Category Archives: drama

“Imagining…is better than remembering something”

“Imagining…is better than remembering something”
POST CREATED BY JENNIFER KILEY
ILLUSTRATED by j. kiley
Created May 23rd 2013
Posted May 24th 2013

garp book cover

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” — John Irving

garp and helen outside house predisastered

“Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat.” — Garp, “The World According to Garp”

“Oh FUCK the longings and agonies of youth.” – T.S Garp

garp and helen on bleechers

Q: What is your thoughts on the future of books? asking John Irving “If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard, sane.”

“You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.” — John Irving; The World According To Garp

jenny with young garp

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP — FILM TRAILER

glenn close as jenny fields in “the world according to garp”

“A part of adolescence is feeling that there’s no one else around who’s enough like yourself to understand you.” — T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp

dean of garp's school has head injury. jenny is telling him about how she conceived garp. he is shocked. 642x366

dean of garp’s school has head injury. jenny is telling him about how she conceived garp. he is shocked. his verbal response, being in a state of shock, “you raped a dying man!” now you will have to read the book or see film to find out why this is so hysterically funny.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt (‘Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!’ Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, ‘The Under Toad is strong today’.

‘Remember’, Duncan asked on the plane, ‘how Walt asked if it was green or brown?’

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.” — John Irving in The World According to Garp

helen at gym watching wrestling practice

John Irving – 2009 National Book Festival The World According To Garp
The Hotel New Hampshire
The Cider House Rules
A Prayer From Owen Meanie
In Own Person
Last Night In Twisted River“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

The amazing John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon in “The World According to Garp,” a film based on John Irving’s novel of the same name. The 1982 movie includes John Lithgow as a transsexual ex-football player, Robin Williams as the writer T. S. Garp, and Glenn Close as Garp’s mother. Lithgow’s heartfelt performance won him an Academy Award nomination! The trailer from YouTube.

garp with roberta muldoon former football player on nfl now jenny’s bodyguard

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“Perhaps in every writer’s life there needs to be that moment when some other writer is attacked as unworthy of the job.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“Don Whitcomb would remember that Garp told him what the act of starting a novel felt like. ‘It’s like trying to make the dead come alive,’ he said. ‘No, no, that’s not right – it’s more like trying to keep everyone alive, forever. Even the ones who must die in the end. They’re the most important to keep alive.’ Finally, Garp said it in a way that seemed to please him. ‘A novelist is a doctor who sees only terminal cases,’ Garp said.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

John Irving At Home Excerpt From: The World According To Garp:

Before we go to the story of the under toad I would like to quote one of my favorite lines from the book and the film. Garp says it to his son, Duncan, who is inside a baby carriage at the time. “Don’t be a baby Duncan, say ‘Da-Da.’ This line makes me laugh every time I hear it. Now to the Under Toad.

The Under Toad Is Strong Today

It was Walt’s fourth summer at Dog’s Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle-deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water’s edge to have a word with him.

“What are you doing, Walt?” Helen asked.

“What are you looking for, dummy?” Duncan asked him.

“I’m trying to see the Under Toad,” Walt said.

“The what?” said Garp.

“The Under Toad,” Walt said. ” I’m trying to see it. How big is it?”

And Garp and Helen and Duncan held their breath; they realized that all these years Walt had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck him under and drag him out to sea. The terrible Under Toad.

Garp tried to imagine it with him. Would it ever surface? Did it ever float? Or was it always down under, slimy and bloated and ever-watchful for ankles its coated tongue could snare? The vile Under Toad.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt ( “Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!” Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, “The Under Toad is strong today.”

“Remember,” Duncan asked on the plane, “how Walt asked if it was green or brown?”

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.

(Excerpt from The World According to Garp by John Irving)

garp and helen in bed pre-cheating maybe

“‘Death, it seems,’ Garp wrote, ‘does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.’” — John Irving; The World According to Garp (1978)

The World According to Garp by John Irving

The World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation. A worldwide bestseller since its publication in 1978, Irving’s classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies synopsis.

John IRVING on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse
“Another thing I noticed while rereading was how clear Irving’s writing is, sentence by sentence. Critics don’t give Irving much credit for his prose style, maybe because his zany plots and characters overshadow it. (Or maybe it’s his enthusiastic use of italics and exclamation points.) But I was impressed by how gracefully he writes, even when he’s being “unsubtle.” There is a transparency to his exposition that is not easy to achieve, but Irving does nothing to draw attention to his effort. In contemporary fiction, this lack of preciousness is rare. Irving’s style has only become simpler over the years. It’s almost as if he decided to keep his prose straightforward so that his plotting could become more elaborate.” — Hannah Gersen, ”Collision Courses and Castration Anxiety: Rereading John Irving.”

helen in black could be when she is telling student she has to end their affair

roberta hugging jenny

garp reading mom’s jenny fields book

“Jenny had read enough stories to know that hers didn’t sound like the good stories in her memory. She wondered what could be wrong, and she frequently sent Garp on errands to the few bookstores that sold books in English. She wanted to look more closely at how books began; she had quickly produced over three hundred typed pages, yet she felt that her book never really started.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp (John Irving 1978)

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with “lunacy and sorrow”; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

garp in drag at his mom’s memorial service. no men allowed.

“A few windows are open, a few refrigerators are humming. There is the faint, trapped warble from some televisions tuned in to The Late Show, and the blue-gray glow from the picture tubes throbs from a few of the houses. To Garp this glow looks like cancer, insidious and numbing, putting his world to sleep. Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer’s irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn’t reading.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

garp with roberta at jenny’s memorial

“Imagining something better than remembering something.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“He wrote once that a novel was ‘only a place for storage – of all the meaningful things that a novelist isn’t able to use in his life.’” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

garp in bed depressed

John Irving talks sex, social misfits, and writing

Why do you keep returning to the politics of sexual identity in your work?

When I finished “The World According to Garp” in 1978, I was naïve enough to think that I will never write about this subject again; that our intolerance of our own sexual differences will surely go away, and that Garp will be seen someday as a relic of the post-sexual-liberation days, when men and women still literally were killing one another. In that book, a man is killed by a woman who hates men. His mother is murdered by a man who hates women. It’s a kind of dual sexual-assassination story, a cynical way of saying: well you think there was a sexual revolution, how come men and women hate each other?

But there isn’t anything that extreme in your latest novel.

True, but it’s still the same damn subject. It’s still about our obstinate intolerance to sexual differences. It explores our lingering suspicion, distrust, dislike, and non-acceptance of our sexual identities.JOHN IRVING’S novel, “In One Person”, is narrated by Billy Abbot, a bisexual author, who recalls coming of age in a small New England town in the 1950s. As a thoughtful, tormented teenager, Billy takes a fancy to various people, such as his stepfather, his friend’s mother, the captain of the school wrestling team, and the local librarian, Miss Frost (who reveals to Billy an important secret about her own identity). The mood of the latter half of the book darkens when Billy moves to New York in the 1980s and witnesses the tragic fallout of the AIDS epidemic.

Mr Irving published his debut novel “Setting Free the Bears” in 1968. But it was “The World According to Garp”, his fourth book, which made him an internationally renowned bestselling author. Four of his books have been adapted for the screen, including “The Cider House Rules”, for which Mr Irving won an Academy Award for the adapted screenplay in 2000In a conversation with The Economist, Mr Irving talks about discovering his own sexual identity as a teenager, how Ronald Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic, and why he always champions the outsider in his novels.

What interested you in giving a voice to a bisexual male in this novel?

I think there is often a “what if” proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels. I find my way into a lot of characters by thinking ‘what would that be like?’ The character of the sexual misfit—someone out of step with what society’s expectations of sexual relationships are—is very familiar to me.

Did you ever think you might be bisexual?

Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I spent more time imagining sex than actually having it. There was a period in that time where I was frightened of half of my sexual fantasises. I was attracted to my friend’s mothers, and I did have an occasional crush on a boy in the wrestling team. [But] I liked girls in my life, and it proceeded in a normal, unchallenged course.

Why do you keep returning to the politics of sexual identity in your work?

But there isn’t anything that extreme in your latest novel.

Do you represent outsiders and social misfits because mainstream culture fails to? Or do they simply have more nuances as characters?

Both. It’s not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who on the surface are instantly sympathetic. I guess I’m always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

Did having an absent father growing up help you to fictionalise him in your novels?

That’s a great way to put it. I use to tease my mother when I decided that I wanted to be a writer, and say: well if you don’t tell me things about who my dad was, I’m going to just make things up. I wouldn’t say this made me a writer. But it was constructive as a teenager to be left to my imagination about who this guy was.

What influence did Dickens have on you?

“Great Expectations” was an important novel in my adolescence. It was very much one of those emblematic novels that made me wish I could write like that. It helped that my models as a writer were dead over a hundred years before I began to write. They were safe people to imitate. There was no way I could sound like Dickens or Hardy if I tried.

What writers from New England influenced your work?

Melville made a huge impact on me. Reading him encouraged me to write about what I most feared, or what I hope never happens to me or anyone I love. I think in every novel of mine there is cloud which you, the reader, knows is coming. Well that comes from Melville.

“In One Person” describes the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. What’s your opinion of how the Reagan administration responded to the crises?

For seven out of eight years of his presidency, Regan did not utter the name of the disease. What is even more incriminating is that it’s hard to imagine that we ever had a president—or will ever have again—who personally knew as many gay guys as he did. He was in the movie business for Christ’s sake. The attitude was: it’s only drug addicts and gay guys who are getting this disease. That wasn’t just said among heartless homophobes, it was actually said by people who were in Reagan’s administration, while Reagan maintained a silence.

Did you have many friends who died of AIDS?

Yes. I was living in New York in the 80s, and as a straight guy I had many gay friends, but I also had friends that I subsequently found out were gay, because they were dying. Similarly, parents found out about their children being gay, because they were dying from AIDS.

When you finished writing “The Cider House Rules” in 1985, were you hopeful that attitudes to abortion rights in the United States would change?

No. I thought this is going to get worse. That minority of people who hate abortion rights, they will always hate it. It’s no surprise that most people in the United States who oppose abortion rights also oppose gay rights too. It’s coming from an element of sexual disapproval. Their attitude is, I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t be allowed. It’s what I call in America, the old prohibition instinct: you don’t like drinking, nobody should do it, you don’t like abortion, no one should have one.

What do you rate as the most technically important aspect to your novels?

I think my approach with writing toward a pre-existing ending, knowing what a story is before I begin the first chapter.

Are you referring to your method of writing the last line of the novel first?

Sometimes it can be the last line, maybe the last few paragraphs, or even the last couple of pages. I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her time. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with lunacy and sorrow, yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries–with more than ten million copies in print–this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

garp quote: “we are all terminal cases” over jenny fields nurse’s uniform

How I’d sell The World According to Garp in a few sentences

It is a gripping book that connects you to every character in the story. In the end, it manages to encompass and successfully interweave themes that are central to the politics and societal issues of both the old and modern worlds and it explores paradigms of feminism and sexual roles in a concentrated manner.

Read it.

Be advised, though. This book is not for those who are prone to lightheartedness at the mention of bodily limbs gone awry/gone, period.

For those of you who would rather watch a story play out on the big screen, there’s a 1982 film based off the book starring Robin Williams as T.S. Garp, the namesake of the novel, and Glenn Close as his mother, Jenny Fields.

“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.” — John Irving

“Life is an X-rated soap opera.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

QUOTATIONS by JOHN IRVING:

“…but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior” — John Irving from The World According to Garp. (I can’t stress how important this quotation is to me. J.I.)

garp says: i’ll stay up and think weird thoughts for awhile

“Not only were certain types of arrogance tolerated by the society of the Steering School, certain kinds were encouraged; but acceptable arrogance was a matter of taste and style. What you were arrogant about had to appear worthy- of higher purpose- and the manner in which you were arrogant was supposed to be charming.” — John Irving, The World According To Garp u

“Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness – in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. ” — John Irving

“I feel like Irving has a sense of reality that is so spot on, despite the fact that his subject matter feels almost fantastical. How he manages to meld these opposing qualities in such an imaginative way is just beyond my understanding, but man does it make for good reading.”– Unknown

“She felt if she ever had children she would love them no less when they were twenty than when they were two; they might need you more at twenty, she thought. What do you really need when you’re two? In the hospital, the babies were the easiest patients. The older they got, the more they needed; and the less anyone wanted or loved them.” — John Irving (The World According to Garp)

“If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital” -John Irving

“In this dirty minded world you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone. That made me a sexual suspect. Then I wanted a baby, but I didn’t want to have to share my body or my life to have one. That made me a sexual suspect too.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.” — John Irving

“As for Jenny, she felt that women—just like men—should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.” — Jenny Fields (The World According To Garp)

“Garp has to die; it’s what the book is about, a double assassination of a mother and her son. More to the point: a woman who is killed by a woman-hating man and a man who is killed by a woman who hates men.” — John Irving, on the end of The World According to Garp.

“It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.” — John Irving (The World According to Garp)

“I may have written this novel twenty years ago, but I go back there almost every day—back to those fears. Even the smallest detail of The World According to Garp is an expression of fear; even the curious pockmark on the face of the Viennese prostitute—it is also an expression of that most terrible fear. “The silvery gouge on her forehead was nearly as big as her mouth; her pockmark looked to Garp like a small, open grave.” A child’s grave …

When Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. “I lost one, too,” they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. — John Irving

“Garp would say that the autobiographical basis – if there even was one – was the least interesting level on which to read a novel. He would always say that the art of fiction was the act of imagining truly – was, like any art, a process of selection.”– Unknown

“He wrote Helen that a young writer needs desperately to live with someone and he had decided that he wanted to live with her; even marry her, he offered, because sex was simply necessary but it took too much of one’s time if one had to be constantly planning how one was going to get it. Therefore, Garp reasoned, it is better to live with it!
Helen revised several letters before she finally sent him one that said that he could, so to speak, go stick it in his ear. Did he think she was going through college so rigorously so that she could provide him with sex that was not even necessary to plan?” — from Garp — John Irving

“Don’t you want to know how I die?” Garp asked them.
They didn’t say anything.
“I kill myself,” Garp said, pleasantly. “In order to become fully established that seems almost necessary. I mean it, really,” Garp said. “In the present fashion, you’ll agree this is one way of recognizing a writer’s seriousness? Since the art of the writing doesn’t always make the writer’s seriousness apparent, it’s something necessary to reveal the depth of one’s personal anguish by other means. Killing yourself seems to mean that you were serious after all. It’s true,” Garp said, but his sarcasm was unpleasant and Helen sighed; John Wolf stretched again. “And thereafter,” Garp said, “much seriousness is suddenly revealed in the work—where it had escaped notice before.” — From “The World According to Garp,” by John Irving

‎”Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!” — John Irving – The World According To Garp

“Human sexuality makes farcical our most serious intentions.” — Garp in The World According to Garp by John Irving

“It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so … She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back.” — The World According To Garp

“a manner betraying both carelessness and intense perfection” — Unknown

The Mystery of Storytelling

1 Reply

The Mystery of Storytelling
TED Talk Julian Friedmann @ TEDxEaling
Post written and Created by Jennifer Kiley
Post Created May 20th 2013
Posted May 23rd 2013

The World According to Garp by John Irving

The first book I read of John Irving. It was turned into a film and there is nothing about this book or film that follow the rules of how Americans always get there Happy Endings. It is a brilliant book and a film I wasn’t sure I liked when I first saw it. Reason is that so much was left out from the book. Eventually, though I realized that the film was quite unique on its own. So I love both book and film and we are not talking about sentimental happy endings or all is good and nothing bad ever happens. This has so many surprises. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film I highly recommend both.

I will warn you that this TED Talk starts out rather brutal in talking about the expectations of a screenwriter, in having a script accepted, which I would say could be applied to writers in a general manner. The rejection words are quite a deal more prevalent according to the speaker of this TED Talk. It happens that he is an agent. A very good one after you get past his opening statements. Don’t fall off the mountain until you listen to more of the video. It’s not that he becomes more encouraging but he does have some rather good points to tell writers, screen or otherwise.

He talks a great deal about writers and writing. The thoughts of famous writers come up. What they think is important for a writer to know. Language. Storytelling. Most famous writers will tell you, of course, to write from out of your own experiences. When asked if there is a formula to writing, the answers come back to some of the origins of storytelling. For example: Campfire tales. Some ingredients to storytelling: Pity. Fear. Catharsis. Beethoven’s approach to a happy ending comes up. His theory is: Suffering. Struggle. Overcoming.

I must say that I am only giving you an overall view of what was talked about on this video. Listening to the video will give you a great deal more. So I shall continue.

Why do we need stories? It all started with Cave paintings. One goes out into the woods to kill a wild animal. Prehistoric caves were the first cinema. They rehearse there fear by looking at the cave paintings. The same is true with the audience in today’s theatres. What do we do to the audience to make it so they have experiences?

Now, this next point, I have a friend who will get a laugh out of this one. It seems that American films love to have happy endings. Did I mention the speaker is British? Well, yes he is. He feels that no one can compete with the American film maker. They have more money and bigger stars. That may be so in American and how the world reacts to the US stars but I feel that British and Australia actors, male and female, are much better. More interesting to watch and to listen to. I rather hate it when a Brit is cast in a role and must lose their British accent for the part. I always wish that they would change the character into someone British so that the actor would be able to speak in their normal tongue.

But back to American film makers, they like accessible characters and once again, they like to have sentimental happy endings. One of the parts that take away the anticipation of what kind of ending will happen that will surprise you rather than being able to breath a sigh of relief that all’s well that ends well. I know from sudden shocking experiences from watching British Television shows or Films, main characters die. And you/I am shocked and saddened that a character that I looked forward to seeing again later is now dead or they lose the love of their life. No, so the British do not appease the audience, nor do they hold your hand and say: “Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. Everything will be perfectly fine.” I mean, just look at Mary Poppins, she always leaves at the end and you really don’t want her to, but she does. Now in the movie, the happy ending is that the family find their way back to each other. How I won’t say, you have to see the film, if you haven’t already.

John Irving on MidMorning

This interview will counter the theory that Americans always write for the Happy Ending. Maybe that is why I fell in love with the first novel I read that John Irving wrote (It wasn’t his 1st Novel by my first one I read of his): “The World According To Garp.” He doesn’t hold back on what happens to his characters. it is a great novel to start with. It will make you a guaranteed fan, unless you’re brain dead. He shows his brilliance as a writer in “GARP.” Every turn of the page a surprise. Quite magical and diverse and he loves BEARS, Gizzlies. {{{Smile}}}

Next issue is Dialogue: American movies have 2/3rds less dialogue. Also, Americans have lower levels of expectation in their educations. Basically, I think he was saying that a great many Americans are rather stupid and often more ignorant, also. He has his point there. A lot of Americans are not that bright. They, also, tend to be dangerous and vote for the wrong people at elections. So, in American films, there is a tendency to tell their stories in a much more visual way. An audience believes what they see. They do not believe what they hear. Scenes are also shorter in American films. They cut off a bit from the beginning and the ending of a scene to make the audience figure out what happens. They want the audience to work for it. It does give them something to do while the film just shows the ridiculous. There is so much garbage produced today. It is quite rare to find the GEM.They do occasionally exist. But it is like what Kurt Cobain says: “I liked it better when I didn’t have money. You’d walk into a shop and find something unique that sets off in your imagination, that you just want to possess that object, but you aren’t sure you can afford it. Then you find out you can but barely. So you buy it, and it becomes the treasure that you so rarely find. Now when you have all the money you have ever needed you lose those moments of discovery. Because you can afford everything and anything you want. Those special moments have been lost forever.”

Well, in the film industry, those moments have mostly been lost forever. The majority of films given the “Green Light” and then made mostly turn out to be crap. That is very disappointing and you are not really sure who you can trust anymore who will be offering you a gem or fake jewelry. You’re on your own. I will never lie here. If I find a film that I find that is fascinating and brilliant, I will be sure to tell you and encourage you to definitely see it. But keep in mind those treasures are becoming more and more difficult to find in the sand. You need more than a metal detector these days.

Next topic comes up around discussing Diana Rigg: Worse reviews ever book. When writing a screenplay or writing anything, there are a lot of rejections. Not only that, but you will be rejected by people who are less talented then you are. He apologizes and asks that “writers please forgive us agents.Remember us when you make it.”

Writers, after they make it, can say: “Only we are the storytellers.” And the writers thinking to themselves: “Very High and Mighty Agents Think That They Have the Power.”

Now if what I have written makes you curious and you’d like to know more, then I would suggest you will enjoy this speaker’s TED Talk on this video on “The Mystery of Storytelling.” I love routing through the TED Talk library to find the gems. This is one of them. And trust me, even in the TED Talks, there are not many that shine, either. “The Mystery of Storytelling ” does and the next one I am going to present does, also. You will like the concept behind that one also. It’s a rather curious subject matter, that causes your mind to ponder and some who I feel who will want the possibility it discusses to have to inside/outside chance of an underlying truth to it.

I’d say that one will be released from “the secret keeper in the next few days. I am the walking wounded and did several work ups on posts before I went in for some surgery. This is the year of the scalpel for me but don’t worry I promised to “POST A POST-A-DAY” and I will. Some of the time I may draw from some of my favorite POSTS, just updated and added onto. Everyone grows in their thinking and hopefully I will as well and be able to add more now from where I was then when one of my ideas became a post in need a growing but it had to have a beginning somewhere. Let’s hope that works. Or maybe I will heal in short spurts and moments when my mind and body work and creativity is alive and well inside of me.

So, press the play button and enjoy this TED Talk on “The Mystery of Storytelling.” Writer or not, everyone usually loves a good story and Julian Friedmann tells a good one on this Video. Hope you can get passed his opening comments, because once done, the video has a great deal to say that is quite brilliant and worth the listen. ENJOY. BE PATIENT AND LET THE FOOTAGE ROLL.

The Mystery of Storytelling: Julian Friedmann at TEDxEaling

The World According To Garp (1982) Scene

John Irving: Advice to Aspiring Novelists: Don’t Shoot Yourself

Big Think Interview with John Irving

QUOTATIONS on STORYTELLING:

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman

“Every great love starts with a great story…” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story… don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words–the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers who won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.” ― Stephen King

“Funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story” ― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” ― Willa Cather

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” ― Doris Lessing, Under My Skin

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus [My comment about the book "The Night Circus"---EXCEPTIONAL. Discovered through a "Like" page on FB. Rented through library, then begged for it as a Christmas Present. It is a MAGICAL, MYSTICAL, METAPHYSICAL book, that should be read by all who find the MYSTERIOUS fascinating. It is up there with the EXCEPTIONAL few books that hold you HYPNOTICALLY in the ETHER and will not let you go until the very end. And I am not sure if you are released even then. THE NIGHT CIRCUS is high on my list of originality in storytelling. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. May even have done a review of it after the first time I read it. It was a rush read job b/c I didn't own the book then but did get it as a present. Now I want to read it again. Don't have it on Kindle so it has been hidden due to some rearranging and organizing of my writing space and overhauling it with a new couch for my recoveries. Can't do stairs for awhile. So I get to relax a bit and get to catch up on reading books I've wanted to spend time with and to veg out a bit with old and new films I have wanted to watch.] NEXT!

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.” ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

TIME TO TAKE MY DRUGS TO KNOCK OUT THE PAIN AND MY BRAIN AT THE SAME TIME AND OFF INTO STRUGGLING TO STAY AWAKE OR TO GIVE INTO SLEEP. I AM AFRAID TO SAY THAT THE SLEEP STATE SO FAIR HAS WON OUT ON ME. THE DRUGS THE HOSPITAL AND DOC/SURGEON PRESCRIBED KNOCK ME ON MY ASS. I AM BARELY ABLE TO KEEP MY EYE LIDS FROM STAYING OPEN. I SUPPOSE THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT BUT OH HOW I HATE TO SURRENDER. ENJOY THE VIDEOS. THEY ARE INSIGHTFUL AND SHARE THE INNER WORKINGS OF JOHN IRVING THE AUTHOR/WRITER AND ON THE TED TALK AN AGENT WHO IS HONEST BUT UNFORTUNATELY FINDS US LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE THE IMAGINATION IS NOT HONOURED IN THE MANNER TO WHICH IT IS DUE AND SURFACE CRAP SO FAR FROM BEING CREATIVE IS WHAT WE ARE FINDING IT REPLACED WITH. IT IS THE RUINATION OF THE WORLD OF ART. WE HAVE TO STAY STRONG AND KEEP REMINDING PEOPLE THAT ART IS THE SAVING GRACE OF OUR CIVILIZATION AND IF IT GOES SO GOES CULTURE AND THAT WHICH HOLDS IT TOGETHER. EVER HEARD OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH? WELL, IF YOU HAVEN’T I WOULD LOOK IT UP. WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR CENTER ALL COLLAPSES AROUND YOU. jk the secret keeper By Jennifer Kiley POWER TO THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE/MULTIVERSES. YEAH !

Letters of Import: Incompetency Revealed 10

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Incompetency Revealed 10
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated & abstract digital art by j. kiley
First Published Tuesday March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Tenth Posted May 21st 2013 Tuesday, December 3rd 2007

Dear Annie,

He returned. Group went back to its repressive normal. No one got to speak except him and his favorites. The only words out of my mouth were: “I am feeling extremely anxious.” And I added, as a dig, “The group was different having a woman lead it. Annie was amazing. Everyone got to talk. We actually had interactions happening.”

He cut me off with his dumb gibberish as he stumbled over his words and mumbled them. It irritated him like Hell that his position had been challenged by me and by a novice, Annie. Let him feel intimidated. The way he tries to undermine me in our private sessions.

He is always acting as a catalyst to draw Brad out. Maybe its time he saw the way he behaved as a less than competent psychotherapist. If he was like this since he started his practice, I don’t understand how he kept his clients faithful. I suppose when you’re desperate and psychologically fucked up you want anyone who will listen. And you fear finding someone new, who might make demands that you are not ready for, and change is scary and someone different could be worse. Plus starting out again with someone new would be so exhausting. It was easier to stay put and take what I felt I deserved and maintain the limited stability I had at the time.

My mistake is I don’t want to cure my agoraphobia. Not right now. It is too fucking terrifying. I don’t want to go out into the world. It just fucks me up more being exposed to it. It is extremely dangerous. I am too sensitive. I feel everything anyone around me is filled with intense feelings. It is overwhelming. At the psych clinic, I hate walking into that place when there is anyone in the waiting room. It’s a nightmare. My brain is bombarded with a total freak out. I need to be rescued. And he is always late and too many people are waiting. I try not to make contact but usually someone wants to talk. Leave me alone. I hear the screams in my head, ‘can’t you all see that I am mad. I will blow-up if you approach me.’ Not really, but I want everyone to just leave me to my quiet. I am trying to pull myself together for my therapy session. I think and I mean: ‘What the Hell are they doing there. Don’t they want to do the same thing? Preparing to tear out their hearts and display them for their own therapists. Leave me alone to concentrate and be ready for mine.’

Annie, I wish you could have been there. He finally came out to get me. I’d say rescue me but it was more of a bother, I think to him, to have to walk all the way from his office to retrieve me so he could spend our next 45 minutes, if I was lucky to get that amount of time. He always shorted me on my time. It is technically suppose to be 50 minutes but I am lucky if I get a full 45. But I shouldn’t complain, most of the time I can’t wait for the session to be over. And he is exacting about that. He doesn’t allow you to even pull things together before he utters the words: “Time is up.” He cuts me off in mid-sentence and mid-trauma but I don’t feel he even notices it.

This particular day, I was telling him about the way I felt Angie was treating me in group. She was jumping on every word I said. I was talking about one of our very special cats dying over the day before and that I was devastated. His name was Dylan James Thomas and we raised him from the time he was about 3 1/2 weeks old. Someone had thrown him out inside a McDonald’s bag. Fortunately, someone kind had found him, they brought him to the local animal shelter. I volunteered there. That next morning the director called me and asked if I had the time and would I like to foster a very little kitten who was in great need of care. He would need special food and hand-feeding through a bottle. Without hesitation, I had “YES” out of my mouth before the director could say another word. I explained to Scottie in between talking to the director. Told him I would be right there. It was rough going with “Dylan James Thomas”. He developed an upper respiratory infection. He slept between Scottie and I. Scottie gave him extra hugs and held him all night while I slept. She told me before I picked him up that we could not keep him but she fell in love him the way I did when I first set eyes on his tiny little body and his small sounding meows. I was hooked and I knew Scottie would be taken in the way I was. I was right. It took her less than 48 hours to agree that “Dylan James Thomas” needed to be a member of our family. I, also, believe it was the long nights of loving care and healing energy that closed the deal.

Anyway, Angie was all support and I am sorry until I said that I was also really sad about the death of someone I admired and I had loved her family from the time I was a teenager. The person who had died was a famous actress that I admired. I have this sensitivity to certain people who effect my life. I may not know them personally but they have entered my heart. Her mom was one of those people that touched my life, also. I felt a closeness to her and to her family. And I was devastated when I heard of her accident and I prayed that she would pull out of her coma, with no way of knowing that it was irreversible. When her death was announced it put me into emotional shock. My mind could not get around that she was dead. I felt such pain for her whole family, her husband and two boys, and her mother and her aunt and uncle. The devastation that her mom should have to lose her daughter, so young. I felt in emotional pain. Well, Angie was a bitch. She could understand my being upset by my cat’s death but an actress that I didn’t know. She didn’t get it and casually dismissed my pain as ridiculous. That was not only insulting but a cold reaction. We were in a therapy group not in a room full of people who are suppose to judge what we feel.

As I expected. Mr. Xxx felt I should try to understand where Angie was coming from. And why should I try to understand where she is coming from when where that place is a dark hole filled with cruelty and patronizing blanket statements of judgment and a total lack of understanding and sensitivity. I am the way I am and don’t need to go to a therapy group or therapist and be told that my feelings don’t deserve to be respected and trashed instead. I should be allowed whatever emotional reactions that I feel and when I bring them up in group they don’t deserve someone’s insensitivity because they lack compassion and the ability to understand something that is different from the way they might react. They should allow the person who is upset the space to express what they are feeling and to shut the fuck up and stifle themselves from putting them down because they don’t understand why they are feeling upset. Just shut the fuck up and allow them to have their feelings and to respect them whether you understand them or not.

I don’t need to tell you much more but I want you to know that the level of Mr. Xxx’s incompetency echos through all who have him as a therapist. He should have intervened on my behalf in the group. You, as least, tried to cover for him by telling Angie that some people have strong feelings for those they admire in the arts. What Madison is feeling is quite understandable. First, she loses a cat she adores and has loved practically from his birth and moments later finds out that someone she cares about in the field of entertainment and from a favorite and famous acting family, has also died so suddenly, leaving behind a grieving mother, husband and two sons. This can be devastating. Madison is a highly sensitive person and feels deeply for everyone and to have the reaction she has is not unusual among a great many people. So, I think you should try to find some understanding for Madison and what she is going through and try to put yourself in her place.

You said all that while my therapist sits like George W. Bush did the day of September 11th, staring into space and not reacting at all while buildings were exploding from planes crashing into them. You so outshine him, it is embarrassing that he is the leader and you are the intern. I thank you for your sensitivity to recognize I was in pain and it made no difference what was causing it. In our private session, he came out in favor of Angie, as if it were a competition. He should have been giving me my therapy not denying me and giving all his support to another person not in that room with us. But I should know better than expect anything that is positive coming from him. No support. No encouragement.

I hope you are seeing and getting what I am trying to convey to you. I need a new therapist and I want that psychoanalyst to be you. When you have accomplished receiving your degrees and you are licensed, I want you to consider seriously of taking me on as one of your first clients. Please for the sake of my confidence and sanity. I really don’t know how much longer I can take seeing Mr. Xxx as my incompetent therapist.

I want you, your insight, your intelligence and intuitive nature and your gentleness to be my guide. When that day arrives I will feel like I will be reborn. I wish I could say these words directly to you. Someday, I hope that I am able to.

Regards,
Madison This is to assure the strictest of confidence.

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the boundaries between us and to record the development of our relationship.

I want Annie Haskell to trust me. I want you to know I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. Writing to you in this way frees up my words as I speak them onto the page. Some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I have written in honesty. Right now, I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”This is a poem I would like to include in this letter. I like to leave a poem in each of the letters if I find one that I would like to share with you. Since I am not even sure if I am going to give these letters to you, I felt it is okay if I include a poem in each of these letters. And if some day, I change my mind and I hand my building collection of letters to you, then I will likely evaluate all that I have written to determine if all of the content of each letter feels acceptable to me to share openly with you. I may feel too shy to be so vulnerable. We will proceed as we have for now and see this as a way of recording the experience of getting to know you and in turn get to know how this all effects me as I record this experience in writing.Want Her Too Much
By Madison Taylor
December 1st 2007

Need too much
Want her too much
But not her’s to give
Anger rises up
Lost
No sign of the light
Highs have faded
Diving down into deepest sea
Total darkness
Will there be a drowning place for me
Are my favorites present
Virginia
Marilyn
Sylvia too
I need a guide
Help settling the end
Lost I am
As I am losing myself
Am I feeling her feelings
Or mine
Or is she sharing hers
She doesn’t seek death
Or harm
That is my desire
Cut
Bleed
Death
The final solution
Can’t handle this fast descent
Heights freak me out
Did I succeed at deserving hell
All those soul points
Angel points too
I surrender
Rejection
No more
Too crushing
Even if not intent
Let me bleed
So I cannot feel my heart breaking
Shredding into pieces
This she does to me now
I want her to take over my world
But only hope keeps that dream alive
And where is that hope?
Entering my world
To begin the dreaming
When I can finally step away
I cannot bear his re-entrance
Into my world
It may be what finally breaks me
Finishes me
Takes me to my ending
A cold sea of infinity
Unless she is able to be my savior
And take me to a place of safety
Far away from him as possible
Or it is certain he will succeed
To bring an end to me this final time.

Sympathy for the Devil — The Rolling Stones(Theme Song # 10 for Letter of Import: Incompetency Revealed 10

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats, patrick, sparky and toker love to escape to

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it starts just past the labyrinth

LE CHATEAU DE ROCHER

le chateau de rocher is the home of madison and scottie & their three cats sparky toker & patrick

glass enclosed pool le chateau de rocher

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan PoeQUOTATIONS of INCOMPETENT:

“The problem with incompetence is its inability to recognize itself.”
― Orrin Woodward, L.I.F.E. Living Intentionally For Excellence

“On the roads of failure, it is not uncommon to see the tears of the talented; and in the land of success, to hear the victorious screams of the incompetent!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan

DEFINITION: without adequate ability, knowledge, fitness; failing to meet requirements; incapable; unskillful. Not having or showing the necessary skills to do something successfully. Ineptitude. Professional incompetence.

Tippi Hedren: The Birds-Marnie-Hitchcock-Activism

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Tippi Hedren: The Birds-Marnie-Hitchcock-Activism
By Jennifer Kiley
Written 11.13.12
Reworked May 11th 2013
Posted May 12th 2013

sean connery as mark kissing tippi hedren as marnie

Watched “Marnie” on Saturday for the more than 100th time. It inspired me to pull out this post I starting writing just after I saw made for TV film “The Girl,” about the relationship between Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock while they made the films “The Birds” and “Marnie.”

Read on and discover Tippi Hedren and if you have never seen the films she made with Hitchcock, I would highly recommend that you either find them on DVD or Blu-Ray or find a site that streams them. They are both fantastic films that will grab a hold of your attention until the last reel finishes rolling. Jk the SK

Sienna Miller plays Tippi Hedren in HBO’s ‘The Girl’
A response to a comment made on my post: “Alfred Hitchcock: Man or Beast.”
Mr. Hitchcock had an obsession with Tippi Hedren and pursued her endlessly and she rebuffed him. He retaliated by the cruelty he showed in his treatment of her during the shooting of the the films “The Birds” and “Marnie.” In “The Birds,” he taped over and over the birds attacking her in the scene in the phone booth, where he even has a fake bird come crashing through the phone booth’s glass walls, purposefully to terrorize. Her nerves were shot already. This just caused her to be further traumatized. Then to add to this, the scene where Tippi’s character is caught up against the door of a room in the house which the birds have surrounded, she has this scene shot over and over for hours as the birds literally attack her, causing her injuries and to bleed. He refused to yell “cut.”During the filming of “Marnie,” all along still pursuing her sexually and he felt romantically to her rejection and threatening her when she says that she is going to quit, by telling her he will ruin her in the film industry. He traumatizes her during several of the sexually questionable scenes.

Reputations: Alfred Hitchcock (Episode 2 Hitch: Alfred The Auteur)
Her character in “Marnie” witnesses something traumatizing when she is a child but it is buried. She becomes a kleptomaniac and hates the touch of any man. Sean Connery plays the male lead who finds her character out and convinces her it would be the best thing for her if she marry him.

mark and marnie at recetrack

Of course, this eventually leads to a scene where he cannot hold back any longer from wanting to be sexual with his wife.

This scene Hitchcock plays to the creep in himself and the scene ends up appearing real, if it is not so, that Sean Connery’s character drops her robe to the floor and she is naked. He then forces himself on her. Which, of course, by the next morning, he finds her floating in the ship’s pool face down.

marnie movie poster

The sex scene is created in such a way that leads you to see Hitchcock as a voyeuristic creep who relishes every moment that Tippi Hedren is suffering while doing the scene. Added to the scene is that Hitchcock takes his time before he says “cut” long after it should have been said.

marnie dinner party

This makes me so angry that he treated Tippi in such a manner. He throws himself on her while they are in the limo just before the premiere of “The Birds.” It was quite clear from the start that Tippi Hedren was not interested in Hitchcock in this manner and he kept forcing himself on her and everyone could see it happening including his wife but would do nothing to stop him. He was too powerful.

marnie changing hair colour

I am a fan of Tippi Hedren’s for her portrait of the character of Marnie. I felt a connection with her from the first time I watched this film as a kid. It always captures me. It is a traumatic experience but a release and satisfaction comes from the ending.

I, also, respect Ms. Hedren for her work with animals, wild and tame. This furthers my respect for her. Her advocacy for the humane treatment of animals. My strongest of causes.

I have loved animals for my entire life and could not live without them as companions and in their existence on Earth in the wild preferred but in man made habitats that are humanely structured.

melanie griffith with mom tippi hedren

Her daughter Melanie Griffith stated of the film “Hitchcock,” that she hoped they portrayed him accurately, as the motherfucker that he was.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery
You see why he has lost a great deal of any honour or good feelings that I had for him. He was well known for not having respect for actors and also known for his casting of blonds. I told my partner while watching “The Girl” that he better not have treated Julie Andrews like that when they made “Torn Curtain.”

marnie-tippi with hitchcock

If he tried I am sure that Paul Newman would have punched him out. Paul Newman said of Julie: “That she is the last of the great broads.” Not offensive in the manner to which I am sure he meant it. Jk the secret keeper

The following is a brief biography of Tippi Hedren and hopefully some trailers from her films “The Birds” and “Marnie” for which I felt she should have been honoured by the Academy with no less than an Oscar Nomination. She was brilliant in playing the character of Marnie.

marnie mark trying to kiss her

An excellent performance that I have watched over and over again. My film collection would, of course, have “Marnie” amongst all the other remarkable films made over the years. I am an obsessive cinephile who appreciates films from any era or language.

Marnie — Trailer

Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren—the Kiss in Marnie Marnie — Trailer

Tippi Hedren talks about the kiss scene from Marnie Marnie — Trailer
Date and Place of Birth
19 January 1930
New Ulm, Minnesota, USA

Birth Name
Nathalie Kay Hedren

Height
5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
Biography:

From working for (Best Director) Alfred Hitchcock, to a movie written by (Worst Director) Edward D. Wood Jr., Tippi Hedren, the Minnesota girl of Scandinavian descent, has had a distinctive career. She moved to New York City in 1950 and worked as a fashion model for the next eleven years. In 1952, at age 22, she married 18-year-old Peter Griffith (divorced in 1961). She gave birth to her only child, future star Melanie Griffith, on August 9, 1957.

Alfred Hitchcock discovered Tippi, the pretty cover girl, while viewing a 1962 TV commercial on NBC’s “Today” (1952). He put her under personal contract and cast her in The Birds (1963). pet shop in “the birds” rod taylor and tippi hedren
In a cover article about the movie in Look magazine (Dec. 4, 1962), Hitchcock praised her; he also told the Associated Press: “Tippi Hedren is really remarkable. She’s already reaching the lows and highs of terror”.

the birds rod taylor jessica tandy tippi hedren

Her next film was the title role in Hitchcock’s masterpiece Marnie (1964) with Sean Connery, and she gave the performance of her life.

Though it took years before she won well-deserved admiration for her work, the film is now widely considered a classic. The professional relationship with Hitchcock ended with mutual bitterness and disappointment during the filming of Marnie.

marnie with gun

Movie Legend — Tippi Hedren
That year, she married her then-agent, Noel Marshall (divorced in 1982). She had a cameo in Charles Chaplin’s final film A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which flopped. Thereafter, Tippi and her husband Marshall collected big cats and other wildlife for the film Roar (1981), which they starred in and produced. The film took 11 years and $17 million to make, but it only made $2 million worldwide. Nevertheless, the film was a turning point in her life; she became actively involved in animal rights, as well as a wide variety of humanitarian and environmental causes. She married her third husband, businessman Luis Barrenecha, in 1985 but divorced him 10 years later. In 2002, she married her fourth husband, veterinarian Martin Dinnes.

Tippi has devoted much time and effort to charitable causes: she is a volunteer International Relief Coordinator for “Food for the Hungry”. She has traveled worldwide to set up relief programs following earthquakes, hurricanes, famine and war, and has received numerous awards for her efforts, including the “Humanitarian Award” presented to her by the Baha’i Faith. As for animal causes, she is founder and President of “The Roar Foundation”. Onscreen, she continues to work frequently in films, theater and TV. She appeared in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), finally bringing to the big screen the last screenplay written by the late Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1974 (and featuring Wood regulars Vampira and Conrad Brooks, just about the only surviving members of Wood’s stock company).

She also enjoyed playing comedic roles, such as an abortion rights activist in Alexander Payne’s satire Citizen Ruth (1996) and slapping Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees (2004). She was also a cast member of the night-time soap opera “Fashion House” (2006). Tippi’s contributions to world cinema have been honored with Life Achievement awards in France at The Beauvais Film Festival Cinemalia 1994; in Spain, by The Fundacion Municipal De Cine in 1995; and at the Riverside International Film Festival in 2007. In 1999, Tippi was honored as “Woman of Vision” by Women in Film and Video in Washington, D.C., and received the Presidential Medal for her work in film from Hofstra University. She enjoys spending time with her daughter, Melanie Griffith, son-in-law Antonio Banderas, and grandchildren Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas. Biography By: kdhaisch@aol.com
Spouse:
Martin Dinnes
(2002 – present)

Luis Barrenecha
(1985 – 1995) (divorced)

Noel Marshall
(27 September 1964 – 1982) (divorced)

Peter Griffith
(1952 – 1961) (divorced) 1 child (Melanie Griffith)
Trade Mark:

Platinum blonde hair
Sparkling green eyes
Voluptuous figure
Deep sultry voice

Tippi Hedren on relationship with Hitchcock

Trivia:

At the end of shooting Mister Kingstreet’s War (1973), she discovered that the big cats used in the production had no place to go and would likely languish in small cages. This prompted her to obtain a parcel of land on her own to establish a home with a natural setting for retired big cats. She named it Shambala and it exists to this day.

Mother of Melanie Griffith.

Presides over The Roar Foundation, an animal preserve outside of Los Angeles.

Director Alfred Hitchcock unsuccessfully pursued a relationship with her during the filming of Marnie (1964).

Is a vegetarian.

She named one of her house cats after Sean Connery, her co-star in Marnie (1964).

Lobbying for passage of Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act.

Participated in panel at University of Illinois on “Hitchcock, Women and Terror”, October 2001.

Her first television commercial was for a cigarette brand in the early 1950s. She learned to smoke for the commercial, because she felt viewers would know if she was faking it. Her smoking habit lasted for 15 years until her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, then 10 years old, came to her after a school health lecture and begged her to stop.

Received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7060 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on January 30, 2003.

Alfred Hitchcock saw her in a 1962 commercial aired during the “Today” (1952) show and cast her in The Birds (1963). In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of The Birds (1963), the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock.

Grandmother of Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas.

Mother-in-law of Antonio Banderas. Former mother-in-law of Don Johnson and Steven Bauer.

Operates an exotic animal sanctuary which prompted her testimony in February 2005 in Riverside Superior Court. Hedren made a complaint regarding animal cruelty by a tiger rescuer and was told by U.S. Department of Agriculture that there were not enough inspectors to respond to her complaint. She eventually made room for a lion rather than have it go to the rescuer. She stated she felt like she was walking through a trash dump.

Her store owner father, Bernard, was Swedish and her school teacher mother, Dorathea, was German-Norwegian.

Friend of Linda Blair, Rod Taylor and Diane McBain.

Has a sister named Patty Davis.

She met with Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville for the final time in London, England, in 1966, while she was filming Charles Chaplin’s last film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967). They took her to tea at Claridge’s. The atmosphere was tense because she knew Hitchcock was upset that she had been cast in what was expected to be a big film, and he was unable to hide his bitterness.

Camille Paglia on Women and Magic in Hitchcock BFI

Her performance as Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963) is ranked #86 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

British neo-progressive band Landmarq have a song titled “Tippi Hedren” on their 1992 album “Solitary Witness”.

Attended Suzanne Pleshette’s funeral in 2008. They starred together in The Birds (1963).

One of her favorite sweet treats is Marnie’s red velvet cake, which she named after her character from the film of the same name Marnie (1964). She graciously provided the recipe for this three-layer cake to a website called high-societea.com, which specializes in articles on tea and accompanying treats.

Requested director Alfred Hitchcock to give her the fur coat that she wore in The Birds (1963), and he graciously gave it to her but charged it to the production company. Eventually, she stopped wearing fur after she became an animal rights activist.

Found it touching when Sean Connery, her leading man from Marnie (1964), said on television that she was underrated while almost everyone in Hollywood was overrated.

Of all her films, Marnie (1964) continues to be her favorite film, because of the complex title character. This is even more telling, considering all the problems that reportedly took place during the filming, which spelled the end of her professional relationship with the film’s director Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the mixed critical reception and the indifferent box office results upon the film’s release.

In most of her films (and in all of her films before 1982 except Tiger by the Tail (1970), her character’s name starts with an M: Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963), Marnie in Marnie (1964), Martha Mears in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Marla Oaks in Satan’s Harvest (1970), Maggie Kingstreet in Mister Kingstreet’s War (1973), Margaret Tenhausen in The Harrad Experiment (1973), Madelaine in Roar (1981), Marcia Stevens in Inevitable Grace (1994), Maylinda Austed in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), Martha in The Darklings (1999) (TV), Michelle Labner in Searching for Haizmann (2003), Mary in Dark Wolf (2003) (V), Mary Jane in I Heart Huckabees (2004), and Minnie in Dead Write (2007).

Bridget Fonda, who played her daughter in the straight-to-cable film Break Up (1998), gushed to her about how she had watched Marnie (1964) “a million times”.

She was supposed to play the leads in Bedtime Story (1964) (opposite David Niven and Marlon Brando), Mirage (1965) (opposite Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau), and Fahrenheit 451 (1966) (opposite Oskar Werner), but Hitchcock told the directors and producers that she wasn’t available to work with them. Shirley Jones, Diane Baker, and Julie Christie eventually played the parts she was considered for.

Actress Sienna Miller portrayed her in the cable movie “The Girl” (2012), which dealt with Tippi’s three years with Alfred Hitchcock. She told Miller to portray her as strong, since she rejected Hitchcock’s advances, even though it meant the end of her career as a leading lady. She said she was happy with Miller’s portrayal.(View Video of Sienna Miller talking about playing Tippi Hedren in “The Girl”)

Met President John F. Kennedy once when he was on vacation, as she was, in the South of France. Later, she was driving to her horse-riding lesson in preparation for her role in Marnie (1964), when she learned about the President’s assassination. She said that she was “stunned, and very angry,” that the assassination could have happened.

Is a fan of actor Johnny Depp and named one of her house cats after him. Even though, she hasn’t met him, her son-in-law Antonio Banderas acted with him in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), and her grand daughter Dakota Johnson appeared in 21 Jump Street (2012), though not in the same scenes as Depp.Personal Quotes

[on Alfred Hitchcock] To be the object of somebody’s obsession is a really awful feeling when you can’t return it.

[on 3/1/05, when asked which is her favorite of the Alfred Hitchcock films she starred in] I think Marnie (1964). They were both so different that it’s kind of hard to figure out which, but The Birds (1963) was sort of a chase. All of the Hitchcock films have a mystery to them and that sort of thing, but the personality of Marnie was so intriguing. She was really – poor Marnie.

My advice to anyone contemplating acting as a profession is to be independently wealthy or have another vocation as a backup. [Melanie Griffith] and [Antonio Banderas] are well set, but most actors make a pittance.

For years, directors and producers came up to me and said they’d wanted me for a role, but [Alfred Hitchcock] wouldn’t allow it. The worst was when I found out that François Truffaut had wanted to cast me. I’d never heard a word about it. That one hurt.

[on being offered the title role in Marnie (1964) by Alfred Hitchcock] I was stunned. I was amazed that he would offer me this incredible role and that he would have that kind of faith in me . . . I thought Marnie was an extremely interesting role to play and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

[on working with Sean Connery, her leading man in Marnie (1964)] He was just fabulous, a consummate actor with a great sense of humor. He was practicing his golf swing all the time – a rather profound golfer. We honored him on June 8, 2006, at the American Film Institute. They asked me to speak about him, which was great fun. It was one of the most wonderful evenings.

It is interesting because some of the critics who really panned [Marnie (1964)] when it came out see it again and it is like they are reviewing an entirely different movie. I think a lot of it was that all those years ago, people were not aware of how a trauma being inflicted upon a child can affect what happens to them as an adult if it isn’t properly dealt with. I think there were multiple reasons why they didn’t like it. For some reason, the painted backdrops really bothered people forty years ago – that was a big deal for some reason with the critics. I kept thinking “So what, it’s a movie!”

[In 2006, when asked whether she can watch The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) and separate herself from the experience of making them] I can do that now and it is quite a relief, actually. I can look at it and think “She did a good job!” There were years where I would see things and wish I could do them over but now I can just watch them.

They called and asked what I thought about a remake of The Birds (1963) and I thought: ‘Why would you do that? Why?’ I mean, can’t we find new stories, new things to do?

Tippi Hedren – Talks about “The Birds” & Alfred Hitchcock plus other Leading Ladies
When you do a love scene with someone in a movie, you have cameras and lights surrounding you. It’s not very romantic, especially considering what I was going through. A lot of people have asked me whether or not I had a fling with Sean Connery during the filming of Marnie (1964), and the answer is no. Marnie was so frigid and cold that she screamed when a man came near her. If I had strong feelings for him in real life, it would have shown through my eyes in the film. I was too dedicated to acting. So, no, I don’t really know what it’s like to kiss Sean Connery.

Tippi Hedren: Hitchcock Ruined My Career | HPL

Salary:

The Birds (1963)
$500 per week

Marnie (1964)
$600/per week

BFI Tippi Hedren in Conversation
An extremely moving conversation, especially when she described her being stalked by Alfred Hitchcock.

Tippi Hedren battles for lions, tigers, against Hitchcock and circus. Oh, my! Interview (AUDIO) For all Animal Activists this Interview with Tippi Hedren is highly enlightening.
QUOTATIONS on OBSESSION:

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” ― Elie Wiesel

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.” ― Jeanette Winterson

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” ― Margaret Atwood

“Don’t be self-conscious, if I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of it.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.” ― William Shakespeare

“I have little left in myself — I must have you. The world may laugh — may call me absurd, selfish — but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen.
I stared at her.
You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven’t grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you’re mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you’re tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful.
I stared at her.
When I see you the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There’s nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops and it is a beautiful place and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you.
I stared.
When you’re gone, the World starts again, and I don’t like it as much. I can live in it, but I don’t like it. I just walk around in it and wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful Girl, is why I stare at you.” ― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.” ― Emily Brontë

“I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can’t see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.” ― Jack Llawayllynn, Indulgence

“This connection we have isn’t going away, it’s only getting stronger. Because the more I spend time with her, the closer I want to be.” ― Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry

“Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.” ― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo ” ― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” ― Claude Monet

“It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

“I vow I am, and always will be, constant and faithful in my love for you, Anais. Nothing you or anyone else does shall alter these feelings. I am forever loving, forever waiting, forever yearning…forever yours.” ― Charlotte Featherstone, Addicted

“To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you’re completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there’s no point to continue. ” ― Jennifer Salaiz

The Great Gatsby

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The Great Gatsby
Film Review
Character Analysis
Film Trailer
Post Created by j.kiley
Posted May 10th 2013
Passages
“When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more of the riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction–Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of “creative temperament”–it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such that I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No–Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elation’s of men” (Fitzgerald 6-7).

This passage, located in the first chapter, is a reflection of Nick’s feelings after the summer of 1922. The unique organization of the book placed this reflection before the actual events, so that it serves to foreshadow what will come. After his summer of parties, decadence and intrigue Nick is disgusted by the modern culture and society. After only one summer, he is prepared to return to the comfort of routine and familiarity that he associates with his home. The only person who has not diminished in his sight is Jay Gatsby, because, in spite of Gatsby’s lavish lifestyle, there was a vitality and enthusiasm about him that impressed Nick. This passage summarizes the final phase of Nick’s emotional and intellectual transformation. Nick experienced interest, involvement and finally disgust. This feeling of disgust and disillusionment with the roaring twenties is a strong sentiment throughout the book.
“They had forgotten me but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together” (Fitzgerald 101-102).

This passage presents a scene in which Nick visits with Gatsby and Daisy, but is completely eclipsed by their love for each other. They see nothing beyond themselves and their own love. Nick leaves unnoticed and un-missed. This self-absorption is apparent in many of the characters throughout the book and contributes to the confusion and sorrow that ultimately occurs. Everyone is working for themselves, with little to no consideration for the feelings or needs of others. In this scene, Nick notes the vitality of the two lovers. It is Gatsby’s passion and enthusiasm for life that particularly impresses Nick, but it is this vitality that ultimately destroys his relationship with Daisy. Both these elements of passion and selfishness create an atmosphere that allows for the careless destruction of lives and people.Characters
Nick
The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, is a self-described “tolerant” and “open-minded” man. From a wealthy and long-established midwestern family, Nick was educated at Yale and is an astute and perceptive individual. Quiet and a good listener, Nick frequently plays the role of confidante, and unwilling witness to the secrets and ambitions of his acquaintances. His own actions and ambitions are insignificant when contrasted with the observations of Gatsby and the Buchanan’s. The reader’s sense and understanding of Nick’s character comes largely from his reactions to the actions of his friends. He is not an impartial judge, and makes his sentiments known. Like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Nick’s experiences alter his perspective on the world. He observes the actions of those around him, and is not unmoved by them. Like Scout, he finds much to repulse him and disappoint him in his fellow humans. Where Scout was repulsed by racism, Nick is sickened by the vices and excesses of the Roaring Twenties. Nick, unlike Scout, is an educated adult, but this does little to prepare him for the atmosphere of wild abandon he finds in New York society.

Daisy
Daisy Buchanan is a distant cousin of Nick’s, who enchants and attracts people with her sensual personality as well as her beauty. On the exterior, Daisy seems to have achieved complete success with her marriage to the wealthy Tom Buchanan, and her popularity within the higher social circles. In reality, Daisy is stuck in a faltering marriage with an adulterous husband, and little true enjoyment. With the arrival of Gatsby, her former love, Daisy experiences a short period of passionate happiness and feeling. This only serves to heighten her internal confusion, as she struggles to determine what type of life she wants to lead and with whom she wishes to spend that life. This struggle demonstrates Daisy’s weakness of character and her malleability. Daisy is supposedly based on Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. Like Zelda Daisy is a winsome and attractive woman, but she has a love for the material things of life. She is fairly superficial, and her outward graces cover a love of money and position.

Tom
Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, is a domineering and determined fellow. Defined by strong and stubborn opinions and feelings that are often ill-founded, Tom’s character is a destructive one. He marches recklessly and heedlessly forward without consideration to the trouble he causes for others. Engaged in an affair, he is unfaithful in marriage and makes Daisy’s life terribly unhappy. He shares many characteristics with Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire. Both men demonstrate primitive qualities and a propensity for anger and aggression. They are physical and bestial men. Unconcerned with the destruction they create, both hurt the women that they love and offend those with whom they interact.

Gatsby
Jay Gatsby is the mysterious and wealthy neighbor who becomes the subject of Nick’s attention all summer. A self-made man from a poor background, Gatsby is brimming with life and enthusiasm. His passion and energy amaze Nick as well as his other acquaintances. He is the constant subject of speculation and gossip because of his intense nature, odd habits, and lack of established history. As Nick discovers, the driving force behind Gatsby’s actions is his love for Daisy. In his mind Gatsby has transformed Daisy into an angel, and his love for her has fueled his drive to be successful. Gatsby is much like the Rhett Butler figure in Gone with the Wind, because like Rhett, he is mysterious and constantly confounding convention. He has worked hard to establish his fortune, and his reputation has grown to extreme proportions. His love of Daisy motivates him, in much the same way that Rhett’s love of Scarlet dictates his actions. By admitting this love, both of these characters are demonstrating a vulnerability uncharacteristic of them, or at least of their reputation. Gatsby, the tragic lover, remains a mystery throughout, even when confiding in Nick.

Carey Mulligan & Leonardo Dicaprio

The Great Gatsby
A grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
By Dana Stevens|Posted Thursday, May 9, 2013, at 6:34 PM
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby.

As Nick Carraway, the mild-mannered but eagle-eyed narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, observes in the book’s early pages, “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” So it was with a Zen mind that I tried to approach Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the book, which, intelligent debunkings aside, I really do regard as one of the great American novels of the 20th century—and probably inherently unfilmable. Literary adaptations of books in which the language is all—particularly the work of high-modern prose stylists like Fitzgerald, Proust, Nabokov, Woolf—seem doomed to either plodding literalism or airy insubstantiality. (Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita had a nasty sense of humor all its own, but the script, written by Nabokov himself, dispensed almost entirely with the narrative voice that makes the novel so perversely seductive.)

Then there was the fact that Baz Luhrmann, the Australian director of such grand-scale entertainments as Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and Australia, was the one who would be turning Fitzgerald’s economic tone poem of a novel into a big, glitzy 3-D spectacle. I’ve never been fond of Luhrmann’s films, and have only been able to tolerate a couple. (I think I walked out of Moulin Rouge, back when I wasn’t a film critic and could indulge in such luxuries.) His mania for heaping one visual excess atop another—look at this! No, look at this!— strikes me as a form of directorial ADD, an inability to let himself or the audience rest. And as a member of that winded audience, I sense an implicit condescension in Luhrmann’s tendency to flag and then re-flag a film’s major themes as his films go on—themes that were not introduced subtly the first time around. In Baz Luhrmann movies, ideas arrive with an ensemble.

But of course, The Great Gatsby is the story of a supremely unsubtle man given to bold gestures and flashy set pieces, so maybe Luhrmann was born to adapt it. At any rate, his Great Gatsby was nowhere near as terrible as I feared. It is, as I suspected, a gargantuan hunk of over-art-directed kitsch, but it makes for a grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies. And far from betraying the spirit of Fitzgerald’s novel, Luhrmann (along with his co-screenwriter Craig Pearce) treats the book with a loving mix of straight-ahead reverence and postmodern playfulness. During the huge, highly choreographed party sequences that structure the story (this isn’t a musical, but the recurring music- and dance-heavy sequences make it feel like one), you’re more likely to hear Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Lana Del Rey than you are a tinny vintage recording of “Ain’t We Got Fun?”, the flapper-age standard that figures in a scene in the novel and that played at the end of the stillborn 1974 Robert Redford version. Luhrmann’s use of contemporary pop may spring mainly from a desire to sell soundtrack albums, but the notion of using hip-hop as a backdrop for Jazz Age euphoria makes sense: With his new wealth, loud pink suit, and impossibly sweet crib, Gatsby is a rap star before his time.
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Dance-floor playlists aside, this Gatsby unfolds in a fairly conventional period setting (though this is the ’20s as seen through a distorting kaleidoscope, everything a little bigger and louder and lusher than life). In a klutzy frame story that’s absent from the novel, we meet Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) at a sanatorium where he’s recovering from “morbid alcoholism” and assorted mental maladies. He begins to tell his story to a benevolent, Santa Claus-like shrink, who provides him with a pen and paper with which to write it down. Later Nick will trade these tools in for a typewriter; whatever writing tool he uses, the words will occasionally drift up around him on the screen, then break apart and drift around him in a cloud of floating 3-D letters. It’s a hokey device, but the Nick-as-author conceit gives us an excuse to listen some choice passages of Fitzgerald’s prose, which Maguire, giving a surprisingly quiet performance at this chaotic movie’s heart, delivers beautifully. Thematically, though, it does seem a mistake to turn The Great Gatsby into a self-referential bildungsroman about a young man’s journey to healing through authorship. When Nick finally pens in “The Great” over his manuscript’s original title Gatsby, we don’t so much feel pride in his accomplishment as annoyance at his smugness—he’s supposed to be telling us this story out of necessity, not ambition.

The story Nick has to tell is one that anyone who’s graduated high school in the United States surely knows, at least in Cliffs Notes form: The mysterious tycoon Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) owns a gaudy estate next door to Nick’s rented cottage in the fictional Long Island village of West Egg. At one of his extravagant all-night flapper blowouts, Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a meeting with Nick’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a dazzling former debutante whom Gatsby once loved and lost as a younger, poorer man. Daisy lives directly across the sound in old-money East Egg with her rich brute of a husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), and is constantly flanked by her best friend Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), an icy-cool golf champion. Over the course of a summer, Nick is drawn into the orbit of these wealthy, powerful, lost people, whom he recognizes as a “rotten crowd” only after their unthinking cruelty has already caused irreparable harm.

Every image and set piece you remember from the novel—the crumbling oculist’s billboard that looms over the action with judging eyes; Gatsby flinging his collection of custom-made shirts at an overcome, weeping Daisy (and, thanks to the 3-D format, directly at us); the hot afternoon at the Plaza Hotel when the rivalry for Daisy’s affections comes to a head—is rendered in broad, operatic gestures. There were many moments when that broadness made me cringe: Does the CGI-aided camera always have to race at jet-ski speed across the water toward the symbolic green light on Daisy’s dock? Must Gatsby’s face really be seen for the first time against a backdrop of fireworks, as the climax of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” surges on the soundtrack? And yet for every slab of processed cheese, there’s another moment whose visual inventiveness pays off. In an early scene, Luhrmann turns one image in the novel—Nick looking out the window at a party, “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”—into a clever Rear Window-style tableau of a Manhattan apartment building bursting with untold stories.

Leonardo DiCaprio makes as good a Jay Gatsby as any living actor I can think of—he captures the character’s fixed-in-time boyishness as well as his innocent hucksterism, and he looks like a (dubiously ethical) million bucks in the splendiferous costumes by Catherine Martin, the director’s wife (who also designed the dizzyingly lavish, champagne-and-confetti-drenched production—she must have been one tired woman by the time shooting ended). But DiCaprio’s physical presence seems almost superfluous in some key scenes, as Maguire’s voice-over narrates the idealistic striver’s actions faster than he can complete them. Our first glimpse of Gatsby, before even the Gershwin-accompanied debut described above, is a shot of his be-ringed hand reaching toward that oft-revisited green light as Nick describes watching his enigmatic neighbor … reach for a green light off a dock. Luhrmann doesn’t just gild the lily, he spray-paints it with glow-in-the-dark sparkles.

Somehow the connection that’s established between Gatsby and Nick—the charismatic gangster and the shy young banker he dubs “old sport”—feels more vital and convincing than the illicit love between Daisy and Gatsby, which, despite Carey Mulligan’s sensitive performance, remains more of a narrative conceit. Perhaps the sweet-faced Mulligan is a little too sensitive for this part—there’s a hard, narcissistic edge to Daisy that we don’t glimpse until very late in the film (which also, disappointingly given Luhrmann’s literalness, misses the chance to work in Gatsby’s observation that “her voice is full of money”). Many of the actors in smaller roles—especially Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke as Tom Buchanan’s working-class mistress and her duped mechanic husband—seem to be straining to fill their limited screen time with the most theatrical, Punch-and-Judy style performances possible. If there’s a discovery in the cast, it’s the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Daisy’s enabling pal Jordan. In the novel, Nick describes the implacable Jordan as looking “like a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf.” Debicki’s cool, reserved performance captures the stillness of that description—when she’s onscreen there’s a moment of respite from the noise, a sigh of relief that there’s someone in this feverishly over-self-explaining movie we may never understand.

The Great Gatsby — Leonardo DeCaprio and Carey Mulligan QUOTATIONS on CLASS:

“Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It’s the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.” ― Ann Landers

“It’s okay. We aren’t in the same class. Just don’t forget that some of us watch the sunset too.” ― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all … The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.” ― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller

“History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.” ― Jeffrey D. Sachs

Silver Linings Playbook & the Stigma of Bipolar

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Silver Linings Playbook & The Stigma of Bipolar
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Film Review taken from Salon
Post Created with a short comment at the end
by jk the secret keeper
Posted 05.01.13

Bradley Cooper, star of Silver Linings Playbook, an Oscar-nominated film about a man living with bipolar disorder. His recent film is making progress toward removing the stigma of mental illness. I am changing the two words to Mentally Creative or Mentally Interesting. The medical community is trying to move away from diagnosing Bipolar or other issues with the brain as “Mental Illness.” They are Brain illnesses or diseases. They are not behavior problems or mental problems. Not should they be stigmatized. When you have the flu you treat it in order to get better. When you have Bipolar you treat it so that you have a better control of what is causing the patient to exhibit the brain illness. There are a variety of ways to treat bipolar as there are people that have that brain dis-ease. I don’t use medications with the exception of one. My thoughts are that you treat bipolar the way that is best for you. I try to work on what helps me keep it under better control. I am still new at it and not very good at following the ways that work the best. But bipolar tends to make you stubborn sometimes. That I have to work on, also. But to stigmatize anyone for having something they were born with or inherited or just woke up one day and there it is bipolar or any other brain illness. You don’t back away from someone with cancer or Parkinson’s or any other physical ailment. Well, bipolar is a physical part of you that is not functioning in a manner in which makes your life easier to live. by jk the SK

Silver Linings Playbook is a film that is a personal movie for David O’Russell and when the group all came together to do the film, it became a personal movie for all of them. Tiffany, played by Jennifer Lawrence, serves as a catalyst and she’s the first person who actually sees who Pat is. Pat is played by Bradley Cooper. That’s the thing that this film has done, people around this country who have seen this film say “this film actually sees who I am” because bipolar is heavily stigmatized, its not a very treatable disease and it’s a condition that is diagnosed way too late. So hopefully, a movie like this will help it become less stigmatized in the onset. The best thing about this movie is that it will be able to reach out and make people feel included. ~ Bradley Cooper

“Silver Linings Playbook” with Bradley Copper

I watched the film last night. My reaction immediately was to think of a way to make a film, write the script for a film, where instead of the mentally creative or mentally interesting being the center and the ones stigmatized, that it wouldn’t be that way at all, instead those that are stigmatized are the folks we consider “normal,” they are the ones we feel uncomfortable around and they are the ones who are put in the outskirts of society and the ones who are stigmatized. If you think about it, those who have bipolar feel uncomfortable around people who are “normal,” those who think they are above those who have problems with the brain. Bipolar isn’t a behavior problem or a mental illness, which I find to be an offensive term. Those with bipolar have the fortunate or unfortunate DNA or the brain misfirings that cause some of the “bipolar reactions” the world has toward bipolar or any other person who is mentally interesting or mentally challenged. Why do “normal” people feel that they have any better a grasp on the truth of life on how to live it than someone who has been “blessed” with the gift of bipolar.

Bipolar is something that is extremely difficult to live with, where every moment or split second could change in your reaction to your world and the way you relate to the people around you. You can fly off the handle and lose your temper from a slight change in your environment. Is that really something to be afraid of? I don’t think so. “Normal” people have moods, also. Yes, bipolar, there are mood changes, the thoughts race around your mind because you have so many ideas firing off in your brain at any given time. Life is exciting. Creating art is a major benefit that can be quite satisfying and comes at one in a rapid firing sort of way. It can be exhilarating. But in that same split second you may find yourself triggered by something you are unaware of that pushes you close to the edge of falling into a dark hole. And most times, you aren’t going to be able to catch a hold of something that will keep you from falling in. It’s an endless fall, like in Alice In Wonderland, except she eventually reaches the bottom and there usually is light there. Bipolar, the lights have gone out.

Finding your way in the dark, when you are feeling nothing but pure tortuous emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual pain, is overwhelming and blinding. Eventually, bipolar will take you to the edge that starts the voices up that make you want to kill yourself or harm yourself. If you have found a discipline when you reach this bottom level like writing or creating art, you usually start that up immediately. And you keep writing or doing your visual arts until you create something that satisfies your opinion that you have succeeded. This may be enough to level you out temporarily and you then may be able to sleep. But even then, you turn on the Walkman with the ear buds in, so not to disturb anyone else with the loudness of your music. The loudness is so that you can only hear the sound of the music and nothing else. It doesn’t usually shut out the death march. That goes on. The thoughts haunt you but you must think them. Bipolar takes you on a journey until you fall asleep.

Hopefully by morning the feelings are under control. Of course, that sleep may take you to 15 or more hours from when you close your eyes. It’s the only way to get back on track. Most likely you haven’t had any sleep in the past day or two. The benefits are that you may not go down that road of bipolar. If you are fortunate you may go down the high one where what you create makes you feel giddy and everything is delightful and light and the demons are sleeping, which means they are leaving you alone. In that bipolar world everything is happy and you laugh and you want the classical or light music to play and you want to create the uplifting poems or stories or art. You want to keep doing projects, to keep creating. So why is the world so afraid of that.

Being mentally creative or interesting isn’t contagious and bipolar people as a rule could care less about harming anyone else except maybe themselves depending on the mood. The mentally creative have been given a stigmatic bum’s rap for the violence of those who take guns and go off on the innocent of the world. Those people are not doing that because they have a brain disease, they are doing that because they are violent individuals or groups that hate themselves and the people that are in their world. Bipolar tends to want to just take care of themselves and stay away from people that judge them. They may yell suddenly and then settle down and forget about it and may want to throw things when they get frustrated but mostly they don’t have any thoughts of hurting anyone and if they get into a down spiral it is usually themselves they are wanting to harm.

So stigma is all in the mind of those who are afraid of people being real and usually afraid of themselves being real. The “normal” people don’t want their reality being touched by anything that might resemble the actual behavior of someone who is alive in any way that might make them have to have a real thought or feeling. I don’t think “normal” people know what they are. Aren’t they usually following the latest dogmatic leader that tells them how to think and how to feel about someone they don’t like. And what about all those people that don’t want to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes because in their “normal” brains they think that it might be them someday who is rich and when they get there they don’t want to have to pay high taxes. I would say the “normal” are the ones who are a bit deluded and can’t think for themselves. And the ones who are bipolar or any other mentally creative individual are the free thinkers and the ones who don’t judge and the ones who want to help support the world and all the people in it.

Maybe it is about time to take a closer look at who the good guys are and who are the ones fucking up the world. And it’s about time to stop stigmatizing and showing people with mentally creative brains as a threat to the safety of society and to see them as contributors in the way of artists and those with original ideas who will move the society and culture forward. Yes, we may get off the path every so often but doesn’t everyone need to do a walk about now and again. Stop judging everyone and start co-existing in peace. Accept difference don’t try to make everyone identical to who you are.
by Jennifer Kiley

Silver Linings Playbook – EXTENDED FEATURETTE HD (2013)Special Features

HERE IS A REVIEW FROM SALON FOR THE FILM: SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Friday, Nov 16, 2012 01:01 PM EST
“Silver Linings Playbook” is gold
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence face love and mental illness in the rich, manic new romantic comedy
By Andrew O’Hehir

We get thrown right into the middle of Pat Solitano Jr.’s troubled life story, without any of the usual context or background. Played by Bradley Cooper in a major departure from his customary sleek pretty-boy roles, Pat is the unhinged, overly intense and not always likable protagonist of David O. Russell’s manic, inventive and rewarding “Silver Linings Playbook.” When we first meet him, he’s standing in the corner of his spartan room in a Baltimore mental hospital, talking to himself. His mom, played by the terrific Australian actress Jacki Weaver, has shown up from Philadelphia to sign him out, against doctor’s orders and without having consulted her husband. What did Pat do that got him locked up in the first place? What’s going on with this family? Why do Pat’s wife and the school where he used to teach have restraining orders against him?

Answers to those questions won’t come into focus for a while, although you may rapidly reach the conclusion that the doctors were right and Pat would be better off heavily medicated and under psychiatric care. Back in the family’s Philly neighborhood, with its slightly desperate upper-fringe-of-the-working-class feeling, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) has no idea his younger son is returning home. One of the best and unarguably funniest roles of De Niro’s recent oddball supporting career, Pat Sr. fronts as an Italian-American tough guy but is more like a barely glued together mass of neuroses, a failing bookie with a penchant for disastrous side bets and an intense OCD relationship with the Philadelphia Eagles. (His wardrobe gets better and better as the movie progresses; I can’t stand football, but I want Pat Sr.’s Eagles-green cardigan.)

As for Pat Jr., whose apparel frequently involves a shapeless gray track suit topped with a black garbage bag – so he can sweat off weight as he runs – his first item of business is studying up on the high-school English syllabus his estranged wife, Nikki, is teaching, in hopes of impressing her at some unspecified future date. (Nikki plays an important role in Pat’s story, but almost entirely through her absence.) This leads, however, to Pat flinging a copy of “A Farewell to Arms” through a closed window at 4 o’clock in the morning, and awakening his parents with a maniacal rant against Ernest Hemingway. (He refuses to apologize, blaming Hemingway. Pat Sr. says, rather mildly, “Tell Ernest Hemingway to come down here and apologize to us in person.”) I can’t help detecting a genre commentary of sorts here, whether it originates with Russell (who also wrote the script) or Matthew Quick, author of the original novel: Hemingway was writing one kind of story, which purports to depict the tragedies of the real world in the 20th century and does not demand a happy ending. This is the other kind of story.

In fact, “Silver Linings Playbook” is a romantic comedy, even if it doesn’t feel like one at first. Furthermore, it’s a rom-com that succeeds in revitalizing that discredited genre where so many others have failed, injecting it with the grit and emotion of realist drama rather than with amped-up whimsy or social satire or montages of people walking on the beach while whiny emo-pop plays on the soundtrack. As he did with the boxing movie in “The Fighter,” Russell proves that you can breathe new life into one of the hoariest forms in the Hollywood lexicon. He takes a movie where everyone in the audience knows how it will end and makes us suspend our disbelief and fall in love all over again. (After an entire decade in the indie-film wilderness following his 1999 breakthrough with “Three Kings,” Russell seems to have found himself a niche reinventing classic movie genres.)

It helps, of course, that we’ve got a dynamite couple to fall in love with. Russell has long had a flair for unexpected casting combinations, but I really didn’t expect Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence to be such a combustible duo. (Yes, in real life, there’s a significant age spread between these two: Cooper is 37 and Lawrence 22. At the risk of sounding like a total sexist pig, it doesn’t play that way on-screen.) Finally getting unleashed from his immensely lucrative “Hangover” roles and a series of tepid leading-man movies, Cooper gives a twitchy, physical, marvelously alive performance as Pat Jr., who’s barely aware how poor his impulse control is and doesn’t seem to notice that his face is often marred with mysterious scars and bruises. As for Lawrence, she’s been in so many movies lately that she’s in danger of being overexposed but I only wish her chaste and cautious performance as Katniss Everdeen had one-third of the fire she shows here as Tiffany, a grieving widow going through a spectacular meltdown of her own.

There have been dozens if not hundreds of other movies about two damaged people who find each other, and quite a few that try to wring bittersweet laughs out of the painful struggle with mental illness. But it’s always wonderfully satisfying to see a conventional or archetypal story structure handled with this level of craft and enthusiasm. “Silver Linings Playbook” never feels like a movie you’ve seen before, even if Pat and Tiffany’s ultimate destination is clear the moment they meet. It seems clear to us, of course, but not to them; Tiffany assumes he’ll just be another entry on her long list of recent sexual partners, while Pat clings like a drowning man to the idea that his marriage to the invisible Nikki – which ended in an act of disturbing violence, as we eventually learn – can still be redeemed.

During Tiffany and Pat’s disastrous first date (which Pat insists isn’t a date, because he’s getting back together with Nikki any day now) they eat Raisin Bran at a diner while she regales him with steamy tales about sleeping with all her co-workers (male and female) at her last job. Pat isn’t literally wearing his garbage bag in that scene, but he might as well be. All the crockery ends up on the floor, along with the remnants of Raisin Bran, and we’re left with the realization that these two people are falling in love but may be too screwed-up to deal with it – a phenomenon that afflicts many of us at one time or another, from you and me to David Petraeus and that lady with the upper arms.

There’s no point denying that “Silver Linings Playbook” is shameless cornpone, given that the bumpy course of Pat and Tiffany’s romance includes such elements as a ballroom dancing competition, a crucial showdown between the Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys and a parlay bet orchestrated by Pat Sr. that links the two. Not to mention a deceptive epistolary exchange straight out of classic French theater. But where most American romantic comedies are either made by talentless hacks or by Hollywood pros who can barely conceal their contempt for the material and the audience, this one was made by a leading American director at the height of his powers who’s paying attention to every emotional beat, every cut and every frame. Great cinema? Hell, I don’t know. But one of the most satisfying movies, that much is for sure.

ADDED NOTE BY jk the secret keeper: I need to watch the film again. Somewhere in the middle I thought the film was over and dropped off and came back before the film was over. So I watched the beginning and the end but missed the middle. My partner, Shawn, thought the film was great. What I saw I agree with her. Make a lot of noise in the middle of the night. So you get woken up by someone yelling and he happens to be bipolar. I don’t think that’s enough to threaten to someone that their behavior is going to get them thrown back into the institution. Only in America does one live under that threat if one is not strictly staying in between the lines. Freedom is another word for nothing left to shout about. SINCE WHEN. THERE ARE LOTS OF THINGS TO SHOUT ABOUT. Why do we have to be quiet to keep ourselves from being locked away. I do realize, and I am not going to give away a spoiler, that the main character has done something that makes the law question his behavior more carefully but the extreme I think everyone takes it seems too extreme to me and especially in society those who are different in their brain and act differently. These are not the dark ages and those with brain problems don’t deserve to be treated as lesser citizens. GO RENT THIS FILM. IT IS A QUIRKY ROMANTIC COMEDY. THE ACTORS ARE BRILLIANT. JENNIFER LAWRENCE DESERVED HER ACADEMY AWARD AND IT DESERVED TO BE NOMINATED FOR BEST PICTURE AT THE ACADEMY AWARDS. jk the secret keeper

Whitney Houston — I Look To You
QUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:

“If I can’t feel, if I can’t move, if I can’t think, and I can’t care, then what conceivable point is there in living?” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“When you are mad, mad like this, you don’t know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else’s reality, it’s still reality to you.” ― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“Creativity is closely associated with bipolar disorder. This condition is unique . Many famous historical figures and artists have had this. Yet they have led a full life and contributed so much to the society and world at large. See, you have a gift. People with bipolar disorder are very very sensitive. Much more than ordinary people. They are able to experience emotions in a very deep and intense way. It gives them a very different perspective of the world. It is not that they lose touch with reality. But the feelings of extreme intensity are manifested in creative things. They pour their emotions into either writing or whatever field they have chosen” ― Preeti Shenoy, Life is What You Make It

“It was as if my father had given me, by way of temperament, an impossibly wild, dark, and unbroken horse. It was a horse without a name, and a horse with no experience of a bit between its teeth. My mother taught me to gentle it; gave me the discipline and love to break it; and- as Alexander had known so intuitively with Bucephalus- she understood, and taught me, that the beast was best handled by turning it toward the sun.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Crazy isn’t a condition it’s a place and it exists somewhere between Love and Oblivion” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich

“Here’s Looking At You Kid”

2 Replies

“Here’s Looking At You Kid.”
Film: Casablanca
Starring Humphrey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman
Playing Roles of Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund
Created by jk the secret keeper
Posted 04.28.13

Casablanca: Rick Blaine & Ilsa Lund “Here’s Looking At You Kid.”

Rick: Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.

Ilsa: But, Richard, no, I… I…

Rick: Now, you’ve got to listen to me! You have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stayed here? Nine chances out of ten, we’d both wind up in a concentration camp. Isn’t that true, Louie?

Captain Renault: I’m afraid Major Strasser would insist.

Ilsa: You’re saying this only to make me go.

Rick: I’m saying it because it’s true. Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

Ilsa: But what about us?

Rick: We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have, we, we lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.

Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you.

Rick: And you never will. But I’ve got a job to do, too. Where I’m going, you can’t follow. What I’ve got to do, you can’t be any part of. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that.

[Ilsa lowers her head and begins to cry]

Rick: Now, now…

[Rick gently places his hand under her chin and raises it so their eyes meet]

Rick: Here’s looking at you kid.

casablanca 1947

casablanca: rick blaine & ilsa lund in paris cafe 680x540

casablanca: rick blaine & ilsa lund in paris cafe 680×540

casablanca: rick hanging out with sam

casablanca: ilsa role played by ingrid berman

FILM REVIEW of CASABLANCA

“Here’s looking at you kid.”

There are so many memorable lines and scenes in the film “Casablanca.”
Casablanca (1942) Directed by Michael Curtiz: Starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine; Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund; Peter Lorre as Ugarte; Claude Raines as Louie (Head of Police/Rick’s Friend); Paul Henreid as Victor Laszlo; Sydney Greenstreet as Ferrari, proprietor of the night club The Blue Parrot.

Just one of the fifty films a studio would make each year back in the day. Casablanca was just one of those films thrown into that collection. Who knew it would spring forth and become the success that it is. Today, it is considered one of the top romantic films of all time.

Won for Best Picture 1942 Oscar. One of the most universally admired films ever made. On most lists of the greatest films of all times. Even people who don’t like old films or black and white films love Casablanca. Roger Ebert said he doesn’t think he’s heard of any negative reviews of this film ever. All the characters are all good except the Nazis. Vichy are the French who collaborate with the Nazis.

Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca in French Morocco, where everyone went for entertainment or to hang out for a drink or to go to the back room where there is gambling going on. Here, in Casablanca, some may obtain exit visas but others may wait and wait and wait. At the beginning of the film, you find out that some couriers were killed in the desert and robbed of exit visas. Officials wanting to see a man’s papers, causes the man to freak out, his papers are not in order, so he runs and is shot and killed because he didn’t halt when ordered to. Life is meaningless.

When Louie, the head of the police, is asked by Major Strasser, what is being done about the murder of the couriers, his answer is: “We’ve rounded up the usual suspects.” No one likes Nazis and the head of the Nazis in this movie doesn’t make them any more popular and maybe makes them even less popular. The Marseillaise is the present day French National Anthem. Remember that when you watch Casablanca.

Ugarte shows up and talks to Rick. Wants to have a drink with Rick but as a rule he doesn’t drink with any of the guests of his night club. Ugarte likes to brag to Rick. He just is looking for Rick’s approval but knows that Rick despises him but he is the only person that Ugarte trusts. Rick does finally seem impressed with him. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out why.

Ferrari wants Rick’s place. He is always trying to buy it. It’s the best place in town. Sasha hangs out there and is sort of Rick’s girl friend and is a bit of an alcoholic. It’s understandable she wants to drink the times are during the 2nd World War and it is making everyone edgy and the French are being ruled by the Germans.

Louie and Rick get involved in a conversation and Louie asks why Rick came to such a God Forsaken place like Casablanca. Rick’s a smart ass and says: “It’s for the water.” But, of course, it is a desert. Rick’s is permitted to stay open because he just doesn’t want to get involved. But he has in his hands something that a lot of people are looking for but no one has any idea what that is. Louie tells Rick there is a famous patriot of the war headed for Casablanca. A member of the Gestapo, Major Strasser, is expected at the club. He is a thoroughly disagreeable Nazis but then what Nazi isn’t. That I may say often.

A major happening occurs at Rick’s but he reassures everyone to settle down and get back into enjoying themselves. Rick actually sits down with the Nazis. The Nazis make mention about invading New York. Rick warns them about staying away from certain sections of New York. They may not be safe. They start in talking about Victor Lazslo being on his way. Rick assuring them that he doesn’t plan on getting involved.

Victor Laszlo and Ilsa Lund eventually show up as expected and walk through the cafe and take a seat in the night club. Expect that many will be approaching Victor fairly often because of his importance and how nervous they make the Nazis. Ilsa starts asking about the piano player and who owns the Night Club. Louie tells her it is a man named Rick. Major Strasser is introduced and acts like the ass that he is. Starts applying his power over Laszlo.

It is evident that Ilsa and Victor are close but at this time we know nothing of their relationship other then they are traveling together. Victor leaves her at table to meet a man at the bar and finds out about Ugarte.

Ilsa wants to speak to the piano player. His name is Sam and she asks him to play some of the old songs. There is a sadness between Sam regarding Rick. She wants him to play a the song “As Time Goes By.” Sam sings the song for her. Out comes Rick telling Sam he’s not suppose to play that song. Rick sees Ilsa sitting at her table. The last time Rick saw Ilsa was in Paris when the Germans marched in to take over the city. He was unnerved seeing her again. He was so not himself that he actually had a drink with all at the table breaking his precedent of not drinking with guests of the night club The Americain.

Later back in his rooms, Rick has a bottle, and tells Sam he is not planning on going to bed. He thinks Ilsa is going to show up. Sam isn’t going to leave his boss alone. He starts getting maudlin. “Of all the gin joints in all the world, she walks into mine.” He wants Sam to play “As Time Goes By.” Sam doesn’t want to open the wounds.

Flashback: Paris with Rick and Ilsa driving around in a convertible. then down by the Seine. In the hotel drinking champagne. “Who are you really and what were you before and what did you think?” Ricks asks. Ilsa’s response: “We said no questions.” All the best lines in these scenes. So many to write down and remember. She reveals an answer without the question. Watch the movie to find out what she told Rick.

Outside, newspapers are being passed around. The Germans are coming I believe are the headlines and what they are saying in French over the microphones. There is a lot of action going on out in the streets.

The most famous line is spoken by Rick toasting champagne with Sam and Ilsa: “Here’s looking at you kid.” Everything is falling apart. “Where were you ten years ago?” Rick said he was looking for a job. For some reason there is a price on Rick’s head but no one knows why. It’s time for everyone to leave Paris. Their suppose to meet at the train station from where they will be leaving. Ilsa loves him so much and the war, she hates that in just the opposite emotion. She thinks that they will be taken apart. “Kiss me as if it is the last time.”

It’s raining at the train station. With three minutes until last train leaves. No Ilsa but Sam and Rick are waiting. There is a note from the Hotel. Fade Out Paris Train Station as you watch the rain wash the ink off of the note in Rick’s hand.

Fade In: Rick’s Rooms enter Ilsa. She wants to talk to him, to tell him a story. It’s about a girl who meets a man, a very courageous man. She looked up to him. She thought it was love. Who did she leave him for? Laszlo or others in between?

Victor and Ilsa meet Strasser at Police station. Strasser guarantees Laszlo will never receive an exit visa. His only way to leave is to be a traitor to his people. Do you really think he is the type of man to be a traitor. Nazis have no sense of integrity so they do not understand an enigma like Victor Laszlo. An important person to their leaving has been reported to be dead.

Rick visits The Blue Parrot and talks with Ferrari, who wants the letters of transit. He tells Rick he thinks he knows where the letters are. Rick purposely left his club so the police would have a chance to ransack it. Louie’s men were impressively destructive at Rick’s Place in order to win points with Major Strasser. Louie blows with the wind. He is with the Vichy. The Vichy being the French who go along and reluctantly support the French. The French who are loyal to their own country feel betrayed by the Vichy.

A young woman comes to Rick to plead for some help. She will have to sleep with Louie if her husband doesn’t win enough money so they can afford a visa. If they use only the money they have there would be nothing left. Louise fully expects her to have sex with him if the money isn’t won. Louie sees that the young woman and Rick are being obvious about conspiring. They are all in the backroom where the gambling goes on. Louie is an odd duck. Louie accuses Rick of being a rank sentimentalist.

Victor has a visit with Rick. The Underground tell Victor all sorts of very impressive things about activities that Rick was involved in during the war.

In Rick’s Cafe, the Nazis are singing about the Fatherland. It is so despicable to the French in the club that they have a singing competition. Guess who wins. Strasser is not very satisfied. He tells Louie to find an excuse to close Rick’s. He tells Rick the reason is because he is shocked that gambling is going on in his club.

Strasser just keeps getting creepier. Threatens Ilsa.

Later Ilsa and Victor speak about the letters of transit and what Rick said about asking his wife why he won’t give up the letters.

Ilsa goes to Rick’s rooms and tries to get letters from him. She wants to tell him what really happened in Paris. The feelings between them, have they been buried or are they gone? The truth comes out. She had no hope that Victor was alive when she was in Paris with Rick.

Victor and Rick talk. They are not that far apart in what they believe.

Louie and Rick talk about letters. Louie doesn’t like Strasser.

Approaching the final few scenes of the film. Cafe Americain is still closed by order of the Prefect of Police. Ferrari has taken over the Cafe. Louie thinks he is at Cafe to arrest Laszlo but Rick surprises him and makes him call the airport to tell them that there is to be no trouble about two letters of transit. Everything is building up to the excitement of what is all going to culminate in some of the biggest surprises yet in the film.

Best closing scenes in any movie and best closing lines. Memorable til the final line.

For the rest of the film and to fill in all the spaces that I have left out, you will need to find a copy of this film on DVD or streaming from online or whatever source you are able to find to watch the whole thing and to see how it ends. It is a thoroughly amazing film to watch. It seems the perfect film in detail, dialogue, scenes, settings, storyline, acting and durability. It has all the perfect elements and the best acting. Filled with sentiment and sacrifice. I first saw this film when I was in my 20s. It was such a surprise that I did not see it when I was a kid. It is understandable for older children and a fascinating film for all adults.

The following videos do have SPOILERS so watch them if you have seen the film already or if you don’t mind seeing scenes before seeing the film. I am sure a great many of you have watched this film. But if you haven’t, it should be on everyone’s’ film list as a must see. The sheer acting alone and the love story and the screenplay is brilliant. The cast is to die for. Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman play the leads. They are two of the finest actors of all times. Worthy of anyone’s time to find out how great they are in Casablanca. No one had any idea what a remarkable film this was going to turn out to be. The special benefit if this film is you get to hate the Nazis and you get to curse them out without impunity. It has the most classic lines of almost any film ever made. Enjoy the videos and seriously consider locating this film if you haven’t seen it and find it so you can watch it again. “Here’s Looking At You Kid.” jk the SK

Tribute To Casablanca
Filled With Spoilers

Casablanca La Marseillaise

All About the Film “Casablanca”

The relationship between Rick and Ilsa was filled with Desire. I am going to write a poem about Desire in my new form of Haiku. I refer to it as X-treme Haiku. I use an altered form of Haiku with the onji (lines) in the 5 – 7 – 7. I do as few or as many verses as I feel will tell the story that I am writing. Sometimes the story will more often be a touch abstract and other times it may be a philosophical exploration, or a story that may have the appearance of something that may b close in resemblance to a fable. With X-treme Haiku I want to allow myself the freedom to write about what I want but to also include restriction which will encourage restraint on my part so that I will write more concisely with the use of fewer words that will contain an understanding and a discipline toward accuracy. I have been using this style of X-treme Haiku for a short while now and find it makes me more disciplined. It involves research and a greater understanding of the words I use. Being precise about definitions of the language I am using. There is a cleanness to the design. The other rules are for myself and they include the use of words. I do not or try not to repeat a word within the same verse or if possible within the same poem unless absolutely necessary. I like mystery in my poems so I do have the tendency to be a touch cryptic and/or abstract. I like analyzing what it is I am writing about. I am honest about whatever it is I have chosen to write about. I believe in going into the depths of what I mean in what I write. Truth is essential. Directness is essential. Abstraction is often essential. I believe in creating a puzzle that must be deciphered. I do not often hand out the simplicity of a matter. A specific reason for that is when I am writing I am also trying to interpret and examine in depth what subject is I am writing on and usually for the purpose of trying to understand what is within or what it is about that I am writing. Now to the poem.

x-treme haiku: "desire" by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013 823x6441

Play It, Sam — As Time Goes By

QUOTATIONS on FILM & DESIRE:

FILM:

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.” ― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“It starts so young, and I’m angry about that. The garbage we’re taught. About love, about what’s “romantic.” Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys–depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.” ― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“Only the gentle are ever really strong.” ― James Dean

“Certain things leave you in your life and certain things stay with you. And that’s why we’re all interested in movies- those ones that make you feel, you still think about. Because it gave you such an emotional response, it’s actually part of your emotional make-up, in a way.” ― Tim Burton, Burton on Burton

“Ezekiel 25:17. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” I been sayin’ that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin’ made me think twice. Now I’m thinkin’: it could mean you’re the evil man. And I’m the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he’s the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you’re the righteous man and I’m the shepherd and it’s the world that’s evil and selfish. I’d like that. But that shit ain’t the truth. The truth is you’re the weak. And I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m tryin, Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard to be the shepherd. — he became the shepherd instead of the vengeance.” ― Quentin Tarantino

“A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again. If somewhere in the Hollywood-entertainment world someone has managed to break through with something that speaks to you, then it isn’t all corruption. The movie doesn’t have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. An actor’s scowl, a small subversive gesture, a dirty remark that someone tosses off with a mock-innocent face, and the world makes a little bit of sense. Sitting there alone or painfully alone because those with you do not react as you do, you know there must be others perhaps in this very theatre or in this city, surely in other theatres in other cities, now, in the past or future, who react as you do. And because movies are the most total and encompassing art form we have, these reactions can seem the most personal and, maybe the most important, imaginable. The romance of movies is not just in those stories and those people on the screen but in the adolescent dream of meeting others who feel as you do about what you’ve seen. You do meet them, of course, and you know each other at once because you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” ― Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies

“Books and movies, they are not mere entertainment. They sustain me and help me cope with my real life.” ― Arlaina Tibensky

DESIRE:

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” ― Epicurus

“Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know–because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.” ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“She leaned forward and caught at his hand, pressing it between her own. The touch was like white fire through his veins. He could not feel her skin only the cloth of her gloves, and yet it did not matter. You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.” ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

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Letters of Import: Welcome to My World Annie 4

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Welcome to My World Annie 4
By Jennifer Kiley
Written 03.31.13
Illustrations by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Early Tuesday Morning
Fourth Posting 04.09.13 Tuesday Oct. 22th, 2007

Dear Annie

There are many things I would like to get to know about you but I am afraid I would be intruding on your privacy. I will guess instead or make up by filling in the spaces from what you say in group or afterwards. I am quite the detective. When I was a kid, I read all the Nancy Drew books I could get my hands on. Then as I got older I graduated to Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. I read others but these two were my favorites and the most intelligent. I, also, got into the British detectives Inspectors Dagliesh and Morse on PBS. Liked reading P.D. James and Colin Dexter. I am a real mystery buff. Love a good mystery in a film, also. The point being I know how to put the pieces together rather quickly.

I should get on finishing up telling you about the cancer. The group, including Mr. Xxx were rather cavalier with my health when I received the diagnosis of Uterine cancer. It’s also called Endometrial cancer. When I got the courage up to tell the group I had been told I had cancer and they found out what kind, I felt like I got totally shot down and shut down. Everyone, including our fearless leader, thought it was the best possible news. Their logic being, if I was to get cancer, getting Uterine cancer was the best one to get. There was nothing to it. In and out for the operation and back on my feet in a couple of weeks. They were not very understanding or consoling at all. So, I think that had a lot to do with why I thoroughly shut down talking about it. I felt rejected. Like no one cared about me. I thought if I died it wouldn’t matter.

So, I started not taking it as seriously but still worried. Then My OB-Gyn told me it looked serious to her. My uterine wall was quite thick. It was a bad boxing day. That’s when she called to confirm the biopsy from the Uterine tissue she painfully scraped from the insides of my body. It was positive for cancer. Nice Christmas. She was great. She went out of her way to get the news to me as quickly as possible. Next step was to find the surgeon. It ended up being the Da Vinci
machine. State of the Art. Two weeks after surgery Scottie and I went to the surgeon behind the Da Vinci machine to get the results. He had us take seats on the other side of his rather large desk. He sat behind it looking like he was having a difficult time finding the words to say. His face wasn’t the kind anyone wants to see when they are waiting for news of this kind. We all looked at each other in the long silence. The doctor finally spoke.

He cleared his throat. “I am afraid I have some rather disturbing news for you, Madison. It seems the cancer has spread outside the containment area of your reproductive organs. It’s in your lymph system. The good news is that we feel and are quite certain that we took the lymph nodes that the cancer had entered. What this means is you have a diagnosis of Stage 3 Endometrial Cancer with an attachment to the lymphatic system. It means your case is a great deal more serious then we expected. Originally, we didn’t feel you would need anything more than the surgery. But now it appears after all you will have to go through a full treatment of Chemotherapy and a full course of Radiation Therapy Treatment that accompanies it. You will need to start almost immediately. Do you have any questions?”

I was dumbfounded and so was Scottie. It was going to really screw with her schedule. Not that she felt that was important at that moment. I thought it was and worried about it. I was trying to think about anything but what I had just heard. I was expecting to be cleared to go home and to continue on living my life in a normal way. With No more Cancer to worry about. Instead it had really only just started. I had just walked into a nightmare that was going to threaten my life from now on. I was never going to be safe from cancer again. From the moment my first doctor told me I would have to see a specialist, that was the beginning. I knew there was a reason I was avoiding it. My unconscious knew I was so god damn bloody sick. But I wasn’t going to listen to any of the signs. They weren’t going to tell me anything was wrong. Stubborn. Scottie kept telling me to call my doctor but I kept putting it off even though I was bleeding to death all the time.

Scottie and I left after we worked out a schedule for my treatment. It meant traveling over 3 hours every visit. That wasn’t going to work. I took the matters into my hands, especially after we would travel the distance for scheduled appointments and then wait there and find out after a few hours of waiting that we were not even on the schedule. I decided to find a place closer to home to receive treatments. They told me that would be impossible. They were wrong. I got on the phone the next day and before the afternoon was over I had a new oncologist. A new cancer center to go to and I could start right away with my treatments. All was transferred and it was a much quieter and comforting place.

End of the cancer saga for todays letter. Did not know I had that pent up inside of me. There is much more but I will keep spreading it out. It is more than I can deal with, so I can’t even imagine you, Annie, understanding what I was going through. No one can if they haven’t been through it. Truthfully, no empathizing will take you to the same place at all.

So, what I really wanted to talk about today was what has been happening inside me. More specifically, my feelings toward you. There’s just something that draws me into wanting to tell you everything. That must seem overwhelming I imagine. I started talk therapy when I was a teenager. It seems to have been converted into my confessional. My conversion into psychoanalysis. It’s a strong urge to understand my self. What’s the reason everything has happened the way it has. Why my life has been so fucked up. I need answers. I need to talk for all the years I was never allowed to. I was a silent child. I thought for quite some time that I was autistic. I was really convinced. I began studying autism in school. It seemed to fit all of my symptoms but I eventually figured out I was just a neglected and a severely abused child instead. Which was worse? I think both are.

Now I am living with another major setback attached to my psych problems. Have you ever heard of agoraphobia? Well, I am an agoraphobic who is not being treated and have never been treated for it or what it does for me except to have pills thrown at it. My fears are being allowed to grow. I don’t object because I don’’t want to experience the panic and anxiety that goes along with going out of the house or interacting with people. My partner, Scottie has her demons with dealing with it.

The pressure between us has been growing when Mr. Xxx started with his lack of support. Denying me my sense of reality. Making me feel like I am unable to interpret my feelings accurately about certain people I feel are treating me like shit. He defended Angie rather than supporting me. The problem comes in that we are both his clients but when he is in a session with me it is my time. That is when I should be getting his support, not her. He should be trying to understand what I am feeling and not Angie. He should be trying to help me understand why she is treating me with such vitriol. What I was feeling about what he was doing made no difference to him. He felt he had to protect Angie from me. I’ve been nothing but cordial to her and she just jumps all over me. Fuck Angie and Fuck Mr. Xxx.

I want to know why I am feeling so hostile. It’s always such a contest to battle out who is right rather then trying to figure out what is wrong. He just doesn’t feel like he cares or wants to understand the effects the group is having on me. I’m really hating to be in that room alone with Angie or him. It is becoming such a toxic place. Its only redeeming quality is that you are there and I feel you protect me. Otherwise I don’t feel safe at all.

You give me support. I wish you were the leader and that Mr. Xxx would resign from the group. He’s threatened to do it enough times. Why doesn’t he just do it and turn the leadership over to you full time. I’d like that more than anything else. Maybe Angie would leave with him.

You’d be so perfect. You could rebuild the group and maybe we would actually talk about something relevant and we would lose him monopolizing every session with his damn stories that haven’t any relevance. We could actually do therapy. Oh, do think about it. Maybe you could work on him and make him decide he is not right for the group any longer or the group is not right with him, that it needs a woman leading a women’s therapy group and not a man.

That is probably enough for this letter. This just exhausts me. I promise I will talk more about it. I just want you to know that I am really beginning to trust you. It’s because I want to and I am believing you will come through and live up to deserving that trust, I think you have already. I do trust you. I want and need to.

I’ll have more to tell you next time. Maybe we can talk some about the individual members of the group besides Mr. Xxx. You need to know more detailed information about them to better understand the dynamics between everyone. It is quite an interesting group broken off into its’ segments. It’s all too depressing to me.

Until next time I will leave you with one secret. Watch out for Robin. She is not your friend. Do not trust her. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That is all I will say for now.

Regards,
Madison (This note is to ensure that each letter is written in the strictest of confidence.)

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the barriers or boundaries of what the potentials could be between us and the development of our relationship.

I am adding this in order that you, Annie Haskell, will know that I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. It will free up my words as I speak them upon the page. And on some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I write in honesty, but for now I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy Psychoanalyst’s Office

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”

John Barry’s Somewhere In Time & Rhapsody on a Theme from Pagnini — Theme #4 for Letters of Import: Welcome to My World Annie 4

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

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Introduction: All The Lonely People

More than one in ten people suffer from chronic loneliness...

Our cultures do little to recognise this alarmingly growing trend. In fact, chronic loneliness can become a disease that eats into the soul causing depression and deep psychological change. The chronically lonely person asks, "What's wrong with me?" Why don't I fit in? Why am I the odd one out?"

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