Guess The Film Quotes

I’m in a band. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I’m obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior.

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?

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold onto it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can’t feel anything but gratitude—for every single moment of my stupid, little life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure; but don’t worry….you will someday.

But Mary Elizabeth felt different. She kept saying it was an "articulate" film. So "articulate." And I guess it was. The thing is, I didn't know what it said even if it said it very well.

I guess that’s all forever is,’ his father replied. ‘Just one long trail of nows. And I guess all you can do is try and live one now at a time without getting too worked up about the last now or the next now.

Then, early, early, early in the morning-just as in countless Disney films-I heard a rooster crow. But guess what? They don't do it just once.

I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium were plundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people they slaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In the gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal? So in Europe and America, yes, Hitler is the Greatest

Post-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the battlefield. Also the reason why religions recruit kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers almost exclusively from the 18-21 range. "Kyle, I never would have guessed that when you were up in your bedroom playing World of Warcraft all through your teens, you were, in fact, becoming an expert on the films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Charlotte: Giordano is terribly afraid Gwyneth will get everything wrong tomorrow that she can get wrong. Gideon: Pass the olive oil, please. Charlotte: Politics and history are a closed book to Gwyneth. She can’t even remember names—they go in at one ear and straight out of the other. She can’t help it, her brain doesn’t have the capacity. It’s stuffed with the names of boy bands and long, long cast lists of actors in soppy romantic films. Raphael: Gwyneth is your time-traveling cousin, right? I saw her yesterday in school. Isn’t she the one with long dark hair and blue eyes? Charlotte: Yes, and that birthmark on her temple, the one that looks like a little banana. Gideon: Like a little crescent moon. Raphael: What’s that friend of hers called? The blonde with freckles? Lily? Charlotte: Lesley Hay. Rather brighter than Gwyneth, but she’s a wonderful example of the way people get to look like their dogs. Hers is a shaggy golden retriever crossbreed called Bertie. Raphael: That’s cute! Charlotte: You like dogs? Raphael: Especially golden retriever crossbreeds with freckles. Charlotte: I see. Well, you can try your luck. You won’t find it particularly difficult. Lesley gets through even more boys than Gwyneth. Gideon: Really? How many . . . er, boyfriends has Gwyneth had? Charlotte: Oh, my God! This is kind of embarrassing. I don’t want to speak ill of her, it’s just that she’s not very discriminating. Particularly when she’s had a drink. She’s done the rounds of almost all the boys in our class and the class above us . . . I guess I lost track at some point. I’d rather not repeat what they call her. Raphael: The school mattress? Gideon: Pass the salt, please.

She took out an Ian McEwan book, flicked through it and said, ‘I love this. I can’t bear people who don’t read. I think they must have something wrong with them, don’t you?’ ‘I guess so.’ ‘Books, music, art, films.’ She held up her glass. ‘Good wine. It’s what life’s all about.’ I held up my own glass. ‘To books, music, art, films and wine.

Some people are special because they're princes or princesses; or queens or kings! Some are special because they're presidents and senators; or because you can watch them on film! But what is the stuff that makes any person special? That makes any person more special than the world and everything in it? That would be love. Once you love someone? They're special, they're important. You make them important, it's your love that makes them more important than the whole world and everything in it! And guess what? That kind of important is real.

A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The first bad penny dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode. 'I would love you to do something for me,' I said. 'Anything! Anything!' the boy said rapturously. 'You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,' I said. 'Anything, sir, anything!' 'Well,' I said, 'do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?' He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. 'What a dreadful thing to say to a child!' she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.

She told me her father taught her to live life way beyond the cusp of it, way out in the outer reaches where most people never had the guts to go, where you got hurt. Where there was unimaginable beauty and pain. She was always demanding of herself, Do I dare? Do I dare disturb the universe? From Prufrock. Her dad revered the poem, I guess, and the entire family lived in answer to it. They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming way, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaids sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now. Ashley said it was the only way to live.

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark When he made Pearl Harbor. I miss you more than that movie missed the point And that's an awful lot, girl. And now, now you've gone away And all I'm trying to say, is: Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you. I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school He was terrible in that film. I need you like Cuba Gooding needed a bigger part He's way better than Ben Affleck. And now, all I can think about is your smile and that shitty movie, too. Pearl Harbor sucked and I miss you. Why does Michael Bay get to keep on making movies? I guess Pearl Harbor sucked just a little bit more than I miss you.

I'm Cooper Taylor. I'm a Scorpio. I enjoy women, long walks on the beach, and my roommate says I use girly shampoo. Oh, and I generally hate anyone in the film industry because they're total assholes. Guess you could say I'm you Pai Mei." "Willow Avery. Actress, Cancer, and according to my team, on my last leg before porn.

Waitress: Don't be so free with your hands. Fields: Listen honey, I was only trying to guess your weight.

I guess the basic difference is that animation is sequential in time but in spatially juxtaposed as comics are. Each successive frame of a movie is projected on exactly the same space--the screen--while each frame of comics must occupy a different space. Space does for comics what time does for film!

Whatever you are thinking, your thoughts are surely about something other than the word with which this sentence will end. But even as you hear these very words echoing in your very head, and think whatever thoughts they inspire, your brain is using the word it is reading right now and the words it read just before to make a reasonable guess about the identity of the word it will read next, which is what allows you to read so fluently.4 Any brain that has been raised on a steady diet of film noir and cheap detective novels fully expects the word night to follow the phrase It was a dark and stormy, and thus when it does encounter the word night, it is especially well prepared to digest it. As long as your brain’s guess about the next word turns out to be right, you cruise along happily, left to right, left to right, turning black squiggles into ideas, scenes, characters, and concepts, blissfully unaware that your nexting brain is predicting the future of the sentence at a fantastic rate. It is only when your brain predicts badly that you suddenly feel avocado.

It's true,' Vanya now, 'look at the forms of capitalist expression. Pornographies: pornographies of love, erotic love, Christian love, boy-and-his-dog, pornographies of sunsets, pornographies of killing, and pornographies of deduction--ahh, that sigh when we guess the murderer--all these novels, these films and songs they lull us with, they're approaches more comfortable and less so, to that Absolute Comfort.' A pause to allow Rudi a quick and sour grin. 'The self-induced orgasm.

@mink: Guess what I got in the mail today? A brand-new copy of The Philadelphia Story. @alex: Nice! Love that movie. We should watch that together sometime if I can find a copy. @mink: Definitely. It’s one of my favorite Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn films! @alex: Well, in other good news, since I know you LOVE gangster movies so much [insert sarcasm here], I just sent you a ton of Godfather screens with Alex-ified captions, changing things up for you. @mink: I’m looking at them right now. You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you? @alex: Only if you do. @mink: You made orange juice go up my nose. @alex: That’s all I ever wanted, Mink.

You go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall and go, "Her. I'll try and be her. I'll try and be her - but here." You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. You are like the robot Johnny 5 in Short Circuit, crying, "More input! More input for Johnny 5! as you rifle through books and watch films and sit in front of the television, trying to guess which of these things that you are watching - Alexis Carrington Colby walking down a marble staircase; Anne of Green Gables holding her shoddy suitcase; Cathy wailing on the moors; Courtney Love wailing in her petticoat; Dorothy Parker gunning people down; Grace Jones singing "Slave to the Rhythm" - you will need when you get out there. What will be useful. What will be, eventually, you? And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager slowly urging you toward the correct answer. You are midwife to yourself, and will give birth to yourself, over and over, in dark rooms, alone. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won't even get out the front door, as you suddenly realize that no, you can't style-out an all-in-one gold bodysuit and a massive attitude problem in Wolverhampton. Others will achieve temporary success - hitting new land-speed records, and amazing all around you, and then suddenly, unexpectedly exploding, like the Bluebird on Coniston Water. But one day you'll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your notes accordingly, staying up all night to hone and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum every day. You'll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you're busy doing other things. What your nature began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you'll be entirely - as you're too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass without you even noticing. And later, over a glass of wine - because you drink wine now, because you are grown - you will marvel over what you did. Marvel that, at the time, you kept so many secrets. Tried to keep the secret of yourself. Tried to metamorphose in the dark. The loud, drunken, fucking, eyeliner-smeared, laughing, cutting, panicking, unbearably present secret of yourself. When really you were about as secret as the moon. And as luminous, under all those clothes.

Q. Your original, self-published version of The Martian became a phenomenon online. Were you expecting the overwhelmingly positive reception the book received? A. I had no idea it was going to do so well. The story had been available for free on my website for months, and I assumed anyone who wanted to read it had already read it. A few readers had requested I post a Kindle version because it’s easier to download that way. So I went ahead and did it, setting the price to the minimum Amazon would allow. As it sold more and more copies I just watched in awe. Q. Film rights to The Martian were sold to writer-producer Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Sherlock Holmes, X-Men: First Class). What was your first reaction? A. Of course I’m thrilled to have a movie in the works. The movie deal and print publishing deal came within a week of each other, so I was a little shell-shocked. In fact, it was such a sudden launch into the big leagues that I literally had a difficult time believing it. I actually worried it could all be an elaborate scam. So I guess that was my first reaction: “Is this really happening!?

I tried to grow up. Honest. Didn’t quite happen. I guess I’m someone for whom youth still seems more real than the present, or the half century in between. And why not? I'm deeply underwhelmed by most contemporary art, literature, music, films, TV, the heinous little phones, money talk, real estate talk, all that stuff. The Internet, which at first seemed so fascinating, appears to be evolving into something even worse than TV, but we'll see.

I don’t know what will be left of me fifty years from now. I suspect that all films will have aged terribly and that the cinema probably won’t even exist anymore. My guess is that the final disappearance of cinemas will take place around the year 2020, so in fifty years’ time, there will be nothing but television.

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.

Everything comes to he who waits. I guess. At last, after at least 200 years of constant vigil, there was delivered to me a big, fat, lumpy letter. There are few things more thrilling in Life than lumpy letters. That rattle. Even to this day I feel a wild surge of exultation when I run my hands over an envelope that is thick, fat, and pregnant with mystery.

She kept saying it was an “articulate” film. So “articulate.” And I guess it was. The thing is, I didn’t know what it said even if it said it very well.

I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.

Any time you see a film or TV show or a commercial that features someone dressed up as an animal, it’s probably Todd inside. “I was in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” he told me. “Guess,” he added, “which one I was.

Angels can’t die yet I imagine it. A psychiatrist at that place once told me it was a projection. Like with movies. Light passes through the film and it gets bigger on the screen. I guess he was saying thought and faith have that kind of power. But he had no fucking idea who he was dealing with.

She told me her father taught her to live life way beyond the cusp of it, way out in the outer reaches where most people never had the guts to go, where you got hurt. Where there was unimaginable beauty and pain. She was always demanding of herself, Do I dare? Do I dare disturb the universe? From Prufrock. Her dad revered the poem, I guess, and the entire family lived in answer to it. They were always reminding themselves to stop measuring life in coffee spoons, mornings and afternoons, to keep swimming way, way down to the bottom of the ocean to find where the mermaids sang, each to each. Where there was danger and beauty and light. Only the now.

So what happened?" "I don't know." Another glance to ensure his continued state of Not Looking, and then I rip off my clothes in one fast swoop. I am now officially stark naked in the room with the most beautiful boy I know. Funny,but this isn't how I imagined this moment. No.Not funny.One hundred percent the exact opposite of funny. "I think I maybe,possibly, vaguely remember hitting the snooze button." I jabber to cover my mortification. "Only I guess it was the off button.But I had the alarm on my phone set,too, so I don't know what happened." Underwear,on. "Did you turn the ringer back on last night?" "What?" I hop into my jeans, a noise he seems to determinedly ignore.His ears are apple red. "You went to see a film,right? Don't you set your mobile to silent at the theater?" He's right.I'm so stupid. If I hadn't taken Meredith to A Hard Day's Night, a Beatles movie I know she loves, I would have never turned it off. We'd already be in a taxi to the airport. "The taxi!" I tug my sweater over my head and look up to find myself standing across from a mirror. A mirror St. Clair is facing. "It's all right," he says. "I told the driver to wait when I came up here. We'll just have to tip him a little extra." His head is still down. I don't think he saw anything.I clear my throat, and he glances up. Our eyes meet in the mirror,and he jumps. "God! I didn't...I mean,not until just now..." "Cool.Yeah,fine." I try to shake it off by looking away,and he does the same. His cheeks are blazing.I edge past him and rinse the white crust off my face while he throws my toothbrush and deodorant and makeup into my luggage, and then we tear downstairs and into the lobby.

Poetry was the way out then, for young people who wanted some exit from the lumpen bourgeoisie and the shackles of respectable wage-earning. It was what painting had been at the turn of the century. Richard knows this now, although he did not then. He doesn't know what the equivalent is at the moment. Film-making, he'd guess, for those with intellectual pretensions.

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination There are simply many cases of it over the mainstream and that even reached the big screen.

Remember all those classic books you HAD to read in school? They sucked, right? Well, guess what? They are actually . . . classics. 'Brave New World', '1984', 'The Martian Chronicles' and even 'Animal Farm' are pretty cool it you're not told you HAVE to read them. If you discover them on your own or if you reread them without having a report due that sends you scurrying to buy CliffNotes or access Wikipedia, then you can actually relax and enjoy them. - Chris Mancini

You know why, in films, the villain hesitates before he kills the hero? You know why he explains his whole dastardly plan? Do you know why you’re hesitating now?” Gavriel quirked a smile. “I do know. But I wager you’ll never guess.” Lucien plunged on. “Because the villain knows that without the hero to hate, his life would be empty. Once he’s murdered his adversary, he’s alone.” “So you’re the hero?” Gavriel asked. “Every hero is the villain of his own story, wouldn’t you say?

Some actors wear their roles like clothing," he said. "No matter what part they're playing, you can always easily see who it is beneath the costume." "It's how drag queens do women, darling," volunteered the elegant Miss X. [...] "The really amazing actors strip themselves down to nothing-they make themselves a blank slate, and you can never guess what they're going to look like or act like in their next film because they completely transform themselves." "It's how transsexuals do women, darling," opined Doris Fish with an arched eyebrow in my direction.

You can’t not submit it,” I say. “You won’t even have a shot if you don’t enter.” “Yeah, but then I can’t be rejected, either.” Winona’s so quiet when she says this, I almost don’t even hear her. But understanding dawns on me, and I finally put all the pieces together. This is why she rewrote so obsessively. This is why she pushed to reshoot so many times. Because if something isn’t finished, it can never really be judged. You’ll never have to reckon with the fact that maybe it—and you—didn’t live up to your expectations. (...) “This is the real deal, Eliza,” Winona says. “And I guess . . . especially because I’ve now literally put myself into the film, I don’t want to know that it’s not good enough. I don’t want to know that I’m not good enough.

What’s wrong with men and women indulging in self-delusion in the course of trying to impress each other? Nothing, I guess. Some illusions are harmless, and some are even beneficial. Far be it from me to try to talk you out of all your illusions. By and large, my philosophy is Live and let live: if you’re enjoying the Matrix, go crazy. Except, maybe, when your illusions harm other people in your life or contribute to larger problems in the world. And that can happen. Being in self-protection mode, for example, does more than just give us an attraction to crowds. In one study, men who watched part of a scary film (The Silence of the Lambs) and were then shown photos of men from a different ethnic group rated their facial expressions as much angrier than did men who hadn’t seen a scary film.

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?

Graduation (Friends Forever)" And so we talked all night about the rest of our lives Where we're gonna be when we turn 25 I keep thinking times will never change Keep on thinking things will always be the same But when we leave this year we won't be coming back No more hanging out cause we're on a different track And if you got something that you need to say You better say it right now cause you don't have another day Cause we're moving on and we can't slow down These memories are playing like a film without sound And I keep thinking of that night in June I didn't know much of love But it came too soon And there was me and you And then we got real blue Stay at home talking on the telephone And we would get so excited and we'd get so scared Laughing at ourselves thinking life's not fair And this is how it feels As we go on We remember All the times we Had together And as our lives change Come whatever We will still be Friends Forever So if we get the big jobs And we make the big money When we look back now Will our jokes still be funny? Will we still remember everything we learned in school? Still be trying to break every single rule Will little brainy Bobby be the stockbroker man? Can Heather find a job that won't interfere with her tan? I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye Keep on thinking it's a time to fly And this is how it feels La, la, la, la: Yeah, yeah, yeah La, la, la, la: We will still be friends forever Will we think about tomorrow like we think about now? Can we survive it out there? Can we make it somehow? I guess I thought that this would never end And suddenly it's like we're women and men Will the past be a shadow that will follow us around? Will these memories fade when I leave this town I keep, keep thinking that it's not goodbye Keep on thinking it's a time to fly

In under two weeks, and with no budget, thousands of college students protested the movie on their campuses nationwide, angry citizens vandalized our billboards in multiple neighborhoods, FoxNews.com ran a front-page story about the backlash, Page Six of the New York Post made their first of many mentions of Tucker, and the Chicago Transit Authority banned and stripped the movie’s advertisements from their buses. To cap it all off, two different editorials railing against the film ran in the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune the week it was released. The outrage about Tucker was great enough that a few years later, it was written into the popular television show Portlandia on IFC. I guess it is safe to admit now that the entire firestorm was, essentially, fake. I designed the advertisements, which I bought and placed around the country, and then promptly called and left anonymous complaints about them (and leaked copies of my complaints to blogs for support). I alerted college LGBT and women’s rights groups to screenings in their area and baited them to protest our offensive movie at the theater, knowing that the nightly news would cover it. I started a boycott group on Facebook. I orchestrated fake tweets and posted fake comments to articles online. I even won a contest for being the first one to send in a picture of a defaced ad in Chicago (thanks for the free T-shirt, Chicago RedEye. Oh, also, that photo was from New York). I manufactured preposterous stories about Tucker’s behavior on and off the movie set and reported them to gossip websites, which gleefully repeated them. I paid for anti-woman ads on feminist websites and anti-religion ads on Christian websites, knowing each would write about it. Sometimes I just Photoshopped ads onto screenshots of websites and got coverage for controversial ads that never actually ran. The loop became final when, for the first time in history, I put out a press release to answer my own manufactured criticism: TUCKER MAX RESPONDS TO CTA DECISION: “BLOW ME,” the headline read.

I took a step back and appraised the sight of the naked torso in front of me. He’d always had an amazing body, but Christ. Trip had gotten freaking ripped. I put my hands to my hips and asked, “Are you kidding me? What the hell is this?” My anger probably missed its mark, considering I was standing there totally nude. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re not wearing any clothes. He knew exactly what I was talking about and was trying to contain a smile as he asked, “What?” I rolled my eyes. “When did this happen? Jesus. Look at you! Give a girl a heads up about such a thing, huh?” That made the smile crack his features. “What? So I’ve been hitting it a little harder lately. I just came off a gladiator film and I’m starting a hockey flick in a few weeks. Occupational hazard, I guess.” “Yeah. A hazard to me, maybe! Here I am with my saggy ass and you’re standing there looking like Michelangelo’s David, you jagweed!” He stepped closer, grabbing my butt and pulling me into direct contact with what was assuredly going to be revealed as his perfect dick. He probably lifted weights with that thing, too. His cock probably possessed its own set of washboard abs.

Where do the biggest movie star of his generation and a revered director (and great actor in his own right) stay when they are visiting someone? Would you believe the local Holiday Inn? Hoping to forge a better connection to Chris, Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper came to see me and the rest of the family in early spring of 2014, before they started filming American Sniper. The unpretentiousness of their visit and their genuine goodwill floored me. It was a great omen for the movie. Bubba and I picked them up at the local airport and brought them home; within minutes Bubba had Bradley out in the back playing soccer. Meanwhile, Clint and I talked inside. He reminded me of my grandfather with his courtly manners and gracious ways. He was very funny, with a quiet, quick wit and dry sense of humor. After dinner--it was an oryx Chris had killed shortly before he died--Bradley took Bubba to the Dairy Queen for dessert. Even in small-town Texas, he couldn’t quite get away without being recognized, and when someone asked for his photo, he stepped aside to pose. Bubba folded his arms across his chest and scanned the area much as his dad would have: on overwatch. I guess I didn’t really understand how unusual the situation was until later, when I dropped them off at the Holiday Inn. I watched them walk into the lobby and disappear. That’s Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper! Awesome!

Where do you write? Arthur Miller wrote in a log cabin he built for himself… I just... I have a room in my house. I mean I like writing in hotels. Occasionally I’m... I just go somewhere. I need to smoke and I need room service essentially, and that’s all I need. As a matter of fact it’s much pleasanter to be at home with wife, family and so on. But… clearly… one ought to have a little more discipline than I have. Because I don’t actually shut myself away. When times are in crisis and I am up against it with a deadline, then I do. But I’m pretty slipshod about the way I organise my life. So you don’t write every day, it’s not… No. No, I don’t. I don’t write every day. And I had a friend staying with us for the weekend and he said, Yes, he writes every day. And I just think ‘Really? What happens to your in tray?’ I can’t cope with mine. You’ve commented on how much you cherish your solitude. Do you have solitude? I’ve had a lot of times on my own and I’ve never been… never felt lonely, ever. I like, I like solitude. As a writer I think a certain amount is necessary. I’m always been… bookish rather than active. So, you know, I make few demands upon the world as a writer. And I don’t really… even if I’m writing about something factual and I need to see places and do things and find out what I’m writing about, I’m fairly casual about that as well. Very often I end up looking at places, rooms, monuments which I’ve been writing about but didn’t really get to see until the play was finished. I think that’s the attraction, actually… there’s a sort of self-sufficiency about creating a play and, I guess, a film. A certain self-sufficiency… in other words it caters to ones own distaste for making sudden movements.

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings;1 that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath;2 that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. Yes, not only Chekhov’s heroes, but what normal Russian at the beginning of the century, including any member of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, could have believed, would have tolerated, such a slander against the bright future? What had been acceptable under Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich in the seventeenth century, what had already been regarded as barbarism under Peter the Great, what might have been used against ten or twenty people in all during the time of Biron in the mid-eighteenth century, what had already become totally impossible under Catherine the Great, was all being practiced during the flowering of the glorious twentieth century—in a society based on socialist principles, and at a time when airplanes were flying and the radio and talking films had already appeared—not by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only, but by tens of thousands of specially trained human beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims. Was it only that explosion of atavism which is now evasively called “the cult of personality” that was so horrible?

STIVERS: In Infinite Jest you didn't mention online services. Is there a reason for that? WALLACE: To do a comprehensive picture of what the technology of that era would be like would take thirty-five hundred pages, number one. In the book, what I was most inrerested in was people's relation to filmed entertainment. There were other things, too. This is one of the ways that rhe cuts hurt. There was some more stuff that would have explained, for instance, the allusions to a virtual reality fad. My guess is that what's going to happen is that these things are going to be real exciting for a while, but the sheer amount of information on them is going to be overwhelming. What is going to become particularly valuable are various nodes and filters and sites that help you lock in and specify sorts of things that you want. In the book, "Interlace TelEntertainment" has become one of those sites. In the future, it is likely that concentrations of economic power are also going to be concentrations of informational power. For instance, in a way it'll be online; anybody who wants to is going to be fiction goes abie to publish a book on the net. The obvious problem, if you ve ever worked at a magazine or at a publisher, is that a lot of people write books but very few of them are any good. The person who is on the net, who has got maybe two hours to find something that's any good, will go to ner t magazines that act as filters and exert some sort of editorial control, which of course will simply mean that online we have the same elitism. What frustrates me is that people have this idea thar the internet and the web are going to be this tremendous democratizing force, that people can do anything they want. What they fail to understand is that people can't receive it all-their heads will bleed, right? So people are going to need help choosing. The places they go to for that help will have the power. They will decide; they will have the credibility. This is good since it isn't exactly the way it is in the publishing and informational world now but it isn't entirely different either.

HER HUSBAND’S ALMOST HOME. He’ll catch her this time. There isn’t a scrap of curtain, not a blade of blind, in number 212—the rust-red townhome that once housed the newlywed Motts, until recently, until they un-wed. I never met either Mott, but occasionally I check in online: his LinkedIn profile, her Facebook page. Their wedding registry lives on at Macy’s. I could still buy them flatware. As I was saying: not even a window dressing. So number 212 gazes blankly across the street, ruddy and raw, and I gaze right back, watching the mistress of the manor lead her contractor into the guest bedroom. What is it about that house? It’s where love goes to die. She’s lovely, a genuine redhead, with grass-green eyes and an archipelago of tiny moles trailing across her back. Much prettier than her husband, a Dr. John Miller, psychotherapist—yes, he offers couples counseling—and one of 436,000 John Millers online. This particular specimen works near Gramercy Park and does not accept insurance. According to the deed of sale, he paid $3.6 million for his house. Business must be good. I know both more and less about the wife. Not much of a homemaker, clearly; the Millers moved in eight weeks ago, yet still those windows are bare, tsk-tsk. She practices yoga three times a week, tripping down the steps with her magic-carpet mat rolled beneath one arm, legs shrink-wrapped in Lululemon. And she must volunteer someplace—she leaves the house a little past eleven on Mondays and Fridays, around the time I get up, and returns between five and five thirty, just as I’m settling in for my nightly film. (This evening’s selection: The Man Who Knew Too Much, for the umpteenth time. I am the woman who viewed too much.) I’ve noticed she likes a drink in the afternoon, as do I. Does she also like a drink in the morning? As do I? But her age is a mystery, although she’s certainly younger than Dr. Miller, and younger than me (nimbler, too); her name I can only guess at. I think of her as Rita, because she looks like Hayworth in Gilda. “I’m not in the least interested”—love that line. I myself am very much interested. Not in her body—the pale ridge of her spine, her shoulder blades like stunted wings, the baby-blue bra clasping her breasts: whenever these loom within my lens, any of them, I look away—but in the life she leads. The lives. Two more than I’ve got.

It’s more an affliction than the expression of any high-minded ideals. I watch Mark Bittman enjoy a perfectly and authentically prepared Spanish paella on TV, after which he demonstrates how his viewers can do it at home—in an aluminum saucepot—and I want to shove my head through the glass of my TV screen and take a giant bite out of his skull, scoop the soft, slurry-like material inside into my paw, and then throw it right back into his smug, fireplug face. The notion that anyone would believe Catherine Zeta-Jones as an obsessively perfectionist chef (particularly given the ridiculously clumsy, 1980s-looking food) in the wretched film No Reservations made me want to vomit blood, hunt down the producers, and kick them slowly to death. (Worse was the fact that the damn thing was a remake of the unusually excellent German chef flick Mostly Martha.) On Hell’s Kitchen, when Gordon Ramsay pretends that the criminally inept, desperately unhealthy gland case in front of him could ever stand a chance in hell of surviving even three minutes as “executive chef of the new Gordon Ramsay restaurant” (the putative grand prize for the finalist), I’m inexplicably actually angry on Gordon’s behalf. And he’s the one making a quarter-million dollars an episode—very contentedly, too, from all reports. The eye-searing “Kwanzaa Cake” clip on YouTube, of Sandra Lee doing things with store-bought angel food cake, canned frosting, and corn nuts, instead of being simply the unintentionally hilarious viral video it should be, makes me mad for all humanity. I. Just. Can’t. Help it. I wish, really, that I was so far up my own ass that I could somehow believe myself to be some kind of standard-bearer for good eating—or ombudsman, or even the deliverer of thoughtful critique. But that wouldn’t be true, would it? I’m just a cranky old fuck with what, I guess, could charitably be called “issues.” And I’m still angry. But eat the fucking fish on Monday already. Okay? I wrote those immortal words about not going for the Monday fish, the ones that’ll haunt me long after I’m crumbs in a can, knowing nothing other than New York City. And times, to be fair, have changed. Okay, I still would advise against the fish special at T.G.I. McSweenigan’s, “A Place for Beer,” on a Monday. Fresh fish, I’d guess, is probably not the main thrust of their business. But things are different now for chefs and cooks. The odds are better than ever that the guy slinging fish and chips back there in the kitchen actually gives a shit about what he’s doing. And even if he doesn’t, these days he has to figure that you might actually know the difference. Back when I wrote the book that changed my life, I was angriest—like a lot of chefs and cooks of my middling abilities—at my customers. They’ve changed. I’ve changed. About them, I’m not angry anymore.

I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It’s pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I’m in my parents’ bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now. “Hey, you,” he says sleepily. “That one was loud, huh?” “What was?” “Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad.” “What time is it?” “Middle of the night, I’d say.” I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don’t want to do that. I’m too comfortable. “Have you gotten any sleep at all?” I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony. “I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again.” “Oh. Sorry.” “It should calm down some when the eye moves through.” “If there’s still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland.” Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy. He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn’t work out for you.” “I could double major,” I shoot back. “I bet you could.” “What are you going to study?” I ask, curious now. “I mean, besides football. You’ve got to major in something, don’t you?” He doesn’t answer right away. I wonder what’s going through his head--why he’s hesitating. “Astrophysics,” he says at last. “Yeah, right.” I roll my eyes. “Fine, if you don’t want to tell me…” “I’m serious. Astrophysics for undergrad. And then maybe…astronomy.” “What, you mean in graduate school?” He just nods. “You’re serious? You’re going to major in something that tough? I mean, most football players major in something like phys ed or underwater basket weaving, don’t they?” “Greg McElroy majored in business marketing,” he says with a shrug, ignoring my jab. “Yeah, but…astrophysics? What’s the point, if you’re just going to play pro football after you graduate anyway?” “Who says I want to play pro football?” he asks, releasing my hand. “Are you kidding me?” I sit up, staring at him in disbelief. He’s the best quarterback in the state of Mississippi. I mean, football is what he does…It’s his life. Why wouldn’t he play pro ball? He rolls over onto his back, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded behind his head. “Right, I’m just some dumb jock.” “Oh, please. Everyone knows you’re the smartest kid in our class. You always have been. I’d give anything for it to come as easily to me as it does to you.” He sits up abruptly, facing me. “You think it’s easy for me? I work my ass off. You have no idea what I’m working toward. Or what I’m up against,” he adds, shaking his head. “Probably not,” I concede. “Anyway, if anyone can major in astrophysics and play SEC ball at the same time, you can. But you might want to lose the attitude.” He drops his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Jem. It’s just…everyone has all these expectations. My parents, the football coach--” “You think I don’t get that? Trust me. I get it better than just about anyone.” He lets out a sigh. “I guess our families have pretty much planned out our lives for us, haven’t they?” “They think they have, that’s for sure,” I say.

I remember a television program I saw once... The program was a documentary, about one of those wars. They interviewed people and showed clips from films of the time, black and white, and still photos... The interviews with people still alive then were in colour. The one I remember best was with a woman who had been the mistress of a man who had supervised one of the camps where they put the Jews, before they killed them. In ovens, my mother said... From what they said, the man had been cruel and brutal... The woman said she didn't notice much that she found unusual. She denied knowing about the ovens. ...He was not a monster, she said. People say he was a monster, but he was not one. What could she have been thinking about? Not much, I guess; not back then, not at the time. She was thinking about how not to think. The times were abnormal. She took pride in her appearance. She did not believe he was a monster. He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit for little pieces of raw steak. How easy to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation. A big child, she would have said to herself. Her heart would have melted, she'd have smoothed the hair back from his forehead, kissed him on the ear, and not just to get something out of him either. The instinct to soothe, to make it better. There there, she'd say, as he woke from a nightmare. Things are so hard for you. All this she would have believed, because otherwise how could she have kept on living? She was very ordinary, under that beauty. She believed in decency, she was nice to the Jewish maid, or nice enough, nicer than she needed to be. Several days after this interview with her was filmed, she killed herself. It said that, right on television. Nobody asked her whether or not she had loved him. What I remember now, most of all, is the makeup.

There was a small, strange moment during which I had this feeling that someone was filming me, which was ridiculous, but it was that specific—”there’s a camera on me”—and then some hard ancient pushed-down thing, a thing I’d felt or thought or feared a long time ago, something I’d since managed to sheathe in an imaginary scabbard inside myself, erupted through its casing like a bursting cyst. I had to really struggle to recover. Something was dislodging itself, as from a cavern inside my body or brain, and this situation seemed so divorced from waking reality that my own dimensions lost their power to persuade. I craned my great head and saw all that yellow-brown plastic catch the light, little pills glinting like ammunition, and then my brain went to work, juggling and generating several internal voices at once: someone’s filming this; this isn’t real; whoever Sean is, it’s not who I think he is; all the details I think I know about things are lies; somebody is trying to see what I’ll do when I run across these bottles; this is a test but there won’t be any grade later; the tape is rolling but I’m never going to see the tape. It is a terrible thing to feel trapped within a movie whose plot twists are senseless. This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody’s doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen. I looked away; I looked away. Held myself steady for a second and then got back to the work of the cleaning, shaking free of the crazy feelings, and I felt the corners of my mouth, half smiling. Most people can clean their bathroom cabinets without waking up any traumatic memories. Not me, not yet, I guess. But as Dave the art therapist told me once when he found me sulking: it’s not so bad to be special. My journey, he said, was longer and slower. He looked me in the eyes, which impressed me, and told me that my good fortune was to learn what special really meant.

Earlier, Susanne’s husband had detected a certain ticking in her, a bomb. He’d packed their children into the car and set out for a night of pizza and a double feature at the second-run movie theatre, leaving her alone to explode, splattering the house with a combination of things she’d ingested as a teen-ager, certain films and punk-rock records that confirmed what she’d guessed: one dies alone. Best to have her family out of the way. Best to have them hidden in a dark cinema when the desire to chop her hair roughly and live on cigarettes surged. These bursts of freedom, while infrequent, were dangerous. Their self-indulgence could tear holes in evenings, marriages, families. She’d been lost in the roar of the vacuum—a device that had the power to put her under a spell, into a trancelike state from which she could most easily contemplate the nature of the universe, the purpose of love, the purpose of death, and a fantasy she sometimes had of being bound nude to a parking meter in the city.

Like every boy, I really wanted a pet. But I was allergic to animal hair. I realize having “allergies” doesn’t help my street cred, either. But this might: I ended up living amongst reptiles. That’s cool, right? I first got the idea while lizard hunting with Uncle Frankie when I was 10. We caught a black and yellow-striped garter snake and I kept that for a while. Later, I acquired a six-foot Burmese python and named him Dudley, after Dudley Moore, my co-star in the film Like Father, Like Son. The cast of Growing Pains gave me a red-tailed boa constrictor for my birthday one year and I named that one Glenn, after my cool set teacher. I had another red-tailed boa that I named Springsteen, named for—well, you can probably guess.

Steve got up before me and left to check the trap. The fire was already going when I crawled out of my swag. I relived the events of the night before over my cup of tea. I heard the boat motor and saw that Steve was coming back, so I got up and ran down to the riverbank to meet him. “We got one,” he said, breathless. “A croc went in that trap after all, mate.” “I guess maybe my splashing around attracted it,” I said with a grin. He laughed. Then he turned and yelled up to the guys, “Cooee!” The whole camp erupted into action. The film crew grabbed their gear, and we went to rescue the crocodile before a poacher’s bullet could claim it. I didn’t know what to expect. I had heard stories of Steve catching crocodiles. I’d seen photographs and some of his video footage. Steve took me into the crocodile enclosures at the zoo. But this was something I’d never experienced. This was in the wild.

As much as he influenced her, Bindi changed Steve, too. After our Florida trip, Bindi and I went home, while Steve flew off to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. We couldn’t accompany him because of the malaria risk, so we kept the home fires burning instead. At one point, Steve was filming with orangutans when his newfound fatherhood came in handy. A local park ranger who had worked with the national park’s orangutans for twenty-five years accompanied Steve into the rain forest, where they encountered a mother and baby orangutan. The rangers keep a close eye on the orangutans to prevent poaching, and the ranger recognized a lot of the animals by sight. “She reminds me of Bindi,” Steve exclaimed, seeing the infant ape. It was a mischievous, happy baby, clinging to her mother way up in the top branches of a tree. “This will be great to film,” Steve said. “I’ll climb into the tree, and then you can get me and the orangutans in the same shot.” The ranger waved his hands, heading Steve off. “You absolutely can’t do that,” the ranger said. “The mother orangutans are extremely protective. If you make a move anywhere near that tree, she’ll come down and pull your arms off.” Steve paused to listen. “They are very strong,” the ranger said. “She won’t tolerate you in her tree.” “I won’t climb very close to her,” Steve said. “I’ll just go a little way up. Then the camera can shoot up at me and get her in the background.” The ranger looked doubtful. “Okay, Steve,” he said. “But I promise you, she will come down out of that tree and pull your head off.” “Don’t worry, mate,” Steve said confidently, “she’ll be right.” He climbed into the tree. Down came the mother, just as the ranger had predicted. Tugging, pulling, and dragging her baby along behind her, she deftly made her way right over to Steve. He didn’t move. He sat on his tree limb and watched her come toward him. The crew filmed it all, and it became one of the most incredible shots in documentary filmmaking. Mama came close to Steve. She swung onto the same tree limb. Then she edged her way over until she sat right beside him. Everyone on the crew was nervous, except for Steve. Mama put her arm around Steve’s shoulders. I guess the ranger was right, Steve thought, wondering if he would be armless or headless in the very immediate future. While hanging on to her baby, Mama pulled Steve in tight with her other arm, looked him square in the face, and…started making kissy faces at him. The whole crew busted up laughing as Mama puckered up her lips and looked lovingly into Steve’s eyes. “You’ve got a beautiful little baby, sweetheart,” Steve said softly. The baby scrambled up the limb away from them, and without taking her eyes off Steve, the mother reached over, grabbed her baby, and dragged the tot back down. “You’re a good mum,” Steve cooed. “You take good care of that little bib-bib.” “I have never seen anything like that,” the park ranger said later. I had to believe that the encounter was further evidence of the uncanny connection Steve had with the wildlife he loved so much, as well as one proud parent recognizing another.

Sure. I film in my living room. Let me get the backdrop down and find something to use as a blindfold, and then we’ll do this, I guess.” At the mention of a blindfold, Zane sucked in a breath. Images from the hotel room immediately flashed in my mind.

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

JE: I’ve only seen the follow up film (Fifty Shades Darker [Foley 2017]). While I think I was curious about pornography when I was younger, these days I feel a bit sickened by porn, especially any suggestion of role play that puts women in a subservient role. Not having read the books I feel I can’t really comment but I guess the concern is that the glamour of the novels and films could normalise domestic violence by eroticising it? I found the stalker scenes and the partner rape scenes disturbing and do worry that, the film certainly, presents Grey’s abusive behaviours as sexy. I think it’s important that young women are reminded of the reality in such cases: men who behave like Grey aren’t tamed by love, as the film suggests, on the contrary, that sort of abuse tends to escalate over time.

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.

It is impossible to view Calamity Jane today without responding to the gay subtext; hell, it’s not even subtext—the lesbian aspects of the film are all right out there. Dressed in buckskins, with a cap on her head and a red bandana around her neck, dirt streaking her face, Calamity says to Katie, “You’re the purtiest thing I’ve ever seen. I didn’t know a woman could look like that.” Hugging Katie, she invites her to move in with her to “chaperone” each other. Helping Katie out of the horse and wagon, Calam tells Katie, “We’ll batch it here as cozy as two bugs in a blanket.” And after Katie cleans the entire cabin, the finishing touch is a front-door stencil that reads “Calam and Katie.” It’s not exactly difficult to guess which woman is the butch one in this relationship; similarly, it is no accident that The Celluloid Closet, the documentary examination of Hollywood’s depiction of gay men and women on film, contains footage of Doris Day in buckskin singing “Secret Love,” the very title itself a code in 1950s America.

The reason why we can’t see our eyes moving with our own eyes is because our brains edit out the bits between the saccades—a process called saccadic suppression. Without it, we’d look at an object and it would be a blurry mess. What we perceive as vision is the director’s cut of a film, with your brain as the director, seamlessly stitching together the raw footage to make a coherent reality. Perception is the brain’s best guess at what the world actually looks like. Immense though the computing power of that fleshy mass sitting in the darkness of our skulls is, if we were to take in all the information in front of our eyes, our brains would surely explode.** Instead, our eyes sample bits and pieces of the world, and we fill in the blanks in our heads. This fact is fundamental to the way that cinema works. A film is typically 24 static images run together every second, which our brain sees as continuous fluid movement—that’s why it’s called a movie. The illusion of movement actually happens at more like 16 frames per second. At that speed, a film projection is indistinguishable from the real world, at least to us. It was the introduction of sound that set the standard of 24 frames per second with The Jazz Singer in 1927, the first film to have synchronized dialogue. The company

He showed us films. Obviously we loved teachers showing films: nap time, makeout time if applicable. But this one, Jesus, you needed to see how it came out. Men calling a strike, the company calling in the army to force them back to work, the miners saying guess what, we’ve got guns too. Serious shit. Battle of Blair Mountain, that turned into the biggest war in America ever, other than the civil one. Twenty thousand guys from all over these mountains, fighting in regiments. They wore red bandannas on their necks to show they were all on the same side, working men. Mr. Armstrong said people calling

We shot The Local Stigmatic for a few weeks in Atlanta, with David Wheeler as our director, and a principal cast of myself, Paul Guilfoyle, Joe Maher, and Michael Higgins. When it was finished, we showed the film around to people we admired. We had a great dinner gathering of artists and literati in London. People like Tom Stoppard and David Hare, who all sat at a long table. Harold Pinter had seen the film twice at this point; he sat at the head of the table, and when he wanted to speak to everyone, he rang a little bell and the group fell silent. “Every once in a while,” he said, “we see something different. We come into contact with art in film.” I just sat there stunned. Heathcote was in the room, fiddling with a coin and not looking up at anyone, playing the role of the shy genius. He’d been described as a protégé of Pinter’s, but to actually be in the same room as his literary idol, I guess it all was just too much for him. I ran the film once for Elaine May, the great actress and filmmaker, who told me, “I liked it very much. But don’t you ever show this to the public. You don’t know your fame. You don’t understand it, and you don’t understand how it registers. You must recognize it.” And she was right. You’re too well-known for this sort of thing. You have to be careful, because you’re going to startle people. Don’t put this in a theater. I showed it to Jonas Mekas, the independent-film impresario of downtown Manhattan, who ran The Local Stigmatic at his Anthology Film Archives and told me, somewhat optimistically, that I was going to win an Oscar for it. I kept calling Andrew Sarris, the film critic for The Village Voice, to come and see it. And he said, “Stop bothering me, Al. I’ve seen it three times already. I’ve told you what I think. Just show the thing already.” I was trying to get the confidence to screen it for wider audiences. I never did. I’ve come to realize that when I do my own things, nobody goes. Those avant-garde influences that I was brought up with never left my brain. When I’m left on my own, that’s just what seems to come out. It’s a drawback. People come in with expectations, and they leave angry. The Local Stigmatic is such a specific distillation of me and my take on this subject. It’s 150 proof, which can be a little strong for some people.

The progressives pose as the champions not only of fairness and social justice but also of compassion. They are the ones who insist on our obligation to those from whom we have allegedly stolen. Let’s leave aside for the moment whether they are right about the theft. What we do know for sure is that progressives assert there has been a theft. They further acknowledge that they are among the beneficiaries of it. Based on this, they would seem to have a clear obligation to return the stolen goods that they are currently enjoying. We might expect, from this analysis, to discover that progressives are the most generous people in America. We can anticipate that they contribute the highest portion of their incomes and time to help their wronged and less fortunate fellow men and women. The truth, however, is that progressives are the least generous people in America. I saw this personally with Obama, who unceasingly declares that “we are our brother’s keeper” even as he refuses to help his own half brother, George, who lives in a hut in the Huruma slum of Nairobi. I met George in early 2012 when I interviewed him for my film 2016: Obama’s America. A few months after that, when I was back in America, George called me from Kenya to ask me to give him $1,000 because his baby son was sick. Surprised, I asked him, “Why are you calling me? Isn’t there someone else you can call?” He said, “No.” So I sent him the money. I guess on that occasion it was I, not Obama, who proved to be his brother’s keeper. And besides George, the president has other relatives in dire need—his aunt Hawa Auma, for example, sells charcoal on the roadside in rural Kenya, and desperately needs money to get her rotting teeth fixed. Although Obama is aware of their plight, he refuses to help them.

You Can't Kill Stephen King, the great film of all time what more awesome than that?? You can't guess or find who is the killer!

Just very, very bright. So bright that there isn’t a single shadow in the shot.” Dell looked back toward the steel shelves. “Uh, you know that’ll like, wash out everything, right? I mean that’s not really how it’s done—” “Listen to me.” I moved closer, leaning against the counter. “Our needs are very specific. We want to kill shadows. Got it?” “Kill shadows,” he repeated, blinking. “Okay. Hey, sure, you’re the customer, whatever. Let me guess…this is an art film, isn’t it?” “I do like to think of myself as an artist, yes.

Reaching for his water glass, Jack rubbed his thumb over the film of condensation on the outside. Then he shot me a level glance as if taking up a challenge. “My turn,” he said. I smiled, having fun. “You’re going to guess my perfect day? That’s too easy. All it would involve is earplugs, blackout shades, and twelve hours of sleep.” He ignored that. “It’s a nice fall day—” “There’s no fall in Texas.” I reached for a cube of bread with little shreds of basil embedded in it. “You’re on vacation. There’s fall.” “Am I by myself or with Dane?” I asked, dipping a corner of the bread into a tiny dish of olive oil. “You’re with a guy. But not Dane.” “Dane doesn’t get to be part of my perfect day?” Jack shook his head slowly, watching me. “New guy.” Taking a bite of the dense, delicious bread, I decided to humor him. “Where are New Guy and I vacationing?” “New England. New Hampshire, probably.” Intrigued, I considered the idea. “I’ve never been that far north.” “You’re staying in an old hotel with verandas and chandeliers and gardens.” “That sounds nice,” I admitted. “You and the guy go driving through the mountains to see the color of the leaves, and you find a little town where there’s a crafts festival. You stop and buy a couple of dusty used books, a pile of handmade Christmas ornaments, and a bottle of genuine maple syrup. You go back to the hotel and take a nap with the windows open.” “Does he like naps?” “Not usually. But he makes an exception for you.” “I like this guy. So what happens when we wake up?” “You get dressed for drinks and dinner, and you go down to the restaurant. At the table next to yours, there’s an old couple who looks like they’ve been married at least fifty years. You and the guy take turns guessing the secret of a long marriage. He says it’s lots of great sex. You say it’s being with someone who can make you laugh every day. He says he can do both.” I couldn’t help smiling. “Pretty sure of himself, isn’t he?” “Yeah, but you like that about him. After dinner, the two of you dance to live orchestra music.” “He knows how to dance?” Jack nodded. “His mother made him take lessons when he was in grade school.” I forced myself to take another bite of bread, chewing casually. But inside I felt stricken, filled with unexpected yearning. And I realized the problem: no one I knew would have come up with that day for me. This is a man, I thought, who could break my heart.

This two quotes make me laugh "Andre Linoge: Born in lust, turn to dust. Born in sin, COME ON IN." (Stephen King on Storm of the Century) "We are on location, not on vacation" (Unnatural 2015 Film) Everyday when I read it or I repeat it makes me laugh it's kind a joke. The first one is a killer joke, the second one is...(you guess from who is this joke!)

Steve and I watched the dingo family play out its drama for a long time. Then we edged our way down to the dam and hopped in. The water was cold, but it felt good. “This is great,” I said, as we swam together. “I’ve been coming here since I was just a little tacker,” Steve said. Bob had brought his young son with him on his research trips, studying the snakes of the region. As I walked in and out of the water, washing up, shampooing my hair, and relishing the chance to clean off some of the desert dust, I noticed something hard underfoot. “Steve, I stepped on something here,” I said. He immediately started clearing the bottom of the pond, tugging on what I had felt beneath the murky water. “Tree limb,” I guessed. “Look around,” Steve said, yanking at the mired object. “No trees here at all.” He couldn’t budge whatever it was, but he didn’t give up. He went back to camp, drove to the dam in his Ute, and tied a chain to the obstacle. As he backed up the truck, the chain tightened. Slowly a cow’s pelvis emerged from the muck. I watched with horror as Steve dislodged an entire cow carcass that had been decomposing right where I had been enjoying my refreshing dip. I must have been poking among its rib cage while I brushed my teeth and washed my hair. Steve dragged the carcass a good distance off. “Do you think we should tell the crew?” he asked me when he came back. “Maybe what they don’t know won’t hurt them,” I said. Steve nodded. “They probably won’t brush their teeth in there, anyway.” “Probably not,” I said, pondering the possibility of future romantic dips with Steve, and what might lurk under the water at the next dam. When we returned to camp, Steve insisted I sit down and not lift a finger while he cooked me a real Aussie breakfast: bacon and sausage with eggs, and toast with Vegemite. This last treat was a paste-like spread that’s an Australian tradition. For an Oregon girl, it was a hard sell. I always thought Vegemite tasted like a salty B vitamin. I chowed down, though, determined to learn to love it. As the sun rose in full, Steve began to get bored. He was antsy. He wanted to go wrangle something, discover something, film anything. Finally, at midmorning, the crew showed up. “Let’s go,” Steve said. “There’s an eagle’s nest my dad showed me when I was just a billy lid. I want to see if it might still be there.” Right, I thought, a nest you saw with Bob years ago. What are the chances we’re going to find that? John looked longingly at the dam. “Thought we might have a tub first,” he said. The grime of the desert covered all of them. “Oh, I think we should go,” I said hastily, the cow carcass fresh in my mind. “You don’t need a bath, do you, guys?” “Come on,” Steve urged. “Wedge-tailed eagles!” No rest for the weary.

Oh... oh guess who is coming? It's comming GreenHollyWood, he thinks that he deserv respect?? Really? I give him awesome and very interesting stuff, he sometimes give awesome and interesting stuff... and after all he wants respect??? Do you know how to gain it? Here is two tips first tip, do what I give you like watch the films which I give you and read the books which I give you show that you are interested, that's called sirious (BUt so far this is other topic isn't it?) Second tip suck somebody's dick that's called respect,.. isn't it?

Seven o'clock and you watched it and then you turned it off. The Fifties. It's like that in movies and television programs, but its plot there. The characters get some information from the newscaster and then they turn it off so they can speak. But we were the characters then. We still are, I guess, so it's only a matter of time before we start seeing television shows where the people turn on the news to get some information and then, instead of turning it off so they can speak, they leave it on, and we get swept into some endless video vortex, some film loop, which has us by the eyes and won't let us go.

You want to kill me?? - So I guess that truth hurts, but why it hurts? Lie doesn't but truth does?? How does it happen?? So you go... you say "Well, well pretty nice made knife..." and you are looking it by moving it like rotate and such type of stuff and one moment you want to kill me. But why?? Is it because I just "I lived" or it was because of "Listen" or it was because of "The Walk"?? or what's the answer?

The intellectual actor For many of those who aspire to be actors or to become better actors, the biggest challenge is to stop thinking and start feeling. Our education system trains young people in thinking and the prizes are given out for analytical skills. But fundamentally this is a cerebral engagement, impassive and rational. And this kind of education – especially at degree level – is often in direct opposition to what actors need to cultivate in themselves. For much of our lives, we are served well by the ability to think logically about what’s happening and make considered, rational decisions about what to do. Indeed, for most professions it’s essential. I’m guessing we would all rather be operated on, or have our taxes done, by someone with the rigour of thinking to be able to analyse a situation and come up with a reliably intelligent plan of attack. But the foremost job of an actor is to commit to the fictional world of a drama and this is not a cerebral activity. The qualities that will really make a performance – spontaneity, impulsiveness, emotional availability, unguarded vulnerability – are neither logical nor intellectual. And these are things we can deliberately cultivate in ourselves. Nicolas Cage: ‘I invite the entire spectrum, shall we call it, of feeling. Because that is my greatest resource as a film actor. I need to be able to feel everything, which is why I refuse to go on any kind of medication. Not that I need to! But my point is, I wouldn’t even explore that, because it would get in the way of my instrument. Which is my emotional facility to be able to perform.

    There, in the dining-room, amid the wreck of dinner glasses, dishes, wine bottles, there settled on all three of us an instant of total immobility, as though the film of our lives had jammed. We sat, frozen in stop frame, until, suddenly, Ernie's head jerked forward and he turned to me, his face screwed up in a painful parody of a boy's embarrassed grin. 'Yes,' he said. 'I guess I have finished. Eh, Maria? Golly, I've gone and done it again. Made a fool of myself, imposed on people's kindness, irritated the people I most want to be friends with. You and Terence. Golly.'     Having castigated himself, he, like all those people who are quick to apologize, considered himself at once forgiven. He grinned again and said, 'What a horse's ass I am. I'll bet that's what you're thinking?' 

repeatedly despite my feeble protestations. I would soon discover—perhaps the last person in America to do so—that this film was part of an entire ecosystem—books, clothes, jewelry, accessories—designed to support the launch of a new doll named, you guessed it, McKenna.

But he had a story. I guess everybody did. People walked around with this thick dark film sticking to them and until you scratched it, you had no idea.

You’ll pay for this,” the sheriff hisses, glaring at my brother and me as we get carried out of the courtroom. “He was with us!” I shout again, staring frantically at the jury as they continue to wrangle me out. “They’re hiding the truth! They’re suppressing evidence! This is just a fucking witch hunt, and my father is being framed!” “Just make them show you our statements!” my brother bellows as they finally haul us all the way out. As soon as the doors seal shut, they reopen, and the sheriff stalks out. Cuffs are being put on our wrists, but they can’t lock us away for long. It’s on film. We’re in contempt of court and nothing else. “Put them in a cell until this damn thing is over. I won’t deal with them again until I have to,” the sheriff barks. Then those cold eyes turn to us. “You’re making a deal with the devil by betraying the souls of the innocent. Your father is guilty. And I’ll make sure he hangs for his sins.” He starts to walk back inside as we start demanding to be turned loose. The sheriff turns just as we reach the corner, and he eyes me. “I’d hoped you see the devil you loved through clearer eyes, but I guess you never did and never will.

Where do I go to get a director? I’ve never hired one in my life. I’ve only starred in three films. I said, “Marty, I don’t know how to interview anybody. This is completely crazy.” He said, “No, you’ve got to do it. That’s it.” So now I had to go to California. I was very unhappy. I went to San Francisco to talk to Peter Yates, who made Bullitt. I went to LA to talk to Mark Rydell. I wound up in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, in what I called the Pompous Room—I didn’t know any other name for it. I’m talking to some guy who’s sort of quiet like me, who’s young and just starting out, but he’s hot off an art film of sorts called Mean Streets, which I hadn’t seen yet, and I’m too busy looking at the tables with red and green felt and the wallpaper with ducks and peacocks on them to understand that I’m speaking to one of our finest filmmakers ever, Martin Scorsese. I was just dizzy and I don’t think we hardly said a word to each other. I guess he must have known I didn’t know my ass from my elbow when it came to hiring a director.

/dəvine/ I. vtr 1. (parvenir à connaître) to guess [secret]; to foresee, to tell [avenir] 2. (soupçonner) to sense [danger] • je devine quelque chose de louche là-dessous | I smell a rat 3. (imaginer) to imagine • je te laisse ~ leur joie | I leave you to imagine their joy 4. (apercevoir) to make out • on devine une maison au loin | you can make out a house in the distance • sa robe laisse ~ ses rondeurs | you can make out her curves through her dress II. vtr 1. (être facile à connaître) • la suite du film se devine aisément | it's easy to guess what happens next in the film 2. (transparaître) [inquiétude, trouble] to come out

I didn’t sit down with Marshall Brickman and say, ‘We’re going to write a picture about a relationship.’ I mean the whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it. It was originally a picture about me, exclusively, not about a relationship. It was about me, my life, my thoughts, my ideas, my background, and the relationship was one major part of it. But sometimes it’s hard to foresee at the outset what’s going to be the most interesting drift. The guesses we started out with, many of them were wrong. But we wound up with the right guesses.

I often meet people in the West who insist that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, without question. Yes, it was horrific. But I often wonder, with African atrocities like in the Congo, how horrific were they? The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess. When Portugal and Belgium were plundering Angola and the Congo, they weren’t counting the black people they slaughtered. How many black people died harvesting rubber in the Congo? In the gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal?

The main reason I’m writing is that I’ve finished the screenplay for my next film, and I’ve been thinking about you a lot. This character, this woman I’ve been writing about for the past year and a half, is someone that I couldn’t picture in my head without thinking of you. I guess, in a lot of ways, I wrote this character with you in mind. And I don’t know what your situation is right now, how interested you are in acting, but I think you’d be perfect for the part. I’m lining up financing, though after Paramount basically killed my last movie with all their bullshit, I think I’ll be going the independent route again. So there won’t be much money, but I hope you’ll consider it. I’ve attached it so you can read it if you’d like, and I’d love to get your thoughts on it and I would love it even more if the two of us could team up again. I would like to get that same feeling of excitement that I had when I was doing Date Due, and you played a huge role in that happening. Write me if you can,

So, we thought it would be fun if Nick took you camping,” the woman in my living room said. This was a production assistant whose name I can’t remember. There were so many people in and out of our house that, in the beginning, we lost track of who was who. “Nick wants to go camping?” I asked. My husband was not someone who randomly planned adventures. If we weren’t working, we were on the couch. Or trying to figure out how exactly we were going to pay the mortgage on our million-dollar house in Calabasas. “It would be funny,” she said. “Fun.” “Where?” I asked. “Like, where do you even go camping in L.A.? Santa Barbara?” “Yosemite.” I had no idea where Yosemite was, and I swear I had it confused with Jellystone. “Like with Yogi Bear?” I asked. “Are there bears there?” “Oh, that’s good,” she said. “You should be worried about that. We can use that.” Welcome to the filming of season one of Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica and the first year of my marriage. Places, everyone. When I packed for the trip, I stuffed as much as I could in my spring 2003 Louis Vuitton Murakami bag. Before I had children or my dogs, that bag was my child. It went everywhere with me. “Is this okay?” I asked the crew. They smiled. “You be you, Jessica,” If I was me being me, I would have said no to going camping. But I guess they had enough footage of us sitting on the couch, so a-camping we will go.

Um…” The marching band in my bloodstream was now doing double-time maneuvers. “Well, I walked into the throne room one day, and Venus was studying this hologram of you, and I asked—just completely casually, mind you—‘Who’s that?’ And she told me your…your fate, I guess. The thing about healing your heart. Then she just…tore into me. She forbade me to approach you. She said if I ever tried to woo you, she would curse me forever. It was totally unnecessary. And also embarrassing.” Reyna’s expression remained as smooth and hard as marble. “Woo? Is that even a thing anymore? Do people still woo?” “I—I don’t know. But I stayed away from you. You’ll notice I stayed away. Not that I would’ve done otherwise without the warning. I didn’t even know who you were.” She stepped over a fallen log and offered me a hand, which I declined. I didn’t like the way her greyhounds were grinning at me. “So, in other words,” she said, “what? You’re worried Venus will strike you dead because you’re invading my personal space? I really wouldn’t worry about that, Lester. You’re not a god anymore. You’re obviously not trying to woo me. We’re comrades on a quest.” She had to hit me where it hurt—right in the truth. “Yes,” I said. “But I was thinking….” Why was this so hard? I had spoken of love to women before. And men. And gods. And nymphs. And the occasional attractive statue before I realized it was a statue. Why, then, were the veins in my neck threatening to explode? “I thought if—if it would help,” I continued, “perhaps it was destiny that…Well, you see, I’m not a god anymore, as you said. And Venus was quite specific that I shouldn’t stick my godly face anywhere near you. But Venus…I mean, her plans are always twisting and turning. She may have been practicing reverse psychology, so to speak. If we were meant to…Um, I could help you.” Reyna stopped. Her dogs tilted their metal heads toward her, perhaps trying to gauge their master’s mood. Then they regarded me, their jeweled eyes cold and accusatory. “Lester.” Reyna sighed. “What in Tartarus are you saying? I’m not in the mood for riddles.” “That maybe I’m the answer,” I blurted. “To healing your heart. I could…you know, be your boyfriend. As Lester. If you wanted. You and me. You know, like…yeah.” I was absolutely certain that up on Mount Olympus, the other Olympians all had their phones out and were filming me to post on Euterpe-Tube.

Wow, really?” I said, before I could stop myself. “I used the wrong word, didn’t I,” Davidson said, looking at me. “I can never remember if ‘clank’ or ‘threep’ is the word I’m not supposed to be using today.” “Here’s a hint,” I said. “One comes from a beloved android character from one of the most popular films of all time. The other describes the sound of broken machinery. Guess which one we like better.

Three Best Ways to Start a Speech The third best way to start a speech is by using an ‘imagine’ scenario. ‘Imagine a big explosion as you climb up 3000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well, I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting on 1D.’ This is how Ric Elias started his TED talk—‘3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed’1—on the Hudson river landing. This true story was captured in an award-winning film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. The second is to start with a statistic or factoid that shocks. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef, restauranteur and activist who promotes healthy eating among children, started his TED Talk—‘Teach Every Child about Food’2—with ‘Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the food that they eat.’ Given that the audience here was mainly American, there is no way that it didn’t get their attention. The absolutely best way to start a speech—no points for guessing—is with a story, one that is inextricably linked with the topic you are speaking on. ‘I was only four years old when I saw my mother load a washing machine for the very first time in her life. That was a great day for her. My mother and father had been saving money for years to be able to buy that machine

At the table, I was surprised to see my favorite kind of lasagna being served in a baking dish just like one of ours at home. When I mentioned this, Greta’s mom said that Marie had come over with it and brought some school clothes for me, as well. I guess my folks had just accepted the fact that I had left home for good. It hurt to think they would just let me go like that. I wondered what Marie had told Mrs. Mallard about my fight with my dad. “Tomorrow morning, Greta and Albert and I will leave here at seven o’clock sharp,” Greta’s mom said to me. “I have to open the school office half an hour before the first bell, so we always leave early. Someone will pick you up at seven-thirty and drive you to your school, Lindsay.” “I can walk,” I said. I didn’t want to see either of my parents. “Well, I’ve been told that you don’t have your schoolbooks here. You left them at home. Of course, you will need them tomorrow, so it’s best you go along with this plan,” Mrs. Mallard replied. Her words suddenly reminded me that I hadn’t done my homework. I could see that the next days were going to be hard. Our animals were in grave danger, we were breaking the law, and my parents didn’t seem to care that I’d moved out. I suddenly felt so terrible that a big lump formed in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow the lasagna. I held my glass of milk up to my mouth and pretended to drink, so that no one would notice my eyes were filling with tears. Luckily, I was saved when Greta’s mom mentioned that there was going to be a film about owls on TV. “I think it’s about to start. Why don’t you girls take your plates into the living room and watch it?” I was sure glad to leave the table before I made a fool of myself.

attendance at the gala a hint that she was sympathetic to the West? Did she have her eye on the bigger art scenes of New York and LA? The agency couldn’t be sure, but they were sure of one thing: they’d never know if they didn’t ask. The job of “wooing Wu,” as one low-level Langley technician described it, fell naturally into the hands of Taiwan-based field agent David Parsons. Not only was Parsons a veteran of covert affairs, but he was also markedly handsome. And while the glamorous side of intelligence was often overplayed in espionage films, it certainly didn’t hurt when trying to build rapport and gather information. “Come on.” Parsons pushed the bowl toward her with a finger. Remember, it has to be her decision to leave. “I know you can do better than that.” “I guess I’m just a little too excited,” Mei confessed. His pulse quickened. Was that the green light he’d been looking for? They had already planned to return to his flat after dinner, but he needed to make sure he didn’t push too hard.

I've worked very hard, you know," she confided to him, "and I've planted some kind of-I've been lucky enough, I guess, to plant a star-and then people wanted to either get in the act or else they wanted to rob me emotionally or financially, whatever. And then walk away and it's always lonely

The Pole Vaulter (author’s note) Al Pittman, poet, and my older brother, said to me one day some years back, “Ken,I’ve got this great idea for a film.” And he shared with me the premise of his story about a boy’s passionate determination to rise above the adult world entanglements and contradictions swirling around him. Al died in 2001, before he got past the story idea. Some time later, I wrote a screenplay,entitled “The Pole Vaulter”, and sketched some storyboard panels for the planned film. That’s how it began. I know a bit about filmmaking and about drawing and pointing. But I know just about nothing about graphic novels. But I wrote a story with images and words. So I guess it’s a graphic novel. Whatever it’s called, what I'm trying to create with “The Pole Vaulter” is an engaging fictional story about people desperately seeking something better and higher. And I hope it’s true. — Ken P.

The thing Africans don’t have that Jewish people do have is documentation. The Nazis kept meticulous records, took pictures, made films. And that’s really what it comes down to. Holocaust victims count because Hitler counted them. Six million people killed. We can all look at that number and rightly be horrified. But when you read through the history of atrocities against Africans, there are no numbers, only guesses. It’s harder to be horrified by a guess.

All I cared about was if the shot was pretty,' she said. 'You're a young filmmaker and you get a nice lens and the dailies can make it seem like you got a movie, but you don’t. You start editing it and realize you’re left with a bunch of beautiful images, but no story. Everyone on set is too easily impressed by a nice camera. And then there’s the writing. I guess it’s a pet peeve—when perfect people write in disease or abuse in order to make a story emotional. It hurts me. There doesn’t need to be cancer or death. I would cry at a simple line—like... a sad husband telling his wife that he’s concerned their dog is the only thing that keeps their marriage interesting.

Jep has turned into an excellent cameraman. He shoots our Duckman videos and does a lot editing. Phil brags about how no one can capture ducks like Jep does. You have to be a hunter to do it, and Jep knows exactly how ducks fly and where he needs to be at all times to capture them on film. Plus, Jep isn’t as outgoing as Jase and me, so he works well behind a camera. He loves to hunt but doesn’t mind being a guy who sits and watches the action, and that’s something Jase and I could never do. Plus, I really like hanging out with Jep. He and I share a love for cooking and coming up with new recipes. He’s the brother I would always choose first to accompany me on a road trip for a hunt or business deal. He’s quieter than the rest of us, but his sense of humor is epic, and he is an awesome deer hunter. He accompanies me on many trips for deer and gets everything set up for me. I guess I have kind of prided myself on seeing value in people, no matter how big or small. When people are more outspoken about their talents, anyone can see the value, but for others you have to help them along to really unleash their potential. And hey, life is too short to spend it with boring people. Jep and I have the same spirit of adventure. When we travel, Jase and Phil will just sit in their rooms, eat some ham and cheese, and do nothing. Jep and I always need to kick it up a notch.

In his first film, Sycamore Nights, he gave his co-star Aileen Bennett a series of white-hot smolders that got him named Sexiest Man Alive that year. I guess it became his signature move, so he kept it up film after film, even when it was entirely unnecessary. Like in Battle for the Home Front, he’s telling his newly pregnant wife that he has to go away to war, and he’s smoldering. Or in Class Action, he’s giving a commencement speech at a military academy and smoldering all over everyone’s parents and grandparents.

Welcome to the Blackcastle Book Club’s official group chat!” “Seriously? You put a picture from The Land Before Time as the group’s profile picture?” “Why not? It’s a good movie.” “Dude, that’s so wrong. It’s a children’s film, and we’re reading about dinosaurs boning.” “It’s a good thing we’re not making them read the books, isn’t it? But fine, I see your point. I wanted to keep it a surprise, but since you insist on policing my admin decisions, I’ve changed the picture to the cover of this month’s book club pick. Gentlemen, prepare yourselves for **drumroll please** Shagging the Spinosaurus!” “We already guessed that was the book of the month. We saw you reading it the other day Aren’t you supposed to read it with the rest of the club? Why are you reading it early?” “Yeah, that’s CHEATING.” “It’s called vetting. Also, I’m the admin. I can do what I want.” “I tried looking for it at the bookstore yesterday and couldn’t find it. Donovan, what was the name of the store you went to?” “Uh… I don’t remember. Just some shop I stumbled on in the city. I’m sure you can buy the book online.” “I don’t understand. How do you shag a spinosaurus?” “The same way you shag a triceratops and a T-rex, genius.” “Oh, you sound so bloody confident. Are you speaking from experience?” “Gentlemen, let’s get back on track! This is a book club, not a fight club. Our first official meeting is on Wednesday. I want everyone to come prepared with at least one discussion question.” “Dibs on the ‘how do you shag a spinosaurus’ question.” “You can’t ask that. It has to be a THOUGHTFUL question.” “How thoughtful do you want us to be? We’re literally reading about dinosaurs fucking.” “And humans If you forget them, that’s human erasure.” “Fuck off, Donovan.” “Spoken like someone who doesn’t have the IQ to come up with a good question.” “Yeah? Let’s wait until Wednesday and see. I bet my question will be better than yours.” “You’re on. May the better questioner win.” “Okayyy. Moving on. Noah, since you refuse to participate in the LITERARY side of our club, you’re in charge of snacks.” “Fine.” “I’m thinking we could do a themed event with dinosaur crackers. Do you think they make custom spinosaurus ones?” “So we’re going to eat the little dude while we read about him getting it on? That’s so wrong.” “Poor Spiny. He deserves better.” “It was an IDEA. I don’t see you guys coming up with anything better.” “How about jungle juice to stay with the dinosaur theme?” “Dinosaurs didn’t live in the jungle.” “How do you know? Were you there?” “Lol.” “Don’t talk to your captain like that.” “You’re our football captain. You’re not the president of this book club. Also, I just looked it up and they did live in jungles, so you’re wrong.” “Wait, we have a president?” “Yes, it’s me. Anyway Noah, can you call the dinosaur cracker company and ask them for custom spinosaurus snacks? Hello? Noah?” Noah Wilson left the conversation.