Short Cuts (1993)

Shakespeare Wrote For Money by Nick Hornby (Believer Books 2008)

Robert Altman's Nashville is one of my favorite films - or, at least, I think it is. I haven’t seen it in a while, and the last time I did, I noticed the longueurs more than I ever had before. Maybe the best thing to do with favorite films and books is to leave them be: to achieve such an exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be re-created. Sometimes we want to revisit them in order to check whether they were really as good as we remember them being, but this has to be a suspect impulse, because what it presupposes is that we have more reason to trust our critical judgments as we get older, whereas I am beginning to believe that the reverse is true.I was eighteen when I saw Nashville for the first time, and I was electrified by its shifts in tone, its sudden bursts of feeling and meaning, its ambition, its occasional obscurity, even its pretensions. I don’t think I’d ever seen an art movie before, and I certainly hadn’t seen an art movie set in a world I recognized. So I came out of the cinema that night a slightly changed person, suddenly aware that there was a different way of doing things. None of that is going to happen again, but so what? And why mess with a good thing? Favorites should be left where they belong, buried somewhere deep in a past self.

A Mashup* in TH

Radar: "Their ringer spotted our ringer."

A total misuse and misapplication of a film quote as you will see below but it is drag down Friday, and I couldn't help but think of the above quote from M*A*S*H, Robert Altman's classic 1970 anti-war film, after I spotted this comment from 'Johng' over at Socialist Unity Blog:

"In other words this was an anti-democratic move. All this talk of late surges. Really. How absurd. Hundreds of people were being recruited and paid for by a single counciler just a couple of weeks ago. Did you not notice?" (From here.)

Mmm, an SWPer getting all upset at the idea of someone packing a meeting. Whatever next? A mormon complaining about someone turning up unannounced on their doorstep on a wet and windy Wednesday night? In fact, I can just picture it:

The scene: The doorstep to a mansion situated just outside Boston. Two people with clipboards and a bundle of papers are at the door. The one who rings the doorbell does all the talking.

Bright eyed and bushy-tailed doorstepper - Mr Romney?

Mitt Romney [hesitant and wary.] yes?

BEABTD - You signed our petition back in August . . .

MR - I did?

BEABTD - Yes, it was about plans for a local incinerator.

MR - OK, I vaguely remember that, and did you vote for me like I asked when signing the petition?

BEABTD - Sorry, we'd already committed ourselves to Ron Paul. He has a more consistently anti-imperialist position on the war.

MR - [clearly irritated] I'm a busy man. What do you want?

BEABTD - Well, as you signed our petition, we've thought you'd be interested in an event we've organised. It will be a week of debate, drama and the dialectic.

[Bushy-eyed hands Romney a glossy brochure advertising the event. A familiar face stares out from the brochure.]

MR - Wait a minute? This was months ago. I'm a mormon not a moron. You know there's a difference, right? Wait up . . . I get it. You don't know how to finish this post, do you?

BEABTD - [Now looking anything but bright-eyed. If anything, looking a bit sheepish.] Don't know what you mean.

MR - You should have finished the post on the quote from M*A*S*H. That was one of your better efforts.

BEABTD - [Now totally crestfallen.} I guess so. But we still have to sell another five tickets for this event or our district organiser will have us doing paper sales outside Foodtown for the next six months. What do you suggest?

MR - "Off you go - fuck off, fuck off the lot of you" [Slams the door in their face.]

BEABTD - [Talking to the door just shut in his face.] Ok, totally understand. Would you like to take out a supporters subscription to our newspaper, then?

Mashup - "A Jamaican Creole term meaning to destroy".