys, and we met in the gym. Brian, the guy I’d seen at the party, was there too. I wasn’t too worried. Since he was at the party, he probably wasn’t too proud of himself and wouldn’t be telling my brother about it. But Willie got up in front of us and said, “I know some of you guys are struggling, and struggling hard.” That got my attention. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, but I remember thinking, He’s never said anything like that before. A couple nights later, I got drunk and went to the movies. When I came out to the parking lot, I saw a note on the windshield of my truck. I picked it up and unfolded it. “I know what you’ve been up to. We need to talk.” It was from Willie.

Aric glanced at Jaxon, Jake and Kel. “So who wants to help me plan a wedding? Jaxon slapped his whiskey on the poker table. “How long is she withholding sex?” Jake laughed. “I don’t think it has anything to do with that.” “It must,” Jaxon said. “No man ever wants to plan a wedding. That’s the stuff horror movies are made of.” “Tell me about it,” Aric growled. “Jordan’s stressed. I’ve noticed her lack of sleep and I want to make it easier for her.” “So just go do what Nic and I did,” Jake grinned. “Minus her throwing herself at you drunk in front of the Elvis impersonator and trying to strip you naked so you could ‘hit that’.” Aric grinned. “Was it really that bad?” Jake leaned back in the cushion of his sofa chair. “It was great! She was all over me. Elvis asked if we wanted to say anything after our vows and she turned to the people waiting to use the chapel and mom and said ‘he’s really good in bed. He does this thing with his mouth’ but then got interrupted when mom cleared her throat and Elvis started coughing.” Jaxon chuckled. “Your wives are a handful, but they sure are

Did you watch the Golden Globes? If you’ve got better things to do with your time, like most of us, here’s the one-sentence version: It’s one of a series of Hollywood parties in which all the celebrities pat themselves on the back for how talented they are. Almost always at these events some movie star who wins an award gets on stage and preaches about the need to help the poor or the less fortunate. Usually they blast evil Republicans in the process. Most of them are drunk when they do it.

Before we took the trip, he had never been on an elevator, eaten a hamburger, or enjoyed a chocolate milkshake. He’d never seen a vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, trash compactor, ATM, vending machine, car with automatic locks, or Western-style movie theater. He had never been to a shopping mall, ridden in a car on the Interstate, or traveled at over 40 miles an hour. He’d never seen a rodeo, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Rubin Museum of Art in New York filled with Himalayan art, or drunk a single-malt scotch. Now he counts all of these marvels of Western culture as some of his favorite things.

her ears? Trying to hold on to a thought." ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Hackers in Hollywood movies are phenomenal; all they need to do is: "c:\> hack into fbi" ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Hand over the calculator, friends don't let friends derive drunk. ♦◊♦◊♦◊♦ Help support helpless victims of computer error.

They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking, their heads lolling with dizzy delight, rivulets etched into our earth, showing us which way the rain ran, downhill, of course, heading, all water, straight for our yet-to-be-pond.

That night, I met some old college friends at Soho House, a private club in the meatpacking district of Manhattan. I hadn’t seen them since I’d joined the community, and they hardly recognized me. They spent a half hour discussing how awkward and introverted I used to be. Then their conversation turned to work and movies. I tried to contribute, but I had trouble focusing on the words. They just floated into my ear and accumulated there like wax. I felt like I didn’t fit in with them anymore. Fortunately, an Amazonian woman with tree-trunk thighs and a lethal boob-job soon stumbled past the table. She was a foot taller than me and somewhat drunk. “Have

Seven. I’ll make all of your favorite snacks and we can have a movie night.” “I see how you’re trying to bribe me with food. I’m gonna let it slide. Do I need to bring anything?” “Just you. Well, bring a bag just in case we get too drunk and you have to sleep over.

After this, you want to watch a movie?” Dominic asks. “You can make that cheddar popcorn I love. We can crowd under that blanket that smells like . . . what’s that smell?” I choke on a fresh wave of fear. “Lavender,” I say as more tears stream down my cheeks. “Yeah. And I’ll let you watch a chick movie because all I really want to do is watch you watch it. Your face gets all dopey when you get love drunk.

Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of Resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you can get just as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record?   Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done.

I am such an idiot. I should never be allowed to watch that movie drunk. Last time, I got on eBay and tried to buy a kids’ bike to deliver pizzas with because that seemed like such a good idea.

think of something that happened to you recently and still bothers you, something that you wish to have off your mind … An episode came to Joe’s mind: an argument he had had with a drunk guy who had been hitting on his girlfriend a couple of nights back. Chances are that you are imagining a life-size scene as vividly as if you were actually there, right? When Joe thought about it, it was true: he was remembering the event as if it was a movie playing in front of him. Take that picture and begin by making it smaller. Then move it off into the distance and drain the colour out of it. If you hear the voices and sounds of the scene, make them fade away together with the brightness. Make the picture so small you have to squint to see what’s in there, and then make it even smaller. When it’s the size of a breadcrumb, you can just brush it away – just like that.

After the show Humphrey Barclay, a highly talented Harrovian Head Boy who could act, direct, and draw cartoons, introduced me to John Cleese, a very tall man with black hair and piercing dark eyes. They were very complimentary and encouraged me to audition for the Footlights. I had never heard of this University Revue Club, founded in 1883 to perform sketches and comedy shows, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and a month later Jonathan Lynn and I were voted in by the Committee, after performing to a packed crowd of comedy buffs in the Footlights’ Club Room. Jonathan, a talented actor, writer, and jazz drummer, would go on to direct Pass the Butler, my first play in the West End, and also write and direct Nuns on the Run, a movie with me and Robbie Coltrane. The audition sketch I had written for us played surprisingly well and, strange details, in the front row, lounging on a sofa, laughing with some Senior Fellows, was the author Kingsley Amis, next to the brother of the soon-to-be-infamous Guy Burgess, who would shortly flee the country, outed as perhaps the most flamboyant of all the Cambridge spies—for whenever he was outrageously drunk in Washington, which was every night, he would announce loudly to everybody that he was a KGB spy. Nobody believed him

It's so easy to give up - to live in dreams with yourself instead of in stories with a friend. I distrust dreams. it's just your brain re-stirring information uselessly, fending for itself in another dimension, making movies of its own fears and you wake up horrified or calmed by something that never happened or dissatisfied and you go back down for more which is all you get. Dreaming is like getting drunk alone, the less you live the more you dream, the more fantastic and outrageous the dreams get. I bet that's all dead people do, dream endlessly, and dreams are death in training.

It’s so easy to give up – to live in dreams with yourself instead of in stories with a friend. I distrust dreams. It’s just your brain re-stirring information uselessly, fending for itself in another dimension, making movies of its own fears and you wake up horrified or calmed by something that never happened or dissatisfied and you go back down for more which is all you get. Dreaming is like getting drunk alone, the less you live the more you dream, the more fantastic and outrageous the dreams get. I bet that’s all dead people do, dream endlessly, and dreams are death in training.

Yeah. You ever see that Sidney Lumet movie The Verdict?” “I don’t think so. I don’t go to a lot of movies anymore.” “It’s an old one with Paul Newman. I went through a Paul Newman phase. Anyway, he’s a lawyer—a drunk, actually—and he tries to drum up business by going to funerals and passing out business cards.

The major TV networks at the time all aired some version of melodramatic afternoon programming for teens. ABC called its afternoon movie series After School Specials, and CBS called their version Schoolbreak. NBC went with Special Treat, which, given the content of these shows, strikes me now as darkly comic. I rarely managed to watch one of these programs in its entirety because I wasn’t allowed to turn on the television during homework time, but occasionally I’d sneak a half hour. They ranged from mild domestic drama, like “Divorced Kids’ Blues,” to more sensational stories, such as “Are You My Mother?,” in which a girl finds out the mom she thought was dead is actually alive and in some kind of institution. Then there were episodes like these: “One Too Many”—one of several specials about drunk-driving accidents. “Don’t Touch”—a variation on the theme that abuse can come at you from any direction: a sitter, a parent, an uncle, a family friend… (See also, and I swear I’m not making this up: “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom.”) “Andrea’s Story: A Hitchhiking Tragedy”—What happened to Andrea when she accepted a ride from a stranger? Well, it wasn’t good at all, I can tell you that. “A Very Delicate Matter”—Guess what? The matter is gonorrhea. “Tattle: When to Tell on a Friend”—Answer: as soon as you notice their interest in cocaine.

I know that,” he said. “But what are you doing? You’re giving me an actor playing a drunk. I’m paying you to be a drunk. You’re trying to talk slurred and walk crooked. A real drunk is trying to speak clearly and walk straight.” My wise and wily repertory theatre director had summed up movie acting in one line, and I remember it and use it to this day. My

After thirty minutes, he began to wonder if Annie had simply forgotten about him, returned to the house after the movie, and got drunk on vodka tonics. “Come get me,” Buster whispered, hoping to create a psychic link to his sister.

Donald Ray sliced his hand open with a knife during a demonstration in a drunk woman’s house and the splash of blood kept the Fangs from nodding off. The movie was so low-budget, Mr. Fang wondered if the actor who played Donald Ray had actually cut open his hand for the scene. He felt his estimation of the actor rise considerably. “Here it comes,” Annie whispered, turning to her parents. “This is me.” Donald Ray, his hand wrapped in a makeshift bandage, picked up the hotel phone and made a collect call to his family back in Little Rock. As the phone rang, tinny and soft in the receiver, the film jumped to Donald Ray’s home, the telephone shrilly ringing on the coffee table. As the camera pulled back, a woman leaned over to answer the phone. She listened for a few seconds and then said that she’d accept the charges. “Donald Ray,” she finally said, both angry and relieved to hear from him. “Look real close,” Annie said. Behind Donald Ray’s wife, sitting on the floor and staring dully at the carpet, was Annie. “That’s you,” Buster said. “Watch now,” Annie said. “This is my big moment.” The Fangs watched their daughter on the big screen, her face empty of expression, seemingly unaware of the conversation going on beside her. It was, the Fangs would later admit, a fairly compelling performance. Then, suddenly, so fast that you would miss it if you weren’t looking, Annie looked toward the camera and smiled. The Fangs could not believe it had happened, the moment so jarring and unsettling that it took them a few seconds to realize what they had just seen. Annie had smiled at the camera. Her teeth bared. Fanged. “Annie?” Mr. and Mrs. Fang said at once. In the seat next to them, Annie was smiling, beaming, the scene ended, her character not to return for the rest of the movie. She was, the Fangs now understood, a star. Chapter Five Annie needed to get out of town. Three days after her disastrous interview,

Any asshole can fall in love on a private beach in a tropical locale, surrounded by lush flora and adorable fauna, shining suns and chirping birds. Give me ten uninterrupted minutes without some ding-dong demanding something or subtweeting me or making me do work and I could fall in love with my worst fucking enemy. Seriously. What’s not to love about being expertly lit and drunk at two in the afternoon? But I’m going to need you to love me on the bus, dude. And first thing in the morning. Also, when I’m drunk and refuse to shut up about getting McNuggets from the drive-thru. When I fall asleep in the middle of that movie you paid extra to see in IMAX. When I wear the flowered robe I got at Walmart and the sweatpants I made into sweatshorts to bed. When I am blasting “More and More” by Blood Sweat & Tears at seven on a Sunday morning while cleaning the kitchen and fucking up your mom’s frittata recipe. When I bring a half dozen gross, mangled kittens home to foster for a few nights and they shit everywhere and pee on your side of the bed. When I go “grocery shopping” and come back with only a bag of Fritos and five pounds of pork tenderloin. When I’m sick and stumbling around the crib with half a roll of toilet paper shoved in each nostril. When I beg you fourteen times to read something I’ve written, then get mad when you tell me what you don’t like about it and I call you an uneducated idiot piece of shit. Lovebird city.

He wore a coat to blend in, but, in truth, he could have been stark naked and it wouldn't have mattered. Just another change Gray had wrought, along with 20/20 vision and an inability to get drunk. 'You would prefer to be uncomfortable? What nonsense.' 'I don't want to be uncomfortable. I want to be normal.' Flickers of black-and-white images, just on the edge of his consciousness, like an old movie reel that had jumped its pockets. Fragments of memories from Gray's previous hosts, their color and texture leeched away by death. 'No mortal ever believes he is normal. Based on my experience, this normal of yours does not actually exist.' Maybe if he couldn't have Gray exorcised, they could go into the self-help business together. Have a talk show. 'I don't guess you ran around in Sigmund Freud's corpse for a while?' 'I do not believe so.' Just as well. Gray's only diagnosis would be 'mortal foolishness' anyway.

he pressed a bit more firmly, but he didn’t hold them long. When he pulled back he said, “I have excellent manners.” “You seem to,” she agreed. “I must be drunk. I’m kissing a stranger in a bar.” “I think we’ve gotten to be pretty good friends,” he said. “We know each other’s darkest, most embarrassing secrets.” “We don’t know each other well enough to be kissing in a bar.” “Listen,” he said. “Did I mention I’m staying here tonight? I probably shouldn’t be driving. I’m going to check in and then come back here. We could have a drink or seltzer together, or I could take you upstairs, if you want to. We could watch a movie or something. Talk. Have drinks and not worry about anything. Whatever you like. Be less alone.” “That would be completely nuts,” she said. “You do this sort of thing a lot?” He shook his head. “Not in years. When I was younger, I was game for a lot of stupid things, but then eventually you grow up a little. Something like this didn’t occur to me when I came over here, bought you a drink. What do you think?” “I think you’re lying,” she said.

It’s our first date. I text to say I’m running really late. Do you: a. Wait longer (+3) b. Take the opportunity to retouch your makeup and hair. Then wait longer (+5) c. Suggest that we reschedule (0) d. Tell me the date is off (-1) When you cook our first meal, it is: a. A traditional recipe passed down from your grandmother (+5) b. A recipe from your library of cookbooks (+3) c. Reheated (0) d. I can’t/won’t/don’t cook (-1) What is the first thing you buy for me? a. A night of drinks so you can get me drunk and trick me into your bed (+5) b. Tickets to a date movie so you can get me feeling romantic and trick me into your bed (+3) c. An expensive cool gadget so you can get me excited and trick me into your bed (+1)

Our ongoing Hollywood education included the lesson that moviemaking is not finished once you actually make the movie. After that, you have to promote the movie, because if the audience doesn’t show up, all your hard work is a bit pointless. But before we could sell Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course to audiences, we had to sell it to the theater owners who were going to show it to the public. So the first stop for our promotional efforts was a gathering of movie theater exhibitors called Show West, in Las Vegas. We would team up there with Bruce Willis, who had an interest in producing our movie. Bindi and I had been in Oregon for a few days, visiting family, and we planned to catch up with Steve in Las Vegas. But she and I had an ugly incident at the airport when we arrived. A Vegas lowlife approached us, his hat pulled down, big sunglasses on his face, and displaying some of the worst dentistry I’ve ever seen. He leered at us, obviously drunk or crazy, and tried to kiss me. I backed off rapidly and looked for Steve. I knew I could rely on him to take care of any creep I encountered. Then it dawned on me: The creep was Steve. In order to move around the airport without anyone recognizing him, he put on false teeth and changed his usual clothes. I didn’t recognize my own husband out of his khakis. I burst out laughing. Bindi was wide-eyed. “Look, it’s your daddy.” It took her a while before she was sure. Our Show West presentation featured live wildlife, organized wonderfully by Wes. Bruce Willis spoke. “I sometimes play an action hero myself,” he said, “but you’ll see that Steve is a real-life action hero.” Bindi brought a ball python out on stage. Backstage, she and Bruce hit it off. He has three daughters of his own, and he immediately connected with Bindi. They wound up playing with the lion cubs and the other animals that Wes had organized there.