MOVIES & SPOKEN WORD

             *FULL MOVIES*    &     *SCENES  & SNIPPETS*     &     *SPOKEN WORD*

 

(NOTE:        MANY OF THESE ENTRIES FIRST APPEARED IN A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FORM ON MY PREVIOUS WEBSITE DATING FROM 2015. )

 

                           **********SCROLL DOWN FOR THE LINKS**********

 

In *MOVIE SCENES*  and in *FULL MOVIES* you'll find:

1. Call What's-his-name and ask him about his house (From WITHNAIL & I [1987])

2. Quintessence of Dust (as above)

3. Everybody Lives With Lies (from THE HOSPITAL [1971])

4. The Wrong Poor Son of a Bitch (as above)

5. You Have Meddled With the Primal Forces of Nature! (from NETWORK [1976])

6. Classic 7-minute comedy sketch from 1953

7. The Objectivity of Subjectivity (from LOVE AND DEATH [1976])

 

8. Wit  ([Full movie] 2001 film based on Pulitzer prize-winning play [95 minutes])

9. Burn! (Queimada!) ([Full movie] Little known historical-political drama starring Marlon Brando)

 

*********SCROLL DOWN FOR THE LINKS**********

 

In *SPOKEN WORD STUFF* you'll find:

1. The Lady or the Tiger (written in 1882, performed by Toyah Willcox & Robert Fripp)

2. Twilight's Last Gleamings (written and presented by William S. Burroughs)

3. The Do-Rights (as above)

4. To Prove a Villain (a brief scene from Richard the Third performed by Daniel Pelissier)

5. The Music of Men's Lives (a scene from Richard the Second performed at the Globe Theatre in London)

 

***LINKS FOR MOVIES & SCENES***                 ***LINKS FOR MOVIES & SCENES***

 

(1) CALL WHAT'S-HIS-NAME AND ASK HIM ABOUT HIS HOUSE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgUjWK7D9ZM

 

The link above and below this explanatory note is an early scene from the 1987 independent comedy-drama Withnail & I. It was written and directed by Bruce Robinson (who’d earlier written the script for The Killing Fields). 

Withnail & I is the story of two chronically drunk, chronically unemployed British actors in 1969. The film has spawned, inter alia, a drinking game based on their prodigious appetite for alcohol.

Withnail (played by Richard E. Grant in his first film role) was inspired by a real life character, Vivian MacKerrell, a minor thespian with emphatic appetites and elastic ethics. As McKerrell’s digestive system collapsed he took to injecting alcohol directly into his stomach. Withnail looks likely to wind up like that.

 

As this scene opens, the “I” character (so called because we never learn his name) has suggested calling What’s-his-name (Withnail’s uncle) to ask about using his country house for a rejuvenating getaway from London.

As he goes to the men’s room, the perfume he’d accidentally spilled on his shoes back in their cluttered flat provokes unwelcome attention.

This interlude finally results in Withnail and the “I” character (played by Paul McGann) surviving a chaotic weekend in the rural cottage owned by Withnail’s lecherous gay Uncle Monty.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgUjWK7D9ZM

 

 

(((0)))

 

(2) QUINTESSENCE OF DUST

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WnNL67PEKU&t=1s

 

This is the conclusion of the cult comedy-drama Withnail and I, written and directed by Bruce Robinson. It starred Richard E. Grant as “Withnail” and Paul McGann (as “I”). It is linked above and below this explanatory note.

As described earlier, the movie explores the turbulent relationship between two chronically unemployed British actors in 1969. Their days are spent getting drunk, getting high and getting into trouble.

A. O. Scott (The New York Times) described Withnail as an egotistical blend of Lord Byron and Mick Jagger whose greatest talent appears to be squandering his talent. The “I” character (whose name we never learn) is frequently capable of responsibility and diligence, in marked contrast to his friend.

Despite the movie’s frequent hilarity, there are bleaker moments of near-despair plus a pervasive sense that this friendship must be finite. Something is about to give.

 

In this extract, we witness the pair’s final parting of the ways.

A miracle has occurred. On their return from a disastrous weekend in the country cottage of Withnail’s lecherous gay Uncle Monty, “I” suddenly finds himself employed. He’s won a plum role in a play and must now straighten up and fly right. And he must leave promptly for rehearsals in Birmingham. The two friends walk to the train station, drinking a bottle of vintage wine stolen from Uncle Monty.

After Withnail delivers a Shakespearian soliliquy, he returns to the filthy flat he’d previously shared with “I”. We’re left to ponder his future. Bruce Robinson later admitted that his original script had Withnail committing suicide. But then Robinson had second thoughts. Better, he thought, to leave that young man’s fate in the lap of the gods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WnNL67PEKU&t=1s

 

(((o)))

 

(3) "EVERYBODY LIVES WITH LIES!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mey1dXTLdeE&t=5s

 

The Hospital (1971) (directed by Arthur Hiller, written by Paddy Chayefsky) is a satirical comedy-drama set in a huge, prestigious teaching hospital in Manhattan. A renowned scene from it is linked above and below this explanatory note.

Herbert Bock, the chief of Internal Medicine (portrayed by George C. Scott), has reached the end of his rope. His stormy marriage has broken down for good, he’s estranged from his kids, and his beloved hospital seems to be falling apart. Callous incompetence surrounds him. He feels helpless and bereft of hope. Bock’s sole escape is nightly binge drinking in his hotel room during which he reviews "the shambles of [his ] life". He concludes his only option is suicide.

As Bock prepares to end his life by massively overdosing on potassium, he witnesses a bizarre scene. A recently admitted patient – a medical missionary from Boston working among the Apaches of northern Mexico – is the subject of a shamanistic ritual. It is conducted right in the ward by an Apache medicine man flown to New York for that very purpose. Bock takes this grotesque episode as yet another sign that his beloved hospital is going to the dogs.

 

Meanwhile, Bock is introduced to that missionary’s daughter (Ms. Drummond, played by Diana Rigg). As the scene you are about to watch begins, she has come to Bock's office on some pretext, but with the clear intention of seducing him. She has, she confesses, “a thing for brooding middle-aged men". The action here unfolds just after she makes her move.

What makes this lengthy scene remarkable is how it was shot in one continuous take. There were no cuts and no interpolations. Scott and Rigg performed as if they were live on the stage. And Scott’s towering performance – in what has become widely known as the “impotence monologue” – is one of the most admired in cinema history.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mey1dXTLdeE&t=5s

 

(((o)))

 

(4) THE WRONG POOR SON OF A BITCH

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7LcjCyFUsg

 

Here is another scene from Arthur Hiller’s black comedy-drama The Hospital (1971, written by Paddy Chayefsky). It starred George C. Scott in the role of Dr. Herbert Bock, the Chief of Internal Medicine at a large, prestigious teaching hospital in Manhattan.

As mentioned above, Bock is a man in crisis. He’s started hitting the bottle as his turbulent marriage finally breaks down for good. His kids hate him. His beloved hospital is crumbling before his very eyes. Thoughtless ineptitude is becoming the norm. He’s in despair.

 

This particular early scene opens just as the supervisors have finally untangled the identity of the young corpse found in the bed assigned to a recently admitted elderly patient named Guernsey.

They surmise that during the night somebody had secretly moved old Mr. Guernsey to another bed.

The question here arises whether it was one of the junior doctors, a Dr. Schaeffer (“Sammy Stud”), who moved old Guernsey in order to use his bed for a brief but passionate rendezvous with his latest girlfriend, one of the hospital’s lab technicians.

At one point during the night, while “Sammy Stud” lay unconscious - but why was he unconscious? - two nurses followed protocol by plugging a 5% glucose solution into his arm, thinking he was old Mr. Guernsey. The sign on the bed said GUERNSEY, after all.

Unfortunately, Dr. Schaeffer was a diabetic, so 5% glucose was fatal. This is the first in a series of macabre – and fatal – incidents involving patients and the hospital staff. All further proof to Dr. Bock that the hospital he loves is rapidly falling apart.

(If the actress playing the chief nurse – Mrs. Christie – looks familiar, it’s because she played the lead character’s mother in the TV series The Sopranos.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7LcjCyFUsg

 

(((o)))

 

(5) "YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE!"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs&t=264s

 

This is a pivotal scene from the 1976 satirical drama Network, also written by Paddy Chayefsky.

 

The man seated at the table is Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), the anchorman of the prime time news program on an ailing national TV network. His worsening depression results in him telling millions of viewers during a recent newscast that he’s “tired of all the bullshit”. He concludes that particular newscast by announcing he intends to commit suicide.

The network’s panicky reaction is neatly turned on its head by an ambitious programming executive, Diana Christensen (portrayed by Faye Dunaway). She skilfully convinces her superiors that most Americans out there are also “tired of all the bullshit” and that they readily identify with Beale’s rage. Let him keep articulating that rage every night, she argues, and everybody will want to watch it.

 

Max Schumacher, the head of the news department (played by William Holden), is Beale’s old comrade-in-arms. His spirited protests that allowing a lunatic to remain on the air violates every canon of responsible journalism fall on deaf ears. Beale’s obvious insanity – he claims to have conversations with God – is of no concern to the board of directors. They sense that Christensen’s radical idea to take the anchorman’s madness and milk it for profit will succeed.

The evening "news" then becomes a platform for Howard Beale to rant and rave about whatever issue is bugging him at the time. Christensen’s idea turns out to be right: the ratings skyrocket, prompting the other networks in turn to seek their own Howard Beales.

 

During one so-called news program Beale urges his 60 million viewers to contact their congressmen to protest Saudi Arabian investors taking over a major American corporation. He’s convinced the takeover will have dire consequences for the U.S. economy. It’s at that point he’s summoned to the office of the network’s owner, Arthur Jensen (played by Ned Beatty) for a timely chat.

Jensen’s lofty position has kept him aloof from the whole Beale controversy, since his only concern has been the network’s profitability. But Jensen himself has a vested interest in this Saudi takeover. He now feels the urgent need to rein Beale in and teach him a few facts about the world of business, the most important of which is that the world itself is a business.

Beale must take this “evangel” – Jensen’s preacherly histrionics were quite deliberate – to heart. The owner’s final comment Because you’re on television, dummy refers directly to what the newsman had told his viewers was God's reply when Beale had asked the Creator the same Why me? question.

Beale now becomes eager to spread Jensen’s philosophy to his vast television audience. But, as we see later in the movie, this all leads to several unintended consequences.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35DSdw7dHjs&t=264s

 

(((o)))

(6) CLASSIC 7-MINUTE COMEDY SKETCH FROM 1953

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ve20PVNZ18&t=28s

 

(((o)))

 

(7) THE OBJECTIVITY OF SUBJECTIVITY

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFjttC_AGsU&t=1s

 

A 2-minute scene from early in Woody Allen's sadly neglected 1976 comedy Love and Death, set in Russia during the early 1800's. It stars himself and Diane Keaton.

 

(((o)))

 

***LINKS FOR FULL MOVIES***                              ***LINKS FOR FULL MOVIES***

 

(8)  WIT  (95 minutes))

 

 Wit was filmed for HBO in 2001. It was based on a play by Margaret Edson. This highly acclaimed version is directed by Mike Nicholls. The screenplay was by Nicholls and Emma Thompson. 

Thompson plays the main role as a professor of 17th-century English poetry who is dying of cancer. If this sounds like the perfect ingredients for a generic chick-flick, it's anything but that. The plot is simple but what the film elicits is on a much higher level.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4ozvI_hzY

 

(((o)))

 

(9) BURN! (also known by its Portuguese title Queimada!)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_7OWnW6wE

 

This Italian production from 1969 was directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. It starred Marlon Brando as Sir William Walker, a 19th-century British aristocrat.

The plot clearly had an anti-imperialist inspiration - this was filmed during the Vietnam War and African wars of liberation era - and concerned a British government agent's plan to engineer a massive slave rebellion on a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island. The rebellion was not for the slaves' benefit but was ultimately intended to give British interests a larger share of the region's sugar production.

Things started to twist and turn after Walker's successful revolution (as history shows they so often do).

 

The production was a troubled one. The prestige surrrounding Pontecorvo's magnificent The Battle of Algiers (1966) was not enough to let him call all the shots in this movie. Political and diplomatic pressure forced him to relocate the story from Spanish Latin America to a fictional Portuguese island in the Caribbean, an area where the Portuguese were never active (they had their hands full with Brazil). To Pontecorvo's chagrin, this move detracted from the film's all-important historical accuracy. Plus Brando was unreliable and argumentative throughout the production. The budget went through the roof.

The final result was cruder than intended, but its roughness lends the film a sort of energy it might otherwise have lacked.

And Burn! is worth a look even for the opening credits, which must rank among the most attention-grabbing in cinematic history.

(Note: the lyrics sung during the opening credits are in Portuguese. The repeated word is abolição, meaning abolition [of slavery].)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_7OWnW6wE

 

(((o)))

 

                         ****BELOW: LINKS FOR SPOKEN WORD STUFF****     

 

 

(1) THE LADY OR THE TIGER 

 

Written in 1882 by Frank R. Stockton (1834 -1902)

 

Performed by Toyah Willcox (voice)  and Robert Fripp (instruments)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSUaZfLcvoQ

 

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(2) TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMINGS

 

Written and read by William S. Burroughs

 

Twilight’s Last Gleamings was the first time Dr. Benway – one of the author’s regular characters – appeared in William S. Burroughs’ œuvre.

Dr. Benway: the undertakers' friend.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYp9wJwUm9A

 

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(3) THE DO-RIGHTS

 

Written and read by William S. Burroughs

 

The Do-Rights describes conditions in the Lexington Narcotics Hospital in the 1940's.

At that time the junkie subculture was almost unknown to the general public.

 

NOTE:

croaker was once a slang term meaning doctor.

A goof ball was a barbiturate  (tranquilizer).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCXMXZA-0eE

 

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(4) TO PROVE A VILLAIN

 

performed by Daniel Pelissier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rVr1Z3V8o&t=4s

 

      Everyone knows that Shakespeare line: “Now is the winter of our discontent…” (a particularly interesting rendition of which is linked above and below this explanatory note).

It’s from one of his earliest plays, The Tragedy of King Richard III, about the bloody rise and fall of the English king from the House of York in the late 1400’s. It remained a popular staple on the English stage well into the 1630’s, some 20 years after Shakespeare’s death and more than 40 years after its first performance. For audiences back then Richard III was like The Godfather is for us.

The main character was – and continues to be – portrayed as a misshapen, limping creature. In the opening scene Richard describes himself as “rudely stamp’d” and “curtail’d of…fair proportion.” He’s “deform’d, unfinish’d.” Driving home the point, he adds, “[I was] sent before my time into this breathing world scarce half made up.” And, he admits, dogs bark at him as he limps by them.

 

      The play begins with England enjoying a time of peace and stability under its new king, Richard’s  brother Edward (another “son of York”). But “these fair well-spoken days” bring Richard little joy. He has “no delight to pass away the time,” he declares, “Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, And descant [pass comment] on mine own deformity.”

 

      Needless to say, women shun Richard. The delights of love are off-limits to him. So, since he “cannot prove a lover,” he decides to become a ruthless villain. He’ll be “subtle, false and treacherous,” lay plots, set traps and merrily lie and murder his way to the top. He predicts that even though he was “cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,” he’ll have the last laugh. The throne of England will be his.

He plans to start by double-crossing his brother George, the Duke of Clarence.

 

     A YouTube search reveals a host of actors – the famous and the unknown – and their video interpretations of this speech (usually entitled Now is the winter of our discontent or Richard III: Act 1 Scene 1). Some renditions are inspired. Some are dreadful. But whatever talent they may bring to the table, and no matter how well they deliver these lines, there’s an inherent problem with this speech.

With all its references to deformity and weakness, disfigurement and lameness, a healthy actor with a robust physique playing Richard III immediately challenges our "suspension of disbelief." It’s not as big a challenge as the black Norwegians in Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Hamlet, but it’s big enough to set the eye and the brain in opposition.

 

      Ironically, the real King Richard III of England (posthumously nicknamed Richard Crookback) was nowhere near as physically challenged as he’s been depicted through the centuries. They discovered his corpse some years ago, and the forensic analysis showed that even though he suffered from roundworms for much of his life he was not in especially bad health by medieval standards. The idiopathic spinal scoliosis which developed in his teens did cause one shoulder to be higher than the other. But this didn’t unduly hamper his mobility, and the royal tailor could easily pad one shoulder to hide the slight imbalance.

By the time Richard died in battle aged 33 there were probably people who’d known him for many years without suspecting he had lopsided shoulders.

 

      In Daniel Pelissier‘s 3-and-a-half-minute video below we are given a tightly controlled rendition. There’s none of the ranting and writhing, sneering and snarling that we must endure in so many less well thought-out performances. Pelissier judiciously delivers the soliloquy while seated, leaving the physical infirmities to our imagination. He skillfully brings out the wry wit woven into the lines, something most actors either undervalue or fail to notice in the first place.

Compared to most other Now is the winter of our discontents out there, this sophisticated interpretation is a little gem, and I commend it to your attention.

 

Earphones recommended

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rVr1Z3V8o&t=4s

 

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(5) THE MUSIC OF MEN'S LIVES

 

      This is a 9-minute scene from Act 5, near the end of this performance of William Shakespeare’s Richard the Second at London’s Globe Theatre. The main character is played by the Anglo-American actor-director Mark Rylance.

 

      Here we see Richard as a prisoner facing an uncertain future. He’s been deposed (“unking’d”) by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, the newly crowned Henry IV of England. Richard reflects on how his disordered thoughts can be tamed by reminding himself that he’s not the first to be in such strife. He then convinces himself that true contentment lies only in being content with having nothing, a state we all reach when we’re content with meeting death (“with being nothing”).

The music interrupting his reverie at that point reminds him of how he can so easily detect the errors in the music that other men make but can’t do so in the music of his own life.

 

       Richard II (1367-1400) was no run-of-the-mill medieval king. English monarchs through the ages included blatant opportunists, nonentities, philanderers, thugs, place-holders, pious nobodies, money-grubbers, reactionaries, backstabbers, frontstabbers and incompetents. But Richard II fits none of those categories.

On the throne from the age of 10, he was said to be highly intelligent and – compared to other medieval monarchs – unusually well read. He also had a slight stammer.

It was once believed Richard had a form of mental illness. This idea has since been discredited, although most historians now think he suffered from some kind of personality disorder. This may account for his undoing: he knew what political changes he wanted to introduce, but his personality disorder clouded his senses and led to his ultimate fate.

 

***EARPHONES STRONGLY RECOMMENDED FOR THIS VIDEO***

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmR74FSfZjg&t=1s

 

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NEOLOGISMS (WORDS FOR WHEN WE HAVE NO WORDS): http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=neologisms

TWO SHORT STORIES: http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=two-short-stories

THE REVOLUTION THAT ATE ITSELF: JAPAN'S RADICAL STUDENTS: http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=the-revolution-that-ate-itself-japans-radical-students

SHORTER FICTIONhttp://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=original-fiction-1

THE LATIN LOVER (short story)http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=the-latin-lover

MOJO MAN: LIFE'S A HIJACK (THE STRANGE TALE OF ROGER HOLDER): http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=mojo-man-lifes-a-hijack-the-strange-tale-of-roger-holder

THE MEN WHO WEREN'T THERE: BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID: http://www.sla.ne.jp/manfacingnortheast/index.php?id=the-men-who-werent-there-butch-cassidy-the-sundance-kid

Published on  December 2nd, 2023