Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (also known as Oswald the Rabbit or Oswald Rabbit) is an anthropomorphic cartoon rabbit created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Universal Pictures. He starred in several animated short films released from 1927 to 1938. Walt Disney Studio produced a total of 27 animated Oswald one-reelers. After Universal removed Disney Studio from the Oswald series, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse as an obvious substitute.

What fascism means to me

1968. I went to Sarasota Junior High School, which was basically The Lord of the Flies with lockers. I'm a scrawny, brainy, nerdy, big-mouth, 7th-grade weirdo. Walking down the halls. Look over at the bike rack. A beefy 8th-grader is fucking with my bike, trying to kick the lock off.

I'm pissed. So pissed, I forget the other his size and weight advantage. Just blindly run up to him.

"Hey! Stop trying to steal my bike!"

Gut punch. Then he slaps me down to the ground, and sticks his foot on my face. Pins me. Says calmly ...

"I wasn't trying to steal your bike."

"I saw you!"

I writhe, but I can't get up.

"No, you didn't. You're lying."

He pushed his foot harder. Tennis shoe. Dirty. Stinks.

"Stop lying."

"You were ..."

"Admit you're lying."

"No! You! I saw ..."

He ground his fucking dirty foot in my face.
"I'm ..."

"Tell the truth."

"Stop!"

He pressed down. Dirt, stink, weight.

"Say, 'I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar.'"

"No."

Harder. About to snap my jaw.

"Say, 'I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar.'"

"I'm a liar. I'm a shitty little liar."

He smiled and let me go.

That's what fascism means to me.

Joker, Smoker, Midnight Toker

This is a movie about a damaged person's descent into the abyss. It shares DNA with Notes from Underground and A Clockwork Orange.

Joker makes A Clockwork Orange look like Singing in the Rain.

The screenplay ripped-off owes a huge debt to Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke. It also bends a knee to Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver. This Joker is pretty much Travis Bickel in clown makeup.

That’s ironic. White, black, it's doesn't matter. (At least in Todd Phillips' fictional universe.) He bends over backwards to make sure it doesn't matter.

(To be fair, the original Joker was the ultimate white guy.)

Christopher Nolan’s movie got it right. His Joker was a nihilistic motherf**ker. His backstory kept changing. “Wanna know how I got these scars?” Whatever he told you was bullshit. There’s no rational explanation for the Joker — and that's the best explanation.

Paul McCartney wrote a song about a roller coaster. The title of the song was "Helter Skelter." Charlie Manson took it as a coded message to start a race war. Which just goes to show there's no accounting for crazy people. 

Aside from that one big flaw, there are also several minor flaws. 

• Bruce Wayne’s dad is a pudgy guy in his early 50s. Batman’s dad should look like Batman’s dad, goddamnit.

• Phllips’ Joker isn’t funny. Damaged or not, he should be funny — even if only in his own mind. I'd put in a hallucinatory scene where he was metaphorically killing the audience at the Pogo — then quickly flash to the reality where he bombed.

• The Joker character should fight to be normal. And fight to be funny. I'd put in a scene where he's reading a how-to book on stand-up comedy. "The secret of stand-up comedy? RELATING TO THE AUDIENCE. They have to care about you, and you have to care about them! Love works—hate works too! Either way, you gotta make a connection!"

• The film sets you up to feel sorry for the Joker. I don’t want to feel sorry for the Joker. But f**k my feelings — it's dishonest. Society's what drove him crazy, I tells ya. Society is the real Joker. 

• The Joker’s loser persona is bad psychology.

Yes, mass murderers and serial killers are often losers. But many come off like kings who’ve been cheated of their thrones. They’re charismatic, often handsome. Look at Charlie Manson. Look at Ted Bundy. These cats don’t have a self-image problem. They think they’re better than everybody else. The world doesn’t see it that way. That gives them a license to kill.

• Phillips' Joker never decides to be the Joker. He never takes a conscious step into the dark side. 

I’m prejudiced in favor of free will. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re all meat robots. I can’t ignore the possibility.

• There's no fall from grace. (The movie tries to cheat this storypoint with blahblah about being off his meds and finding out he was adopted. It's a cheat.) This Joker is all Hyde and no Jekyll. The portrayal echoes Stephen King's criticism of Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining. The character starts out crazy. There's no place to go. 

Dick Tales

More to it than that. PKD had a mystical experience in which the metaphysical source code unfolded. His "Exegesis" of that epiphany ran X typewritten pages.

But this worldview saturates Dick's writing. The fake half-world of Ubik. Jory, feeding on souls with the grinding teeth of a sheep. The entropic kipple of his original "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" The fakes, simulacra, knockoffs, masks and cheap copies running through EVERY novel like the details of a massive Ponzi scheme. 

Gnosticism is the ultimate conspiracy theory. We're living in a fake reality. It's not the "Maya" of Hinduism. This ain't no illusion—it's a deliberate deception. A con. The store where you milk the rubes. The sheep pen where you convinve the trusting little bleaters you're the "Good Shepherd" until the day comes when you cut their throats, chop them to bits, roast and eat them, with a little mint jelly.

This isn't the Borges airless NeoPlatonism. Dick's devils sink their teeth in you. We're living in a hell realm. Cannibalism is the rule. Or its polite disguise: exploitation.

But a good screenwriter is never a passive conduit.

Decartes said reality can't be a dream. 


Because God (by definition) is good and he wouldn't f*** with us, QED. Gnosticism says "The entity you call 'God' is a pretender. He isn't good. And he's definitely f***ing with us."

Decartes said reality can't be a dream. 


Because God (by definition) is good and he wouldn't f*** with us, QED. Gnosticism says "The entity you call 'God' is a pretender. He isn't good. And he's definitely f***ing with us."

Finnegans Fall

After discussing the, er, erection of Finnegan's undeniably phallic Tower of Babel-esque skyscraper in the dawn of protohistory, the narrator explains why Finnegan fell --

Heed! Heed ! It may half been a missfired brick, as some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back promises, as others looked at it. (There extand by now one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same). But so sore did abe ite ivvy’s holired abbles, (what with the wallhall’s horrors of rollsrights, carhacks, stonengens, kisstvanes, tramtrees, fargobawlers, autokinotons, hippohobbilies, streetfleets, tournintaxes, megaphoggs, circuses and wardsmoats and basilikerks and aeropagods and the hoyse and the jollybrool and the peeler in the coat and the mecklenburk bitch bite at his ear and the merlinburrow burrocks and his fore old porecourts, the bore the more, and his blightblack workingstacks at twelvepins a dozen and the noobibusses sleighding along Safetyfirst Street and the derryjellybies snooping around Tell-No-Tailors’ Corner and the fumes and the hopes and the strupithump of his ville’s indigenous romekeepers, homesweepers, domecreepers, thurum and thurum in fancymud murumd and all the uproor from all the aufroofs, a roof for may and a reef for hugh butt under his bridge suits tony) wan warning Phill filt tippling full. His howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did shake. (There was a wall of course in erection) Dimb! He stottered from the latter. Damb! he was dud. Dumb! Mastabatoom, mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute is all long. For whole the world to see.

It's a vision of dense complexity. City life, and its multitudinous technology was just too much for the poor guy.

Advertisements

Cruise Control

INT, CREEPY PENTHOUSE APARTMENT.
Walls of glass reveal the grid of light and ambiguity of LA at night. An apartment very much like the Comedian's apartment in "The Watchmen." But, you  know, different.

The Bald Guy watches the Academy Awards credits roll on a wall-mounted flat screen TV. Then raises a remote -- and kills the TV.

A smug look of satisfaction distorts his generic face.

This cell phone rings. He whips it out.

David! (listens) Oh definitely. The SPs will never come back from this. Every PTS in town will think twice. Hollywood is ours now! If Elron was alive he'd ... (listens) I feel the same way, David.  (beat) You know I do. Nighty-night.

The Bald Guy ends the call, puts cell phone in his pocket.

He smiles, stands up, and begins dancing ...

And we see he's really ...

Ohmygod he's really ....

Agghhhhhhhh!

Matt Damon

Damon: (whirling around) F** you and your f**ing candy. (grabs candy, randomly throws it) That Oscar's mine, you f*** p***! I said I'd f***ing take it and I'm taking it! Any of you motherf**ing a**holes has a problem with that, you tell me to my f***ing face.


Sitting in the chair to Damon's left, Casey Afleck mumbles something.

Damon: Man, I have no idea what you should just said.

Marlee Maitlin supplies her input from the chair to Damon's right.

Matlin: (speaking and signing) He says you can take the Oscar and shove it up ...

Damon: My ass. That's wicked funny, Casey.

Casey: (mumbles something) 

Tray Parker: (OS -- mentally challenged voice) Matt Damon.

Damon: Not funny, Parker. Wasn't the first time.

Tray Parker: (OS) Matt Damon.

Damon: Parker. I swear to f*** Christ you say that one more time I'll f*** kill you.

Tray Parker: (OS ) Matt Damon.

Damon: Motherf***!

He leaps over chair.