QUOTE OF THE DAY
Hi. These quotes were hand-picked for the indie film website www.shootingpeople.org. They are little film
quotes to which I then added my own little responses which appeared in Shooting People's daily
bulletins. The form was inspired by the Beano and the Whizzer and Chips -
which would pose
a question followed by an answer printed upside down at the bottom of the page.
As with the Beano
you would
have to try and guess where the quote is from. As it would
be cumbersome and awkward for you to repeatedly turn your computer upside down in order to
read the answers I have simply given the quote and the source from which it is from
immediately beneath it. I hope you enjoy reading them. I certainly enjoyed writing them
in a late night wishing I could go to bed and dream of a brighter day kind of way.
As it's a drag to upload these quotes and as my work with Shooting People is currently
ongoing, the entire tapestry of these quotes is not yet completed, so please do return
from time to time if you are depressed or having a panic attack and let's see if I've added
anything else. Please - I repeat - please do not kill yourselves. You may find my writing
profoundly moving or liable to evoke intense feelings - possibly even borderline spiritual.
In this respect
I am very much like the troubled junky rocker Pete Doherty. He is very troubled.
And as with
his fans, you may find my words evoke intense feelings in yourselves. This is natural.
You probably may want
to harm yourself as an act of love for me. Please do not do this. There are other
ways to show your love, perhaps building me a giant crucifix out of lollipop sticks
or making me a bib out of hair
you find in the road. Please channel your love safely. Love in the wrong hands can be a dangerous
thing. You throw a penis into the mix and things just get darn right messy...
THE QUOTES...
“Don't you realize? The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what's right for them. Because it's their time. Their time! Up there! Down here, it's our time. It's our time down here. That's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket.”
- Mikey from the Goonies
It is my heatfelt opinion that had he caught the right storm, and had he actually been real – Mikey from the Goonies could have led the children of my generation to an unprecedented revolution. With rhetoric like the above, the cherub-faced asthmatic kid could have persuaded us to leave our parents - kind of like the Pied Piper – and go and live in a cave. We probably wouldn’t have survived and it would have ended up like Lord of the Flies – but my God I would have been prepared to follow Mikey to the ends of the earth. Never has leadership been thrust upon one so young, and absorbed with such command and authority. This is why it pained me so to see him reduced to a subserviant little hobbit in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. You let yourself go and I guess this is what happens. From leader of the Goonies to Sam the Hobbit. What a travesty.
“…Gimme some….just gimme some…”
“…Nothing new for trash like you! Nothing new for trash like you!...”
- Creepy perve guy who takes Chloe Sevingy and her sister into a car in Gummo.
When I first saw this film I was round my mates Eugene’s house. Someone suddenly switched over and we saw a kid with the weirdest face ever eating chocolate and spaghetti in a bath. Then we saw a woman shaving off her eyebrows laughing to herself - and a drunk redneck WWF wrestling a chair. We finally knew we’d found home. Harmony Korine’s film caught a rhythm that struck a cord with our life - there wasn’t really a plot. Five years later all my friends have got jobs and that beautiful freak kid in the bath is just a distant angel.
“It's a really long story, Chet. Gary and I were messing around with the computer Friday night. We decided to make a woman and we did and she went crazy and she messed up the whole house.”
- Weird Science
John Hughes film I remember from the eighties. Chet gets turned into some farting bog creature in a suburban kitchen. Kids wear bras on their heads to make computer women creatures. 1980’s house parties. It has everything your heart asks for.
“Ass to Ass”
- Requiem for a dream
Film version of Selby Jr’s book made by the bloke who made Pi. Got some really nifty effects. Spot on depiction of a classic mad train lady with crazy hair. I went on a first date with a girl at uni to see this. What a foundation for a fun relationship…..smack-head son ends up getting his arm amputated. Speed-addicted mum has mental breakdown and is force-fed down the nose. And beautiful girl gone smack-whore goes ass to ass in some city-boy rut-fest. I may as well have taken her to see some puppies being put down cos that’s what it was like. Still - shagged her though…
“If I was a woodcutter, I'd cut. If I was a fire, I'd burn. But I'm a heart and I love. That's the only thing I can do.”
- Jesus, (Willem Defoe); The Last Temptation of Christ.
If I had to think of the worst actors to play Jesus I would say: Danny DeVito, Jimmy Stewart
and the big man from Everybody Loves Raymond. Who can you think of to be the crappest Jesus?
“Don’t fuck with the Lords of Hell”
“Don’t fuck with the babysitter”
- Adventures in Babysitting
We watched this film at my house I think on my eighth birthday – a slumber party. This was back in the day when renting videos was still a new phenomenon. We had a few videos and never got round to watching this until we decided we couldn’t get to sleep. So we put it on and were captivated by the truck-driving “Thor”, the urban escapades of the cast - but mainly I think because of the word fuck. The mad adventures of the gang were mirrored by our own mad adventure – namely staying up quite late, (probably about twelve o’clock), and watching a film that said fuck. Live the dream. Slumber parties rule. Other quote:
College Girl: I'm so lonely!
Daryl: How could a righteous babe like you be lonely?
College Girl: That's the sweetest thing anybody's ever said to me!
Daryl: Really?
College Girl: (pause) Wanna go to bed?
“I don't think I want to know a six-year-old who isn't a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don't want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don't have a college degree. I don't even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they're ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they're no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I'm coming looking for you! Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! Good day to you, madam.”
- Buck Russel (John Candy) in Uncle Buck
Another one of those eighties films where it freeze frames on John Candy’s face at the end and the credits go up. There are an estimated fifteen thousand of these films. I love John Candy. When I die I want to see his face freeze-framed and credits of all the things I’ve done in my life go up.
“Nice shooting, son - what’s your name?”
“Murphy.”
- Robocop
Quite an easy one this. There’s something I like about the fact that Robo-cop eats baby food. Probably the fact that he blasts the crap out of everyone and then eats baby food. They tried a similar trick in Terminator where Arnold Schwarzenegger sucked on rusks but it didn’t have the same effect. Also, the original Daleks had bibs – but this was also cut because it was rubbish and they looked stupid saying “Exterminate” whilst wearing bibs.
“Peachy, I'm heartily ashamed for getting’ you killed instead of going home rich like you deserved to, on account of me bein' so bleedin' high and bloody mighty. Can you forgive me?”
“That I can and that I do, Danny, free and full and without let or hindrance.”
“Everything's all right then.”
- Danny and Peachy, (Sean Connery and Michael Cane), The Man Who Would be King
This film is brilliant - an unashamed British, imperial, gung-ho, war/adventure movie based upon the Rudyard Kipling novel.
Other quotes:
Billy Fish: (translating for the tribal leader) “He wants to know if you are gods.”
Peachy Carnehan: “Not gods - Englishmen. The next best thing.”
“When we're done with you, you'll be able to stand up and slaughter your enemies like civilized men.”
This is such a great boy’s own adventure movie. Go back to being ten years old and watch it! Otherwise - pretend there’s no moral questions overhanging the concept of Empire, put on your pyjamas, and watch it downstairs sitting on the carpet! Forget Saving Private Ryan – these were the days when war was a laugh! These were the days when war was a laugh – battle was an opportunity for lads to get together and have a giggle, and seeing someone getting their face shot off was just a bloody good excuse for a punchline…
“I like the way the trees are.”
- Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter.
This is as good a reason as any I can think of for not wanting to get blown up in a war. I like the way trees are.
GOVERNOR: You - what’s your name?
INMATE: Smith.
GUARD: Say "sir" when you answer the Governor.
INMATE: Sir Smith.
- Tom Courtenay, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Wicked petulant line. This version of Alan Sillitoe’s kick-ass novel has one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen. Golden boy long-distance runner (forget his name) runs away after being sidelined by new boy - “Smith”. The next scene cuts in his attempted escape with a chorus of cons in a church hall singing Jerusalem. The escapee is caught, dragged back, and has the living crap beaten out of him, whilst we cut in and out of Smith and the cons singing their hearts out. Tom Courtenay has got such a petulant, chiselled scummy little face. First ever Chav.
Only bad thing about this film is the “jazz” scenes have aged badly. It’s also got thing-ummy-jig from The Likely Lads in it. Who also appears in Billy Liar. As indeed does Tom Courtenay. Cos they’ve both got working class faces. Unlike mine. Which is upper-working to lower-middle class. That’s what my face is. What class is your face?
“…a great ape on the football field…”
- Woman to the rugby playing dude in This Sporting Life (1963)
The ending of this film is great. He gets twatted on the field and the camera lingers on him as the play goes off to another part of the pitch - and then – (kind of in that autistic bubble spielberg creates by sucking out sound in Saving Private Ryan) – time slows down to a pulse and his breathing and he just gets up and carries on. I used to work pushing trollies at Marks and Spencers and it felt like this whenever I got on the bus in a freezing December.
“How dare you! How dare you say such filthy, disgusting things! You come into this house drunk, filthy drunk! You're filthy! You talk filth, you ARE filth! You're filth! You filthy pig! You filthy, disgusting pig! Filth, FILTH!”
- Thora Hird in A kind of Loving
Film version of the Stan Barstow novel. Great scene where he’s sick on Thora Hird.
“I've still got some fight left in me, not like most people.”
"Not saying you ain't, but where does all this fighting get you?”
"Have you ever seen where not fighting gets you?”
- Arthur Seaton, (albert Finney), Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Another film from the slum fiction sixties. This was from the days when working class people were romantic. Now they’re chavs.
“It was a big for us, we had won the war in Ambrosia. Democracy was back once more in our beloved country.”
- Tom Courtenay, Billy Liar, (film about an incessant bullshitter escaping his hum-drum existance with fantasies of a mythical “Ambrosia”).
Some of you may have noticed the theme this week in the quotes, in that they were all from these old black and white English movies about the working classes. Nowadays we don’t have cinema about that sort of lifestyle - but we still occasionally get access to that world when they have one of the poor families in Wife Swap.
Also, (occasionally), you would get access into poor people’s houses in Grange Hill – (where they’d show you how some children can’t do their homework cos their dad comes home drunk with chips for dinner) - but I’m not sure if they show Grange Hill anymore.
Next week we’re going upwardly mobile as we seek to gain acceptance into the world of middle-class cinema. Everyone put on your smart shirt and best shoes. Forget about Tescos own brand biscuits – we’re going all Kit-Kat on yo’ ass….proper biscuits!
“No matter how many showers I take I still smell Beethoven all over me.”
- Bloke in the film Beethoven
Hilarious film about a giant dog.
“Secret Bear says not to worry about falling - worry about the lion instead!”
- “Share Bear” in Care Bears the Movie
I think I went and saw this when I was about ten – which is far too old.
“Bud, how much oxygen you've left?”
"About 5 minutes"
“Bud, if you drop all your ballast you can still make it...”
“Gonna stay for a while... I knew this was a one-way trip.”
- The dude underwater and his estranged wife in The Abyss
Strange underwater tentacles probe and explore a submarine. Navy dude gets the shakes and thinks the russians are coming. Underwater aliens are discovered. I particularly remember this film cos this was one of the first times I ever went out at the weekend without adult supervision. Daniel Muchmore killed a wasp on the bus on the way home.
“I think only stupid people have good relationships.”
“That's the spirit.”
“Yeah, yeah, just list your five main interests in order of importance.”
“I'm gonna have to put… trad…trad jazz…Blues…then rhythm at the top of the list.”
“Right, so, let's just put music, that way we only use up one…”
“It's not like I'm some modern punk, dickhead. It's an obvious, 1977 original punk rock look. I guess Johnny fuckface over there's too stupid to realize it.”
“I didn't really get it either.”
“Everyone's too stupid.”
- Seymour, Enid and Rebecca (Steve Buscemi, Thora Birch and Scarlet Johansen) in Ghost World.
Not a bad film. Quite a good depiction of the breakdown of a friendship post high-school. Also a good depiction of a lonely loser in Steve Buscemi’s character. Actually I guess the film’s alright. Didn’t think so so much at the time, but I guess reflectively it was alright. Yeah. It was alright. I guess.
“That was so fucking money. That was like the Jedi mind-shit.”
- Swingers
In this film everyone describes everything as “money”. If something’s good it’s “money”. It’s actually quite a good depiction of a group of mates with a past and history going out for the night. “You’re so money and you don't even know it!” It’s got the guy who played Monica’s millionaire boyfriend in Friends. I saw him in a film about some unlikely kid who played American Football for Notre Dame college in America. The bloke appeared as a cameo. A teenager. He was well fat. So not money.
“…but I wanna stay in the jungle with you, Bagheera!…”
- Mowgli, Jungle Book
My heart and soul is bound up in this film. Were it not for the fact it would limit my career opportunities and networking possibilities – I would walk around in a pair of red pants just like Mowgli – scampering up and down the highstreet scraping a stick along the shop windows of poundstretcher and Gregs the bakers. This is how I read the film….
…Mowgli lives in the jungle and has the best friends you could ever imagine……they’re the best group of friends - tight and watching out for each other…….then some woman comes along and fucks it up…..Mowgli leaves his mates and becomes an “adult”…..abandoning his chums for some doey-eyed tart and a mortgage in a jungle hut ……the glory days are well and truly over….adulthood is completed…. she splits up the junglist dream team like an animated Yoko Ono…..everyone pisses off and acts as if they never met King Louie and his rag-time skiffle boys…it was like the “Bear Necessities” never happened…
If you watch carefully you will notice that the song the girl sings at the end of the film in order to snare Mowgli,(“My father’s hunting in the forest…”), is heard as an instrumental overture right at the beginning of the film - thus RIGHT AT THE MOMENT MOWGLI ENTERS the jungle of youth and is received by the pack of wolves – he is DESTINED TO LEAVE its carefree canopy and become a tedious adult who knows about radiators and mortgages…..it’s a tragic twist of life…and despite Mowgli’s exuberant petulance and energetic assertions that he wants to stay in the jungle…he’ll do a runner…
…go and visit Mowgli now…I bet you he knows how to bleed a radiator and knows how to use a calculator to work out 17.5% VAT in order to offset it against his tax…
…who on God’s earth would wanna hang out with someone that knows that information..?
“In my beginning is my end”
Even from the beginning Mowgli’s little red pants were gonna be hung up in a nail on some tree in the jungle somewhere.
I couldn’t bear to stumble across those pants. It would kill me.
“We’re not gonna make it are we? People I mean…”
- John Connor, (Edward Furlong), Terminator II.
These words go round my head whenever I see an advert for Nuts magazine.
“There was a moment... when I used to blame everything and everyone... for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn't get no answers 'cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.”
“Like what?”
“Has anything you've done made your life better?”
- The teacher guy to Edward Furlong in American History X
There’s a wicked scene where Ed Norton and his mates play the black kids for the rights to the basketball court. The music, the camera, the pace in which it’s cut – you get caught up in the moment of cinema – it’s exciting and the thrust of the cinema brings you sympathetically on the side of Norton and his white pals…you’re caught up in the game…then Edward Norton takes his top off and you see he’s got a big swastika on his chest.
That’s a cheeky little move.
Playing with your sympathies and laying shit like that on you.
ADDITIONAL: There’s a horrible scene with teeth on a kerb stone and you hear them make a scraping, rasping sound. The head then gets popped like an egg. Rubbish day out.
Not really the greatest of films but, you know, you’d watch it every few years if you happened to come across it late at night.
“I like cows.”
- Simple girl in the “tree scene” in Jurassic Park
Okay brilliant. Well try and milk one of these diplodocus’ and see if it’s like a “cow”.
(NB: If it was possible to milk dinosaurs you could make Tyrannosaurus Rex cheese and “pterodactyl butter” to put on your caveman toast).
“Legs or no legs, I’ve never seen such a mobile fireball…”
- Airforce guy speaking about legless Captain, Douglas Bader (Kenneth Moore) in the 1956 film, Reach for the Sky
There’s a scene where Bader is cheeky to a Nazi officer having been caught by the Krauts and interned in a Prisoner of War Camp. It’s all taken in good stride by his Nazi captors. Like the Great Escape, these were the days when being a prisoner of war was a laugh and no different from being Dennis the Menace in detention. If caught trying to escape or something the Nazis would simply call you a little rascal and send you to bed without any pudding. (Maybe you wouldn’t be allowed to join in PE the next day). There was a version of Reach for the Skies where, having made a quip about Germans and sausages, Bader was forced to dig his own grave and then shot in the head, but the studios vetoed it.
“If there's magic in boxing, it’s the magic of fighting battles beyond endurance, beyond cracked ribs, ruptured kidneys and detached retinas. It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.”
- Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris, Million Dollar baby.
In this film, female boxing wannabe Hilary Swank ends up getting paralysed, rotting bed-sores and tries to kill herself by biting out her tongue. Yeah, it’s real special having that dream no-one else can see. Wish I had a vision.
“I am going to have to turn this opportunity down.”
“No, you are going to have to turn this opportunity yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Fat cunt!”
“No, No, No!”
“Yes, Yes, Yes!”
- Don Logan, (Ben Kingsley) to Ray Winstone in the film Sexy Beast.
Ben Kinglsey is absolutely horrible in this film as Don Logan – a bullying tyrant who persuades retired gangster Ray Winstone to leave his home in Spain to perform “one last job”. Ben Kinglsey also played Gandhi in the 1982 epic bearing the same name, however in this film - a tribute to the mild-mannered lawyer - Ghandi adopts a policy of non-violent protest.
Don Logan took a week to persuade Winstone to leave Spain.
Gandhi took 10 years to persuade the British to leave India.
You work it out.
Ultimately the film isn’t all that, but Ben Kingsley does give an incredible performance as one of the most horrible, disgusting men I have ever seen. (In Sexy Beast). (Not Ghandi).
“Jesus. I got 'em all!”
- Dustin Hoffman, Straw Dogs
Film in which the cerebral Dustin Hoffman has to defend his home and woman from a bunch of deranged, giggling, cidered-up yokels. This film, combined with the Wicker Man, is part of the reason why I will never live in the countryside. There’s no police. There’s no law - and everyone wants to kill you. I’d much rather take my chances with the crack-addicts and junkies of the city. (One needs a subway or at least a motorway close by in order to sleep). You move to the countryside and it’s not long before you’ll be defending yourself with man-traps and heating up oil to throw into people’s faces. I don’t care what you say to me - I’ve seen it in two films now and it’s a fact. The country-side is horrible and they hate you if you come from the city or wear trainers or other modern clothes (like gloves or watches).
NB: There’s a scene where Hoffman gets cuckolded whilst out hunting ducks. Totally humiliating and made worse by the ambiguity of whether his wife enjoys it. (She’s kind of sort of raped but also runs her fingers through his hair). (Horrible).
“Some things in their natural state have the most vivid colours.”
- Willow, (Britt Ekland), The Wicker Man
Britt Ekland plays the voluptuous, strumpety type landlords’ daughter in this film about pagans and apples. In one scene, in a weird erotic display, Britt Ekland, the Landlord’s daughter, starts slapping a window-sill and looking at the camera. I mean she looks right at you. I’m not sure where to look? What’s she doing? Why is she slapping a window-sill? Is that sexy or not? A window-sill being punished? I mean, fair enough you’ve just seen her bottom, but why does she start transferring her energy to a window-sill? Is it some kind of home-furnishing sub-dom play? Can it be transferred to Combi boilers and carpet tacs? I bet you there’s an internet site devoted to radiators being whipped and fridges being spanked. And how horny would an MFI catalogue be in this context?
NB: It’s not actually Britt Ekland’s bottom you see. It’s a stunt bottom.
“There is a beauty beyond the senses, Nefretiri. Beauty like the quiet of green valleys and still waters. Beauty of the spirit that you cannot understand.”
- Charlton Heston, The Ten Commandments
Moses goes off on one.
“Win the crowd and you will win your freedom”
- Oliver Reed, Gladiator
In time, he would come to never forget those words that were whispered to him, “Win the crowd, win your freedom”. And so Michael Barrymore stepped into the Big Brother House…
“You think you're God Almighty, but you know what you are? You're a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin' mug! And I'm glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I'm glad what I done!”
- Marlon Brando to Johnny Friendly in On the Waterfront
In the film Last Tango in Paris Marlon Brando sticks a tub of butter up his arse.
Didn’t win him an Oscar.
“Your five years in solitary confinement are at an end. You’ve paid part of your debt to France.”%
- Prison guy to Steve McQueen in Papillon.
This film schlaps on a bit.
There was a Stella Artois advert recently that ripped off the Papillon “boat trip” in which all the prisoners are being transported off to a colony. Originally they tried the Greenhouse rape scene from the film Scum but the ending wasn’t as funny. (That’s why they decided to take a prison scene from Papillon instead, as I have just explained).
Other prison scenes they storyboarded but which didn’t quite say “Stella”:
The kid slashing his wrists in Scum (already done by Budweiser)
The sexual molestation by fat Turkish guard in Midnight Express (done by Budweiser in their “Wassup” campaign)
That bit when the girl shows one of her tits in Midnight Express (again – done in a Budweiser “wassup” campaign)
"Shoot the pederast", Sleepers - ("King of Beers" Campaign, Budweiser)
“Malfunction, need input.”
- Robot in Short Circuit
Film about a stupid robot that keeps saying, “Johnny Five is alive”. In the eighties that was endearing, but now we know he’s got less memory than an i-pod and a toaster’s got more manouverability.
“Foolish boy. Don't you know anything about Fantasia? It's the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.”
“But why is Fantasia dying, then?”
“Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.”
“What is the Nothing?”
“It's the emptiness that's left. It's like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.”
- The Never Ending Story
Film with an anti-bullying message. Locked in an attic with an old book, a kid finds empowerment in the fantasy world he is drawn into. On any lunchtime in the 80’s you could go into the library of any comprehensive and find the school’s geeks and defects standing near a bookshelf hoping to meet a man made of stones and a dragon to become friends with. Clearly it didn’t work. Although the idea of being who you are and not caring about what people think of you is sweet, it’s not really practical advice for any kid getting their head flushed down the toilet or being forced to take a leading role in a year 10 production of “Happy Slap – The Movie.” I'm not up with current trends in the education system, but telling kids to retreat into a fantasy world in the face of bullying is probably, I imagine, not held in high regard. Telling a child to imagine they are Nemo
whilst being urinated on is probably deemed counter-productive to solving a bullying problem, in the long run.
“Pass this to baby face…..I am baby face!….”
- Bloke who became Dexter Fletcher in Press Gang in the musical, Bugsy Malone
Bugsy Malone. I genuinely hand on heart will tell you that this is one of the greatest movies ever made. A few years back I came home from uni for half-term after having had a bad time. Things weren’t going so good and I wasn’t particularly looking forward to going back. One evening, a couple of days before going back, I flicked on the telly and caught the end of Bugsy Malone. The splurge fight had just finished and then Cagey Joe’s piano came in with a ghostly twang. Then the vocals slowly crept in:
“We could have been anything that we wanted to be…..and it’s not too late to change…..”
The music was slowly pulling my heart into a garden of spiritual revelation:
“No doubt about it …ba-dom-dom-ba-dom…..we’re the very best at being GOOD GUYS!…”
And then things kicked off into a turbo-charged, youth-filled revery of GLORY, OPTIMISM and HOPE. A magnificent chorus of youth untainted by all the crap that comes with becoming an “adult”. It was then in the electricity of my heart that I knew there is glory, there is love and there is a magnificent fuck it to everything. We CAN be anything that we want to be, it’s NOT too late to change.
And then when this lesson was learnt the most glorious coda comes in…
CHORUS OF BUGSY KIDS: You give a little love and it all comes back to you…na-na-na-na-na-na-na…..you know you’re gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do….
Sometimes it takes little kids dressed as gangsters - with slightly dubious make-up on - to remind us of that.
“Return the map!!…..Re-re-return the map!!……return what you have stolen from me!….”
- The Supreme Being, Time Bandits.
Back to the Future but with midgets. Terry Gilliam film me and my brother used to watch a lot. Got a good battle between an ancient Greek king and a man with a Boar’s head. Takes place in a desert. Sean Connery plays the Greek King. Still speaks with a Scottish accent. Also features a nasty ending, (which is good I think for a kid’s film). Also ends with a George Harrison song. George Harrison helped build a big Hare Krishna temple up in Letchmore Heath with massive grounds and a giant lake where me and my friend once broke into but they weren’t angry. A Hare Krishna let us play on their strange piano thing in their temple, and the Hare Krishna let one of their oxes lick my hand and I giggled and said, “It’s licking my hand!” Then he showed us how he milked a cow and where they let their goats sleep. We had a lovely day. Then we said goodbye to the Hare Krishna and went back through the railings.
This has nothing to do with Time Bandits.
“This is what we fought all night to get back to?”
- The Warriors
In this gritty urban nightscape, there are a load of street-gangs, one of whom has got to escape some fuck-up in New York and get back to their respective hood. Fighting their way home, every gang’s got their own little “gimmick” and “look” to distinguish them as different. There’s like “rollerskaters” and “baseball bat” gangs. The discerning film watcher will notice that amongst all these street-punks and hood-rats there’s one gang who are “mime artists”. This is stupid. The ability to squirt people with imaginary flowers or pretend you’re trapped behind a glass screen wouldn’t strike me as particularly effective in a combat situation. Whilst everyone else is cutting each other up with crow-bars and chains – the mime artitsts are in the background pretending they’ve got a heavy suitcase they can’t pick up or pretending to be stuck in a heavy gust of wind. Idiots. Who invited them to the grand gang meeting? They’re not even a real gang. Who invited the schmucks at the back pretending to be mime artists?
“Mind you die like a Kelly, son!”
- Mick Jagger’s mum, Ned Kelley.
How did someone who put a radiator on his head and subsequently got shot become an Australian national hero?
“Old Man. You home tonight? …You've got to admit - You ain't dealt me no cards in a long time. It's beginning to look like You got things fixed so I can't never win out. …Inside, outside…all of them rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Now just where am I supposed to fit in? Old Man, I gotta tell You. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it's beginning to get to me. When does it end? What do You got in mind for me? What do I do now?”
- Paul Newman talks to God in Cool Hand Luke
Seemingly having found his answer Paul Newman eats fifty eggs and becomes a hero. This strikes me as a strange revelation/dictate from God. Any God who advises a man to eat fifty boiled eggs has clearly had too much time to think on his own. Between the days of Samson in which he was bidden to destroy the Philistine temple, the days of Abraham in which he was bidden to sacrifice his son - and the days of Cool Hand Luke in which he was bidden to eat some eggs - clearly something has gone awry. Either bored, got a headache, or just rusty from a lack of inaction since the Biblical days – I would start to doubt any God whose mysterious plan is somehow bound up in you getting constipated.
NB: The film has some nice acoustic guitar in it and a famous scene of a prison warden saying, “What we have here is a failure of communication”, which isn’t really that good when you watch it, but I guess it had some kind of resonance to a bunch of hippies when they watched it back in the sixties.
ADDITIONAL NB: I reckon I could have taken Paul Newman on and eaten Cadbury’s Cream Eggs – sixty to his fifty. Bet you no-one would have called me a hero though.
“I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man…felt free.”
- Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, in The Shawshank Redemption
Two things I noticed in this film:
- When the governor opens Andy’s bible and finds he’s been hiding a miniature rock-hammer in it, the page it opens on is Exodus.
- Earlier on in the film Morgan Freeman says Andy’s bid to escape is a “shitty pipe dream”. Andy actually cruels through a pipe of shit to escape.
I defy anyone not to be moved by this film. When they meet together on the Pacific - that’s a pure fucking moment. I’d do time to have a moment like that. (I imagine the first night when Mr Big takes a shine to me things would change though).
Red’s voiceover provides such a beautiful, lyrical prose to this film. The whole thing makes you pine for such a beautiful, idyllic world that I’m sure never really existed. Like the idea of drinking beer on a roof like free men holds massive creedence amongst my small community of schmucks. Andy and the boys drinking on the roof is presented as a kind of tableu of this beautiful sun-kissed afternoon. Like the moment with the girls singing on the record within the quote, the film repeatedly punctuates its drabness with these moments of increased pitch, and intensity, and beauty, with Red’s voiceover grabbing your chest and pinning it to the images attached. Your heart is literally stitched to some of these visual images by a fantastic voiceover. Think of a Shredded Wheat. This criss-cross of image and voiceover provides a powerful meal to satisfy your spiritual hunger and keep the bleak, long night at bay. The perfect breakfast to start your day.
(I feel like I should talk a bit about Coco Pops now but increasingly I feel we’re moving away from the Shawshank Redemption. It would have been well cool if there was one scene in the Shawshank Redemption where one of the characters said, “How are your Coco Pops Andy?” and he just said, “Not bad.”).
“Jesus Christ, what happened?”
- Casper, (Justin Pierce) Kids
For me, this film really captured the exuberance of youth, of traipsing through the city and getting wasted, not a care for the future, just locked into that beautiful auto-pilot of youth where your feet take you on adventures and ideas become action in a split second. Nothing takes any effort at that age. Everything’s just an exciting bid to discover the city and get laid. And even though everyone dies of AIDS at the end of this film – I well wanted to live their life. (I don’t think I received the message properly).
NB: After watching this film I started referring to myself as “fucking dope” and wanted to be fifteen again. (I am fucking dope). Apparently the kid who played Casper killed himself a few years after. The kid who plays Telly was in a couple of Larry Clark movies post Kids, but to be honest, his voice is so bloody distinctive and he was cast in these same trailer trash/ hick type roles, so it wasn’t really clear whether he could do anything else. I wonder what he’s doing now? Whatever it is I bet it’s some dope-ass shit.
DOUBLE NB: Yes y’all.
“Spinning-bird-kick!”
- Chun Li, Street Fighter the Movie.
“Spinning-bird kick” ... “Yoga fire” ... “Har-yu-ken!”
God it must have been a highpoint when the treatment for this film landed on the script-writer’s desk.
“I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was virtue.”
“You're no different. You're no better.”
“I didn't say I was different or better. I'm not. Hell, I sympathize; I sympathize completely. Apathy is the solution. I mean, it's easier to lose yourself in drugs than it is to cope with life. It's easier to steal what you want than it is to earn it. It's easier to beat a child than it is to raise it. Hell, love costs: it takes effort and work.”
- Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman in film about a serial killer - Seven
The character John Doe played by Kevin Spacey is inspired in no short measure by Dante’s epic Terza Rima poem, The Divine Comedy. In the film “Hannibal”, Hannibal Lechter is also a great admirer of Dante’s verse. It seems that Dante is fast becoming the official poet laureate of serial killers and murderers, which I guess makes more sense than a serial killer being into limericks.
(…DANTE: “Through me you go to sorrow’s citadel:
Through me you go to the eternal pain”
NUTTY LIMERICK: “There once was a man from Kentucky
Who said golly gosh I’m so lucky…”
Makes much more sense.
“It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.”
- Buffalo Bill, The Silence of the Lambs
In this film Buffalo Bill makes costumes out of people’s skin. I’d hate for someone to make a pair of pants out of my skin. I bet you they’d make it out of my face too. If I got murdered that would probably be my luck too. Some fat, trucker murderer who cruises motorways makes a pair of underpants out of my face and wears them on long distance hauls. I can just see my face now as his pants, sandwiched between his sweaty leather seat. I’d be so pissed off. I couldn’t even begin to tell you as he began schlapping me around up to Leeds and Inverness and god knows where else he’d take me. This service station…that service station…god what a life…a pair of trucker’s pants…
“She'll be talking to me about something. Suddenly the words fade into silence. A cloud comes into her eyes and they go blank. She's somewhere else, away from me, someone I don't know. I call her, she doesn't even hear me. Then, with a long sigh, she's back. Looks at me brightly, doesn't even know she's been away, can't tell me where or when.”
- Vertigo
One of the best films ever. The music churns your heart. You realise you’ve been watching a scene for fifteen minutes in which there’s no dialogue – just Scotty following the girl – and it’s one of the best pieces of cinema you’ve ever seen. The city looks incredible and you wish the world was that beautiful. You wish that all men dressed like Scotty. You wish that department stores had well-dressed people who helped you. Everything in the fifties looks amazing. One of the greatest love stories ever. A man grieving for his love but not even able to tell or let on that he was in love. And his love not even being real. I’ve always thought it would be funny to go up to Scotty in the final church scene in which he is staring down at the brink of death and say, “Fancy a curry, Scotty?”
“Clear the ramp! Thirty seconds. God be with ya!”
- Saving Private Ryan
There are certain moments in history where if you had been placed in them you know with absolute concrete certainty what would have happened to you. I can say that in Saving Private Ryan I would have been one of the blokes who got shot in the face the moment he stepped off the boat. As the runway of the boat went down I probably would have managed to say, “Which way do we go? - but ultimately would have been shot in the face.
“You must have something? Hopes? Wishes? Dreams?”
“No, not even dreams”
- Brazil
Oh man what a film. Those little piggy masks. The dream sequences. When I first saw this film Gilliam had created such a maelstrom between fantasy and reality I thought that Sam Lowry had been rescued and escaped - even though the concrete facts of the film were telling me he had not. And then when it came back to him still in the torturer’s chair I was rushing with exhiliration when I clocked that he had “escaped” – in that he’d retreated into some complete mental fantasy world. What an ending! – to turn going mad into a victory! A bleak, tragic victory – but still a victory!
ADDITIONAL: This film features “Rene” from ‘Allo ‘Allo.
“I've had seven lovers in my life, three of which were one-night stands. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Perhaps you'd like to watch telly whilst I take a shower?”
- American Werewolf in London
Jenny Agutter shags bloke in shower. Best enjoyed when you’re thirteen. Doesn’t dissapoint when revisited as an adult. Other films where you can see Jennifer Agutter in the nude:
Walkabout.
Equus.
The Railway Children.
“Sweetheart, do you remember last night when you woke up, and you said "They're here.'?”
“Uh huh”
“Well, who did you mean?”
“The TV People.”
- Poltergeist
Kid eaten by tree, girl sucked into a television, scary clown under bed. This is good stuff.
Poltergeist - house built on ancient Indian burial ground.
Pet Cemetary – ancient Indian burial ground.
The Shining – I’m sure there’s some ancient Indian burial ground.
People – stop fucking with ancient Indian burial grounds!
“Honey I Shrunk the Kids” – ancient Indian burial ground…
“Chitty-chitty Bang Bang” – ancient Indian burial ground…. I could continue…?
“No sir, YOU are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker.”
- The Shining
I wish Jack Nicholson in the Shining was my dad.
“I want my cigarettes! I want my cigarettes!”
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
There are a few films where the ending is so beyond kick-ass it rattles your skeleton. Raging Bull is one, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is another. Whilst feeling your heart is a million feet high, filled with awesome grandeur of the film’s content, you can’t also but feel humbled and small in the knowledge that no matter what you do in life, no matter what you create, you will never commit anything to screen as brilliant as that. You won’t even come close. The acting. The humour. The script. The tragedy. The glory. The way Chief disappears into the darkness. The music of his ancestors playing him off to the freedom of soul he’s now found. Never forget that there are moments in cinema that are better than your life, and that you couldn’t get angry if people were to choose these moments over your life – if for example they had to make a choice. (It’s when they start choosing Cannonball Run over your life that you got to start to think about the way you’re living…)
“Daddy would you like some sausage…daddy would you like some sausage…”
“I'm the backwards man, the backwards man, I can run back as fast as you can.”
“Japan 4!”
- Tom Green, Freddie got Fingered
My sister and I love this film. Written, directed by and starring the comedian Tom Green you’ve gotta be into his whole spiel to like it. Part of the energy in his comedy is creating these short condensed images of pure adsurdity – yet which contain their own internal logic. Sort of. More often than not they’re fantastically surreal and beautiful little nuggets. Beautiful, visual poems. He manages to make, “I wanna eat chicken-burgers” one of the funniest lines you’ve ever heard. If you can track down his MTV shows do so. They’re pretty dated but there’s one sketch where he goes to an Elvis convention and pisses them off by doing a dance in which he scrapes his face across the floor, whilst wearing a crash helmet.. Also his version of “Canterbury Tales” is one of the best things I’ve ever seen – in which he walks through the streets of Minneapolis at night carrying a chicken carcass on a rope, wearing a dress and wailing with sun-cream smeared on his face. I’ve read the Canterbury Tales and that is the Canterbury Tales. TS Eliot spoke of the “objective correlative”, in which an image is created to embody and personify a more intangible, spiritual concept. Tom Green’s chicken-carrying woman is the embodiment of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
ADDITIONAL INFO: Tom Green has boned Drew Barrymore and has also made a documentary following the removal of his testicle following its subjugation to cancer. This is the "Tom Green Cancer Special" and I haven't seen it.
“Rise and shine, campers, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.”
“Rise and shine, campers, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.”
“Rise and shine, campers, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.”
- DJ in Groundhog Day
Imagine if events kept repeating themselves? Imagine if Bill Murray played a slightly caustic, jaded sarc-meister in every film he made?
“Daddy, you bastard, I’m through…”
- From the poem, “Daddy”, Gwyneth Paltrow, Syliva
Film about half-baked poet, Sylvia Plath.
“We never found anything on Jack... there's no record of him at all.”
“No, there wouldn't be, would there? And I've never spoken of him until now... Not to anyone... Not even your grandfather... A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets. But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me... in every way that a person can be saved. I don't even have a picture of him. He exists now... only in my memory.”
Fuck off.
(Quote from Titanic by the way).
Actually, you know what, I wanted to leave it at that but you’ve kind of got to address what the grandma’s saying here, and what the grandma has essentially said to her grand-daughter is: “I never loved your real grandfather….I was secretly in love with some stowaway that I boned on a cruise to America…I was a bit of a slag when I was younger…”
(“PS – I also boned someone on the Hindenburg and in the cockpit of the space shuttle Challenger – I was just mad for tragedy. When I was younger that was my thing. Wherever there was tragedy there I was, getting my beans. Here – come and give granny a kiss…”)
“I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation. It'll fight if it has to, but it's vulnerable out in the open. If it takes us over, then it has no more enemies, nobody left to kill it. And then it's won.”
- RJ MacReady, (Kurt Russel), The Thing
Film about a creature that changes shape and wants to kill everyone it comes into contact with. Being re-made starring Jodie Marsh.
“If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”
- John Hurt, 1984
Sorry John, they’re all at the chip shop.
“There's something I've been meaning to ask you for some time now.”
“What's that?”
“Can you cure me?”
“No. We can care for you, but we can't cure you.”
- John Hurt/Anthony Hopkins, The Elephant Man
The opening scene in which John Merrick’s mother gives birth has elephant imagery that makes me think she had sex with an elephant. In which case what do you expect?
“Madison, if you don't open this door, I'm going to break it down! All right, that's it!
[busts the door open to see Madison laying on the bathroom floor]”
“Why wouldn't you let me in?”
“I was... shy.”
“You were shy? After the cab, and the elevator, and on top of the refrigerator, you were shy?”
“I was shy.”
“[to himself] She was shy.
- Splash
Daryl Hannah plays a mermaid. In Splash III her family get dredged up in a tuna net.
ADDITIONAL: I once heard a rumour that Daryl Hannah has six fingers on one hand.
“Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the absolute carnage you are about to witness. Super Bowl, World Series - they don't know what pressure is. In this building, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?”
“Yeah, we got to kill the motherfuckers - we got to kill 'em!”
- Trading Places
There’s a scene where you see Jamie Lee Curtis’ breasts. About forty minutes into the film. When she’s taken him back to her flat. Just after she’s taken off her wig. Can’t miss it. (You’ll be able to pause it better if you got a DVD).
“My family they got shot down by D.E.A. officers because of a drug problem. I lived with the greatest guy on earth. He was a hitman, the best in town, but he died this morning. And if you don't help me, I'll be dead by tonight.”
- Natalie Portman, Leon
Even though in my heart I think I’d make a wicked hit-man, in my head I know I’d bump into shopping trolleys. Film features a young Natlie Portman and I definitely don’t fancy her.
“Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!”
- A Clockwork Orange
My dad tells me that during the seventies some football hooligans would dress up in boiler suits and bowler hates in imitation of Alex and the Droogs. MP’s at the time complained that impressionable youths were emulating the characters of the film and thus it shold be banned.
The film also features a scene where Alex murders a woman with a giant ceramic penis - although as I understand, football hooligans didn’t carry round ceramic penises - so that kind of undermines those censor-junkies who say people imitate what they see in films.
“They float Georgie, they all float, and when you’re down here you’ll float too!”
- Pennywise the Clown, “IT”. Horror type film based on Stephen King Novel.
In this scene Pennywise the scary clown appears through a drain in the kerb trying to persuade a boy to take a balloon. The boy stoops down to look at him peering through the grill. In the quote above he’s referring to a helium-filled balloon that floats - however it’s when I remember that he’s down in the sewers peering through a grill that I start to thinking maybe he’s talking about something else?
“There ain't no spiders here.”
“Look! There's a giant spider web over there in the corner.”
“Well yes, a spider web would reveal an arachnid presence.”
- Arachnophobia.
We had a French exchange student staying over at our house when we took him to see this. He run out of the cinema half way through cos he was scared of spiders, hid in the foyer, and in turn scared some of the other people. It’s okay though, we put him inside a giant glass and put him outside the cinema.
“You mean to say that you are a daughter of Eve?”
- The Chronicles of Narnia
Normally I have Fry’s Turkish Delight but at Christmas grandma gets posh turkish delight that looks like it’s covered in talcum powder. Apparently this film is a Christian parable. Does the Turkish Delight represent then the body and blood of Christ that is taken in communion? Take eat, this is my body? Cos if Jesus was made of Turkish Delight I don’t think I’d have been able to contain myself, and whilst he was giving the parable of the three seeds I would have been nibbling on his foot. When he was giving the parable of the stones I’d have been nibbling on his fingers. And by the time he got to the bit about the meek I think he’d have asked me to leave cos he wasn’t entirely happy with me being
his disciple.
“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when ever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you: digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning, full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.”
- Frith, Watership Down
Cartoon about refugee rabbits looking for a new home. Art Garfunkel writes the theme tune. Follow up planned where the rabbits are put in detention centres, told to fuck off to where they came from and then subsequently deported.
Film features a French seagull that says “piss off!” which has always struck me as somewhat out of place in a kids cartoon but a much prized moment none the less.
Apparently butchers at the time advertised the slogan: “You've read the book, you've seen the film, now eat the cast”.
Not bad marketing.
On a serious note, the death of Hazel the rabbit is one of the best on-screen deaths ever committed to screen. Seriously. That is the death of a rabbit full of days. Let us not forget the bravery and courage it took for those rabbits to abandon their warren.
“….I wanna “C” “O” “O” “L” …. “R” “I” “D” “E” “R”…!!..”
- Michelle Pfeiffer, Grease 2
Having two sisters means I now know every lyric from Grease II. Despite that I’m still tough as fuck.
Other trivia:
There is a scene where Michael Carrington is riding a motorbike and says the word “bollocks” when he falls off his bike.
Michael is derogatarily referred to as “Shakespeare” by the T-birds because he knows how to spell.
The film features a character called “The Mooch”.
When Michael “dies” he goes to Biker Heaven. In this heaven God is a big, fat trucker.
As a joke the headmistress refers to the T-birds as the “T-bones” and the head of the T-birds corrects her. This joke is used twelve times in the film.
It’s not as good as the first one.
"How much for the little girl? How much for the women?"
"What?"
"Your women. I want to buy your women. The little girl, your daughters... sell them to me. Sell me your children."
- The Blues Brothers
When I was eight we were invited round to Shahar’s for his birthday. They put the Blues Brothers on in the living room. The film was far too long for us to appreciate it but we were made to watch it. We just wanted to break one of Shahar’s presents, run round and knock stuff over, and give Darren a dead leg.
“I’m just a girl who can’t say no…”
- Oklahoma!
Film about the origins of trailer trash.
"Here he is folks - the Butcher of Bakersfield!"
- The Running Man
Film about a 1980’s dance where you’d slide your legs up and down to simulate running on the spot.
Features a fat man called “Dynamo” who sings opera before he kills you in his mini-tank that fires electricity.
“This sausage is moldy!”
“Shut up and drink your gin.”
- Fagin, Oliver
Musical based on original 19th Century chavs working for a pimp. In one rosey depiction of a bright, bustling marketplace, beautful women sell such ware and produce with lines like , “Who will buy my wonderful roses?” “Peaches – two for a penny”. A similar musical set in a modern marketplace would feature people selling stolen radios, copied DVDs that will only play the menu music - and a man with VHS’s of porn kept in a black sack.
The film features a song called. “Oom-pah-pah”. Not to be confused with the song “Oom pah!” in the cartoon, Tubby the Tuba. Lyrics:
TUBBY THE TUBA: First you take an Oom, then you take a Pah, put them both together you get Oom-pah-pah, Oom-pah-pah!
NANCY in OLIVER: Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah that’s how it goes….oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah everyone knows.
Nancy may rather off-handedly dismiss that “everyone knows”, although of course everyone wouldn’t know unless Tubby the Tuba had of course first explained it, reinforced by fifteen verses in a similar arrangement. And then reinforced it with a nother fifteen verses telling you first you takre an oom, then you take a pah. This is actually a good cartoon. I should have got a quote for that instead.
“SPppaArKy!”
- Piano from “Sparky’s magic piano”
Cartoon about a magic piano. In this film, Sparky has a magic piano that shows him where to put his fingers. The kid subsequently becomes a virtuoso and everyone wants to see him. Eventually it goes to his head and the piano decides to teach Sparky a lesson by not showing him where to put his fingers
in front of a massive auditorium. Sparky understands he has allowed himself to become big-headed and everything’s good again. Although learnt his lesson, I personally would have taken that piano, gutted out all its strings and then smashed the crap out of it in an alleyway. Don’t pull any fucking surprizes on me on stage I may have said.
This house is so full of people it makes me sick. When I grow up and get married, I'm living alone.
- Home Alone
In this film, the seven year old Macauley defends his home against intruders, (like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs, minus the cuckold/rape scene). There was a Cuckold Rape scene but Christmas market
In one scene Macauley Culkin puts aftershave on his face and then runs around cos it burns. This is the films’ “piece de la resistance” as it shows a child mimicking adult behaviour with hilarious consequences and was so strong, that it made it into the film’s trailer. This film works along the comic formula that if you get a child doing adult things it will have hilarious effects. Applying this formula, the funniest follow ups would be:
Macauly gets a mortgage
Macauly gets divorced.
Macualey loses some of his good humour and zeal.
Macauly pays his car tax.
Macauley goes into work every day and feels a little bit of his soul being lost forever.
Macauley learns how to change a tire.
Macauley takes a Rennie and has a sit down
"It's amazing, Molly. The love inside, you take it with you.
- Patrick Swayze, Ghost
Whatever. The film features that actor with the funny face like droopy the dog that they use whenever they need an actor with a funny face. Think he’s dead now. (You know - the guy who plays the ghost on the train? With the funny face? The dude with the funny face? The big droopy face? He’s in loads of stuff? Never a lead role? Only stuff where they need a dude with a funny face? You know? That actor with the funny face? Looks like miniature anchors have been attached to his eyes and cheeks? The dude with the funny face?
“What am I gonna be? Quasimodo in the belfry? What is this?”
“I want you to stay here for a while.”
“Where?”
“In the convent. It's the safest place in the world. You think Vince is gonna look for you in a convent?”
- Woopee Goldberg, Sister Act
Woopee Goldberg on a witness protection scheme gets hidden in a convent where her natural musical ability allows her to transform the amateur back-room choir into an international singing sensation. At one point the pope comes to one of their gigs and taps his foot. This is the funny bit of the film where you go, “Oh look – the pope’s at their gig and he’s tapping his foot…” - and that’s when you have to laugh.
“Just what is it you're looking for, sir?
"Lovebirds."
"Lovebirds, sir?"
"Yes. I understand there are different varieties. Is that true?"
"Oh yes, there are."
"Well, uh, these are for my sister, for her birthday, see, and uh, as she's only gonna be eleven, I, I wouldn't want a pair of birds that were... too demonstrative."
"I understand completely."
"At the same time, I wouldn't want them to be too aloof, either."
"No, of course not."
"Do you happen to have a pair of birds that are... just friendly?"
- The Birds
Film about some birds that wage war on an American town.
Just supposing that we did have to go to war with birds - do you reckon people like David Attenborough and Terry Nutkins from the Really Wild Show would have to be shot as collaborators? They’d be like the Lord Haw Haws of the Ornithology world? Telling us to acquiesce and compromise with the feathered invaders? There’s no way I’d submit to an army of soldiers that desrve to be in a bargain bucket. Fuck them. If they wanna bring it, bring it.
“What is this great evil? How did it steal into the world? From what seed, what root did it spring? Who's doing this? Who's killing us? Robbing us of light and life. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.”
- The Thin Red Line
The worst war movie I’ve ever seen. Terrible internal dialogues. Pointless cameos. The most lame-assed, poncey, weak-as-diluted lime-juice philosophies you’ve ever heard. By the time we saw slow motion shots of a slightly injured bird walking past a tree trunk to show us the horrors of wars the message had been lost. By the end of the film I wanted to go out and buy shares in the arms industry.
“Murder me! Murder me like you murdered my mother!”
- Dominique Swain, Lolita
I have a friend who winds me up by saying Humbert Humbert did nothing wrong. “You don’t understand Lee – she was a nymphet”, “Yeah but….”.
I’ve got some stuff I want to write about Jeremy Irons but probably best I don’t. Oh whatever - you just bloody know Jeremy Irons loved playing this. I mean, you look at the DVD interviews and it’s all like, “It was a very challenging having to perform some of these scenes with a young girl…”. Yeah whatever - you bloody loved it and you’re a dirty old fucker and it’s all over your face. Now you can sit there in your manicured theatre voice but basically you bloody loved it and you’d do it again if the chance arose.
"You think there's cocaine in that pool?"
"Might be."
What if we O.D.?"
We'll keep an eye on each other.
- Cocoon.
Film where you have to look at old men wearing swimming trunks. Too many memories of communal changing rooms as a child.
“Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry, and it's raining out!”
“…"Mother, she's just a stranger"! …As if men don't desire strangers! As if... ohh, I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me! You understand, boy? Go on, go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite with MY food... or my son! Or do I have tell her because you don't have the guts! Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?”
- Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and his mother in Psycho
My uncle and I pulled into a service station whilst schlapping back from some place up North. It was one of those horrible places that sell glue-pies and chips on plastic trays. Grey autumn light and empty afternoon. Empty. Then this middle-aged man came in with his mother. She was having a go at him. They sat down and she was calling him a “hateful man”… “stupid boy”… “weak”… “pathetic”. He was a big man but dressed wearing the clothes an inadequate person might wear. We were tired and we just quietly watched it, not speaking to each other. He sat there looking at his plate of beans and chips as she continued to say spiteful things to him. “look at you….you’re pathetic….a weak man….you’ll never be anything…”. As we left we knew another psycho had been made and that motorway service stations would be his forte. And that’s something that happened to me that I thought I’d share.
“Greetings. The Master Control Program has chosen you to serve your system on the Game Grid. Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training, which will result in your eventual elimination. Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the warrior elite of the MCP. You will each receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to obey commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That will be all.”
- Tron
Film about a man who gets sucked into a computer and is made to play tennis and wear a torch on his head..
“I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretaries that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move.”
- The Boiler Room
Film with the kid from Friends. There’s one scene where Ben Affleck says: “I am a fucking millionaire….Sounds strange huh? Believe me – it’s even stranger to say…. You Want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari, 355 Cabriolet….I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine. ….. Act as if….. You understand what that means? Act as if you are the fucking President of this firm. Act as if you got a 9 inch cock. Act as if. They say money can't buy happiness? Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.”
…And you just know he’s speaking from the heart.
Smug-arse.
Didn’t even have to act.
“You gotta have presence on the court. Presence like a cheetah rather than a chimp. Sure, they both got it, but Chimpy gotta jump his nuts around to get it. The shy cheetah moves with total nonchalance, stickin' it to them in his sexy, slow strut. Me? I play like a cheetah.”
- The Basketball Diaries
Leonardo DiCaprio plays basketball and takes some heroin – which probably explains why he thinks he’s playing basketball with the animals from Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
“Hello. My name is Lenord Lowe. It has been explained to me that I've been away for a long time.I'm back.”
- Robert De Niro, Awakenings
This is actually a really good film even though it’s got that whole made for TV, “house-wife” weepy feel about it. (The kind of films my mum watches in the afternoon on channel 5 where there’s always some kid dying or some kid saying something like, “Mummy – where has grandpa gone?”). It’s based on a book by Dr Oliver Sacks who also write the excellent, “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, which features a man who mistook his wife for a hat.
“If he had guts to knock Mom cold once, then maybe she'd be happy and then she'd stop picking on him. Because they make mush out of him! Just mush!”
- Rebel Without a Cause
James Dean wishes his dad would hit his mum, which has always struck me as a strange solution to his teenage angst. “If only dad would hit mum everything would be alright and I’d be able to concentrate on school!” “If dad would hit mum I’d really make a go of it this term”. “If only dad would hit mum then I reckon my grades would improve.”
This film features lines which are so clearly written by an adult trying to get into the mind of a teenage kid:
“I'll bet you'd go to a hanging.”
“I guess it's just my morbid personality”
and:
“If I had one day when I didn't have to be all confused and I didn't have to feel that I was ashamed of everything. If I felt that I belonged someplace. You know?”
Which is the same as when Shakespeare tries to write children and they all sound like thirty-eight year old men. Eg. from Macbeth
[Little Macbeth is stabbed]
SON: “Mother I am slain!”
“Maroon wanted to blackmail Acme. I didn't want to have anything to do with it, but he said that if I didn't pose for those pattycake pictures, Roger would never work in this town again. I couldn't let that happen. I'd do anything for my husband, Mr. Valiant. Anything.”
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Irritating film about a cartoon rabbit framed for a murder he didn’t commit. It’s a bit of a tired joke to wax on about how fit Jessica Rabbit is. In fact it’s a somewhat cliched territory to wax on about all other cartoon characters you’d like to have sex with - Wilma Flintstone, Betty Boop and Daffy Duck just being a few cartoon characters I would have liked to have had sex with.
“The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive”
- Private Joker, Full Metal Jacket
Private Pyle gets beaten by bars of soap and cries like a big baby. Then shoots himself like a big cry baby who can’t even take a joke.
“Honey, the house you drew for me...”
“Uh huh.”
“Where did you see it? Did you see it in your head? Is that why you drew it?”
“In my head?”
“Aidan, why did you draw that house?”
“Cause she told me to.”
“Who? Who told you to?”
“The little girl.”
She talks to you?”
“No, she shows me things.”
“Did she show you the horses?”
“She doesn't like it in the barn. The horses keep her up at night.”
“So she still lives there?”
"No, she lives in a dark place now.”
- The Ring
Film about a girl who lives in a bucket.
When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse manifests in that place of death. Anyone who encounters it is consumed by its fury.
- The Grudge
Film about a dead girl that scares people by making a croaking noise. The sound engineers originally tried it so that she farted at people but it wasn’t as scary.
“Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for”
- Michael Jackson singing in Ben
Film about a boy who gets chronically bullied and so becomes friends with some killer rats. By the end of the film we’re meant to sort of have a feel-good feeling about the film cos the boy has a real pal in this rat. But if you look at it dispassionately - here we’ve got a kid who’s sitting in a sewer talking to a rat. I think it’s safe to say the bullying’s got to him and that social services have failed miserably to intervene before things have got out of hand.
“The Leader wants them living. Some of them will be made into troops for battles with his enemy.”
“And the others?”
“In addition to the water... there is another basic shortage on our planet.”
“Food!”
- V
TV mini-series about Reptile Aliens that David Icke mistook for a documentary in the mould of 7-up.
Me and my brother used to watch this as kids. There’s one scene I remember when someone eats a mouse and another when a woman gives birth to a reptile baby. David Icke mistook this scene as a live news-feed of the coming of Christ the Second.
“Don't you forget about me…don't, don't, don't, don't…don't you forget about me…”
- Simple Minds, The Breakfast Club
Emilio Estevez gets detention for putting cellotape on another boy’s bottom. As a punishment I was once sent into the bottom set to experience life in a thick class. I had the best time of my life. The teacher didn’t care and clearly no-one had done any work for months. Most effort was put into thinking up new ways to throw stuff at one kid’s head. When the teacher tried to calm stuff down I was exhilirated at the bare-faced non-recognition of authority of one of the pupils quite frankly telling the teacher to fuck off – and then refusing to leave the classroom when told to get out. I mean this was great stuff. These are the people you want to send out to fight wars!
“Sgt. Mulcahy!”
“Sir!”
"I have no doubt you a fair man, Mulcahy. I wonder if you are treating the men a little hard.”
[Sgt. Mulcahy pauses]
"You may speak freely.”
"The boy is a friend of yours, is he?”
Yes, we grew up together “
“Let him grow up some more.”
- Glory (Film about the formation of a black regiment in the American Civil War)
Does anyone else know this film? Me and my brother know every line from this, having watched it so much as kids. The film makes getting blown up, shot with cannons and then dying in a pit with your friends well beautiful. (Although apparently there’s less rousing music and slow motion shots in real life. And you don’t hear voiceovers of narrators saying cool things as you go into battle). Forgive me for saying this - but embossed inside me there’s something really romantic about the American civil war. It’s just the way it’s depicted – everyone’s just fighting in these beautiful meadows…or shooting over makeshift fences next to idyllic farm-houses. Fuck urban warfare. I want to fight in a Constable painting.
“O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.”
- Mark Antony, (Marlon Brando) Julius Caesar
Marlon Brando plays Caesar’s loyal avanger in this kick-arse Roman epic. When Marlon Brando does his bit to camera vowing for revenge – I’m telling you – that is something special. And when he incites the crowd against the corruptors of Rome - I’m telling you - I feel like going out and smashing up a pizza parlour, or smashing down the pasta shelves at Sainsbury’s.
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
- Richard Dreyfus as the writer/narrator in Stand By Me
I wanted to write something really funny and cynical about this – but that is a pretty cool age to be.
Hang on, let me give it another go:
“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
Yeah well it’s pretty lame if you’re entering your thirties and….ahh…..i can’t do it….i got a months rent to pay and a mobile phone bill to settle out…who am I trying to kid…
Maybe I’ll do something about American Graffitti and then I can cuss Richard Dreyfus in that.
“I love you, Daddy Warbucks.”
- Annie
Film about a small orphan dressed as Ronald McDonald.
“I love you daddy, Warbucks.”
I have a belief that if you say this to enough millionaires one of them will take you in and let you live in their big mansion. After a few weeks, when they realise you’re taking the piss and just lying on the couch, drinking tango through a straw and watching videos, you just have to say, “I love you daddy, Warbucks” with big eyes, and they’ll let you stay for another couple of weeks, before you have to do it again. “I love you daddy, Warbucks” are the magic words to make millionaires like you, and I reckon you could take the piss for a few months before they kick you out – but that’s okay – by then you and your mates would have nicked enough stuff from their house and have enough nintendo games.
“It must be tremendously interesting to be a schoolmaster, to watch boys grow up and help them along; to see their characters develop and what they become when they leave school and the world gets hold of them. I don't see how you could ever get old in a world that's always young.”
- Bird that marries Mr Chips in, Goodbye Mr Chips
You know what? This is a bloody good film. Robert Donat won an Oscar for his portrayal of eccentrically, scatter-brained school-master, Mr Chipping – affectionately referred to as Mr Chips. Not to be confused with Mr Chips from Catchphrase, who was modelled on a small dustbin.
Mr Chips’ dying lines read:
“I thought I heard you saying it was a pity... pity I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them... and all boys.”
In the context of the film this is an incredibly moving line. Taken out of context it sounds terrible and would make people want to piss on his gravestone. If you knew what Mr Chips was really like you know that’d be a terrible thing to do. No-one deserves to piss on Mr Chips’ gravestone. He was a lovely man and definitely, definitely wouldn’t deserve to be the victim of a hate crime.
“Why us? Why does it have to be us?”
“Because we're here, lad.”
- Captain bloke to scared soldier kid in Zulu.
My uncle is obsessed with this film. I mean like seriously. I don’t even think he likes other films and doesn’t really understand the point of them. When watching the film I always think that the soldiers should get a load of glass and smash it on the grass so the Zulus cut their feet. This is when I realise I’d never be good in the army – tactics from the Beano probably don’t really work in real life.
“Sergeant Major! Take my horse. Ride to Natal. Tell the Bishop; that is, tell his daughter, that I was obliged to remain at Isandlawahna with the infantry. Go with God.”
“I go because you order me; but I leave God here to help you.”
- Zulu Dawn
Counter-attack from the zulus makes it one all on aggregate.
“What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust? A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams... FOR WHAT? So you can swim and dance and play.”
- The Time Machine (1960)
George has a go at future generations for letting all man’s achievements wither away leaving a dystopian world of grinning idiots and schmucks who can’t do anything for themselves. Could you imagine what he’d do if he saw Nuts magazine and FHM?
This is such a cool film. George invented a time machine using a clock, an old bicycle tire and an umbrella. Emmet Brown developed the Flux Capacitor in Back to the Future thus enabling time machines not only to move backwards and forwards in time, but to also move backwards and forwards on a spatial level within the primary 1st, 2nd and 3rd dimensions. Although he didn’t invent a drinks holder.
“What’s your pleasure, Meester Cotton?”
“The box.”
- Hellraiser
Film about an evil Rubix Cube. Featured a character with nails in his head who seemed to represent the worst kind of DIY misadventure possible – or possibly a self-imposed accident bourne out of frustration at failure to complete a Rubix Cube. I once had a Rubix Cube that I dropped over the side of a bridge on the A41. It fell into undergrowth and I couldn’t find it. Eighteen years later I still glance across to the patch of grass whenever I walk past. I know it’s not there.
Recently, having found a Rubix Cube in a jumble sell, I found myself unable to match all the coloured squares. Although I don’t wish to compare it to the plight of the characters in Hellraiser – one of whom has his face ripped apart by fish-hooks – it is frustrating.
"One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach, all the damn vampires."
- The Lost Boys
Features a scene where Michael’s chinese turns to maggots and worms and all the vampires laugh and have a hoot at their practical joke. Scenes they edited out included the vampires putting a woopee cushion under Michael’s seat, and Val Kilmer insisting that one of the vampires, “pull his finger”.
Film features “the Frog brothers” - two brothers who learn how to exorcise demons and kill vampires from comic books. This actually has a strong basis in fact and if you look closely in the Exorcist the priest isn’t reading from Catholic liturgy but is actually reading from a copy of Beezer- the little girl’s exhortations of “Fuck me Jesus!” being retorted with Latin readings of Corky the Cat and Lord Snooty.
“Free your mind.”
[Morpheus jumps from one building to another a long distance away]
“Whoa.”
- The Matrix
What I like most about this film, (which I don’t by the way), is the way that a “Rage Against the Machine Song” comes in at the end. Go on Rage – stick it to the system.
NB: Will you please look at the script above and acknowlegde that this film is shit?
“You don't look hip”
- Taxi Driver
The first time I saw Taxi Driver I’d gone to visit my brother up in Middlesborough. We and a few people had gone out and then come back. Everyone went to bed. I woke up about four am a bit tired, drunk and hollow-eyed. I went and sat in the living room and put in a film. It was Taxi Driver. I’d never seen anything like it. This fucking horrific cathartic ending. Shot in the most emaciated, desaturated of colours. I’d never met anyone like Travis on a TV screen before even though I felt like I knew him. The film finished and then I was sitting in this living room at five am. The birds were sort of singing outside. Then I noticed - I was wearing a green army jacket….
I had shed a skin and a new person had evolved that morning. Most twenty-something males should be able to define their lives as “pre-Taxi Driver” and “post-Taxi Driver”. I’m not sure which is the better one to be.
"There was a boy, a very strange enchanted boy..."
- Moulin Rouge
My mum and sisters like this film. I can’t be bothered to watch it, although when I hear from the living room the sound of Ewan MacGregor singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” I imagine it was just what Kurt Cobain had in mind when he started his Grunge revolution all those years ago…
“I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou.”
- Fargo, Frances McDormand/ Marge Gunderson
When I first saw this film I hated it. I couldn’t get over the “surface level” humour of all the characters saying “Yah” the whole time and it grated on me. Now I rightly regard this film as the work of brilliance it is. The frustrated lives. The beautiful celebration of the small things that make up massive significance when collated in your soul. The quiet downbeat love between Marge and Norm.
The Japanese guy who meets Marge and starts telling her how lonely he is. Norm getting second place in that stamp competition. A truly great film doesn’t just give you incredible characters, it creates a whole world, a geography, a landscape and a vernacular that is of that place. Now I love it when they say yah and it feels homely and familiar, like I’m a resident myself.
“The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got 48 hours off from the world man. I'm gonna blow steam out of my head like a screaming kettle.”
- Human Traffic
The absolute worst film ever made. It is the worst of angsty-type, teenagers into adult-hood, “where do I fit in” sort of films, all set in a 1990’s rave backdrop that no doubt had a shelf life of five minutes. There is a scene where the main character stands up and sort of says something like, “Oh god…why can’t they make a national anthem that we can relate to as kids who live in E-culture….” and then he proceeds to sing to the camera the national anthem with lyrics about “why can’t people just not have jobs and be given Ectasy tablets at post-offices?” That’s pretty much how the film continues. Sub grange hill crap. From start to finish. Throwing my two pennies worth into the “definition of terrorism” debate - I would like to include Human Traffic as a piece of terrorism - refer it to the UN Security Council - and subsequently have all funding witheld from those connected in any way shape or form with the film.
The only people I’ve ever met who thought this film was - and I quote - “The best film I’ve ever seen”... “like watching my life on the screen” - were Martin Kapotchnik and Andrew Deansprick*, two cretinous schmucks who spent sixth form drowning their minds in E’s and skunk. They were last seen opening their A-level results to D’s muttering something about National Anthems they could relate to.
(*Names have been changed to protect their identities carrying bags of manure to customers at garden centres)
Quote from film:
“We risk sanity for moments of temporary enlightenment. So many ideas. So little memory. The last thought killed by anticipation of the next. We embrace an overwhelming feeling of love. We flow in unison. We're together. I wish this was real.”
Shut up, pill-head.
"Choose life..."
- Trainspotting
Film that intended to show the gritty, real side of heroin abuse by having the sexiest of UK actors and the coolest soundtrack in years, including the number one hit single that stayed in the charts for 16 weeks, Born Slippy by Underworld.
"My brother wouldn't touch your titties with a ten foot pole. He likes his women bad, Lenora, not cheap.
- Cry Baby
Johnny Depp plays a 1950’s badboy “drape” who sheds one tear every day in honour of his father who died at the electric chair. If Johnny Depp was really being true to honouring his father’s memory he would piss himself and shake around on the floor, although this would undermine Johnny Depp’s cool character, and he would look stupid when he was on stage playing guitar, (I mean, even the Sex Pistols didn’t piss all over themselves…)
The film has a woman called “Hatchet face” who is ugly and features Iggy Pop taking a bath in a tin can. The film also features Ricki Lake who says a really funny line that she delivers really well, “Oh Grandma, I’m so happy, all knocked up and pregnant”, but you’ll just have to trust me that she says it really well.
“You got to pray…pray…you got to pray just to make it today….”
- MC Hammer in, “Please Hammer, Don’t hurt ‘em”
MC Hammer cleans up the streets by dancing in big trousers. You have to remember of course this was the eighties and this was sufficient to talk people out of gang warfare and using crystal meth. Nowadays people would still watch him dance but then they would machine gun him through the head cos they’re not sure what he’s doing and they have to make sure he’s not a threat. That is of course if he isn’t sectioned for walking downtown Compton and dancing manically in people’s faces.
In the film, Hammer also plays the Reverend Pressue. In one extended scene, Hammer (Reverend Pressure) says, “….pressure….pressure…..Reeeeverand Pressure!!” repeatedly, very loudly - because that’s what a character in a film does – he says his name very loudly lots of times and that means you’ve got a character. You have to repeat your name very loudly so the viewers will know that you’re “reverand Pressure”, and they will acknowledge that you are a character and it’s a good film.
In 1991 Vanilla Ice brought out his reply to Hammers, Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘em with his film “Cool as Ice”. The plot outline on the IMDB website reads: “A rap oriented re-make of "Rebel Without a Cause," with heavy emphasis on the fact that rap star Vanilla Ice has assumed the James Dean role.”
I can quite confidently say that had Vanilla Ice died in a tragic automobile accident, there would be no posters of his face on people’s walls.
Vanilla plays a “bad-ass” called John Van Owen who comes into town one day. Here is an example of John Van Owen being a bad-ass taken from the film:
John Van Owen: [walking away] See ya later, dick...
Nick: [offended] It's nick.
John Van Owen: [turns around for a second] Oh yea, yea... NICK...
Jesus. I’d like to say this was a different time but it really wasn’t – this was crap then too.
“All of life is a coming home. Salesmen, secretaries, coal miners, beekeepers, sword swallowers, all of us. All the restless hearts of the world, all trying to find a way home. It's hard to describe what I felt like then. Picture yourself walking for days in the driving snow; you don't even know you're walking in circles. The heaviness of your legs in the drifts, your shouts disappearing into the wind. How small you can feel, and how far away home can be.”
- Robin Williams, Patch Adams
Robin Williams switches his dial to endearing, life-affirming, heart-warming, teary smile mode and turns in another performance as an endearing life-affirming bastard with a sickly sweet feeling in your throat. In a way it’s like being groped. “Okay Robin…today I want you to give a big smile to the camera with pale watery tears in your eyes that bespeak the sadness yet beauty of life?…..you think you can do that?” “You got it.” “And then after that I wanna do a scene where you bounce around to show us that we musn’t take life too seriously to intimate that life is just an illusion?”. “You got it”. “Okay cool….let’s bring out a person with cancer for Robin to patronise please…” [old lady is wheeled onto set]
“Why are you doing this to me, Joe? Every time I talk myself out of it, you come around and make it sound so easy.”
“I guess I don't want to give up on you.
- Bend it Like Beckham
Feature-length version of Grange Hill. Seriously – imagine an episode of Grange Hill spread out for five hours – except with less convincing acting – and you come vaguely close to what this film is about. Has the audacity to end with one of those song/credit things - where the cast and crew sing lines from a song and have a right old laugh – as if we’ve all been on some great adventure with this gang and know them so well. We haven’t. We’ve been subjected to five hours of Grange Hill. The whole thing’s ridiculous anyway - one crunching tackle would snap Keira Knightly in half.
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM FACT: Keira Knightly puts in a performance only less wooden than Pinocchio’s.
ADDITIONAL: The Director famously got angry and started yelling at Kiera Knightley after she failed to respond to the director’s calls for “Action”, only for the director to realise she’d been talking to a goal-post
"Father, what are you crying for?
"Because you're dead, Pinocchio.
"No! No, I'm not.
"Yes. Yes, you are. Lie down."
- Pinocchio
Featured the grasshopper “Jimminy Cricket”. Not to be confused with “Jimmy Cricket”, children’s entertainer from my youth whose gimmick was that he wore his shoes on the wrong feet. That’s what children want – an entertainer who wears his shoes on the wrong feet and then brings attention to the fact that he’s got his shoes on the wrong feet repeatedly throughout the performance. That’s what kids find entertaining. I once saw Jimmy Cricket perform live at a theatre in Hastings. He did his “shoes on the wrong feet” gag twelve times. By the end of the show some of the kids were crying, and I distinctly remember one kid shouting, “Fuck off, Jimmy”.
Anyway, in Pinocchio, “Jimminy Cricket” represents Pinocchio’s consciense. I like the idea that after years of philosophy, from Nietsche to Hegel - trying to define what constitutes the moral nature of man - what is our conscience - Disney decides that it is a Grasshopper that comes when you whistle. And not only that - he’s a tramp – a tramp grasshopper that wears a crooked top hat and trousers with holes in them.
The film also plagiarises the Bible’s story of Jonah, which features a big whale that swallows a man. In the Bible Jonah is eventually spat out of the whale, however Pinocchio and Geppetto instigate their escape by starting a small fire near his lower intestines.
It also features a song with the lyircs, “Hey didderly-dee – an actor’s life for me”, which I imagine Tom Cruise sings whilst prancing around his mansion in his little pants, (although I wish in no way to compare him to Pinocchio – either for his wooden performances or his stature. Tom Cruise is in no way like a little Pinocchio. Let’s make that clear – when I say Tom Cruise – don’t think of Pinocchio in your head – and certainly don’t think of Tom Cruise in his mansion wearing pants and in front of a mirror saying, “I want to be a real boy”).
"Yes."
- Got it yet? Got the quote? Let's try again...
"Yes."
No?
Well apparently it's Morgan Freeman from Driving Miss Daisy. This is my brother,
Steven's, big
"impression" that he expects people to get. He says the word "Yes", and apparently
people have to guess that it's Morgan Freeman.
Steven is currently travelling around the far East no doubt harrassing good Korean people who are just
trying to get on with a day's work by forcing them to listen to his impression of Morgan Freeman
and not leaving them alone even when getting tearful.
What makes it worse is i've never even seen the bloody film and i'm sure neither have they - but he will insist to them that they should know it.
“You'll not kill him, but you throw him into the slop pool to be drowned and eaten by crabs.”
“Then let the crabs be cursed by Odin. That's my decision.”
- The Vikings
Another film me and my brother used to love as kids. Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis play Vikings. Features a song that went, “…the Vikings…the Vikings….na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na…….the Vikings……the Vikings….na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na….”.
The film was fairly simplistic in its scope.
“I’m the bad guy? How did that happen?”
- Falling Down
Michael Douglas smashes up a sweet-shop cos they don’t have any Space Raiders.
“Awful tired now, boss”
- The Green Mile
Absolutely awful film that shamefully tried to cash in on that whole look and vibe you got in The Shawshank Redemption. The film featured an absolutely giant man on death row, who was in actual fact very gentle and had midges fly out of his mouth whenever something bad happens.
It features a scene where – unsolicited - he cures Tom Hanks of a problem with his prostate by holding his penis. It’s right there, (in my mind), that the gentle giant’s protestations that he was innocent of indecent assault on the outside, fall down.
“Tora! Tora! Tora!”
- Tora Tora Tora
What the Japanese used to say before attacking as Kamikaze pilots. Also the reply you’d get if you said to a rabbi: “Rabbi - what’s it all about?”
We once made a rabbi cry in Hebrew classes, but I don’t want to talk about it.
“These things are good: ice cream and cake, a ride on a harley, seeing monkeys in the trees, the rain on my tongue, and the sun shining on my face. These things are a drag: dust in my hair, holes in my shoes, no money in my pocket, and the sun, shining on my face.”
- Poem by Rocky Dennis in the 1985 film, Mask
Check this out – the person who plays Rocky, (the kid with facial deformity), is played by Eric Stoltz! I never knew that! (Cher plays his mum). Quite a good film, although it’s got a bit of a TV feel to it. Laura Dern plays a blind girl who likes horses. Rocky teaches her to “see” colours by giving her pebbles to hold at a variety of different temperatures. Nonsense of course but an endearing moment none the less.
“Shut up! It's Daddy, you shithead! Where's my bourbon?”
- Blue Velvet
I mean seriously. Bloody hell. That scene with the gas-mask and Dennis hopper? I mean seriously. These sort of films should have bloody warnings on them:“DO NOT WATCH IN THE SAME ROOM AS YOUR MOTHER”. There is absolutely nothing that can be said to lessen the awkwardness that will ensue. There is no conversational pot pourri that can mask the painful stench of awkwardness that will ensue. It’s impossible. They should have something called The Blue Velvet Challenge, where a group of people have to watch it in the same room as their mothers and the last person to remain wins. What they will win I don’t know cos they’ll be searching for some kind of disinfectant of their soul for weeks.
Stay well away from anyone who has Blue Velvet as one of their favourite films on their Shooters Card.
Just politely decline any collaboration.
Tell them some other work came up.
Leave it at that.
Don’t get drawn into an extended conversation.
"You are a better man than I Ganga Din"
- Ganga Din
Rudyard Kipling poem made into a film. It’s about some Indian guy during the days of British control over India, and he’s totally obsessed by the British soldiers and their red tunics and wants to be one – kind of like Sandy and the Pink Ladies or the kid who wants to be a T-bird in Grease Two – it’s all about getting the jacket. He hangs around the soliders and does work for them like a skivvy, kind of like a figure of fun, practising his marching during his free time. Anyway, one day, when the crunch is getting down to the crunch, the British are about to be majorly ambushed and it is Ganga Din who manages to heroically raise the warning and save the day. To be honest I was about ten years old when I saw it and I can’t remember much except I sort of remember Ganga Din managing to get up on a tower to blow a trumpet in order to warn the troops and he gets the crap blown out of him, kind of machine-gunned to death. Standing over his grave the British soldiers acknowledge this loveable buffoon’s act of heroism and say the famous line, “You are a better man than I, Ganga Din.”
They then go off for some tea and some biscuits.
It’s only retrospectively thinking about the film that I can see that Ganga Din was a collaborating traitor who sold his people out all because he wanted a red jacket.
“You are the navigator”
- Flight of the navigator
Kid flies around earth in spaceship singing songs by the Beach Boys. Along the way he teaches an alien about love and what “tears” are. I’m so sick of fims that teach robots what “love” is or what “tears” are. I suppose people writing the films think this is a really cool way to comment on the human condition – by explaining emotions to robots. Or aliens like in ET. Why do we always have to explain ourselves to aliens and robots? What’s it to them? Who the fuck are they?
“It is accomplished.”
- Jesus, The Passion of the Christ
Everyone was going on at the time about whether or not this film was anti-semitic….and to be honest it was so boring I didn’t care…after the first hour and a half I just wanted to grab a hammer and some nails and just nail him up already….
As a Jew I guess that’s not the kind of thing I should be saying.
I think I must have gone to see this film and been sitting next to a group of evangelical Christians cos there was a woman who was crying next to me throughout the entire film, and every time Jesus got whipped she let out a little shriek followed by a, “Halleluya! Thank you Jesus!” Every time he got whipped she said, “Thank you Jesus”. In the end I felt like explaining to her that it wasn’t a documentary and that wasn’t actually Jesus up there. After some deliberation of how to go about it I came to a conclusion and just said, “Shut up.”
FINAL NOTES: Totally predictable ending. Also thought there were too many apostles. Could have done with dropping a few. Maybe Mark or Peter.
NB: I got into this film free cos someone who worked there let me sneak in for free. Jesus would have been well pissed off. One nil to Lee…
“You remind me of the babe.”
“What babe?”
“The babe with the power.”
“What power?”
“The power of voodoo.”
“Who do?”
“You do.”
“What?
“Remind me of the babe.”
- labyrinth
David Bowie stars in a feature length version of Sesame Street. The film features an eccentric “fox”, a goblin called “Hoggle”, and a brain damaged man made of rocks. I’ve never understood this man made of rocks thing. There’s one in the Neverending Story too. They’re both stupid. I guess this sort of reflects a theoretical reality cos if you were made of rocks your brain would basically be made of a pebble and clearly you’d be an idiot.
"Can I trust you?"
- Casino
Do you wanna know the bit that makes me think Scorsese is the fucking bollocks? It’s when De niro first sees Sharon Stone, (Ginger). He sees her in the CCTV cameras of his Casino. Remember? When she throws all those chips up in the air? And all that music comes in? So from the very first moment he sees her he is already spying on her – completely in keeping with the rampant jealousy and control freak behaviour that comes to define their relationship. That in essence is the difference between Scorcese and a lightweight – camera tricks and techniques not being used just for the sake of it – but because they actually synchronise in some way with the plot, the action, the characters, the energy. It’s about synergy.
Gangs of New York was shit though and so was everything from Bringing out the Dead onwards.
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