Prospect Film Quotes

What is more, the whole apparatus of life has become so complex and the processes of production, distribution, and consumption have become so specialized and subdivided, that the individual person loses confidence in his own unaided capacities: he is increasingly subject to commands he does not understand, at the mercy of forces over which he exercises no effective control, moving to a destination he has not chosen. Unlike the taboo-ridden savage, who is often childishly over-confident in the powers of his shaman or magician to control formidable natural forces, however inimical, the machine-conditioned individual feels lost and helpless as day by day he metaphorically punches his time-card, takes his place on the assembly line, and at the end draws a pay check that proves worthless for obtaining any of the genuine goods of life. This lack of close personal involvement in the daily routine brings a general loss of contact with reality: instead of continuous interplay between the inner and the outer world, with constant feedback or readjustment and with stimulus to fresh creativity, only the outer world-and mainly the collectively organized outer world of the power system-exercises authority: even private dreams must be channeled through television, film, and disc, in order to become acceptable. With this feeling of alienation goes the typical psychological problem of our time, characterized in classic terms by Erik Erikson as the 'Identity Crisis.' In a world of transitory family nurture, transitory human contacts, transitory jobs and places of residence, transitory sexual and family relations, the basic conditions for maintaining continuity and establishing personal equilibrium disappear. The individual suddenly awakens, as Tolstoi did in a famous crisis in his own life at Arzamas, to find himself in a strange, dark room, far from home, threatened by obscure hostile forces, unable to discover where he is or who he is, appalled by the prospect of a meaningless death at the end of a meaningless life.

But hold fast. Before you become too flushed at the prospect of starring nightly in your own private pornographic films, there are limitations.

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

The Life of Riley in its best-known version evolved from a prospective Groucho Marx vehicle called The Flotsam Family. The Marx series failed at audition when the would-be sponsor wouldn’t accept Groucho in what was, for him, a straight role—as head of a family. Then producer Irving Brecher saw a film, The McGuerins of Brooklyn, with a rugged-looking and typically American blue-collar man, William Bendix, in one of the leading roles. There, on the screen, was his character. A new audition was recorded, with Bendix as star and the character renamed Chester A. Riley. It became a solid midlevel hit.

A while back, when Dick and Barry and I agreed that what really matters is what you like, not what you are like, Barry proposed the idea of a questionnaire for prospective partners, a two-or three-page multiple-choice document that covered all the music/film/TV/book bases. It was intended a) to dispense with awkward conversation, and b) to prevent a chap from leaping into bed with someone who might, at a later date, turn out to have every Julio Iglesias record ever made. It amused us at the time, although Barry, being Barry, went one stage further: he compiled the questionnaire and presented it to some poor woman he was interested in, and she hit him with it. But there was an important and essential truth contained in the idea, and the truth was that these things matter, and it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.

What had happened was that the German army had deep misgivings about the western offensive, afraid that success would go to Hitler’s head, as indeed it did, and the failed British offensive had made them nervous. Hitler in particular was worried about whether his tanks would manage to get through the marshy ground to the west of Dunkirk. He was also nervous at the prospect of Gamelin’s inevitable counterattack from the south east. But his senior military advisers were divided about what to do. There were angry meetings at Hitler’s military OKH headquarters, the operational command of the army.  There is some evidence to suggest that Hitler was reluctant to destroy the British, believing that the British empire – like the Roman Catholic church – was one of the pillars which held up the world (his favourite film was Lives of a Bengal Lancer). The controversial stop order was to have enormous implications, preventing Guderian from winning the war that week – it could be said to have been Hitler’s fatal strategic error.

It felt fantastic to be back filming again, and it made me realize how much I missed it. The crew represented our extended family. I never once caught a feeling of annoyance or impatience at the prospect of having a six-day-old baby on set. To the contrary, the atmosphere was one of joy. I can mark precisely Bindi Irwin’s introduction to the wonderful world of wildlife documentary filming: Thursday, July 30, 1998, in the spectacular subtropics of the Queensland coast, where the brilliant white sand meets the turquoise water. This is where the sea turtles navigate the rolling surf each year to come ashore and lay their eggs. Next stop: America, baby on board. Bindi was so tiny she fit on an airplane pillow. Steve watched over her almost obsessively, fussing with her and guarding to see if anything would fall out of the overhead bins whenever they were opened. Such a protective daddy. Our first shoot in California focused on rattlesnakes and spiders. We got a cute photo of baby Bindi with a little hat on and a brown tarantula on her head. In Texas she got to meet toads and Trans-Pecos rat snakes. Steve found two stunning specimens of the nonvenomous snakes in an abandoned house. I watched as two-week-old Bindi reacted to their presence. She gazed up at the snakes and her small, shaky arms reached out toward them. I laughed with delight at her eagerness. Steve looked over at me, as if to say, See? Our own little wildlife warrior!

A strange landscape stared back at her. Delphine gasped and let the tree support her weight as she slowly took in the sight of of the forest drawn tight around the ring of moss surrounding the linden. The trees were skeletal and pale as bone, branches gnarled and twining in complicated knotwork that might have been intentionally woven or might have been the wild striving of trees reaching for the sky. There were no leaves, but a thick hoarfrost of silver coated every branch, every twig, every barren bud. Bracken grew tangled at the roots of the trees; it, too, was layered in sparkling pale beauty. The ground was covered in the same thick silver, which Delphine slowly appreciated was not cold at all, but still as fragile and sharp as frost. No grass grew on the ground, only a thick carpet of the same moss surrounding the tree. The silver didn't pass through the circle, fading to a film near the green encircling the linden tree.

Film director Frank Oz (who’s also the Muppet master behind Yoda and Miss Piggy) has a term for this all-in state of mind. He calls it “going the distance.” This is the test Frank applies at the start of any project—not just to himself but to anyone he will prospectively hire or collaborate with on a movie, a play, whatever. Frank asks himself, “Will this person commit unconditionally to the work? Is this someone I can count on in act 3, when the wheels come off and the faint of heart flee for the exits? Is this someone who will have my back in crunch time?” We’re talking now about the third-level meaning of “Put your ass where your heart wants to be.” Commitment over time. Commitment in the face of adversity.

We spent the day at the house with the architect, the engineer, the landscapers. I am very excited about the prospect of creating a home where we can spend time together as a family, where friends and extended family can come for long weekends, where I can build an art studio and an auxiliary kitchen in which to film a cooking show that has been percolating in my hungry mind for a while now, where we can plant a vegetable garden and a small orchard and put the benefits of them to good use every season, where my daughters, or sons, can get married, where Felicity can bring her lover(s), where my proctologist(s) can visit, and where our grandchildren can spend time with their cousins for years to come when I am no longer here.

The Queen’s Highland castle retreat, set in 40,000 acres of heather and grouse moor, is effectively the Windsors’ family seat. Ever since Queen Victoria bought the estate in 1848 it has had a special place in the affections of the royal family. However the very quirks and obscure family traditions which have accrued over the years can intimidate newcomers. “Don’t sit there” they chorus at an unfortunate guest foolish enough to try and sit in a chair in the drawing-room which was last used by Queen Victoria. Those who successfully navigate this social minefield, popularly known as “the Balmoral test,” are accepted by the royal family. The ones who fail vanish from royal favour as quickly as the Highland mists come and go. So the prospect of her stay at Balmoral loomed large in Diana’s mind. She was “terrified” and desperately wanted to behave in the appropriate manner. Fortunately rather than staying in the main house, she was able to stay with her sister Jane and husband Robert who, as he was a member of the royal Household, enjoyed a grace and favour cottage on the estate. Prince Charles rang her every day, suggesting she join him for a walk or a barbecue. It was a “wonderful” few days until the glint of a pair of binoculars across the river Dee spoilt their idyll. They were carried by royal journalist James Whitaker who had spotted Prince Charles fishing by the banks of the river Dee. The hunters had become the hunted. Diana immediately told Charles that she would make herself scarce so while he continued fishing she hid behind a tree for half an hour hoping vainly that the journalists would go away. Cleverly she used the mirror from her powder compact to watch the unholy trinity of James Whitaker and rival photographers Ken Lennox and Arthur Edwards as they tried to capture her on film. She foiled their efforts by calmly walking straight up through the pine trees, her head muffled with a headscarf and flat cap, leaving Fleet Street’s finest clueless as to her identity.

The original Rocky is still one of my all-time favorite films because it’s about a know-nothing journeyman fighter living in poverty with no prospects.

When I first met my long-term partner, Mike, he was suffering with an incurable disease. (No need for specifics). He was taking a concoction of pills and was facing a prospect of steroid medication and perhaps surgery to keep his condition in remission. I was somewhat surprised that on our first date, he told me, not just the full story of his own disease, but also all about his father and sister, who were both suffering with separate incurable illnesses. As I got to know Mike and his family, I was struck by how much they talked about illness. Mike gave an almost daily commentary about his various aches, pains, twinges and physical state. Where some families talk about politics or sport, or celebrities, or current affairs (it’s dogs, cats and kids in my family), Mike’s family would chat around the dinner table about conditions, consultants, tests, medical procedures, drugs and treatments. I found this quite bewildering, because these subjects rarely enter my mind. It was like being in a room full of people talking about a book you haven’t read or a film you haven’t seen. I found myself with nothing to add to this conversation, having no story about illness to tell. But here’s where it gets interesting. When I mentioned my observations to Mike, he became aware of how much he and his family spoke about illness for the first time ever. With my prompting, he began to change his story. And as he did so, not only did his aches and pains begin to disappear, but his chronic disease also started, almost miraculously, to improve. After a few months, he felt well enough to come off all his medication. At some point, he even stopped his regular visits to the doctor. There was just no point in seeing a doctor when he felt so well. Of course, we aren’t allowed to say ‘cured’ (because only doctors are allowed to claim a cure), but all these years later, his ‘incurable’ illness is not simply better, it’s gone. Now, please don’t take this as a prescription to ditch your meds and stop seeing your doctor. I’m not saying you can or should replace proper medical advice or treatment with words. This is just one anecdote about one man who chose to tell a different story. Take from it what you will.

As Ivar traveled downtown to the Wall Street offices of Lee Higginson, he shifted gears. His pitch to Durant wouldn’t be an American monopoly – that venture clearly had floundered. He certainly wouldn’t mention film. Instead, Ivar would dangle a new idea before Durant: the prospect of Americans investing in foreign monopolies. Antitrust laws prohibited a match monopoly in the United States, but nothing prevented American investors from buying into monopolies abroad. Ivar’s match monopoly in Sweden was a highly profitable model. It could be just the beginning. Ivar recalled the extraordinary scheme orchestrated during the seventeenth century by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, who had formed the South Sea Company to assume England’s national debt. The scheme had become known as the South Sea Bubble, for the sharp increase in the price of South Sea Company shares. In exchange for the South Sea Company assuming its debt, the British government had given the company a monopoly on trade to the South Seas. The deal helped keep England solvent, and led to a boom in the business and share price of the company. It was an audacious deal, but a simple idea. And the idea could be replicated; it wasn’t limited to England and the South Seas or to a time two hundred years earlier. In theory, if a government needed money and a company wanted a monopoly, both sides could benefit from a similar compact – anytime, anywhere, with any product.

The most optimistic prospect of saving reptiles, along with all the world’s wildlife, may lie indirectly in the huge interest in wildlife films, and the growth of ecotourism that follows it. The potential income can be a significant proportion of a nation’s GDP, but it depends entirely on developing and sustaining places where wildlife can be satisfactorily and harmlessly experienced by visitors in its true habitat. In some parts of the world, national economic self-interest has already recognized that there is more to be gained from long-term conservation than from short-term exploitation of our ever-diminishing natural world. It is to be hoped that this message spreads in time.

Henrik Poulsen, who now advises an investment company, described how his firm recently bought a Danish company that makes control systems for wind farms: “Now we want to expand this company and we’re looking for companies that we could merge into this platform.” Naturally, they’re looking around the world. But the prospects they’ve found “are all located within a few hundred kilometers” of each other in Jutland. “Which is a bit crazy,” said Poulsen. Economic geographers like myself call this “clustering” or “economies of agglomeration.” It’s what happened for film in Hollywood in the 1920s and for tech in Silicon Valley in the mid–twentieth century. Jutland is now the Silicon Valley of wind energy—which is striking for a country whose population is just over half that of Los Angeles County.

In general, it could be said that we talk about many things. I’ll try to list them in no particular order. 1) The Latin American hell that, especially on weekends, is concentrated around some Kentucky Fried Chickens and McDonald’s. 2) The doings of the Buenos Aires photographer Alfredo Garófano, childhood friend of Rodrigo and now a friend of mine and of anyone with the least bit of discernment. 3) Bad translations. 4) Serial killers and mass murderers. 5) Prospective leisure as the antidote to prospective poetry. 6) The vast number of writers who should retire after writing their first book or their second or their third or their fourth or their fifth. 7) The superiority of the work of Basquiat to that of Haring, or vice versa. 8) The works of Borges and the works of Bioy. 9) The advisablity of retiring to a ranch in Mexico near a volcano to finish writing The Turkey Buzzard Trilogy. 10) Wrinkles in the space-time continuum. 11) The kind of majestic women you’ve never met who come up to you in a bar and whisper in your ear that they have AIDS (or that they don’t). 12) Gombrowicz and his conception of immaturity. 13) Philip K. Dick, whom we both unreservedly admire. 14) The likelihood of a war between Chile and Argentina and its possible and impossible consequences. 15) The life of Proust and the life of Stendhal. 16) The activities of some professors in the United States. 17) The sexual practices of titi monkeys and ants and great cetaceans. 18) Colleagues who must be avoided like limpet mines. 19) Ignacio Echevarría, whom both of us love and admire. 20) Some Mexican writers liked by me and not by him, and some Argentine writers liked by me and not by him. 21) Barcelonan manners. 22) David Lynch and the prolixity of David Foster Wallace. 23) Chabon and Palahniuk, whom he likes and I don’t. 24) Wittgenstein and his plumbing and carpentry skills. 25) Some twilit dinners, which actually, to the surprise of the diner, become theater pieces in five acts. 26) Trashy TV game shows. 27) The end of the world. 28) Kubrick’s films, which Fresán loves so much that I’m beginning to hate them. 29) The incredible war between the planet of the novel-creatures and the planet of the story-beings. 30) The possibility that when the novel awakes from its iron dreams, the story will still be there.

At their root level, religions exist to justify the existence of a soul, or as the secularist contends, a mind. The innate need to distance oneself from the natural world by concocting beliefs that inculcate you with an intangible, immortal aspect is the strongest link religion shares with film. You strenuously resist your bodies, rebel against the prospect that your decomposing forms are all there is, blanch at the prospect that there’s nothing cocooned inside your filthy shell to transcend disgusting flesh. Religions and art and dreams are all plaintive cries to transform once your body sickens and dilapidates into compost.

The longing for improvement and the fear of waste and worse - it is a pattern still with us, and maybe it speaks to the medium's essential marriage of light and dark, or as Mary Pickford put it in her autobiography (published in 1955), Sunshine and Shadow. Light and dark were the elements of film, and they had their chemistry in film's emulsion. They had a moral meaning, too. But not everyone appreciated that prospect, or credited how it might make your fortune.

Then one day, Walter looked Ruth in the eye and abruptly announced that he was going to become an actor. He joined a generation of World War I veterans who, failing to make a killing in real estate, ended up working as extras in the film industry. Indeed, they arrived by the busload and trainload, according to Anthony Slide in Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, “Bit” Players, and Stand-Ins. It was a hard life for most extras, who were lucky to get a day’s employment in a crowd scene and suffered the embittering experience of serving as observers of the lavish wealth that surrounded them. They were rather like indentured servants, their prospects of emerging as even bit players—let alone as character actors or stars—seemed exceedingly doubtful. But a few, including Walter Brennan, loved the speculative and sporting atmosphere of Los Angeles in the 1920s, and endured the boom-and-bust cycles that broke the spirit of many men and women. A lifelong conservative, Brennan never questioned the nature of such an economy. He seemed to thrive on risk and to enjoy the company of other risk takers.