Author: Thoughts On The Dead (Page 131 of 1031)

• Just watch the damn movie.
• This post will make no sense to those who have not seen Southland Tales five or six times.
• It will also make no sense to those who have.
• Because Southland Tales makes not the tiniest bit of sense.
• It is occult bullshit, and you’re not allowed to ask occult bullshit to stick to a strict plot.
• We’re five minutes in and Justin Timberlake is still narrating; he’s already mentioned “Neo-Marxists” more than once.
• I told you this in the last post: it’s that kind of movie.
• And then he ends the narration by paraphrasing T.S. Eliot.
• Obviously, the one about the world ending.
• Funnier would have been if Justin Timberlake started reading Eliot’s poem about how much he loved kitties.
• The one they made Cats into.
• Ever see Cats?
• That shit doesn’t make any sense, either, but it makes more sense than ST.
• Now we got Robert Frost, Two Roads Diverged.
• It’s an occult film, not sci-fi.
• There’s no science here.
• You can’t refer to the ocean as a perpetual motion machine, and have the word “science” in the name of your genre.
• Annnnnnd here’s Marx.
• He is first quoted by a pimp named Fortunio, who is played by Mad TV alumni Will Sasso.
• Which is appropriate, as Mad TV was Saturday night sketch-based comedy for the people, as opposed to SNL, the program of the ruling class.
• Context needs to be given: Southland Tales was a massive bomb.
• It got booed at Cannes, ravaged by critics, ignored in theaters, and quickly forgotten.
• Now, all of those dumb motherfuckers were wrong, but one needs to be aware of the surrounding facts of a work of art.
• But no one read Moby Dick when it came out, either.
• Am I comparing Southland Tales to Moby Dick?
• Yes, I am.
• Is it an apt comparison?
• Almost certainly not.
• Holy shit, John Larroquette out of nowhere.
• Warn a man when you’re gonna introduce John Larroquette.
• I was not expecting that tall drink of Cajun water.
• HIGHLANDER!
• Fuck!
• First, John Larroquette shows up and now you’re giving me Christopher Lambert!?
• Although, he does get his ass kicked by Cheri Oteri within seconds.
• The Highlander should be able to take Cheri Oteri.
• That might be more unbelievable than the time travel and Magic Earth Jizz.
• The characters in Southland Tales like two things: putting guns against their heads, and drugs.
• It is a druggy-ass movie.
• The best time to watch it might be while coming down from a three-day multi-chemical binge.
• This bullshit will fuck you up if you watch it while coming down from a three-day multi-chemical binge.
• Trust me on this one.
• The Rock used to have hair.
• It started way up high on his skull, but it was hair and he had it.
• The Rock does not have hair any longer, but he has about $500 million more.
• That is an acceptable trade.
• I’m not a great fan of Auteur Theory, films being inherently collaborative works, but Southland Tales is directed to within an inch of its life.
• None of the actors are making their own choices.
• It should be noted that The Rock and Seann William Scott also co-starred in 2003’s The Rundown.
• The Rundown was a generic buddy picture, but it made more money than Southland Tales, possibly because it was not a giant, sloppy pudding of insanity.
• Possibly, hopefully, finally, the revanchists have come for the movie: there have been several “reevaluating Southland Tales articles of late; they all feature the phrase “eerily prescient.”
• Salon did a good job of summarizing the plot here.
• This is a paragraph at random:

• Boxer appears at the Santa Monica pier to meet Starla Von Luft. She tells him that he must board the mega-zeppelin and what he is looking for is in the Baron’s private chamber. Then she pulls out her gun and threatens to kill herself unless she can give Boxer a blowjob. Pilot Abilene, who has been watching the scene from his gun turret, shoots and kills Starla.

• I told you: it’s that kind of movie.
• The mega-zeppelin doesn’t even get mentioned until the third act, and then WHAMMO mega-zeppelin full of Marxists.
• And by that point, you’re like “Yeah, of course.”
• The movie would have felt a bit empty had a mega-zeppelin not appeared.
• All the reviews and analysis and whatnot mention Phillip K. Dick and Vonnegut, but no one brings up Robert Anton Wilson.
• RAW is all over this bullshit.
• Whipsaw tonal shifts, characters with goofy names, creators writing themselves into stories and/or stories writing themselves into existence.
• You can smell the fnords.
• Enthusiasts, I pray that my little jokes and pokes aren’t coming across as dismissive, or negative in any way: I love this fucking movie.
• However, he wrote as watching a bleach-blond Jon Lovitz murdering Amy Poehler in cold blood, it is a deeply strange piece of work.
• Yet, it’s also familiar.
• Southland Tales is a movie you dreamed once, and half-forgot.
• And Booger is in it.
• Curtis “Booger” Armstrong.
• The Rock, Booger, and Nora Dunn.
• That’s a fucking cast, man.
• Anyway, so: Cannes was a disaster.
• This was 2006, and it was Richard
• Kelly’s first film since 2001’s sleeper hit Donnie Darko.
• The common phrase is “much-anticipated.”
• The movie wasn’t quite ready: the special effects weren’t finished, and some cuts still needed to be made, but the date had to made.
• The reception was not the desired one.
• It should be noted that many in the audience were foreign, and therefore not to be trusted, but still: booing and hissing and whatnot.
• This doomed the film; Southland Tales was dumped–18 months later–into fewer than 50 theaters, and given virtually no promotion.
• Cost $17.5 million, made less than $300 grand.
• They didn’t let Richard Kelly direct a movie until 2014 after that.
• But they did keep paying hi to write screenplays, so it’s not like he’s living out of his van.
• Unless it’s one of those spiffy vans that people on Instagram live out of.
• Wallace Shawn (accompanied by John Larrouquette and the scary old lady from Poltergeist) is now chopping off the Prime Minister of Japan’s hand in exchange for access to Fluid Karma.
• Fluid Karma is free energy, delivered wirelessly, and also a super-hallucinogen that allows the user to see into the future, and it comes from a giant aquifer that encircles the planet like a snake.
• Magic Earth Jizz.
• It powers the mega-zeppelin, but also–when injected into Justin Timberlake’s neck–can induce musical numbers.
• It’s really useful jizz.
• Most jizz just makes babies, or encrusts socks.
• No one mentions what a MOVIE Southland Tales is: intricately-framed shots, and hero introductions, and operatic breaks into fantasy
• Look at this bullshit:

• That’s old-fashioned Hollywood magic right there.
• My argument is not that this film should have been a massive success; it literally could not have.
• This is not a summer blockbuster.
• In the current scene, a former member of NSYNC is sniping suicidal women and Jon Lovitz from a military emplacement just off the coast of Venice Beach.
• And some folks just can’t dig that kind of jam.
• Which is okay.
• It’s like what Garcia said that time about licorice.
• Remember Garcia?
• He was in the Grateful Dead.
• The website is about the Grateful Dead.
• BUT Southland Tales should have received a better–or at least fairer–reaction from the critics.
• What can we expect from the lying, failing media, which lies so much and fails so much.
• Fuck it, I’m calling it: FAKE NEWS.
• Southland Tales does not predict Trump; while it does feature a gleefully fascist Republican Party, they are still in pre-Basketball Head mode of pretending to be human.
• There’s lots of movies about the end of the world, but they don’t feel like the end of the world.
• Southland Tales does.
• Mandy Moore is in it, and somehow it feels like the end of the world.
• Give the flick some credit for that, huh?
• I sincerely believe that no one without at least a 3rd-degree initiation into one or more secret societies should have been allowed to review this.
• You need a basic understanding of the Tarot, the Apocrypha, several disappeared Mystery religions, and Buddhism (both Chinese and Tibetan) just to get in the club.
• The nigh-incomprehensible plot becomes clear when read as an occult text.
• It’s standard Gnosticsm mixed with some left-hand path/right-hand path stuff.
• Archons versus the Invisible College.
• This is the 101, people.
• Kevin Smith, Booger, and the scary old lady from Poltergeist are now telling The Rock that the screenplay he (The Rock) wrote with Buffy the Vampire Slayer is all true, and that he (The Rock) is not himself, but rather his double from the future who switched places with him when he and Seann Willian Scott drove through a rift in the spacetime continuum.
• I didn’t make that bullshit up.
• I couldn’t make that bullshit up, and I’m good at making up bullshit.
• Oh, the Magic Earth Jizz also makes you telepathic.
• Maybe.
• Southland Tales is odd, and disquieting, and glorious, and spastic, and mannered, and fluid, but most of all it is American.
• Los Angeles is just synecdoche.
• The movie’s about all of us.
• Maaaaaaan.
• Read this; it’s from Vice, and good.
• This is the answer to the question What is the opposite of a Marvel movie?
• For example, Marvel movies rarely feature Bai Long giving a speech on the intradimensional co-existence of souls with her titty hanging out.
• Among other differences.
• The Seann William Scott from the future has now met up with the Seann William Scott from the past.
• The correct pluralization is Seanns William Scott.
• You didn’t know that when you woke up this morning, and now you do.
• You’re welcome.
• The two have shaken hands.
• Oh, what a terrible move.
• TotD TOP TIP: If you ever meet your double from another dimension, DO NOT TOUCH THEM!
• Nothing good can come of it.
• Again, people, this is the 101.
• Don’t kill Baby Hitler and don’t touch your alternate-self.
• Everyone knows these rules.
• The Rock and Wallace Shawn are now arguing about whether or not to abandon the mega-zeppelin.
• That sentence will make sense if you watch the film, I promise.
• Soak in it.
• Get lost in it.
• Give yourself to it.
• No movie rocks the cock like Southland Tales, Enthusiasts.

The most common of tropes when writing about Southland Tales is to–as plainly as language allows–recount the particulars of any scene. I will now do so, but I’m gonna use the Bullet Points cuz they’re easier than writing paragraphs.

• Both The Rock and The Seann are not their actual selves in this clip, but rather their 69-minutes-into-the-future selves.
• They are also both amnesiacs, or maybe brainwashed.
• Lovitz is a psycho cop on the take from Neo-Marxists, or possibly double-agents within the Neo-Marxists, or maybe the actual Marxists who are also in charge.
• Southland Tales is nothin’ but Marxism and maybe all the way down.
• Hell, Karl is kinda in the flick.
• There’s a guy who looks just like Marx, and says Marxist shit, and he’s played by Kevin Smith, so that’s what kind of movie this is.
• “Kevin Smith as Karl Mark” crazy is high-level crazy.
• But he’s not in this scene, and we’re only discussing this scene.
• The Rock is there on a ride-along with The Seann, for his new film, which he has just written with a Porn Star played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer; this screenplay foretells the future, or possibly causes the future to occur.
• He does that thing with his fingers a lot.
• Whole film.
• It’s adorable.
• He also has tattoos of icons from every religion tattooed on his massive torso, and they fight for dominance.
• Again: it’s that kind of movie.
• You shouldn’t ask questions like “Why is that happening?”
• Or “What is happening?”
• You should just accept Southland Tales and say “This is happening.”
• Fuck it, y’know what?
• Here.
• Go watch it.
• I’m not kidding.
• Go watch Southland Tales or we can’t be friends any more.
• It’s Sony Crackle, which is a thing that exists, and it’s free.
• High Def, and professional stereo sound, and properly-sized, and streamed at your command to your device of choice.
• For free.
• It’s a miracle of a world sometimes.
• (WARNING: Nothing’s free, slaphead. There are commercials, but not too many; the length of the ad breaks seemed a fair price to pay for the service provided. However, it’s a shitty stream service so they didn’t bother to fade in and out of the commercials like professionals, so you’re engrossed in the picture–and this is one of those movie’s that’s gonna engrossinate you–and then WHAM hard cut into some lady trying to sell you pants. It’ll toss you off the couch the first time it happens.)
• Seriously, go watch the movie.
• We’re forming a discussion group in the Comment Section, and there might be a quiz.
• In fact, there’s no “might” about the matter.
• This is gonna be on the test, people.
• Southland Tales is now Required Reading.
• One more for the back row.