Showing posts with label The Fool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Fool. Show all posts

Wednesday 27 November 2019

Venus and Adonis


MAURICE: 
You won't be able to do it if you can't relax and let people look at you.
It's the human form, as it is, naked, 
in all of its weakness and beauty.

JESSIE: 
Oh, yeah?

MAURICE: 
What would your mother say?

JESSIE: 
She says if I weren't born, 
She'd be better off.





JESSIE: 
Is this it?

MAURICE: 
This is it.
There.
You see?

JESSIE: 
Is her name Venus?


MAURICE: 
No.


Venus is a Goddess.

Accompanied by Eros,
She creates Love and Desire in us mortals,
leading often to Foolishness and Despair.

The Usual Shit.

For most men, a woman's body is 
The Most Beautiful Thing They Will Ever See.

JESSIE: 
What's The Most Beautiful Thing
a Girl Sees?
Do you know?


MAURICE: 
Her First Child.







Are you all right?


JESSIE: 
I'm not doing any more
of that modeling, I can tell you that.

MAURICE: 
The model for Venus was a Real Woman, 
just like you, that's what caused all The Fuss.

JESSIE: 
Do a bit, then.


MAURICE: 
Now?

JESSIE: 
If you're so good at it.

MAURICE: 
"Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?
Come, let me clutch thee:
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still."
Now, tell me, who wrote that?

JESSIE:
I don't know.

MAURICE: 
Really?


JESSIE:
All right then, smart-arse, what about this?
"I should be so lucky,
lucky, lucky, lucky.
I should be so lucky."
Well? Who wrote it?

MAURICE: 
Not a clue.

JESSIE: 
Well, there you are then.

Hey, it's like A Beach down there.


MAURICE:
I Iived by The Sea when I was a child.
It always calms me.
Shall we go to The Seaside, Venus?

JESSIE: 
I'd rather go to Topshop.

MAURICE: 
(CHUCKLING)
I'll take you to Lunch.


JESSIE: 
Take me somewhere posh.


MAURICE: 
Posh?

JESSIE: 
I want to meet someone really famous, not just you.
Who are these bastards?

MAURICE: 
Some of these arseholes were very well-known.


JESSIE:
For what?

MAURICE: 
You cheer me up, you know.

JESSIE: 
You have a laugh at me, don't you?

MAURICE: 
Just a little.

JESSIE: 
I'll get you back.


MAURICE: 
You will.
Don't you worry.


BILL MOYERS: 
And what does it mean, do you think, to young boys today. 
That we are absent these myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
There was no problem in these old days. 
The boy came out with a different body, and he’d gone through something.

BILL MOYERS: 
What about the female? 
I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male. 
Was this a kind of secret society for males only?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
It wasn’t a secret society, 
it was that the boys had to go through it. 
Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with the female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us. 
In primary cultures today, the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation. 
It happens to her; I mean, nature does it to her. 
And so she has undergone the transformation, and what is her initiation? 

Typically it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, and realise what she is.

BILL MOYERS: 
How does she do that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
She sits there. She’s now a woman. 
And what is a woman? 

A woman is a vehicle of life, and life has overtaken her. 
She is a vehicle now of life. 

A woman’s what it’s all about; 
the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. 

She’s identical with the earth goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself. 

The boy does not have a happening of that kind. 
He has to be turned into a man, and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself.
The woman becomes the vehicle of nature; the man becomes the vehicle of the society, the social order and the social purpose.

BILL MOYERS: 
So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
What we’ve got on our hands. 
As I say, if you want to find what it means not to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.

BILL MOYERS: 
And you’d find?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
Well, the news of the day.

BILL MOYERS: 
Wars…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
Young people who don’t know how to behave in a civilized society. 
Half the…I imagine that 50% of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behave like barbarians.

BILL MOYERS: 
Society has provided them no rituals by which they become members.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
None. There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. 
Even in the Roman Catholic Church, my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. 

So that, I mean, every time now that I read tile Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity, you know. 
The altar is turned so that the priest, his back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that. 
Now they’ve turned the altar around, looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration, and it’s all homey and cozy.

BILL MOYERS: 
And they play a guitar.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
They play a guitar. 
Listen, they’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is, is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

BILL MOYERS: 
So ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely form, and that’s true in the rituals of society, and the personal rituals of marriage and religion.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 
Well, with respect to ritual, it must be kept alive. And so much of our ritual is dead.

Laughter is Infectious




 
You've heard of the placebo effect.
But are you aware of the nocebo effect? 
 
 
In which the human body has a negative physical reaction to a suggested harm.
 
This will make you vomit.
This will make you vomit.
This will make you vomit.
 
 Your mind has the power to create its own physical reality.



This will make you vomit.
 


[VOMITING]
[CHEERING IN DISTANCE.]
 



Why do we yawn when we see others yawn? 
 
Throughout history, there have been incidents.
 
The Dancing Plague of 1518 
 
The Tanganyika laughter epidemic.
 
The Hindu milk miracle.
 
Psychologists call it 
conversion disorder.
 


In that the body converts a mental stress to a set of physical symptoms.
 
In this case, a tic, or spasm.
 
And, like any disorder, it can be contagious.
 
This kind of collective behavior is not limited to human beings.
 
What we know is that, in certain communities, under specific circumstances, an involuntary physical symptom developed by one person can become viral.
 
 
And spread, from person to person until the entire community is infected.
 
And so, my question to you is, if the idea of illness can become illness, what else about our reality is actually a disorder? 
 
  



 
ANIMATION: 
Cartoon sequence of animated Victorian photos, at the end of which a large pig descends, fatally, on a portrait of a man.
 
Cut to wartime planning room. Two officers are pushing model pigs across the map. A private enters and salutes.
 
Private
Dobson's bought it, sir.
 
 
Officer
Porker, eh?
Swine.
 
Cut to a suburban house in a rather drab street. 
Zoom into upstairs window. 
Serious documentary music. 
 
Interior of a small room. 
A bent figure (Michael) huddles over a table, writing. 
He is surrounded by bits of paper. 
The camera is situated facing the man as he writes with immense concentration lining his unshaven face.
 
 
Voice Over
This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of jokes. 
In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in The World... and, as a consequence, he will die ... laughing.
 
Ernest stops writing, pauses to look at what he has written... a smile slowly spreads across his face, turning very, very slowly to uncontrolled hysterical laughter... he staggers to his feet and reels across room helpless with mounting mirth and eventually collapses and dies on the floor.
 
Voice Over
It was obvious that this joke was lethal... no one could read it and live ...
 
 
 
 
 
The scribbler's mother (Eric) enters. 
She sees him dead, she gives a little cry of horror and bends over his body, weeping. 
 
Brokenly she notices the piece of paper in his hand and (thinking it is a suicide note - for he has not been doing well for the last thirteen years) picks it up and reads it between her sobs. 
 
Immediately she breaks out into hysterical laughter, leaps three feet into the air, and falls down dead without more ado. 
 
Cut to news type shot of commentator standing in front of the house.
 
Commentator (reverentially) 
This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock, comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. 
 
Sudden ...violent ... comedy. 
 
Police have sealed off the area, and Scotland Yard's crack inspector is with me now.
 
Inspector
I shall enter the house and attempt to remove The Joke.
 
At this point an upstairs window in the house is flung open and a doctor, with stetoscope, rears his head out, hysterical with laughter, and dies hanging over the window sill. 
 
The commentator and the inspector look up briefly and sadly,
and then continue as if they are used to such sights this morning.
 
Inspector
I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music, played on gramophone records,
and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q Division ... 
 
(he indicates a little knot of dour-looking policemen standing nearby
 
The atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of me reading the joke.
 
 
He gives a signal. 
The group of policemen start groaning and chanting biblical laments. 
The Dead March is heard. 
The inspector squares his shoulders and bravely starts walking into the house.
 
Commentator
There goes a brave man.
Whether he comes out alive or not,
this will surely be remembered as one of the most courageous
and gallant acts in police history.
 
 
The inspector suddenly appears at the door, helpless with laughter, holding the joke aloft. He collapses and dies. 
 
Cut to film of army vans driving along dark roads.
 
Voice Over
It was not long before the Army became interested in the military potential of the Killer Joke. 
 
Under top security, The Joke was hurried to a meeting of Allied Commanders at the Ministry of War.
 
Cut to door at Ham House:
Soldier on guard comes to attention as dispatch rider hurries in carrying armoured box. 
 
(Notice on door: 'Conference. No Admittance'.) 
 
Dispatch nider rushes in. 
A door opens for him and closes behind him. 
We hear a mighty roar of laughter....
series of doomphs as the commanders hit the floor or table. 
Soldier outside does not move a muscle.
 
Cut to a pillbox on the Salisbury Plain.
Track in to slit to see moustachioed top brass peering anxiously out.
 
Voice Over
Top brass were impressed. 
Tests on Salisbury Plain confirmed The Joke's devastating effectiveness at a range of up to fifty yards.
 
 
 
Cut to shot looking out of slit in pillbox. 
Zoom through slit to distance where a solitary figure is standing on the windswept plain. 
 
He is a bespectacled, weedy lance-corporal (Terry Jones) looking cold and miserable. 
 
Pan across to fifty yards away where two helmeted soldiers are at their positions beside a blackboard on an easel covered with a cloth.
 
Cut in to corporal's face -
registening complete lack of comprehension as well as stupidity. 
 
Man on top of pillbox waves flag.
The soldiers reveal the joke to the corporal. 
He peers at it, thinks about its meaning, sniggers, and dies. 
 
Two watching generals are very impressed.
 
Generals
Fantastic.
 
 
Cut to a Colonel talking to camera.
 
Colonel
All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of The Joke.
 
They worked on one word each for greater safety.
 
One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital.
 
But apart from that things went pretty quickly, and we soon had The Joke by January,
in a form which our troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could.
 
Cut to a trench in the Ardennes.
Members of the joke brigade are crouched holding pieces of paper with the joke on them.
 
Voice Over
So, on July 8th, 1944, the joke was first told to the enemy in the Ardennes...
 
Commanding NCO
Squad! Tell The ... Joke.
 
Joke Brigade (together)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?
Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
 
Pan out of the British trench across war-torn landscape and come to rest where presumably the German trench is.
There is a pause and then a group of Germans rear up in hysterics.
 
Voice Over
It was a fantastic success.
Over sixty thousand times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke ...
 
Cut to a film of Chamberlain brandishing the 'Peace in our time' bit of paper.
 
Voice Over
...and one which Hitler just couldn't match.
 
Film of Hitler rally.
Hitler speaks; subtitles are superimposed. 
 
SUBTITLE
'MY DOG'S GOT NO NOSE'
 
A young soldier responds:
SUBTITLE:
HOW DOES HE SMELL?
 
Hitler speaks:
SUBTITLE:
AWFUL
 
Voice Over
In action it was deadly.
 
Cut to a small squad with rifles making their way through forest.
Suddenly one of them (a member of the joke squad) sees something and gives signal at which they all dive for cover.
From the cover of a tree he reads out Joke.
 
Joke Corporal
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?
Ja! .. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
 
Sniper falls laughing out of tree.
 
Joke Brigade (charging)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?
Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
 
They chant the joke.
Germans are put to flight laughing, some dropping to ground.
 
Voice Over
The German casualties were appalling.
 
Cut to a German hospital and a ward full of casualties still laughing hysterically.
 
Cut to Nazi interrogation room.
An officer from the joke brigade has a light shining in his face.
A Gestapo officer is interrogating him;
another (clearly labelled 'A Gestapo Officer') stands behind him.
 
Nazi
Vott is the big joke?
 
Officer
I can only give you name, rank, and why did the chicken cross the road?
 
Nazi
That's not funny!
(slaps him)
I vant to know the joke.
 
 
Officer
All right. How do you make a Nazi cross?
 
Nazi (momentarily fooled)
I don't know ... how do you make a Nazi cross?
 
Officer
Tread on his corns.
(does so; the Nazi hops in pain)
 
Nazi
Gott in Himmel!
That's not funny!
(mimes cuffing him while the other Nazi claps his hands to provide the sound effect)
Now if you don't tell me the joke, I shall hit you properly.
 
Officer
I can stand physical pain, you know.
 
Nazi
Ah ... you're no fun.
All right, Otto.
 
Otto (Graham) starts tickling the officer who starts laughing.
 
Officer
Oh no - anything but that please no, all right I'll tell you.
 
They stop.
 
Nazi
Quick Otto.
The typewriter.
 
Otto goes to the typewriter and they wait expectantly.
The officer produces piece of paper out of his breast pocket and reads.
 
Officer
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!
... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
 
Otto at the typewriter explodes with laughter and dies.
 
Nazi
Ach! Zat iss not funny!
 
Bursts into laughter and dies.
A guard (Terry G) bursts in with machine gun, The British officer leaps on the table.
 
Officer (lightning speed)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer?
Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
 
The guard reels back and collapses laughing.
British officer makes his escape.
 
Cut to stock film of German scientists working in laboratories.
Voice Over
But at Peenemunde in the Autumn of '44, the Germans were working on a joke of their own.
 
Cut to interior.
A German general (Terry J) is seated at an imposing desk.
Behind him stands Otto, labelled 'A Different Gestapo Officer'.
Bespectacled German scientist/joke writer enters room.
He clean his throat and reads from card.
 
German Joker
Die ist ein Kinnerhunder und zwei Mackel über und der bitte schön ist den Wunderhaus sprechensie.
'Nein' sprecht der Herren 'Ist aufern borger mit zveitingen'.
 
He finishes and looks hopeful.
 
Otto
We let you know.
 
He shoots him.
More stock film of German scientists.
 
Voice Over
But by December their joke was ready,
and Hitler gave the order for the German V-Joke to be broadcast in English.
 
Cut to 1940's wartime radio set with couple anxiously listening to it.
 
Radio (crackly German voice)
Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse,
and von vas... assaulted! peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho.
 
Radio bursts into 'Deutschland Ãœber Alles'.
The couple look at each other and then in blank amazement at the radio.
 
Cut to modern BBC 2 interview.
The commentator in a woodland glade.
 
Commentator
In 1945 Peace broke out.
It was the end of The Joke.
Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention,
and in 1950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.
 
He walks away revealing a monument on which is written:
'To the unknown Joke'.
Camera pulls away slowly through idyllic setting.
Patriotic music reaches cresendo.
 
Cut to football referee who blows whistle.
Silence. Blank screen.
CAPTION:
'THE END'
 
The seashore again, with the 'It's' man lying on the beach.






















Wednesday 20 November 2019

NIMROD


It's Hard to Hate Someone You Understand.


He said that he understood... 
But I could see in his eyes that he didn’t —

He was lying to me....!

Our vibrations were getting nasty, but why?
Was there no communication in This Car..?
Had we deteriorated to the level of Dumb Beasts...?



In the Ancient Days, Mankind built a Tower so high that it threatened to touch Heaven —


And God cursed us with
Foreign Language.

Misunderstanding 
and the 
Inability to Communicate

No-One (I Think) is in My Tree 
Living is Easy (with Eyes-Closed)
Misunderstanding All You See





"...it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. 

He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. 

He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. 

He also said he would be revenged on God, if he should have a mind to drown the world again; for that he would build a tower too high for the waters to reach. And that he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers.

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. 

It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water

When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. 

The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion ..."








LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
And this includes the China holdings? 

Laura :
Yes, sir.
As soon as you sign, you'll be the richest man in the world.



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
You're thinking, 
"How is this possible? 
He was the coffee boy.
He worked for me." 



Laura :
Sir, I wasn't — 

LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
I can read your mind, Laura.



Laura :
Yes, sir.
Sorry, sir.



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
God blessed me with a gift, do you understand? 

I am his chosen vessel.


In the ancient days, mankind built a tower so high that it threatened to touch Heaven and God cursed us with foreign language.
Misunderstanding and the inability to communicate, but I know what's in the heart of every man, woman and child on this Earth.
Gone is the confusion, the division.
I am The Great Uniter.



Laura :
You're a saint, sir.



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
The money is a tool, you see.
Nothing more.
Power.
Because without power, who would listen? 



Laura :
Sir, your sister.


Amy, The Beloved :
Excuse me.
I've been waiting.
Papers to sign.




LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
Always papers.

Amy, The Beloved :
Is that Laura? 
Why do you keep her around? 
She's ancient.



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
She resents me.

I like that.


Amy, The Beloved :
I need a new house.


LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
No, you •want• a new house.


Amy, The Beloved :
Harvey's screwing his masseuse.



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
So? You're screwing her, too.


Amy, The Beloved :
I •hate• it when you do that.
Huh? 

[WHIMPERS.]
Stop! 



LEGION, 
(w. The Shadow King still in His Head) :
No more houses.

Amy, The Beloved :

Okay.


[SHUDDERS.]
[INDISTINCT MUTTERING.]
It's always blue!


No one knows what it's like 
To be the bad man 
To be the sad man 
Behind blue eyes 

No one knows what it's like 
To be hated 
To be fated 
To telling only lies 

But my dreams 
They aren't as empty 
As my conscience 
Seems to be 

I have hours 
Only lonely 

My love is vengeance 
That's never free 

THE KING :
[IN FARSI.] : 
No one comprehends this pain 
Feels this feeling 
Like me 
And I blame you 

No one controls themselves like this 
His anger 
His pain 
My pain and fear 
Cannot be revealed 

BOTH: 
But my dreams 
They aren't as empty 
As my conscience 
Seems to be 
I have hours 
Only lonely 

My love is vengeance 
That's never free 

My love is vengeance.
That's never free.

When my fist clenches, crack it open 
Before I use it and lose my cool When I smile 
Tell me some bad news 
Before I laugh and act like a fool 

KING FAROUK
[ IN FARSI] : 
If I am evil 
[TONE RESONATES.]
- [DAVID GROANS.]
Purify me If I shiver 

LEGION :
When I shiver 
[ECHOING.]
Please give me a blanket 
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat 

[LAUGHS.]

No one knows what it's like 
To be the bad man 
To be the sad man, man, man, man, man