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Dogville

Dogville (2003) is a movie written and directed by Lars von Trier, starring Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany. It is a parable that uses an extremely minimal, stage-like set to tell the story of Grace Mulligan (Kidman), a woman hiding from mobsters, who arrives in the small mountain town of Dogville, Colorado, and is provided refuge in return for physical labor. Her stay there ultimately changes the lives of the local people and the town in many ways.

 * A quiet little town not far from here.

"The film Dogville as told in nine chapters and a Prologue."

Prologue

 * Which introduces us to the Town and its residents...

 *  This is the sad tale of the township of Dogville. Dogville was in the Rocky Mountains in the US of A. Up here where the road came to its definitive end near the entrance to the old, abandoned silver mine. .

 * Most of the buildings were pretty wretched; more like shacks; frankly. The house in which Tom lived was the best, though, and in good times might almost have passed for presentable.

 * Tom's father had been a doctor and now received a modest pension so it was no great disaster for Tom to drift about not doing anything in particular. Tom was a writer… at any rate by his own lights. Oh, his output as committed to paper was so far limited to the words "great" and "small", followed by a question mark, but nevertheless meticulously archived in one of his many bureau drawers... In order to postpone the time at which he would have to put pen to paper in earnest, Tom had now come up with a series of meetings on moral rearmament with which he felt obliged to benefit the town.

 * Jason gave that mutt a bone with meat on it? When did we last see meat? Next time you waste good food I'll take your knife away. Oughta known it was you giv'n meat to eat. Moses was meant to be hungry! To keep watch.
 * Chuck.

 * These are wicked times, Tom Edison. Soon there'll be folks by with even less than us.
 * Chuck.

 * You think they're fine? I don't think so, I think there is a lot this country has forgotten. I just try and refresh folks memory by way of illustration.
 * Tom

Chapter ONE

 * In which Tom hears gunfire and meets Grace.

 * It wasn't long before his thoughts were back on his favorite subjects again, and in the midst of the storm they metamorphosed into articles and novels and great gatherings that'd listen in silence to Tom after the publication of yet another volume that scourged and purged the human soul. And he saw men — and among them even other writers — throw their arms round one another as, through his words, life had opened up for them anew. It hadn't been easy. But by his diligence and application to narrative and drama his message had gotten through, and asked about his technique he would have to say but one word: "Illustration".

 * Tom could have spent another half hour or more on the bench, but another unusual noise roused him. It was Moses barking. Oh, that wasn't unusual in itself, but it was the way he barked that was new. His barking was not loud, but more of a snarl, as if the danger was quite close at hand and not merely a passing raccoon or fox. As if the dog were standing face to face with a force to be taken seriously. .

 * Hey Lady! I wouldn't go up there if I were you. I know the mountain well, I doubt if I'd get away with my life. It's a very nasty drop.
 * Tom.

 * Is there another way?
 * Grace.

 *  The beautiful fugitive's name was Grace. She hadn't chosen Dogville from a map or sought out the township for a visit, yet Tom felt right away that she belonged.

 * She could have kept her vulnerability to herself, but she had elected to give herself up to him at random. As... Yes... a gift. "Generous, very generous", thought Tom.

 * Are you saying that everybody in this town is like you?
 * Grace to Tom.

 * I think you have plenty to offer Dogville.
 * Tom to Grace.

 * To call the mood of the audience at Tom’s morale lecture in the mission house the next day "enthusiastic" would have been going too far — but they had come. And Tom had launched himself fearlessly into his endeavor to illustrate the human problem: to receive. The subject was obvious, but quite dreadfully ill-considered by this young man. To compensate for his lack of preparation Tom made diligent use of his technique of lashing out somewhat haphazardly in all directions. .

 * Honestly, Tom, you've done it again. Made us come here to listen to a lot of nonsense. What do you think you are some kind of philosopher?
 * Liz

 * Observant, that's what I am.
 * Tom.

 * I really don't want to put any of you in jeopardy.
 * Grace.

 * Surely we can offer her two weeks! And if after that time so much as one man cries out Be gone! — I promise I'll happily send her packing myself.
 * Tom.

 * No more words were spoken at the town meeting in the mission house. But it had been decided, they all felt, that the fugitive would be given two weeks. And they would all be able to look at themselves in the mirror and know that they had done what they could, indeed, and perhaps more than most people would have done.

 * Those awful figurines say more about the people in this town, than many words.
 * Tom

 * If this is the town you that love, then you really have a strange way of showing it. All I see, is a beautiful little town in the midst of magnificent mountains. A place where people have hopes and dreams even under the hardest conditions. And seven figurines that are not awful at all.
 * Grace - Video clip : A Beautiful Little Town

 * Calling Dogville beautiful was original at least. Grace was just casting one more look at the figurines she herself would have dismissed as tasteless a few days earlier, when she suddenly sensed what would best have been described as a tiny change of light over Dogville.

Chapter TWO

 * In which Grace follows Tom's plan and embarks upon physical labour

 * This first day of spring had also been picked to be Grace's first ever day of work. The day in which she was to set off around Dogville and offer herself one hour per household per day.

 * A cleanin' lady for a cleanin' lady? You be talkin' nonsense, Mister Ben!
 * Olivia.

 * Grace turned into the alley which went by the exotic name, Glunen Street to knock on the door of the blind — but only too vain — man.

 * Grace's interview with Jack McKay proved sadly symptomatic of the attitude in Dogville. Reserved but friendly, not without curiosity. Only Jack had expressed his "no" concisely and precisely: Martha needed a monologue almost an hour long to arrive at the same conclusion.

 * Grace had ended up next to Ma Ginger's gooseberry bushes, in a mood that was not particularly good.

 * Nobody want's me to work for them. I would really like to offer something in return. You're all running a terrible risk having me here. I mean, I am willing to learn.
 * Grace.

 * I went to Mr. McKay. I went to Martha and to Chuck and Vera's, and nobody seems to need any help. They all think everyone else needs something, and not themselves.
 * Grace.

 * Perhaps there's something you don't need done?
 * Tom.

 * Something...something that you would like done, but that you don't think is necessary.
 * Grace.

 * I'll happily mind Achilles if Vera will let me. But if he doesn't like me he doesn't like me.
 * Grace.

 * They are good kids. And I love them. Please don’t say such nice things about the kids. I cry too easily. Both in sorrow and in joy.
 * Vera.

 * Oh, don’t be ashamed, Ben. We all have the right to make the most of our lives. I’m sure that those ladies in those houses they bring a lot of joy to a lot of men.
 * Grace.

 * If you want my Ma to like you, and let you stay. You'll just have to be nice to me.
 * Jason.

 * I wasn't trying to fool anyone.
 * Grace.

 * This town is rotten from the inside out and I wouldn't miss it, if it fell into the gorge tomorrow. I see no charm here, but you seem to. Admit it you've fallen for Dogville. The trees, the mountains, the simple folk. And if all that ain't got you fooled yet, I bet the cinnamon has. That damned cinnamon in those gooseberry pies. Dogville has everything that you ever dreamed of in the big city.
 * Chuck.

 * I found out that people are the same all over. Greedy as animals. In a small town they're just a bit less successful. Feed 'em enough they'll eat till their bellies burst.
 * Chuck.

 * That's why you wanted to get rid of me...because you can't stand that I remind you of what it was you came here to find.
 * Grace.

Chapter THREE

 * In which Grace indulges in a shady piece of provocation.

 * There is not much to see around here. Wretched town.
 * Jack McKay.

 * You're no fool, Miss Grace. No fool. You probably see that those curtains are hard to open... and obviously concluded that it's because they're not used very often. But the view's good — entrancing even. So, ask me, why a man who loves the light hang these heavy curtains? Yes, I'm blind. Not weak sighted, not myopic: Blind. So please go and let me be that on my own... In Switzerland they call it the Alpenglünen. That's the light that reflects from the highest peaks after the sun goes down behind the mountains. But now it's gone.
 * Jack McKay.

 * Grace was standing beside Tom, watching them convene, and knew inside herself that this might well be the last time she would see these now so familiar faces. She had at least two of them against her, and even one would have been too many.

 * Nobody should be prevented from speaking their mind out of politeness. I'll wait at the mine. And if the vote says that I should leave, then I'll take the path across the mountains, while it's still light.
 * Grace.

 * Grace had friends in Dogville. That was for sure. Whether they were few or many did not matter a jot. Grace had bared her throat to the town and it had responded with a great gift: with friends. No gangster could deprive her of this meeting with the township no matter how many guns in the world. And should the strokes of the bell not reach 15, she knew now that she meant something to the town and that her stay had been of significance. Not much, perhaps, but nevertheless, a trace she had left. And the first in her young life in which she took pride.

 * I think they like you here.
 * Tom

Chapter FOUR

 * Happy times in Dogville

 * And now, since the town had agreed that everyone was to give according to his abilities she received wages, not much, but enough to save up for the first of the tiny china figurines from the row of seven that had stood for so long gathering dust in the window of the store. And she dreamed that in time she would be able to acquire them all. Slowly those alabaster hands turned into a pair of hands that could have belonged to anyone in any little rural community.

 * It was such a relief when you turned up and you were the one all the men had eyes for. You know, Tom and them. I've had to put up with it for so long... Frankly, I just didn't have the energy for it anymore.
 * Liz

Chapter FIVE

 * Fourth of July after all

 * Today was a day for celebration. Nobody was to worry about the hard times. And Grace could stop at Ma Gingers window quite content: to ascertain that only two of the little china figurines remained, and were thus the only two she had not yet been able to save up enough to purchase.

 * I think I've done a pretty good analysis of the folks in this town and I think I understand them in a meaningful way. But when I come to decipher you, I get absolutely nowhere. You know Liz. Liz is easy to read. And there was some attraction between us, but as I can see right through her, intellectually I mean, I can see right through her, my desire is purely of a physical nature. But with you, it's more... it's more complicated.
 * Tom.

 * Grace: Are you trying to say that you're in love with me? Tom: No I wouldn't... love is...It's not... It's a big word... yeah. Yeah. Grace: That's good, because I think that I am in love with you, too.

 * This year I didn't bring any notes with me. Because I'm not gonna pretend, I can read them. Which brings me to a point. A point I wanna make. And that point is you Grace. Yes. You have made Dogville a wonderful place to live in. As a matter of fact, somebody tells me they ran into grumpy old Chuck down the street and he was actually smiling. Well, I've never seen your smile, Grace, but I will bet you I could describe it. Because it obviously has every color that's refracted from the shiniest prism in the world. You probably have a face to match that. Does she have a face to match that, Tom?
 * Jack McKay.

 * We are proud to have you among us. And we thank you for showing us who you are. Here's to you, Grace. Stay with us as long as you damn please.
 * Jack McKay.

 * Grace was the same and so was the town. That the gangsters had fixed to have charges made against Grace in their efforts to neutralize her came as no surprise. But everything had changed a little yet again.

 * Well, they couldn't really argue that anything had changed. But by not telling the police they felt they were committing a crime themselves.
 * Tom.

 * I think I should leave.
 * Grace.

 * Tom: From a business perspective, from a business perspective, your presence in Dogville has become more costly. Because it's more dangerous for them to have you here — not that they don't want you — since they feel there should be some counterbalance, some quid pro quo. Grace:  That sounds like words that the gangsters would use... Tom: There is also more of an incentive if you don't wanna stay. See, with all those wanted posters hanging around the place, I can hardly think of anywhere else you could hide.

 * I'm willing to do whatever it takes. If I have to work harder, longer hours for less pay. Then I'm willing to do that, of course I am. I just wanna be sure that they wouldn't prefer that I left town.
 * Grace.

 * I have to get some sleep. My days are gonna be much busier now.
 * Grace.

 * I hate it for you to see me like this. I can't bear that I'm doubting you. I'm sorry. Goodnight.
 * Grace.

 * Everybody was really against any changes to Grace's working conditions at all when the subject occasionally came up in conversation. Oh, Ben had declared in sympathy that he wouldn't accept any more work than before, and Grace was grateful for that, even if he was a bit drunk when he said so. Busy minutes became busy hours and busy hours became busy days, and irrespective of whether they thought the idea of increasing Grace's services had any fairness and justification to it or not, it didn't seem to make anyone any happier. More to the contrary.

 * Vera wants me to picking apples from trees that are barely in the ground. Things take time. That's love, seeing what they need and respecting those needs. If anyone understands that, it's you. At least I thought so.
 * Chuck.

 * Grace: Don't be upset. I'm sorry if I doubted you. It won't happen again. I promise you. Chuck: I wouldn't make that promise if I was you. When you fended me off, a thought came into my mind that made me ashamed. A thought that you would hate me for.

 * You've really been alone up here, haven't you? You haven't had anyone to comfort you and I should ask you for forgiveness... Still friends?
 * Grace.

 * I was just resting. Awful lot to do here in Dogville, considering nobody needs anything done. Jason wants to sit on my lap all the time.
 * Grace.

 * Grace: You can see through it all, can't you. I'll tell you, I'm gonna be asleep in two minutes. Tom: What if I don't want you to go to sleep? Grace: I don't think you have a choice tonight.

 * Tom:  I do love you, Grace. Grace: I'm glad you love me. I love you, too. I really do.

 * We have our whole lives ahead of us. The thing that I love about you is that you don't demand anything of me. That we can just be together.
 * Grace.

Chapter SIX

 * In which Dogville bares its teeth

 * I have been mean to the others too, even baby Achilles. And he's so tiny he can't put up a fight. It's not right... I got it coming to me, I know. I deserve a spanking.
 * Jason.

 * I don't care how much fun you think it would be. I'm not gonna spank you, Jason.
 * Grace.

 * Maybe I should go stand in the corner and be ashamed?
 * Jason.

 * Just as Dogville had done from its open, frail shelf on the mountainside, quite unprotected from any capricious storms, Grace, too, had laid herself open. And there she dangled from her frail stalk like the apple in the Garden of Eden. An apple so swollen that the juices almost ran. And once again the police had come to Dogville.

 * God only knows what that woman’s capable of.
 * Chuck.

 * It wasn't me who wanted you here. You were far to beautiful and frail for this place. You tricked me into feeling that I meant something to you. It's your own damn fault I need your respect, Grace.
 * Chuck.

 * Please. Stop it. Please. Please don't. Please look at me. Look at me, talk to me. We're friends. You are my family, stop it.
 * Grace.

Chapter SEVEN

 * In which Grace finally gets enough of Dogville, leaves the town, and again sees the light of day

 * That evening Tom had sensed at once that something had taken place, but had to plead with Grace for ages before she finally broke down and unburdened herself.

 * I came here with all these ideas and these stupid prejudices. He is not strong, Tom. He looks strong, but he's not.
 * Grace.

 * Next day the weather changed. The fog came rolling down from the mountains. And although there were no sunsets to be seen, McKay thought it best that she sat by him anyway. She had sat by Jack McKay so many times now, but Jack had not got better at judging the distance between them. On the contrary, where fingers alone had previously brushed her young flesh, now it was a hand that remained in place throughout the allotted span.

 * The hours in the orchard were long now, for the harvest was underway. And Grace had long since given up arguing with Chuck's perception that respect for cultivation, harvest, and fruit could be directly measured in provision of carnality.

 * Though reluctant to leave Grace alone Tom wandered around quite often now, lost in thought as he tried to crack the problem of possible escape. And as Grace's wages no longer found their way to her purse he had stepped in, and together they had triumphantly picked up the last of the seven figurines from Ma Ginger's window.

 * She saw you, Grace. She saw you. Behind this pile of broken limbs... with Chuck... He said it wasn't the first time you'd made advances towards him. He never told me before because he wanted to spare my feelings. He's a withdrawn and primitive man, but at heart he's loyal and he is good. What do you want with my husband?
 * Vera.

 * I believe smashing them is less a crime than making them.
 * Vera.

 * Vera, remember how I taught your children... Remember how happy you were, when I... When I taught your children about the doctrine of stoicism and they finally understood it.
 * Grace.

 * All right, for that, I'm gonna be lenient. I'm going to break two of your figurines first, and if you can demonstrate your knowledge of the doctrine of stoicism by holding back your tears, I'll stop. Have you got that.
 * Vera.

 *  In her lifetime Grace had had considerable practice at constraining her emotions, and would never have believed it would be hard to control them now. But as the porcelain pulverized on the floor it was as if it were human tissue disintegrating. The figurines were the offspring of the meeting between the township and her. They were the proof that in spite of everything, her suffering had created something of value. Grace could no longer cope. For the first time since her childhood, she wept. .

 * Knowing the exact time to harvest is the greatest art of all, Chuck had said, and the time had come. For the apples and for Grace.

 * June is near to bursting. She can't use the pot on her own, as you well know. It ain't fitting' to toy with her just 'cause she's crippled and can't help herself.
 * Olivia.

 * The evening before the escape Tom tactically thought it best not to press his desires of the flesh too hard upon Grace, and instead he adopted a more sensitive approach.

 * There is a right and a wrong time to plant seeds and you can't plant seeds in the winter.
 * Tom.

 * You love me and we will meet again in love and in freedom.
 * Grace.

 * I shouldn't be ashamed wanting you, should I? It's nothing to be ashamed of.
 * Tom.

 * Its lovely. It's lovely that we want each other. But not this way.
 * Grace.

 * As Grace hastened to the garage, she grew more and more pleased with the decision to keep her departure under wraps. There was actually quite a bit of work Dogville didn't need doing that its residents would have to carry out for themselves in future.

 * You said once, you said once, that there aren't many pleasures in my life. And you know... I go to Miss Laura once a week. And you got me to see that it weren't nothing to be ashamed of. I was gonna go there tonight and of course it costs me. I mean, not as much... not as much as a surcharge for dangerous goods, but still... it does cost me, you know.
 * Ben.

 * It's not personal, Grace. It's not personal. I just... I have to take due payment, that's all. I don't... I don't have a choice.
 * Ben.

 * Grace fell asleep on the long highway, thanks to her healthy ability to push any unpleasantness around her far away. A generous God had blessed her with the rare talent of being able to look ahead, and only ahead. And later when the truck slowed down about to reach its destination and she slowly returned to consciousness, she had no way of knowing how long she had slept. All she knew was that she would be happy to see the light of day again. And then she heard the dog.

 * It didn't help Grace that the first theft ever registered in Dogville had taken place the previous evening, when most people were assembled for the town meeting. Old Tom Edison Senior had had a considerable sum of money stolen from his medicine closet and suspicion soon fell on Grace, who had apparently been planning an escape that would surely require funding. Grace chose to remain silent in the face of these new charges.

 * Grace, we don't like having to do this. We don't have much of a choice if we are to protect our community.
 * Tom Sr.

Chapter EIGHT

 * In which there is a meeting where the truth is told and Tom leaves (only to return later)

 * I'm here to do the thinking for you. If we are to have the slightest chance of getting you out of here, they can never know how close we really are. They can't know I'm trying to help you. If they knew it was me that took the money, I wouldn't be here talking to you now.
 * Tom.

 * Please don't disappear, Tom. I need you.
 * Grace.

 * Now that Vera had received proof that it was in fact Chuck who'd forced his attentions on Grace, she was meaner than ever. Had Grace had friends in Dogville they, too, fell like the leaves.

 * Everything I tried to do went wrong. I can't come up with the answer I was looking for.
 * Tom.

 * It all started with a meeting, so it will be logical to end it with one too. You'll talk and they'll listen. They can't refuse to listen.
 * Tom.

 * It is like a child who doesn't want to take his medicine. They'll be furious at first, but in the end they'll see it is for their own good. Just don't be hateful. Don't be reproving. If anybody can do it, Grace, you can.
 * Tom.

 * If forgiveness was close at hand in the mission house, they were all hiding it well. It hadn't been easy for Tom to get them there. Appealing to consciences stowed farther and farther away by their owners every day as if they were as fragile as Henson's glasses after polishing, had proved quite a task. But if one was going, the others might as well come along, too, so nobody could talk behind anybody's back.

 * Grace had presented her story with clarity. She had not embellished or understated. And just as she finished the snowflakes all at once stopped tumbling down, leaving Dogville clad in the daintiest, whitest blanket of snow imaginable.

 * The snow had come early, perhaps too early. A misplaced augury of conciliation. Tom looked around, worried: Vera's teeth were clenched. She was the first to speak.

 * Copious lies. Just lies.
 * Vera.

 * Tom, I got to tell you. Even I have trouble defending that girl. With your help, which I prefer to think was accidental, Tom... She has managed to spread bitterness and troubles throughout this whole town. She has to go. How do we get rid of her, Tom.
 * Jack McKay.

 * I asked you here to listen. You only came to defend yourselves... I'm sorry it's quite a blow to me to see all of my friends act this way, so uncivilized.
 * Tom.

 * No, no more plans. I promise. They asked me to chose between you and them. That's not difficult on a day like today. I love you. You may be stronger, it's true, but the ideals, the ideals we share... I've chosen, Grace. I have chosen you. Now it is the time! The time we've been waiting for. We free ourselves of Dogville.
 * Tom.

 * It'd be so easy to make love right now. They may kill us any minute... It would be the perfect romantic ending... It would be so beautiful. But from the point of view of our love, so completely wrong... We were to meet in freedom.
 * Grace.

 * You're cold now, Grace. I've just rejected everybody I've ever known in your favor. Wouldn't it be worth compromising, just one of your ideals just a little to ease my pain? Everybody in this town has had your body, but me... We're the ones supposed to be in love.
 * Tom.

 * My darling Tom. You can have me if you want me. Just do what the others do. Threaten me. Tell me that you'll turn me in to the law, to the gangsters and I promise you, you can take whatever it is you want from me. I trust you, but maybe you don't trust yourself? Perhaps you've been tempted, you've been tempted to join the others and force me. Perhaps that's why you're so upset.
 * Grace.

 * Let tomorrow bring what it's gonna bring. It's not a crime to doubt yourself, Tom, but it's wonderful that you don't.
 * Grace.

 * Of course it was all a load of nonsense. If anybody was capable of keeping track of ideals and reality, he was. After all, it was his job. Moral issues were his home ground. To think that he might doubt his own purity was really to think very little of him.

 * It was all quite a blow to the young philosopher! And realistically enough, he thought that if the doubt was already present, it could grow. Perhaps so great that one day it would prove detrimental to his entire moral mission. ... Fortunately Tom was as conscientious as regards his future profession as he was practical. He allowed sincerity, and ideals plenty of room in his life, without getting "sentimental" about it, as he would put it.

 * Grace opened her eyes after an almost unconscious sleep, and was confused... Judging by the light coming through the cracks in the walls, it had to be nearly midday... "The grey hour" as Jack McKay for some reason called noon in Dogville, being a man of many ideas and proclivities, quite a few of which Grace would prefer to remain ignorant of! But why had nobody roused her? Nobody had hammered furiously at her door. Not a child had thrown mud into her bed or broken her remaining windowpanes. Now she remembered. She recalled the meeting the previous day, and puzzled still more. Why had she not been confronted with the outcome of that meeting? Or even killed? It was quite unlike Dogville to restrain its indignation at any point. Perhaps things had turned out well after all?

 * We thought some time off would be good for you. That was quite a speech you made yesterday. It gave us all something to think about.
 * Mrs. Henson.

 * I wouldn't say we won exactly, not exactly, but I think something very good can come out of this, something very good.
 * Tom.

 * Tom: The people of this town they surprise me again and again. I might even have to revise my theories a little bit. You know how much I hate doing that kind of thing. You know, Grace, last night when I came back and I saw you lying there asleep so sweetly, I was suddenly inspired. I wrote the first chapter of a story. A story about a small town. Guess where I got the inspiration? But I haven't come up with a name for the town yet. Grace: Why not just call it Dogville? Tom: Wouldn't work. No, it wouldn't work. It's got to be universal. Lot of writers make that mistake, you see. Hey, do you want me to read it to you? If there is any love in it, it comes from you...

 * Two people only hurt each other if they doubt the love they have for one another. You can read it some other time. You sit down some place and gaze out at the mountains. It's what the girl in my novel does.
 * Tom.

 * Sensibly, Grace chose to hope for the best rather than fear the worst, and planned to spend the day calmly washing her clothes and herself, which for some reason or another she was sure none of the characters from Tom's fictitious township would dream of doing.

 * After two days off Grace had been put back to work, but the quietness remained... Indeed it intensified ... until on the fifth day it swelled into a strange mood that, all of a sudden, brought all the citizens to the street to listen. They asked each other if the phone was really still down, or if they'd heard about Ben having had to turn his truck around on his way to Georgetown that very morning on account of a large tree blocking the road. They were not worried ... worried was not the right word... and then Tom spotted the cars.

 * Grace had just started on the bed, which June had soiled yet again, when an irritating feeling of wasting her time forced itself upon her. And it was without thinking she then said the words: "Nobody gonna sleep here." She didn't say them out loud, but even so she was startled by the utterance that had urged itself upon her. Where had these ominous words come from?

 * You couldn't bring yourself to throw it away, could you? The number he gave you that night. You couldn't throw it away. I told you how dangerous that man was. That was stupid.
 * Grace.

 * Stupid or not, Tom was soon a passionate spokesman for locking Grace in her shed that night. If the vehicles were indeed a sign that the call Tom had placed five days earlier on behalf of the community to the number indicated on the card from his bureau drawer had at last led to action, and Grace was now to be eliminated from their lives, it would surely look good if the town had also locked her up. Grace was lying on the bed when Jason was sent up with the key. Grace heard it turn in the lock, but she was deeply absorbed by arguments and thoughts on matters she had otherwise avoided for the best part of a year now.

Chapter NINE

 * In which Dogville receives the long-awaited visit and the film ends

 * From the moment when they'd finally heard the sound of vehicles starting one after the other from the direction of the edge of the woods, things had moved rapidly. Tom had arranged a delegation to provide a proper reception. Dogville might be off the beaten track, but it was hospitable, nevertheless.

 * Tell me, has the crime rate really gone up in this country, as we are lead to believe? Maybe people just regard things as criminal, because they envy their success? What's your opinion on the subject? Maybe you have none. I'll get the door...sorry.
 * Tom.

 * What the hell is this?
 * The Man In The Coat, on seeing Grace bound.

 * Grace was no expert in exclusive automobiles, yet she recognized with no difficulty the sound of the vehicle that was rounding the corner from Canyon Road at that very moment. Alas, in Grace's memory the legendary purr of the Cadillac series 355 C was inextricably linked with another, rather less sophisticated sound: that of gunfire directed against her person.

 * Shooting at you certainly didn't help matters. Of course not. You're, far, far too stubborn.
 * The Big Man.

 * Our last conversation, the one in which you told me what it was you didn't like about me, never really concluded — as you ran away. I should be allowed to tell you what I don't like about you. That I believe would be a rule of polite conversation.
 * The Big Man.

 * To plunder, as it were, a God given right. I'd call that arrogant...
 * Grace.

 * You do not pass judgement, because you sympathize with them. A deprived childhood and a homicide really isn't necessarily a homicide, right? The only thing you can blame is circumstances. Rapists and murderers may be the victims, according to you. But I, I call them dogs, and if they're lapping up their own vomit the only way to stop them is with the lash... Dogs can be taught many useful things, but not if we forgive them every time they obey their own nature.
 * The Big Man.

 * Grace: So I'm arrogant. I'm arrogant because I forgive people? The Big Man: My God. Can't you see how condescending you are when you say that? You have this preconceived notion that nobody, listen, that nobody can't possibly attain the same high ethical standards as you, so you exonerate them. I can not think of anything more arrogant than that. You, my child, my dear child, you forgive others with excuses that you would never in the world permit for yourself.

 * You should be merciful, when there is time to be merciful. But you must maintain your own standard. You owe them that. You owe them that. The penalty you deserve for your transgressions, they deserve for their transgressions.
 * The Big Man.

 * Does every human being need to be accountable for their action. Of course they do. But you don't even give them that chance. And that is extremely arrogant. I love you. I love you. I love you to death. But you are the most arrogant person I've ever met. And you call me arrogant! I have no more to say.
 * The Big Man.

 * Grace: The people who live here are doing their best under very hard circumstances. The Big Man: If you say so, Grace. But is their best really good enough? Do they love you?

 * The difference between the people she knew back home and the people she'd met in Dogville had proven somewhat slighter than she'd expected.

 *  Grace looked around at the frightened faces behind the windowpanes that were following her every step, and felt ashamed of being part of inflicting that fear. How could she ever hate them for what was at bottom merely their weakness? .

 * Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light. It was if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer. Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now. The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings... and in... the people! And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all to well: If she had acted like them, she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough. .

 * We can start by shooting a dog and nailing it to a wall. Over there beneath that lamp, for example. Well, it might help. It sometimes does.
 * The Big Man.

 * It would only make the town more frightened, but hardly make it a better place. And it could happen again. Somebody happening by, revealing their frailty.
 * Grace.

 * A man can't really be blamed for being scared now, can he?
 * Tom.

 * Although using people is not very charming, I think you have to agree that this specific illustration has surpassed all expectations. It says so much about being human. It's been painful, but I think you also have to agree it has been edifying. Wouldn't you say?
 * Tom.

 * If there is any town this world would be better without, this is it.
 * Grace.

 * Tell her you will stop if she can hold back her tears. I owe her that. I'm afraid she cries a little too easily.
 * Grace, giving instructions to executioners working for the Big Man.

 * We've better get you out of here. I'm afraid, you've learned far too much already.
 * The Big Man.

 * You want the curtains opened? You don't need them anymore.
 * Driver.

 * I think we should open them. I think it's appropriate.
 * Grace.

 * Tom: Bingo Grace! Bingo! I have to tell you, your illustration beat the hell out of mine. It's frightening, yes, but so clear. Do you think that I can allow myself to use it as an inspiration in my writing? Grace: Goodbye, Tom.

 * Some things you have to do yourself.
 * Grace.

 *  Whether Grace left Dogville or on the contrary, Dogville had left her (and the world in general) is a question of a more artful nature that few would benefit from by asking and even fewer by providing an answer. And nor indeed will it be answered here.

Quotes about Dogville

 * Alphabetized by author

 * Shocks, galvanizes, and exhilarates.
 * Jeanne Aufmuth, Palo Alto Weekly.

 * Von Trier's contempt for humanity is becoming harder to hide with stylistic flourish. He doesn't even try here, and his arrogance is topped only by his misanthropy.
 * Sean Axmaker The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

 * Singular and unforgettable — the work of a brilliant crackpot.
 * Joe Baltake in The Sacramento Bee.

 * This examination of selfishness, xenophobia and the human ability to rationalize acts of horror may have audience members squirming not with outrage but recognition.
 * John Beifuss in Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN).

 * Optimistic viewers may debate how much of a handle he has on human nature. But he's clearly got a handle on his own views, and presents them in a way that is impossible to ignore or discount completely. You can loathe Dogville because it represents a concession to the basest ideas of human greed and cruelty, but you can't deny that it makes those ideas feel frighteningly real.
 * Josh Bell in Las Vegas Weekly.

 * Dogville isn't for everyone, but there's some intellectually stimulating conversation fodder for those with the patience to navigate the film's rough terrain.
 * James Berardinelli in Reelviews.

 * Brilliant and infuriating, wise and naïve, outrageous yet unforgettable.
 * Jami Bernard in The New York Daily News.

 * Continuing his stubborn, aesthetically pathbreaking ways, Lars von Trier has produced, in Dogville, a masterpiece that is nearly unwatchable.
 * Peter Brunette at indieWIRE.

 * Yes, all the rumours are true. Dogville is vile, hilarious... and essential.
 * Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly.

 * Lars von Trier is probably a genius. This doesn't stop him from being a jerk.
 * Robert W. Butler in The Kansas City Star.

 * The film equivalent of an early 80s West Coast punk rock demo: low budget, unfocused fury from deep within that not everyone will agree with, but with undeniable primal power.
 * Larry Carroll, Filmstew.com.

 * Rich with meaning or a sublime prank, Dogville gets to you.
 * Jeannette Catsoulis in The Las Vegas Mercury.

 * A simple tale, told so well while being so revealing. There are many reasons why it shouldn't work, but because it does, it feels magical.
 * Jeffrey Chen in Window to the Movies.

 * Imagine if Jesus Christ came to die for our sins only to discover we weren’t worth the trouble.
 * Erik Childress at Efilmcritic.com.

 * Uncompromising filmmaking that's both artistic and powerfully entertaining.
 * Rich Cline, Shadows On The Wall.

 * It's a pity that the political point-scoring at Cannes, admittedly fired up by Von Trier's provocateur stance, has diminished the perception of Dogvilles artistic worth. Dogville is daunting, non-naturalistic and bold. Von Trier has denied it was intended as an antithesis of Billy Wilder's Our Town; his concerns in the film are bigger than America-bashing. It's a moral parable for our times.'
 * Mary Colbert in Boxoffice Magazine.

 * Dogville is a love-it-or- hate-it experience, but one that will fill a large space in any viewer's imagination.
 * Colin Covert in The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

 * For a movie with such bold visual designs and high-flown rhetorical ambitions, it seems almost reactionary to say that it works because the performances are so good.
 * Nick Davis at Nick's Flick Picks.

 * We realize we just sat watching a movie for 3 hours that's a little pretentious but didn't really mind — that says something.
 * Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone at TheMovieChicks.com.

 * What Lars von Trier has achieved is avant-gardism for idiots. From beginning to end, Dogville is obtuse and dislikable, a whimsical joke wearing cement shoes.
 * David Denby in The New Yorker.

 * Von Trier supplies enough of an intellectual apparatus to give Dogville the veneer of art, but at its core this is a hollow, mean-spirited work.
 * Daniel Eagan in Film Journal International.

 * Dogville can be defended and even praised on pure ideological grounds, but most moviegoers, even those who are sophisticated and have open minds, are going to find it a very dry and unsatisfactory slog through conceits masquerading as ideas.
 * Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun-Times.

 * It is a valiant but risky attempt and, truth be told, it is only partially successful.
 * Michael Elliott, Movie Parables.

 * The acting is ice cold. The dialogue is lethargic. And if we're going to sit through any movie that's 177 minutes, it better have some Hobbits in it. There are no Hobbits here, so stay home.
 * E! Online.

 * For courage and sheer audacity in form and plot, no filmmaker on the world stage currently matches Lars von Trier... Make of the provocation what you will, but don't miss this completely unique and extraordinary movie by one of the world's most adventurous directors on top of his game.
 * Jürgen Fauth at About.com.

 * You don't so much enjoy watching it as you simply appreciate the genius that went into its creation.
 * Phoebe Flowers, South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

 * Has rarely been far from my mind in the 10 months following Cannes, during which time it has grown only richer, deeper and more complex than I initially estimated.
 * Scott Foundas in L.A. Weekly.

 * This brilliantly acted film is a highly stylized, surprisingly successful experiment that sits somewhere between theater and cinema.
 * Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide.

 * The daring, artistic brilliance of Dogville far outshines any negative interpretation we may have of the work. It's to be praised for inspiring varying interpretations and generating debate.
 * Jack Garner in The Rochester Democrat And Chronicle.

 * An experience that's both grueling and, in its way, glorious.
 * Lance Goldenberg in the Weekly Planet.

 * This acerbic "illustration" of a small town’s curious notions of entitlement unspools as a Christian allegory by way of Mark Twain or Dr. Seuss.
 * Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine.

 * Slow-moving but engrossing, it feels shorter, and any reservations you may have about the unorthodox approach are washed away by its unexpected and purgative ending.
 * Eric Harrison in The Houston Chronicle.

 * Sarcastic humor, inventive staging and a brutal story combine to give Dogville the force of a bonfire, incendiary and beautiful.
 * Chris Hewitt in St. Paul Pioneer Press.

 * For passion, originality, and sustained chutzpah, this austere allegory of failed Christian charity and Old Testament payback is von Trier's strongest movie — a masterpiece, in fact.
 * J. Hoberman in The Village Voice.

 * While you watch the movie, it can seem ridiculously long-winded... But once it's over, its characters' miserable faces remain etched in your memory, and its cynical message lingers.
 * Stephen Holden in The New York Times.

 * Brutally masterful allegory.
 * Peter Howell in The Toronto Star.

 *  Dogville is as deeply insightful as it is deeply disturbing, a movie that will challenge you intellectually and punish you emotionally. Put as succinctly as possible, Dogville is a "holy fuck!" movie going experience... The first great film of '04.
 * Dan Jardine in Cinemania.

 * Damn if I didn't completely forget to hate Dogville, and if I wasn't, three hours later, completely blown out of my little mind and right into the screening room next door.... You wanna see what our town is like? Here it is, in all its mean, petty, horrible smallness. It's not particularly about American meanness or pettiness or smallness, though some have accused von Trier of being anti-American — it's about human meanness, etc. The only thing "anti" about Dogville is that it might be called an anti-epic — an ambitious movie with a big cast and a marathon runtime that's about how small and insular and selfish people can be, about the miserable depths to which human beings can sink in their cruelty to others. Nationality's got nothing to do with it, though the ability to wield power over other human beings might, and so there might be some pertinent application to America as a whole right now. But everyone will — or should — recognize the universality of this, the worst side of humanity.
 * MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher.

 * Aesthetically sparse and thematically audacious, the searing work of a genuine provocateur
 * James Kendrick, at the Q Network Film Desk.

 * Dogville is no different from von Trier's earlier parables of vulnerability and brutality. And like those works, it is the staggering, infuriating work of a visionary filmmaker.
 * Lisa Kennedy in The Denver Post.

 * It would take a true knucklehead not to understand that Dogville isn’t so much Anywhere, U.S.A., as anywhere. It really is a masterpiece — von Trier’s first, as it happens.
 * Glenn Kenny at Premeire magazine.

 * I hate it, yet I'm fascinated by the magnitude of the ambition and the failure to realize it.
 * Bruce Kirkland in Jam! Movies.

 * Who but von Trier could make such a film? Who else would dare?
 * Liam Lacey in The Globe And Mail.

 * Without a doubt one of the most brilliant films I have had the chance to experience.
 * Kevin N. Laforest in the Montreal Film Journal.

 * This is a seriously important film and a huge achievement.
 * Mick LaSalle, The San Francisco Chronicle.

 * Nearly as powerful as Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark.
 * Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press.

 * Imprints itself on the consciousness and hauntingly lingers.
 * Arthur Lazere, Culturevulture.net.

 * A stunning display of a filmmaker adventuring on the far side of what's possible.
 * Megan Lehmann in The New York Post.

 * A marvel — but the film's stylized technique makes great demands on cast and audience alike.
 * Donald J. Levit in Reeltalk Movie Reviews.

 * Dogville is in no way a standard film and likely won't appeal to many. But Von Trier is so inventive, so outlandish and so filled with energy he has to at least be admired.
 * Tom Long in The Detroit News.

 * It's simply a movie whose bite is as harsh and hard as its bark.
 * Bob Longino in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

 * A tenacious, brutal drama that dares you to turn your back.
 * Glenn Lovell in The San Jose Mercury News.

 * It's a bleak view of humanity expounded here, giving much food for thought, and for meditation on the concepts of humanity, tolerance, acceptance.
 * Jean Lowerison in The San Diego Metropolitan.

 * A satanic Our Town.
 * Eric Lurio, Greenwich Village Gazette.

 * A punishing film to sit through, and its rewards may well depend on how much credit you wish to give von Trier for doing something different. Because, for better or worse, Dogville is unlike anything else you'll see on screens this year.
 * Moira MacDonald in The Seattle Times.

 * This unique cinematic experience is a parable of greed and revenge that could take place anywhere.
 * Marc Mohan in The Oregonian.

 * The only thing simple you can say about Dogville is that it's a masterpiece.
 * Kim Morgan, Reel.com.

 * Dogville is another round of brazen disrespect from cinema's baddest boy. But the movie, despite its ultimate nuttiness, has a quiet, consuming power that sneaks up on you and doesn't go away.
 * Wesley Morris in The Boston Globe.

 * Utterly engrossing.
 * Scott Nash, Three Movie Buffs.

 * It's a tough sit through tough questions.
 * Richard Nilsen in The Arizona Republic.

 * I'd be hard-pressed to argue that the gloomy Dane wants anyone to actually like Dogville." Yes, it plays like a baldfaced, brazen insult, but it is a stunningly accomplished one. It hurts, but maybe it should.
 * Michael O'Sullivan in The Washington Post.

 * It's like von Trier's expression of bewilderment at the idea of Christ. Like Mel Gibson, he portrays intense evil to make us wonder at the generosity of Grace.
 * Jeffrey Overstreet, Looking Closer.

 * Controversial, intelligent and daring, Dogville features a career-best performance from Nicole Kidman... At three hours it certainly stretches the patience, and any movie inspired by German playwright Berthold Brecht isn't likely to have mass audience appeal. But for all the ideas being examined, it works as a compelling drama too, and the acting is excellent... Dogville is a shock to the system.
 * Nev Pierce at the BBC

 * Unapologetically cynical, miraculously imaginative, and sumptuously beautiful, Dogville is a thought-provoking time at the movies.
 * Dustin Putman at Themovieboy.com.

 * Running a painfully long three hours, Dogville is pretentious with a capital 'P.
 * Steve Rhodes in Internet Reviews.

 * Maddening, challenging and audacious, Dogville is an unlikely masterpiece.
 * Rene Rodriguez in The Miami Herald.

 * Kidman, in a performance as emotionally stark as any she's ever given, makes Grace's journey achingly real, even though everything around her is deliberately artificial.
 * James Sanford in the Kalamazoo Gazette.

 * You just have to see it to believe it. Frankly, I have never seen anything like it, which is not to say that it's good or bad, but it is different and even original.
 * Andrew Sarris in The New York Observer.

 * It's the best stage play you've ever attended, and you feel as if you're right in the middle of it.
 * Steve Schneider in The Orlando Weekly.

 * Dogville is conjured out of chalk outlines and stark stage effects. The floor plans of the tiny houses are stenciled on the ground, as are invisible streets and phantom landmarks like the prized gooseberry bushes and the nonexistent dog whose nonetheless audible bark signals the arrival of a stranger. …  Young Tom Edison, worried without any obvious reason that the town is in need of moral rearmament, wishes for a test of its virtues, a real-life illustration (one of his favorite words) of his vague notions of community and responsibility. Grace, who is fleeing from big-city gangsters, seems to offer a perfect opportunity. She is reluctant to impose on the town's kindness but also utterly helpless. Dogville rises to the challenge of her presence by opening its arms in generosity, and then enclosing her in a pious, self-justifying embrace of indentured servitude, humiliation and, eventually, sexual slavery. … One of the film's grimmest scenes, the first of several rapes, takes place in one of the houses, and the camera pulls back through the invisible walls to the streets of the town, where the other Dogvilleans are going about their desultory business. Their obliviousness to what is taking place in the children's bedroom over at Vera and Chuck's house seems like a malign and active refusal to acknowledge it, a symbol of the repressive, willed innocence that is among the town's many sins. The people of Dogville are proud, hypocritical and never more dangerous than when they are convinced of the righteousness of their actions.
 * A. O. Scott, in "Dogville: It Fakes a Village" in The New York Times (21 March 2004).

 * What's amazing about von Trier's alienating ploys is how quickly they make the movie enthralling. What starts out as distracting works to bring us in closer to what we should be concentrating on: the passion of Nicole Kidman's tragic heroine, and what her suffering says about the hope of all mankind.
 * Bob Strauss in The Los Angeles Daily News.

 * Challenging, dramatic, provocative.
 * David Sterritt in The Christian Science Monitor.

 * It stalks silently, stark with its minimalism at first, and then pounces unexpectedly with an overwhelming wash of emotion like a rabid animal, with sharp piercing teeth.
 * Michael Szymanski at Zap2it.com.

 * Dogville is not a cry of rage against America — it's a cry of rage against all mankind. It demands to be seen but not to be loved.
 * Joshua Tanzer in OFFOFFOFF

 * No matter how you come down on this movie politically, Dogville is a compelling chamber piece with constant cinematic surprises.
 * Desson Thomson in The Washington Post.

 *  Dogville is a film that, in its flooring penultimate chapter, reverses the usual tables, only to implicate von Trier himself, whose self-criticism here is every bit as incisive as any vitriol spewed America's way... Whether you admire this film or flat-out despise it, you certainly won't walk away unaffected. It's as devastating as it is deeply troubling... I was breathless and more genuinely shaken up than I've been by a film in a very long time.
 * Josh Timmermann at Stylus magazine.

 * For all the plot detours and dead spots, this is strong, stinging filmmaking. Von Trier, light years from the formula doggerel at the multiplex, delivers something rare these days: a film of ideas.
 * Peter Travers in Rolling Stone (24 March 2004).

 * I think the point to the film is that evil can arise anywhere, as long as the situation is right.
 * Lars von Trier, as quoted in "Dogville: It Fakes a Village" by A. O. Scott, in The New York Times (21 March 2004).

 * A masterpiece.
 * Joe Utichi in FilmFocus.

 * Has the discipline to properly challenge us, to incite discussion on any number of topics, and to leave us with something to think about the next time we look in the mirror.
 * Rob Vaux in the Flipside Movie Emporium.

 * Philosophy and politics aside, von Trier has forgotten to make a movie worth watching, create a single sympathetic character or write dialogue that isn't prattle.
 * James Verniere in The Boston Herald.

 * Dogville is not a masterpiece, nor is it an embarrassment. But it is a cinematic Rorschach test, as much fun to praise and to scorn as it is to watch.
 * Chris Vognar in The Dallas Morning News.

 * Though certainly a failure in some respects, Dogville may be the most fascinating, richly accomplished screw-up you'll see all year.
 * Michael Wilmington in The Chicago Tribune.

 * This isn't cynicism. It's nihilism. And its brilliant, infuriating display here proves again that Von Trier — exciting, maddening Von Trier — may be finding unusual new ways to say things just as he's running out of things to say.
 * Stephen Whitty in The Newark Star-Ledger

title: Dogville


text:
The Philadelphia Story

The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 film about a bride-to-be whose plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival into her life of two cynical but romantic men: her ex-husband, and a journalist.

 * Directed by George Cukor. Written by Philip Barry (play), Donald Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt.

Uncle Leo's bedtime story for you older tots! The things they do among the playful rich - Oh, boy! taglines

Dinah Lord

 * Oh, I wish something would happen! Nothing ever possibly in the least ever happens here!

 * [watching the wedding, triumphant] I did it. I did it all!

Dialogue

 * Tracy: If you just face the facts squarely as I did.
 * Margaret: We both might face the fact that neither of us have proved to be a very great success as a wife.
 * Tracy: We just picked the wrong first husbands, that's all.

 * Kidd: Your assignment will be Spy's most sensational achievement - Tracy Lord. Big game hunting in Africa, fox hunting in Pennsylvania. Married on impulse and divorced in a rage. And always unapproachable by the press. 'The Unapproachable Miss Lord.' 'The Philadelphia Story'...quote 'A Wedding Day Inside Mainline Society.'
 * Mike: Or: 'What the Kitchen Maid Saw Through the Keyhole.' unquote...quote 'No hunter of buckshot in the rear is Cagey Crafty Connor' unquote, close paragraph.
 * Liz: Close job, close bank account. But Mr. Kidd, how can you possibly get inside the Lord estate, let alone the house?
 * Mike: Now we're not gonna do it, Liz, dawgonnit, it's degrading. It's undignified.
 * Liz: And so is an empty stomach. How do we get in?

 * Dexter: Orange juice, certainly.
 * Tracy: Don't tell me you've forsaken your beloved whiskey and whiskeys.
 * Dexter: No, no, no, no. I've just changed their color, that's all. I'm going for the pale pastel shades now. They're more becoming to me. How about you, Mr. Connor? You drink, don't you? Alcohol, I mean.
 * Mike: Oh, a little.
 * Dexter: A little, 'little.' And you a writer? I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know one time, I think I secretly wanted to be a writer.

 * Dexter: I never saw you looking better, Red. You're getting that fine, tawny look.
 * Tracy: Oh, we're going to talk about me, are we? Goody.
 * Dexter: It's astonishing what money can do for people, don't you agree, Mr. Connor? Not too much, you know - just more than enough. Now take Tracy for example. Never a blow that hasn't been softened for her. Never a blow that won't be softened. As a matter of fact, she's even changed her shape - she was a dumpy little thing at one time.
 * Tracy: Only as it happens, I'm not interested in myself, for the moment.
 * Dexter: Not interested in yourself! You're fascinated, Red. You're far and away your favorite person in the world.
 * Tracy: Dexter, in case you don't know it -
 * Dexter: Of course, Mr. Connor, she's a girl who's generous to a fault.
 * Tracy: To a fault, Mr. Connor.
 * Dexter: Except to other people's faults. For instance, she never had any understanding of my deep and gorgeous thirst.
 * Tracy: That was your problem.
 * Dexter: Granted. But you took on that problem with me when you took me, Red. You were no help-mate there. You were a scold.
 * Tracy: It was disgusting. It made you so unattractive.
 * Dexter: A weakness, sure, and strength is her religion, Mr. Connor. She finds human imperfection unforgiveable. And when I gradually discovered that my relationship to her was supposed to be not that of a loving husband and a good companion, but - [He turns away from her] Oh, never mind.
 * Tracy: Say it.
 * Dexter: But that of a kind of high priest to a virgin goddess, then my drinks grew deeper and more frequent, that's all. [Mike slides off his chair and leaves them.]
 * Tracy: I never considered you as that, nor myself.
 * Dexter: You did without knowing it. Oh, and the night that you got drunk on champagne and climbed out on the roof and stood there, NAKED, with your arms out to the moon, wailing like a banshee - [Dexter laughs at the thought.]
 * Tracy: I told you I never had the slightest recollection of doing any such thing.
 * Dexter: I know. You drew a blank. You wanted to. Mr. Connor, what would you... [He turns and notices Mike has gone] Oh.
 * Tracy: A nice story for spies, incidentally.
 * Dexter: Too bad we can't supply photographs of you on the roof.

 * Dexter: [about marrying George] How in the world could you even think of it?
 * Tracy: Because he is everything you're not. He's been poor. He's had to work and he's had to fight for everything. And I love him, as I never even began to love you.
 * Dexter: Maybe so, but I doubt it. I think he's just a swing from me. But it's too violent a swing. Kittredge is no great tower of strength, you know, Tracy. He's just a tower.
 * Tracy: You hardly know him.
 * Dexter: To hardly know him is to know him well. And perhaps it offends my vanity to have anyone who is even remotely my wife re-marry so obviously beneath her.
 * Tracy: How dare you! Any of you in this day and age use such an idiotic...
 * Dexter: I'm talking about the difference in mind and spirit...Kittredge is not for you.
 * Tracy: You bet he's for me. He's a great man and a good man. Already, he's of national importance.
 * Dexter: You sound like Spy Magazine talking. But whatever he is, toots, you'll have to stick. He'll give you no out as I did.
 * Tracy: I won't require one.
 * Dexter: I suppose you'd still be attractive to any man of spirit, though. There's something engaging about it, this goddess business. There's something more challenging to the male than the, uh, more obvious charms.
 * Tracy: Really?
 * Dexter: Really. We're very vain, you know - 'This citadel can and shall be taken, and I'm the boy to do it.'
 * Tracy: You seem quite contemptuous of me all of a sudden.
 * Dexter: No, Red, not of you, never of you. Red, you could be the finest woman on this earth. I'm contemptuous of something inside of you you either can't help, or make no attempt to; your so-called 'strength' - your prejudice against weakness - your blank intolerance.
 * Tracy: Is that all?
 * Dexter: That's the gist of it; because you'll never be a first-class human being or a first-class woman, until you've learned to have some regard for human frailty. It's a pity your own foot can't slip a little sometime - but your sense of inner divinity wouldn't allow that. This goddess must and shall remain intact. There are more of you than people realize - a special class of the American Female. The Married Maidens.
 * Tracy: So help me, Dexter, if you say another word, I'll...
 * Dexter: I'm through, Red. For the moment, I've had my say.

 * George: You know, we're gonna represent something, Tracy, you and I in our home, something straight, sound, and fine. Then perhaps your friend Mr. Haven will be somewhat less condescending.
 * Tracy: George, you, you don't really mind him, do you? I mean, the fact of him...I mean...that he ever was my lord and master. That we ever were...
 * George: I don't believe he ever was, Tracy, not really. I don't believe that anyone ever was - or ever will be. That's the wonderful thing about you, Tracy.
 * Tracy: What? How?
 * George: Well, you're like some marvelous, distant, well, queen, I guess. You're so cool and fine and - and always so much your own. There's a kind of beautiful purity about you, Tracy, like, like a statue...
 * Tracy: George -
 * George: Oh, it's grand, Tracy. It's what everybody feels about you. It's what I first worshiped you for from afar.
 * Tracy: George, listen -
 * George: First, now, and always! Only from a little nearer now, eh, darling!
 * Tracy: I-I don't want to be worshiped. I want to be loved!
 * George: Well, you're that too, Tracy. Oh, you're that all right.
 * Tracy: I mean really loved.
 * George: But that goes without saying, Tracy.
 * Tracy: No. No, now it's you who doesn't see what I mean.

 * Mike: The prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
 * Tracy: You're a snob, Connor.
 * Mike: No doubt, no doubt...Tracy. You can't marry that guy.
 * Tracy: George? I'm going to. Why, why not?
 * Mike: Well, I don't know. I thought I'd be for it at first, but you just don't seem to match up.
 * Tracy: Then the fault's with me.
 * Mike: Well, maybe so, but all the same now, you can't do it.
 * Tracy: No?
 * Mike: No.
 * Tracy: Come around about noon tomorrow. I mean today. Snob.
 * Mike: What do ya mean, snob?
 * Tracy: You're the worst kind there is. An intellectual snob. You made up your mind awfully young, it seems to me.
 * Mike: Well, thirty's about time to make up your mind. And I'm nothing of the sort, not Mr. Connor.
 * Tracy: The time to make up your mind about people - is never.

 * Tracy: [after Dexter has proposed] Dexter, are you sure?
 * Dexter: Not in the least. But I'll risk it. Will you?
 * Tracy: You bet! You didn't do it just to soften the blow?
 * Dexter: No.
 * Tracy: Nor to save my face?
 * Dexter: Oh, it's a nice little face.
 * Tracy: Oh Dexter, I'll be yar now, I promise to be yar.
 * Dexter: Be whatever you like, you're my redhead.

 * Tracy: How do I look?
 * Mr. Lord: Like a queen - like a goddess.
 * Tracy: And do you know how I feel?
 * Mr. Lord: How?
 * Tracy: Like a human. Like a human being.
 * Mr. Lord: Do you know how I feel?
 * Tracy: How?
 * Mr. Lord: Proud.

Taglines

 * Uncle Leo's bedtime story for you older tots! The things they do among the playful rich - Oh, boy!
 * Broadway's howling year-run comedy hit of the snooty society beauty who slipped and fell - IN LOVE!

Cast

 * Cary Grant - C. K. Dexter Haven
 * Katharine Hepburn - Tracy Sammantha Lord
 * James Stewart - Macaulay 'Mike' Connor
 * Ruth Hussey - Elizabeth 'Liz' Imbrie
 * Mary Nash - Margaret Lord
 * John Howard - George Kittredge
 * Roland Young - Uncle Willie
 * John Halliday - Seth Lord
 * Virginia Weidler - Dinah Lord
 * Henry Daniell - Sidney Kidd

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Philadelphia Story


text:
User:Rm80780

There is no virtue when liberty is dead. Fletcher clan motto

title: User:Rm80780


text:
User talk:Rm80780

--Aphaia 20:10, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Rm80780


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User talk:Runa~enwikiquote

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Your account will be renamed
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title: User talk:Runa~enwikiquote


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User talk:Death Of Rats

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title: User talk:Death Of Rats


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User talk:83.249.216.72

Welcome to Wikiquote, the free compendium of quotations! You don't have to log in to read or edit articles on Wikiquote, but creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, requires you to provide no personal information, and gives you many benefits, including:
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title: User talk:83.249.216.72


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User talk:64.24.42.81

Welcome to Wikiquote, the free compendium of quotations! You don't have to log in to read or edit articles on Wikiquote, but creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, requires you to provide no personal information, and gives you many benefits, including:
 * The use of a username of your choice
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title: User talk:64.24.42.81


text:
Ken Kesey

Kenneth Elton Kesey (17 September 1935 – 10 November 2001) was an American writer, most famous for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and as a cultural icon whom some consider a link between the "beat generation" of the 1950s and the "hippies" of the 1960s as a founding member of the Merry Pranksters.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962)

 *  One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
 * A children's folk rhyme quoted in the front pages of the book.

 * They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.
 * First lines, Ch. 1

 * It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.
 * Ch. 1

 * Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.
 * Ch. 1

 * He who marches out of line hears another drum.
 * Ch. 1

 * Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower.  Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice! And you tell Mr. Harding right back — he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low — that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.
 * Ch. 1

 * This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It's for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that came in all twisted and different is now a functioning, adjusted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a marvel to behold.
 * Ch. 4

 * I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it.... I'm tired.
 * Ch. 5

 * Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
 * Ch. 5

 * But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?
 * Ch. 7

 * I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference.... To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.
 * Ch. 9

 *  "But I tried though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"
 * Ch. 11

 * Later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.
 * Ch. 17

 * But just as soon as we got to the pool he said he did wish something mighta been done, though, and dove into the water.
 * Ch. 18

 * Alla you! Quit bugging me, goddammit!
 * Ch. 21

 * You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn't like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you're so b-big and so tough! Well, I'm not big and tough.
 * Ch. 22

 * While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water — laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
 * Ch. 25

 * "What worries me, Billy," she said — I could hear the change in her voice — "is how your mother is going to take this."
 * Ch. 29

 * He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.
 * Ch. 29

 * I watched and tried to figure out what he would have done. I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.
 * "Chief, in Ch. 29

 * I been away a long time.
 * "Chief, in Ch. 29

 * Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . . come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . ..
 * Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) First lines

 * NEVER GIVE A INCH!
 * Sometimes a Great Notion (1964)

 * The Grateful Dead are faster than light drive.
 * Inside cover of "The Grateful Dead" LP (1967)

 * Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart... the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"
 * Kesey's Garage Sale (1973)

 * I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.
 * As quoted in the BBC documentary The Beyond Within: The Rise and Fall of LSD (1987)

 * Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking, 'cause that's where he works. He knows that area of the mind and the brain, and he knows the difference between the two areas. He's a real master at getting your old wheel squeaking again. … When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew that we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it. It is still largely unexplored and uncharted. People like Leary have done the best they can to chart it sort of underground, but the government and the powers do not want this world charted, because it threatens established powers. It always has.
 * As quoted in "Comes Spake the Cuckoo" the Far Gone interview (13 September 1992) by Todd Brendan Fahey

 * This is just shit. It's happening. No blame. Happening and on the rise it would appear. What can we do to delay it? Probably zilch. To stop it? Likely less. But to survive it? Now that sounds more promising. There is evidence of bad shit having been survived before. Ancient Advice Left in cave by Wise French Caveman: "When Bigbad Shit come, no run scream hide. Try paint picture of it on wall. Drum to it. Sing to it. Dance to it. This give you handle on it." So Twister is my try.
 * Letter to Allen Ginsberg (August 1993)

 * I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers. … The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
 * "The Art of Fiction" - interview by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)

 * God... your book is beautiful!
 * To Peter Reich on his memoir: A Book of Dreams about his early life and his father Wilhelm Reich.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)

 * Quotes of Kesey from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), by Tom Wolfe

 * I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
 * Ch. 1 : Black Shiny FBI Shoes

 * There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus. If you're on the bus, and you get left behind, then you'll find it again. If you're off the bus in the first place — then it won't make a damn.
 * Ch. 6 : The Bus

 * We are always acting on what has just finished happening. It happened at least 1/30th of a second ago. We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.
 * Ch. 11: The Unspoken Thing

 * Nothing lasts.
 * Ch. 11: The Unspoken Thing

Magic Trip (2011)

 * There's something about what we're doing, [which] is that we're meant to lose... every time! We make these foires, write these books and perform this music, but the big juggernaut of civilization continues and we've been kind of brushed to the side, but I think all through history there's been these kind of divine losers that just take a deep breath and go ahead—knowing that society's not going to understand it—and not even caring, because they're having a good time.
 * Magic Trip, (2011)

Fresh Air interview (1989 )

 * Terry Gross; Conversations with Ken Kesey, ed. Scott F. Parker (University Press of Mississippi, 2014), 110.

 * It's a good book. yeah, he’s a—Wolfe's a genius. He did a lot of that stuff, he was only around three weeks. He picked up that amount of dialogue and verisimilitude without a tape recorder, without taking notes to any extent. He just watches very carefully and remembers. But, you know, he's got his own editorial filter there. And so what he's coming up with is part of me, but it's not all of me.

The Paris Review interview (1994)

 * "Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136" by Robert Faggen, in The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994)

 * When I see bad-looking bikers with black leather studs on their wrists hanging out at the Oregon Country Fair, I take it as a sign of health. No, I don’t want them hanging around, but trying to eliminate them all, arrest them all, legislate against them all — that’s evil. I have asked feminists, If you could, would you eliminate all male chauvinist pigs? If you could come up with some kind of spray to spray in the air and do away with them, would you? Would you do away with all scorpions and rattlesnakes, mosquitoes? Mosquitoes are part of the ecosystem. So are male chauvinist pigs. You’ve got to fight them, but you don’t try to exterminate them. A purifying group or system that would eliminate them all — that would be an evil force. Anytime you have a force that comes along and says, We will eradicate these people, you have evil. Looking back in history, what has seemed the worst turns out not to be the worst.'''

 * Kerouac had lots of class — stumbling drunk in the end, but read those last books. He never blames anybody else; he always blames himself. If there is a bad guy, it’s poor old drunk Jack, stumbling around. You never hear him railing at the government or railing at this or that. He likes trains, people, bums, cars. He just paints a wonderful picture of Norman Rockwell’s world. Of course it’s Norman Rockwell on a lot of dope. Jack London had class. He wasn’t a very good writer, but he had tremendous class. And nobody had more class than Melville. To do what he did in Moby-Dick, to tell a story and to risk putting so much material into it. If you could weigh a book, I don’t know any book that would be more full. It’s more full than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov. It has Saint Elmo’s fire, and great whales, and grand arguments between heroes, and secret passions. It risks wandering far, far out into the globe. Melville took on the whole world, saw it all in a vision, and risked everything in prose that sings. You have a sense from the very beginning that Melville had a vision in his mind of what this book was going to look like, and he trusted himself to follow it through all the way.

 * I was performing The Sea Lion in the Newport Performing Arts Center. Afterwards a white-haired old woman approached me and said, Hey, you remember me? I looked her over, and I knew I remembered her, but had no idea who she was. She said, Lois. It still didn’t click. She said, Lois Learned, Big Nurse, and I thought, Oh my God. She was a volunteer at Newport, long since retired from the nursing business. This was the nurse on the ward I worked on at the Menlo Park hospital. I didn’t know what to think and she didn’t either, but I was glad she came up to me. I felt there was a lesson in it, the same one I had tried to teach Hollywood. She’s not the villain. She might be the minion of the villain, but she’s really just a big old tough ex-army nurse who is trying to do the best she can according to the rules that she has been given. She worked for the villain and believed in the villain, but she ain’t the villain.

 * I like that saying of Thoreau’s that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” Settlers on this continent from the beginning have been seeking that wilderness and its wildness. The explorers and pioneers were out on the edge, seeking that wildness because they could sense that in Europe everything had become locked tight with things. The things were owned by all the same people and all of the roads went in the same direction forever. When we got here there was a sense of possibility and new direction, and it had to do with wildness.

 * When people ask me about LSD, I always make a point of telling them you can have the shit scared out of you with LSD because it exposes something, something hollow. Let’s say you have been getting on your knees and bowing and worshiping; suddenly, you take LSD and you look and there’s just a hole, there’s nothing there. The Catholic Church fills this hole with candles and flowers and litanies and opulence. The Protestant Church fills it with hand-wringing and pumped-up squeezing emotions because they can’t afford the flowers and the candles. The Jews fill this hole with weeping and browbeating and beseeching of the sky: How long, how long are you gonna treat us like this? The Muslims fill it with rigidity and guns and a militant ethos. But all of us know that’s not what is supposed to be in that hole. After I had been at Stanford two years, I was into LSD. I began to see that the books I thought were the true accounting books — my grades, how I’d done in other schools, how I’d performed at jobs, whether I had paid off my car or not — were not at all the true books. There were other books that were being kept, real books. In those real books is the real accounting of your life.

 * It’s the same old wilderness, just no longer up on that hill or around that bend or in the gully. It’s the fact that there is no more hill or gully, that the hollow is there and you’ve got to explore the hollow with faith. If you don’t have faith that there is something down there, pretty soon when you’re in the hollow, you begin to get scared and start shaking. That’s when you stop taking acid and start taking coke and drinking booze and start trying to fill the hollow with depressants and Valium. Real warriors like William Burroughs or Leonard Cohen or Wallace Stevens examine the hollow as well as anybody; they get in there, look far into the dark, and yet come out with poetry.

 * One of these days you're going to have a visitation. You're going to be walking down the street and across the street you're going to look and see God standing over there on the street corner motioning to you, saying, "Come to me, come to me." And you will know it's God, there will be no doubt in your mind — he has slitty little eyes like Buddha, and he's got a long nice beard and blood on his hands. He's got a big Charlton Heston jaw like Moses, he's stacked like Venus, and he has a great jeweled scimitar like Mohammed. And God will tell you to come to him and sing his praises. And he will promise that if you do, all of the muses that ever visited Shakespeare will fly in your ear and out of your mouth like golden pennies. It's the job of the writer in America to say, "Fuck you God, fuck you and the Old Testament that you rode in on, fuck you." The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

Trip of a Lifetime (1999)

 * Quotations from an interview in The Sun Times [South Africa] (29 August 1999); interview later quoted in "Still hippie, still trippy" in The Sydney Morning Herald (16 October 1999)telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/trip-of-a-lifetime-ken-kesey-lsd-the-merry-pranksters-and-the-bi

 * I got high on psychedelics before I was ever drunk. I never smoked. Then LSD came by. And to me it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened... And, of course, the best drugs ever were manufactured by the government.

 * You can't trust the quality any more...
 * On why he seldom took LSD in his later years.

 * I have known a lot of people to go down and out — they kill themselves with alcohol or downers. But I've never known anybody to go up and out.

 * LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.

 * A TV crew came over 10 years or so ago, on the anniversary of the discovery of LSD, and those guys were trying to push me towards saying how bad it was. They wanted me to talk about the dark underbelly of the drug culture. And I said, I'm not going to talk about that because I've never seen it, except in kids doing stuff that I don't know about and I'm not interested in... I've never taken crack and I've never taken ecstasy; none of us has. I don't want to take some strange drug and end up chewing my tongue for 12 hours.

 * What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.

 * When people ask me what I think is my best work, it's the bus. There're lots of books, but there's only one bus.

 * The real crazies who are looking for a messiah... after an hour or so they realise I'm not it and go off and look somewhere else.

 * What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.

 * You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.

Quotes about Kesey

 * Tripmaster was a word from the 1960s. People could be on acid, and there's a tripmaster who suggests trips for them and who guides them and keeps them from flipping out. I feel that I myself was very good at doing that. Often I would be the one who would not take drugs and the other people would take the drugs. I would make sure they were safe. Very different from Ken Kesey. I wanted to make sure that they did not go to any dangerous places, make sure they went to beautiful places with flowers and music and birds.
 * 1993 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

 * Kesey creates finally in McMurphy a modern unhero or anti-hero who expands himself, through a gradual shift in his concern from himself to those around him, into the role of the traditional hero. It is a strange and preposterous role... In the modern world, such a hero, individualistic to the point of disaffiliation but at the same time altruistic to the point of self-sacrifice, is by definition absurd; and all people and actions touched by such heroism are tinted by its absurdity.
 * Joseph J. Waldmeir in "Two Novelists of the Absurd: Heller and Kesey" (1964)

 * Big Nurse speaks for the fixed pattern, the unbreakable routine, the submission of individual will to mechanical, humorless control. McMurphy speaks an older American language of freedom, unhindered movement, self-reliance, anarchic humour and a trust in the more animal instincts.
 * Tony Tanner in City of Words (1971)

 * Kesey practices what has come to be known as Gonzo journalism. The reporter, often intoxicated, fails to get the story but delivers instead a stylishly bizarre account that mocks conventional journalism.
 * R. Z. Sheppard in Time magazine (8 September 1986)

 * McMurphy is not merely up against the Big Nurse and her ward, but against all the controlling aspects of society, which molds its conformists into dull mechanical robots for the Combine.
 * Matthew Rick in "Tarnished Galahad: The Prose and Pranks of Ken Kesey"

"—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —" — all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said. "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said. He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. '''It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch — lightning.'''
 * He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about —
 * Tom Wolfe, in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes

 * Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus … or off the bus."
 * Tom Wolfe, on Kesey's coining of the phrase "on the bus", in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. VI : The Bus; as Paul Grushkin reports, in Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail (2011), p. 120, the statement became a famous evocation of an attitude:
 * The phrase became a metaphor for 1960s culture rethinking — if you were "on the bus" you were "with it."

title: Ken Kesey


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User talk:144.137.92.68

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User talk:213.202.128.177

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Bad Boy Bubby

Bad Boy Bubby is an Australian movie released in 1994, a tragicomedy. It is directed by Rolf De Heer and starred Nicholas Hope.

Mam (Flo)

 * Jesus can see everything. He tells me you moved, by Christ, I'll beat you brainless.

 * Be still.

Salvation Army Chick

 * Lick your tongue, now lick me here.... that prickles...
 * I sing this song when I want to be close to my good friend Jesus........

Pop

 * You still look good, Flo. You always were a good looking broad.

 * Hey son, you can call me pop. I'm your pop.

 * Yeah yeah alright. Don't go making a big thing of it.

 * Hey what's up son, you got a mental condition or something?

 * Christ, kid, you're a weirdo!

 * Christ Flo, you gotta see the funny side of it, all these years and I never know'd I had a son

 * I know you're in there Florence.... I'll be back.....

Miscellaneous

 * Council worker: Oi, piss off out the way mate, I gotta cut this tree down... Hey, you fuckin deaf...You're a queer looking rooster aren't ya? what are ya one of them fuck in' greenies aye, C'mon on, fuck off or I'll cut your prick off.....fuckin idiot...go on, get out of it
 * Angel: Here's your bed, and there's your suitcase, and I've put your cat in the freezer, and we can bury that tomorrow, ok?

Bubby

 * How come... cat no gas mask? Don't need one... cats don't breathe.

 * You be sexy woman, Flo.

 * Come on, cat. Pizza!

 * Me be Pop now.

 * Be still ya litte cunt! I'll beat ya brainless!

 * God be a useless cunt!

 * Christ, I beat you brainless.

 * You're a sexy woman Flo, you've got great big whoppa's.

 * Bubby being left to die... me Pop now!

 * Pop get pizza for cat!

 * Jesus can see everything I do... and he's going to beat me brainless!

 * [upon discovery of dead cat in Bubby's luggage] That be Cat!

 * Fuck you, God! Strike me down if you dare! Angel be beautiful. God be a useless cunt!

 * Two of those wonderfully fattening chocolate eclairs please, Sam!

 * [to traffic cop] Get off of the fuckin' road you greenie bastard! Get off of the fuckin' road you greenie bastard! Get off..." [cop drags Bubby out of car & beats him "I don't like smart cunts!"]

 * Bubby is the apprentice Roadie. Band Member: "Yeah Righto. Just don't drop the fucking speaker!"

 * "What do you think of your dinner, Mr. Pop?" "Pizza be better than this!"

 * ''Angel: You're rich, you're handsome...... you think it's OK to make fun of people like me...... well, it's just hurtful......"

Scientist

 * You see, no one's going to help you Bubby, because there isn't anybody out there to do it. No one. We're all just complicated arrangements of atoms and subatomic particles — we don't live. But our atoms do move about in such a way as to give us identity and consciousness. We don't die; our atoms just rearrange themselves. There is no God. There can be no God; it's ridiculous to think in terms of a superior being. An inferior being, maybe, because we, we who don't even exist, we arrange our lives with more order and harmony than God ever arranged the earth. We measure; we plot; we create wonderful music. We are the architects of our own existence. What a lunatic concept to bow down before a God who slaughters millions of innocent children, slowly and agonizingly starves them to death, beats them, tortures them, rejects them. What folly to even think that we should not insult such a God, damn him, think him out of existence. It is our duty to think God out of existence. It is our duty to insult him. Fuck you, God! Strike me down if you dare, you tyrant, you non-existent fraud! It is the duty of all human beings to think God out of existence. Then we have a future. Because then — and only then — do we take full responsibility for who we are. And that's what you must do, Bubby: think God out of existence; take responsibility for who you are.

title: Bad Boy Bubby