Screwed Movie Quotes

So I was thinking we should skip tomorrow, stay right here and watch shitty movies all day." My first response was to say I couldn't skip a whole day's worth of classes, but as I met Cam's mischievous gaze, I said screw it. "That's a brilliant idea." "I know, right?" He tapped his head. "I'm full of great shit." "Yeah, you're definitely full of it..." "Ha.

How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

Keanu Reeves?" she asks in amazement. I nod. "What did he wish for?" "Isn't it obvious?" I say, waving a hand at the screen. "Fame." "That's why he's famous? Because of a wish?" "Have you seen his movies? Surely you didn't think he made it on his acting skills?" I grant wishes; I don't work miracles. Viola looks back at the screen, eyes screwed up in awe. "I guess that makes sense," she says faintly as my former master delivers a line poorly. "Wow.

You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting across just gets you to the hospital. That's just from movies and TV shows and stuff like that. You didn't really try to kill yourself. you just wanted attention, but you screwed up. Try harder next time.

In the land of Gods and Monsters I was an Angel Living in the garden of evil Screwed up, scared, doing anything that I needed Shining like a fiery beacon You got that medicine I need Fame, Liquor, Love give it to me slowly Put your hands on my waist, do it softly Me and God, we don't get along so now I sing No one's gonna take my soul away I'm living like Jim Morrison Headed towards a fucked up holiday Motel sprees sprees and I'm singing 'Fuck yeah give it to me this is heaven, what I truly Want' It's innocence lost Innocence lost In the land of Gods and Monsters I was an Angel Looking to get fucked hard Like a groupie incognito posing as a real singer Life imitates art You got that medicine I need Dope, shoot it up, straight to the heart please I don't really wanna know what's good for me God's dead, I said 'baby that's alright with me' No one's gonna take my soul away I'm living like Jim Morrison Headed towards a fucked up holiday Motel sprees sprees and I'm singing 'Fuck yeah give it to me this is heaven, what I truly Want' It's innocence lost Innocence lost When you talk it's like a movie and you're making me Crazy - Cause life imitates art If I get a little prettier can I be your baby? You tell me, "life isn't that hard" No one's gonna take my soul away I'm living like Jim Morrison Headed towards a fucked up holiday Motel sprees sprees and I'm singing 'Fuck yeah give it to me this is heaven, what I truly Want' It's innocence lost Innocence lost

Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.

Reality is what we tell to go screw itself every time we write or read a book, shoot or watch a movie.

You're the tattooed, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, train wreck, son of the movie star who's marrying my family-values, ex Marine Senator father. You're a tabloid headline, standing right here in front of me! Yeah? Well, you're the goody-goody, stuck up, boring-ass virgin who's so uptight she can't find anyone to punch her v-card except the manwhore from her school who will screw literally anyone. And then turns out to be the most boring fucking lay I've ever had.

Dear Hunger Games : Screw you for helping cowards pretend you have to be great with a bow to fight evil. You don't need to be drafted into a monkey-infested jungle to fight evil. You don't need your father's light sabre, or to be bitten by a radioactive spider. You don't need to be stalked by a creepy ancient vampire who is basically a pedophile if you're younger than a redwood. Screw you mainstream media for making it look like moral courage requires hair gel, thousands of sit ups and millions of dollars of fake ass CGI. Moral courage is the gritty, scary and mostly anonymous process of challenging friends, co-workers and family on issues like spanking, taxation, debt, circumcision and war. Moral courage is standing up to bullies when the audience is not cheering, but jeering. It is helping broken people out of abusive relationships, and promoting the inner peace of self knowledge in a shallow and empty pseudo-culture. Moral courage does not ask for - or receive - permission or the praise of the masses. If the masses praise you, it is because you are helping distract them from their own moral cowardice and conformity. Those who provoke discomfort create change - no one else. So forget your politics and vampires and magic wands and photon torpedoes. Forget passively waiting for the world to provoke and corner you into being virtuous. It never will. Stop watching fictional courage and go live some; it is harder and better than anything you will ever see on a screen. Let's make the world change the classification of courage from 'fantasy' to 'documentary.' You know there are people in your life who are doing wrong. Go talk to them, and encourage them to pursue philosophy, self-knowledge and virtue. Be your own hero; you are the One that your world has been waiting for.

I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. "Lonely place," Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, "Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it's private. That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you gave up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed.

Even when I closed my eyes tight, I could still picture them kissing. “Screw this.” I opened my eyes, stood, and fished my key out of my pocket. It was time to go inside and gouge my eyes out.

A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say “Excuse me” while meaning “Screw you.” Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value—the totality of what they did or what they said. But people—the ordinary, the decent and basically honest—couldn’t get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.

We used to hang out all the time. St. Clair and me.But after you arrived,I hardly saw him. He'd sit next to you in class,at lunch,at the movies. Everywhere. And even though I was suspicious,I knew the first time I heard you call him Etienne-I knew you loved him.And I knew by his response-the way his eyes lit up every time you said it-I knew he loved you,too. And I ignored it,because I didn't want to believe it." The struggle rises inside me again. "I don't know if he loves me.I don't know if he does,or if he ever did.It's all so messed up." "It's obvious he wants more than friendship." Mer takes my shaking mug. "Haven't you seen him? He suffers every time he looks at you.I've never seen anyone so miserable in my life." "That's not true." I'm remembering he said the situation with his father is really terrible right now. "He has other things on his mind,more important things." "Why aren't the two of you together?" The directness of her question throws me. "I don't know.Sometimes I think there are only so many opportunies...to get together with someone.And we've both screwed up so many times"-my voice grows quiet-"that we've missed our chance." "Anna." Mer pauses. "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard." "But-" "But what? You love him,and he loves you, and you live in the most romantic city in the world." I shake my head. "It's not that simple." "Then let me put it another way.A gorgeous boy is in love with you, and you're not even gonna try to make it work?

there are some people who must always go somewhere. ‘let’s go to a movie!’ ‘let’s go boating!’ ‘let’s get laid!’ ‘screw all that stuff,’ I always say, ‘just let me sit here.

And you’ve screwed me up, Lib, because now I’m thinking in lyrics instead of original thoughts. I’m looking at you and trying to find the words to convince you to be with me, and do you know what comes into my head? You showed me colors you know I can’t see with anyone else. They aren’t my words, I don’t even know what song or album they’re from, for God’s sake, but it’s exactly how I feel. And you taught me a secret language I can’t speak with anyone else—like, I can’t remember who wrote that, but I feel it down to the marrow in my bones. Being with you has changed the threads of my existence, I swear to God, so now being without you makes everything quieter, dimmer, and duller. So. Much. Smaller. And I fucking hate it.

Okay, now things got tough. In the movies, heroes always get into seemingly impenetrable buildings through a heating duct or ventilation shaft or service entrance. In real life, if someone goes through all the hassle of creating an elaborate security system, they don’t have a 3 ✕ 3 ventilation shaft secured only by a metal grate and four screws. Unless they’re really, really stupid.

Our eyes finally meet—he’s still staring at me, lips parted. And I can’t get a read on his expression. As the moments stretch on, a bud of nervousness blooms in my stomach, its vine wrapping around my vocal chords. “I…I wasn’t sure what you had planned for tonight. You didn’t tell me.” Those long lashes blink, but he doesn’t say anything. I raise my hand toward the kitchen. “I can go change if this isn’t—” “No.” Nicholas steps forward, his hand up. “No, don’t change a thing. You’re…absolutely perfect.” And he’s looking at me like he never wants to stop. “I didn’t expect…I mean, you’re lovely…b-but…” “Wasn’t there a movie about a king who stuttered?” I tease him. “Was he a relative of yours?” He chuckles. And call me crazy, but I swear Nicholas’s cheeks go slightly pink. “No, stuttering doesn’t run in my family.” He shakes his head. “You just knocked me on my arse.” And now I’m beaming. “Thank you. You look pretty great too, Prince Charming.” “I actually know a Prince Charming. He’s first-class prick.” “Well. Now that you’ve tarnished a precious piece of my childhood, this better be some date,” I tease. “It will be.” He holds out his hand to me. “Shall we?

Yeah, a truly wonderful movie. I could feel my IQ plummeting with every passing minute of this great movie… It’s almost amazing how they actually managed to screw up a movie with a script as simple and generic as this one. In short, it’s a complete piece of crap.

Screwed up and incomprehensible as it may seem to a rank outsider, making a movie is a lot like living life. You work with little bits and pieces without ever getting a look at the big picture. It comes together gradually, in order or out of it, with no discernible pattern.

Southerner Tom Watson, a populist Jeffersonian from Georgia, faced potential prosecution under the law because his newspaper often opposed Wilson’s war aims and policies. Several movie directors were arrested or fined, one because his film on the American War for Independence cast the British in a negative light.

And you've screwed me up, Lib, because now I'm thinking in lyrics instead of original thoughts. I'm look at you and trying to find the words to convince you to be with me, and do you know what comes into you head? You showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else. They aren't my words, I don't even know what song of album they're from, for God's sake, but it's exactly how I feel. And you taught me a secret language I can't speak with anyone else-like, I can't remember who wrote that, but I feel it down to the marrow in my bones. Being with you has changed the threads of my existence, I swear to God, so now being without you makes everything quieter, dimmer and duller. So. Much. Smaller.

Truth doesn’t screw around, and truth doesn’t care about your opinions. It doesn’t care if you believe in it, deny it, or ignore it. It couldn’t care less what religion you are, what country you’re from, what color your skin is, what or who you’ve got between your legs, or how much you’ve got invested in mutual funds. None of the trivial junk that concerns most people most of the time matters even one teensy-weensy bit to the truth.

A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say "Excuse me" while meaning "Screw you." Unless they were unreliable or clearly established as lunatics or scoundrels, characters in novels, movies, and games were meant to be taken at face value—the totality of what they did or what they said. But people—the ordinary, the decent and basically honest—couldn't get through the day without that one indispensable bit of programming that allowed you to say one thing and mean, feel, even do, another.

na kept her head down and pulled Lockie out into the street. She hoped he would manage to avoid standing on anything. His bare feet were already filthy but the streets of the Cross held the worst bits of human detritus. Tina didn’t want to have to deal with a piece of glass in Lockie’s foot, or worse. He was walking on tiptoe and more than one adult stopped to look at them. Tina moved quickly, getting Lockie out of sight before the questions had time to form. People tended to ask a lot more questions in the daytime. They saw things more clearly. Tina preferred the dark, where it was easy to hide.She had no idea what she was going to do with the kid after the new clothes and a shower. Maybe if he was warm and fed he would agree to walk into the police station and tell his story. Maybe he just needed a little time. He looked like a thinker. It was possible that she was really fucking up by keeping him. She had no idea what his body had been through. He could drop dead right now or have some kind of psycho meltdown.He looked at the ground as he walked. He held her hand and she guided him around the obstacles. He would not look up.He was locked up inside himself. His body was doing what it needed to do and maybe somewhere in his mind he was trying to find a key. If she got him to go to the police they would bring in a counsellor. Someone with a box of dolls and a soft voice. She had seen a movie about it. Lockie would be able to point to the doll and tell everyone exactly how his childhood had been taken. But would that help? Tina hoped he would be ready to talk to the police soon. If he wasn’t she was really screwed.

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

Here’s the thing, people: We have some serious problems. The lights are off. And it seems like that’s affecting the water flow in part of town. So, no baths or showers, okay? But the situation is that we think Caine is short of food, which means he’s not going to be able to hold out very long at the power plant.” “How long?” someone yelled. Sam shook his head. “I don’t know.” “Why can’t you get him to leave?” “Because I can’t, that’s why,” Sam snapped, letting some of his anger show. “Because I’m not Superman, all right? Look, he’s inside the plant. The walls are thick. He has guns, he has Jack, he has Drake, and he has his own powers. I can’t get him out of there without getting some of our people killed. Anybody want to volunteer for that?" Silence. “Yeah, I thought so. I can’t get you people to show up and pick melons, let alone throw down with Drake.” “That’s your job,” Zil said. “Oh, I see,” Sam said. The resentment he’d held in now came boiling to the surface. “It’s my job to pick the fruit, and collect the trash, and ration the food, and catch Hunter, and stop Caine, and settle every stupid little fight, and make sure kids get a visit from the Tooth Fairy. What’s your job, Zil? Oh, right: you spray hateful graffiti. Thanks for taking care of that, I don’t know how we’d ever manage without you.” “Sam…,” Astrid said, just loud enough for him to hear. A warning. Too late. He was going to say what needed saying. “And the rest of you. How many of you have done a single, lousy thing in the last two weeks aside from sitting around playing Xbox or watching movies? “Let me explain something to you people. I’m not your parents. I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. I’m a kid, just like all of you. I don’t happen to have any magic ability to make food suddenly appear. I can’t just snap my fingers and make all your problems go away. I’m just a kid.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he had crossed the line. He had said the fateful words so many had used as an excuse before him. How many hundreds of times had he heard, “I’m just a kid.” But now he seemed unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “Look, I have an eighth-grade education. Just because I have powers doesn’t mean I’m Dumbledore or George Washington or Martin Luther King. Until all this happened I was just a B student. All I wanted to do was surf. I wanted to grow up to be Dru Adler or Kelly Slater, just, you know, a really good surfer.” The crowd was dead quiet now. Of course they were quiet, some still-functioning part of his mind thought bitterly, it’s entertaining watching someone melt down in public. “I’m doing the best I can,” Sam said. “I lost people today…I…I screwed up. I should have figured out Caine might go after the power plant.” Silence. “I’m doing the best I can.” No one said a word. Sam refused to meet Astrid’s eyes. If he saw pity there, he would fall apart completely. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.

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

After all, which would you rather do, pal, screw Bridget Bardot’s brains out or read reviews of her movies?

screwed up reality that has nothing to do with actual hacking? Well, take one of those movie scenarios, give it enough acid to drown Las Vegas, and then double that amount of cocaine.

If you were to ask me at gunpoint, like Hollywood producers who are too stupid to read books and say, “give me the punchline,” and were to demand, “Three sentences. What are you really trying to do?” I would say, Screw ideology. Screw movie analyses. What really interests me is the following insight: if you look at the very core of psychoanalytic theory, of which even Freud was not aware, it's properly read death drive—this idea of beyond the pleasure principle, self- sabotaging, etc.—the only way to read this properly is to read it against the background of the notion of subjectivity as self-relating negativity in German Idealism. That is to say, I just take literally Lacan's indication that the subject of psychoanalysis is the Cartesian cogito—of course, I would add, as reread by Kant, Schelling, and Hegel.

Love isn’t about the mushy feelings someone gives you. Screw the butterflies. Movies promote unrealistic endings where the guy gets the girl, no matter the drama and obstacles in their way. Love is dangerous and lethal. It’s about sacrifices and a willingness to protect the people you care for at all costs.

Knocking on the Ellises’ door ten minutes later with the pink horn and streamers in hand, I try to put on the I-am-a-cool-motherfucker pose. When Brittany opens the door wearing a baggy T-shirt and shorts, I’m floored. Her pale blue eyes open wide. “Alex, what are you doing here?” I hold out the horn and streamers. She snatches them from my hand. “I can’t believe you came here because of some prank.” “We’ve got some things to discuss. Besides pranks.” She swallows nervously. “I’m not feeling great, okay? Let’s just talk at school.” She tries to close the door. Shit, I can’t believe I’m going to do this like a stalker guy in the movies. I push open the door. ¡Que mierdaǃ “Alex, don’t.” “Let me in. For a minute. Please.” She shakes her head, those angelic curls swaying back and forth across her face. “My parents don’t like when I have people over.” “Are they home?” “No.” She sighs, then opens the door hesitantly. I step inside. The house is even bigger than it looks from the outside. The walls are painted bright white, reminding me of a hospital. I swear dust wouldn’t have the nerve to land on their floors or counters. The two-story foyer boasts a staircase that rivals the one I saw in The Sound of Music, which we were forced to watch in junior high, and the floor is as shiny as water. Brittany was right. I don’t belong here. It doesn’t matter, because even if I don’t belong in this place, she’s here and I want to be where she is. “Well, what did you want to talk about?” she asks. I wish her long, lean legs weren’t sticking out from her shorts. They’re a distraction. I look away from them, desperate to keep my wits. So what if she has sexy legs? So what if she has eyes as clear as glass marbles? So what if she can take a prank like a man and give it right back? Who am I kidding? I have no reason for being here other than the fact that I want to be near her. Screw the bet. I want to know how to make this girl laugh. I want to know what makes her cry. I want to know what it feels like to have her look at me as if I’m her knight in shining armor.

I remember when all you ever talked about was finding a guy and getting married. You'd hog the TV, watching those sappy chick flicks --" "Then I grew up and learned why they always end the movie after the guy and girl get together. That's when everything falls apart.

In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepared, financially, for that day. Going public would give us the capital to fund our own projects and, thus, to have more say about where we were headed, but it would also give us a buffer that could sustain us through failure. Steve’s feeling was that Pixar’s survival could not depend solely on the performance of each and every movie. The underlying logic of his reasoning shook me: We were going to screw up, it was inevitable. And we didn’t know when or how. We had to prepare, then, for an unknown problem—a hidden problem. From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment.

Sometimes,” Catmull says, “if it were a big enough of a gut punch he’d go for a walk with the director. Steve was this incredibly intelligent, strong-willed person who made things happen, but at the same time he enabled people. He was always big on going for walks with people. So he would take the director out on a walk, where you talked more slowly, you think through things … just talking, just a friendly back-and-forth talking. His goal was just to help them make a better movie. It always made it easier for the director to move forward. It wasn’t ever like ‘Oh, you screwed up.’ It was ‘What are we gonna do to move forward?’ The past can be a lesson, but the past is gone. He believed that.” This kind of one-on-one mentoring was something Steve learned over time. “Early on, if somebody didn’t measure up Steve wouldn’t hide it,” says Catmull. “That kind of behavior wasn’t something I ever saw during his last ten years. Instead, he would take you off in private, and turn what could have been an embarrassing thing into something that actually became very productive and bonding. He learned; he had taken the mistakes that he made, internalized and processed them, and made some changes.

Margo started talking. “The thing is they don’t even really care; they just feel like my exploits make them look bad. Just now, do you know what he said? He said, ‘I don’t care if you screw up your life, but don’t embarrass us in front of the Jacobsens—they’re our friends.’ Ridiculous. And you have no idea how hard they’ve made it to get out of that goddamned house. You know how in prison-escape movies they put bundled-up clothes under the blankets to make it look like there’s a person in there?” I nodded. “Yeah, well, Mom put a goddamned baby monitor in my room so she could hear my sleep-breathing all night. So I just had to pay Ruthie five bucks to sleep in my room, and then I put bundled-up clothes in her room.” Ruthie is Margo’s little sister. “It’s Mission: Impossible shit now. Used to be I could just sneak out like a regular goddamned American—just climb out the window and jump off the roof. But God, these days, it’s like living in a fascist dictatorship.

A lawyer is standing in a long line outside a movie theater. Suddenly, he feels a pair of hands massaging his shoulders and neck. The lawyer turns around. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” “I’m a chiropractor, and I’m just keeping in practice while I’m waiting in line.” “Well, I’m a lawyer, but do you see me screwing the guy in front of me??

I said he was a shitty agent, not a shitty politician.” Claire still couldn’t read the man’s expression. “You don’t sound like a fan.” Nolan clasped his hands together on the table. “On the surface, it seems like we’re making progress, but when I think back on the last few minutes of our conversation, I get the feeling that you’re questioning me instead of the other way around.” “You’ll make a great detective one day.” “Fingers crossed.” He flashed a grin. “I want to tell you something about the FBI.” “You always win?” “Sure, there’s that, and terrorists, of course. Kidnappers, bank robbers, pedophiles—nasty fuckers—but nuts and bolts, what we at the ol’ FBI deal in day-to-day is curiosities. Did you know that?” Claire didn’t respond. He’d clearly given this speech before. Nolan continued, “Local cops, they find something curious they can’t figure out, and they bring it to us, and we either agree that it’s curious or we don’t. And generally when we agree, it’s not just the one curious thing, it’s several curious things.” He held up his index finger. “Curious thing number one: your husband embezzled three million dollars from his company. Only three million dollars. That’s curious, because you’re loaded, right?” Claire nodded. “Curious thing number two.” He added a second finger. “Paul went to college with Quinn. He shared a dorm room with the guy, and then when they were in grad school together, they shared an apartment, and then Quinn was best man at your wedding, and then they started the business together, right?” Claire nodded again. “They’ve been best friends for almost twenty-one years, and it seemed curious to me that after twenty-one years, Quinn figures out his best buddy is stealing from their company, the one they built together from the ground up, but instead of going to his buddy and saying ‘Hey, what the fuck, buddy?’ Quinn goes straight to the FBI.” The way he put it together did seem curious, but Claire only said, “Okay.” Nolan held up a third finger. “Curious thing number three: Quinn didn’t go to the cops. He went to the FBI.” “You have domain over financial crimes.” “You’ve been reading our Web site.” Nolan seemed pleased. “But lemme ask you again: Is that what you’d do if your best friend of twenty-one years stole a small, almost negligible, amount of money from your zillion-dollar company—find the biggest, baddest stick to fuck him with?” The question gave Claire a different answer: Adam had turned in Paul to the FBI, which meant that Adam and Paul were not getting along. Either Adam Quinn didn’t know about the movies or he knew about the movies and he was trying to screw over Paul.

I needed to grab another box of screws, but, when I got to the truck, I realized I’d left my wallet in my tool bucket. When I went back ground the house to get it, she had my plans open and was double-checking all my measurements.” Emma’s cheeks burned when Gram laughed at Sean’s story, but, since she couldn’t deny it, she stuck her last bite of the fabulous steak he’d grilled into her mouth. “That’s my Emma,” Gram said. “I think her first words were ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’” “In my defense,” she said when she’d swallowed, pointing her fork at Sean for emphasis, “my name is on the truck, and being able to pound nails doesn’t make you a builder. I have a responsibility to my clients to make sure they get quality work.” “I do quality work.” “I know you build a quality deck, but stairs are tricky.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I had to double-check.” “It’s all done but the seating now and it’s good work, even though I practically had to duct tape you to a tree in order to work in peace.” She might have taken offense at his words if not for the fact he was playing footsie with her under the table. And when he nudged her foot to get her to look at him, he winked in that way that—along with the grin—made it almost impossible for her to be mad at him. “It’s Sean’s turn to wash tonight. Emma, you dry and I’ll put away.” “I’ll wash, Gram. Sean can dry.” “I can wash,” Sean told her. “The world won’t come to an end if I wash the silverware before the cups.” “It makes me twitch.” “I know it does. That’s why I do it.” He leaned over and kissed her before she could protest. “That new undercover-cop show I like is on tonight,” Gram said as they cleared the table. “Maybe Sean won’t snort his way through this episode.” He laughed and started filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’m sorry, but if he keeps shoving his gun in his waistband like that, he’s going to shoot his…he’s going to shoot himself in a place men don’t want to be shot.” Emma watched him dump the plates and silverware into the water—while three coffee mugs sat on the counter waiting to be washed—but forced herself to ignore it. “Can’t be worse than the movie the other night.” “That was just stupid,” Sean said while Gram laughed. They’d tried to watch a military-action movie and by the time they were fifteen minutes in, she thought they were going to have to medicate Sean if they wanted to see the end. After a particularly heated lecture about what helicopters could and couldn’t do, Emma had hushed him, but he’d still snorted so often in derision she was surprised he hadn’t done permanent damage to his sinuses. “I don’t want you to think that’s real life,” he told them. “I promise,” Gram said, “if I ever want to use a tank to break somebody out of a federal prison, I’ll ask you how to do it correctly first.” Sean kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Cat. At least you appreciate me, unlike Emma, who just tells me to shut up.” “I’d appreciate you more if there wasn’t salad dressing floating in the dishwater you’re about to wash my coffee cup in.” “According to the official guy’s handbook, if I keep doing it wrong, you’re supposed to let me watch SportsCenter while you do it yourself.” “Did the official guy’s handbook also tell you that if that happens, you’ll also be free to watch the late-night sports show while I do other things myself?

hawk, he would have been bankrupt years ago. I like to build cars and make movies. If you ask me, we would have been better off directing our resources toward making movies than putting up a fancy new building.” “Why did you go along with the plan?” “I didn’t have any choice. I told my father I thought it was a bad idea. He had the final vote. Did you and your father agree on everything when you were growing up?” “Of course not.” “Who usually won the arguments?” “My dad.” He gives me a knowing smile. “Same here. My father wanted to build his dream studio. It was his money. Do you think my opinion on the economic viability of the project carried any weight? He spent his life being told he was a genius. That word isn’t generally used when people talk about me. Now it’s going to cost us a fortune to get out.” Families. Rosie keeps her eye on the ball. “Richard, you told us you left your father’s house around two o’clock. Who was still there?” “My dad, Angelina, and Marty Kent.” “Do you know what time Kent left?” “No.” “Do you have any idea what happened to him?” “I understand he jumped.” Rosie lays the cards on the table. “Do you think he killed your father?” He starts mixing paint again. “I think Angelina killed my father. Then again, nothing Marty did would have surprised me. He was a self-righteous ass. He thought he was the brains behind the operation, and my dad and I were just pawns. And he was really ticked off.” The venom in his tone surprises me. He tells us Kent and his father had been fighting about the China Basin project for months. “Marty thought he was getting screwed. My dad went to the other investors to try to negotiate a bonus for him.” “Did something happen on Friday night?” “Yes. My dad told him that the other investors had vetoed the bonus.” This jibes with the information from Ward. He adds, “There was something else. Marty decided to try to pull some strings at city hall. He hired a consultant to help him get the approvals for the China Basin project.” I decide to play coy. “Do you know his name?” “Armando Rios. Some money may have changed hands. Marty never told me about it. Marty never told me

Unless you're living in the best neighborhoods, Philadelphia is indeed everything David Lynch claims it is: a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent and decaying place. Huyen was so shocked, she wanted to go back to Vietnam immediately. Only pride prevented her from doing so. Grays Ferry was sullen and desolate and everyone seemed paranoid. Saigon is often squalid but it is never desolate. Vietnam is a disaster, agreed, but it is a socialized disaster, whereas America is -- for many people, natives or not -- a solitary nightmare. If Americans weren't so stoic and alienated, if they weren't' so cool, they wouldn't be so quiet about their desperation. Huyen could handle poverty, but she had no aptitude for paranoia, the one skill you needed to survive in Philadelphia. In Saigon you dreaded being cheated or robbed; in Philadelphia you feared getting raped and killed. In the end, Philadelphia was even worse than Eraserhead, because it didn't last for 108 minutes but went on forever. As in Vietnam, Huyen sought comfort in American movies to escape from the real America she could see just outside her window. Every American home was its own inviolable domain, a fortress with the door never left open. The rest of the world could go to hell as long as there was enough beer in the fridge and a good game on TV. And utopia was already on the internet, why go outside if you didn't have to? In the morning, Huyen kept the door locked, bolted and chained, and watched Jerry Springer -- in his glasses and tweed suit the image of a college professor -- to learn more about Americans and improve her colloquial English. In the afternoon, she took a bus to the YMCA to attend an ESL class. At night, the couple barely screwed in the land of bountiful screwing. His wife was so tense, Jaded went back to masturbating.

They sounded like two moms, happily waiting on their daughters, and that brought all of my screwed-up emotions rushing back.

The moral: the dimwitted and impulsive might not be able to hold a job or learn algebra, but they sure knew how to screw each other—and reproduce like crazy. The movie took place many generations in the future, after which this reverse evolution had run its inevitable course, resulting in a society largely composed of morons.

There’s a possibility she’s been spending time over in San Ignacio, at a place called the Maybe Club.” “Ah,” said Hagopian. “Joanna’s hitting a better-class rotten and rundown dive these days. The Maybe Club is a high-class sewer.” He trotted off, still in sweatsocks and no shoes, to a new row of files. “Here. A write-up from the San Ignacio Pilot weekend section a couple months back.” He unfolded a full tabloid page and gave it to Easy. “ ‘Controversial Club’s Owner Defends Liberal Views,’ ” Easy read the headline. “Is he in politics, too?” “He thinks it’s okay to screw other peoples’ mates,” explained Hagopian. “In San Ignacio that’s a pretty liberal view.” Easy looked at the photo of the Maybe proprietor leaning against the bar in his club. “This is Sunny Boy Sadler. …” “Right, onetime singing cowboy of the B movies,” said Hagopian. “I spent many happy afternoons in the Forties with his films. Little did I realize then that Sunny Boy was usually so juiced they had to practically glue him to his horse.

Beyond that, I’d schemed and lied and screwed up my very best friendship in the world.

They have four categories: happy, satisfied, dissatisfied, disgusted. If they hit happy, they've screwed up; They never want you to be happy. On the other hand, they don't want you so disgusted you quit. The sweet spot is somewhere between dissatisfied and disgusted.

River stretched. He wiggled his toes in the fading sun, and smiled. "Violet, Violet. You curl up next to me, nap, and leave. What is this, some sort of one-nap stand?" He smiled. "Screw the movie. Get back over here.

He didn't look angry. Stern, maybe. Impassive, definitely. Eventually, he raised his hand and turned away. Not just sort of away, but forty-five degrees away, like, I'm not looking at you anymore. I'm looking this totally different way now and so we're done. Just above face level, his palm flat and perpendicular to the floor, like a stereotyped movie Native American going "How!" Or a traffic cop saying, "Stop!" Or maybe a guy signaling his uninvited biographer to keep his distance — which is understandable on a human level, but less so in the wake of fifty-plus years of public life. All that self-revelation in his music — in the hundreds of thousands of words of interviews he's given, talking about his wives; his lovers; his astonishingly screwed-up relationship with the friend/musical partner he will sometimes insist had no real impact on him at all, and then turn around and say that their lives have always been woven together; and his father; his creative blocks; his anxieties; his therapists; and more. Still: Don't look at me.

I should have told you. You ever have that feeling like, you know you aren't good, you're not doing things right - like you can see yourself screwing up, kind of like watching it on a movie, but even though you feel it happening, there's nothing you can do to stop it?" "I know what you mean." Sometimes I do stuff and while I'm doing it my head is screaming at me, Stop, don't do that, stop, stop." "But you just do it anyway." "Yeah, mostly I do. what's the point, you know?" The last question seemed tacked on, overly sarcastic, like he'd realized what he was saying and had to counter it with a joke, something that meant nothing. You don't have to act like you don't care, I wanted to tell him. Not with me.

Screws fall out all the time. The world's an imperfect place.

So I spilled my guts already. Your turn. If you won’t tell me what happened just now, at least tell me what happened at the tattoo place.” I did. I was tempted to joke that his dad was right--apparently I was evil--but he wouldn’t appreciate that. When I was done, he stood there, his broad face screwed up in disbelief. “So this old lady, who’s never met you before, sees your birthmark and says you’re a witch?” “Sounds like something from a TV movie, doesn’t it?” I hummed a few bars of suitably sinister music. “Should have been a fortune-teller, though. The teenage girl goes to the fortune-teller, whose gypsy grandmother says she’s cursed.” “Maybe that was it. Like one of those reality TV shows. You got pranked.” “In Nanaimo? Must be a low-budget Canadian production.” “Is there any other kind?

It’s official,” Sam said as we walked out. “We’re screwed. The universe is conspiring to destroy us.” “If it was, I think it could have managed that a few times by now.” “Ah, but that’s the trick. You cheat death, it keeps trying. Didn’t you see that movie?” “All of them, actually. Serena loved--” A brief pause. “She loved horror movies.” “Did she? I’d have thought her more the romance type.

It’s official,” Sam said as we walked out. “We’re screwed. The universe is conspiring to destroy us.” “If it was, I think it could have managed that a few times by now.” “Ah, but that’s the trick. You cheat death, it keeps trying. Didn’t you see that movie?” “All of them, actually.

Structure 19. You worried about structure when you came up with your story! If you did, I’m sorry. You missed some of the most joyous moments in writing. Character and story come first. Before anything. Certainly before all that Act One, Two, and Three crapola. When you’re teasing out your story, make lots of notes. Think out loud. Talk to a tape recorder. Make more notes. Fill up oceans of 3x5 cards. Write on yellow legal pads. Write on white legal pads. Scribble on napkins or beer coasters. Write down cool stuff for characters to do that may never find its way into the movie. Make notes and more notes and more notes, but do not trouble yourself with structure. Screw structure. Have fun. Structure is for later. For now, just let your incredibly creative mind run free. Make notes about character and plot and story and funny moments and locations you’d like to visit. Tape record dialogue for your

Visualization is basically the process of making a movie in your mind. You want to see yourself in many different situations, using your martial arts skills or your de-escalation skills to walk away from specific conflicts victoriously. The key to successful visualization is that you always see yourself being victorious. You don’t want to visualize yourself screwing up or making mistakes. Visualizing yourself losing or messing up, is like practicing your martial arts skills incorrectly, over and over again.