Movies that make no sense.

Senseless Tragedy wrote:

Jim, in an interview following Columbine, rather than extend sympathy and compassion to families of the children lost, you said, "...doesn't every kid fantasize about shooting up their classroom?".

No Jim. Most kids don't have those fantasies. And most writers don't fantasize about revenge on NEA board members either.

Sorry the glorification of heroin addiction, and prostitution and fantasies about violent acts of revenge didn't get you where you wanted to go in the world of literature.

I don't think Carroll ever said "...doesn't every kid fantasize about shooting up their classroom?" in an interview or anywhere else.

Have a look at this interview for a sane perspective:

There's compassion for the families in that interview.

Mrs. M wrote:

[quote]DocLove wrote:

12 Monkeys

'Yes, but much like Brazil or other Terry Gilliam movies, it's visually stimulating surrealism keeps me intrigued.'

But at least Brazil was good!

xxxx wrote:

Fred McGriff wrote:

... 'Syriana'... Who the hell were the bad guys?

I think that was the point.

Uh...the whole movie made no sense. I've not met one person who could understand it or stay awake through it.

However, my vote is for "Inception". Dreams within dreams with a dream landscaper and on and on....pure nonsense.

From a 2002 Denver Post article;

“I wanted to shoot the great expanse of boredom – the ceiling and the blackboard,” he says. “I think a lot of kids have had that fantasy of wanting to riddle up the blackboard and stuff. But I didn’t want to shoot anybody and stuff. That’s why I thought it was a little bit over the top when I saw that (film).”

His book clearly references his fantasy about using a machine gun to shoot up his school.

Even these exerts from his fan club site have a tone of lacking compassion for the families. My sense was that if he showed any compassion, it was in an effort to save his marketability, but his lacking sense of responsibility for the impact of his *art* oozed through most of the PR bullshit.

Quotes by Carroll from an article by Nick Carter

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6 May 1999

"I don't want to talk about it, period," Carroll said initially during a phone interview on Friday's show when the subject turned toward the shootings. "No offense, man, but I've said the same thing to everybody.

"It's amazing. '60 Minutes' has called, the 'Today' show has called, 'Good Morning America' has called, Larry King, CNN, Time, Newsweek -- you name it. And I'm telling them all the same thing: Artists have nothing to do with the deranged, vaguely connected actions of a few celebrated nut cases -- and that's it.

"Look at guys like Mark David Chapman," Carroll added with a rising tone. "When they took him in, they found a copy of 'Catcher In The Rye' in his pocket, and his crimes had at least five times more direct references to the book than mine. I mean, pick on Charlton Heston or something; he's standing there in an ad holding a gun and saying 'Join me,' and they're going to pick on me?"

IMO, If you're going to allow your book to become an example of a violent teenage rant in film so you can pull in the royalties, you better be ready to get picked on when kids play it out in real life. I can forgive his writing about the subject the way he did at 15 years of age, kids have a hard time processing rage, but allowing that scene (and others) in the film as an adult... in the wake of that tragedy, he needed to take more responsibility.

This was a man who never grew up. If you're 48 years old and are still finding common ground with a 15-year-old heroin addict, or the teen pop psychology of Jonathan Livingston Seagull for that matter, you haven't grown up either.

"IMO, If you're going to allow your book to become an example of a violent teenage rant in film so you can pull in the royalties, you better be ready to get picked on when kids play it out in real life. I can forgive his writing about the subject the way he did at 15 years of age, kids have a hard time processing rage, but allowing that scene (and others) in the film as an adult... in the wake of that tragedy, he needed to take more responsibility."

I'm not Jim Carroll's lawyer or manager or anything so I don't know the exact details, but I do know that he had nothing to do with the movie. Either he sold the movie rights, or he was basically ripped off. I suspect that he sold the rights, because generally you do have to pay if you use the name and have some of the same plot. Even if he was perfectly happy "selling out" and didn't care (1) if the movie bore little relation to his book, and (2) if the movie was a big factor in leading to violent behaviour, I think it is reasonable to assume that he had no particular desire to see things go this way.

And you say you can forgive him writing the way he did when he was 15. Well maybe that's because he wrote it when he was indeed a teenager! He didn't rewrite the book again for the movie.

"but allowing that scene (and others) in the film as an adult... in the wake of that tragedy, he needed to take more responsibility."

Do you mean to ask "why does he still allow that scene to continue to exist, after the shooting? Why doesn't he just drop it down a memory hole?"

"I wanted to shoot the great expanse of boredom – the ceiling and the blackboard,” he says. “I think a lot of kids have had that fantasy of wanting to riddle up the blackboard and stuff. But I didn’t want to shoot anybody and stuff"

So he's saying that there was nothing to do with shooting people. How does that have anything to do with shooting people? I don't think this is any more violent than shooting targets.

baby with a helmet wrote:

Mulholland Drive. Does anyone even want to pretend they understood that bs?

Sure. Failed wanna-be actress dreams of what might have been and then wakes up to the reality of her life.

oldXChasbeen wrote:

Eraserhead....but back in the day I saw it I was a dope smoking, beer swilling teenager so it didn't really matter if it made any sense. Actually, now that I'm 40-something and still swill beer but no longer smoke dope, it still doesn't make any sense.

I second that...the Eraserhead part, not the burnout part.

bladerunner wrote:

xxxx wrote:

I think that was the point.

Uh...the whole movie made no sense. I've not met one person who could understand it or stay awake through it.

Maybe you should stop hanging out at the mall hitting on 15 year old chicks.

Richard What's happening wrote:

Synecdoche, New York

YES!

He had about as much a role in the Columbine shootings as the creators of Doom did, which is: not at all. Don't blame artists for the actions of psychopaths.

Not a Catholic junkie wrote:

I'm not Jim Carroll's lawyer or manager or anything so I don't know the exact details, but I do know that he had nothing to do with the movie.

Nothing to do with that movie? It was based on his book.

[/quote]And you say you can forgive him writing the way he did when he was 15. Well maybe that's because he wrote it when he was indeed a teenager! He didn't rewrite the book again for the movie.[/quote]

No, but as the author, he could have asked for some editorial input in the movie as a condition of the sale, for less profit.

[/quote]Do you mean to ask "why does he still allow that scene to continue to exist, after the shooting? Why doesn't he just drop it down a memory hole?"[/quote]

No, I mean if the scene was offensive to him, why didn't he step in earlier in the film making process, instead of trying to extricate himself from his own story AFTER the massacre.

And whether it be the book or the screenplay, Carroll seems more concerned with the artistic license of the writers than the kids who were killed.

[/quote]So he's saying that there was nothing to do with shooting people. How does that have anything to do with shooting people? I don't think this is any more violent than shooting targets.[/quote]

Maybe you'd feel differently if you'd ever worked in a school. A student fantasizing about shooting up his classroom with or without human targets is a pretty disturbing idea.

what the fvck are you idiots arguing about? you are ruining a good thread. go fvck each other somewhere else.

Yo Soy Tanenbaum wrote:

He had about as much a role in the Columbine shootings as the creators of Doom did, which is: not at all. Don't blame artists for the actions of psychopaths.

The Basketball Diaries is marketed as a memoir, not fiction. The author claims that these were his thoughts and actions.

i know im a dick, the original wrote:

what the fvck are you idiots arguing about? you are ruining a good thread. go fvck each other somewhere else.

Apologies to the OP.

2001: A space odyssey

Barton Fink

12 Monkeys

DocLove wrote:

But at least Brazil was good!

This is a frightful understatement.

I second or third Magnolia. I hated that.

malmo wrote:

An Inconvenient Truth. A crockumentary about a mad non-scientist who threatens to flood the world unless the governments of the world agree to his ransom demands and support his lavish lifestyle. Funny shit.

Priceless! My favorite part(s) is (are) when he tries to draw a straight line between warming and Katrina. Oh wait, that was the whole movie....