Troubleshooting Life 283, October 9 - Film is a disease that is only cured with more film
"Film is a disease," Frank Capra said. "When it infects your bloodstream... when it takes over as the #1 hormone, it plays Iago to your psyche, and with heroin the antidote to film is more film."
- Martin Scorsese quote
TAXI DRIVER, Written by Paul Schrader, Shooting Script 1976
"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence."
THOMAS WOLFE, "God's Lonely Man”
TRAVIS BICKLE, age 26, lean, hard, the consummate loner. On the surface he appears good-looking, even handsome; he has a quiet steady look and a disarming smile which flashes from nowhere, lighting up his whole face.
But behind that smile, around his dark eyes, in his gaunt cheeks, one can see the ominous stains caused by a life of private fear, emptiness and loneliness. He seems to have wandered in from a land where it is always cold, a country where the inhabitants seldom speak. The head moves, the expression changes, but the eyes remain ever-fixed, unblinking, piercing empty space.
HUGO (2010), written by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick book
HUGO: My father took me to the movies all the time. We saw Tom Mix and Lon Chaney. But Douglas Fairbanks was my favorite.
Hugo sword fights along the bank for a moment. A beat as they walk.
ISABELLE: What was he like?
HUGO: He loved the movies ... Ever since he was a kid and the movies were new. He told me about the first one he ever saw. He went into a dark room and on a white screen he saw a rocket fly into the eye of the man in the moon. (smiles) He said it was like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day.
Reader, I found myself relating to these lonely characters like Bickle or Hugo.
To paraphrase Oh Dae-su in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy (2003), a human can see the TV as his church, friend, teacher, lover, and more.
In high school, I saw Taxi Driver on my laptop in my parent’s basement, on Netflix or Hulu or one of “dem sites,” when I was sick of my schoolwork.
Little did I know, I would catch “The Film Disease,” Marty says Frank Capra said.
There is no cure for movies, Reader. Only more movies.
Scorsese is a favorite of mine.
Since I was a kid I have been exploring it, and I could see myself doing this work forever.
And it wasn’t just the movies themselves, but the way he talks about movies, and still talks about movies, like his upcoming movie, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).
MARTIN SCORSESE (Deadline):
“I’ve always considered myself a teacher more than a filmmaker,” Scorsese began when quizzed on his voracious appetite for world cinema and why he likes to remain in dialogue with other people about the films he loves.
“I’ve felt a sense of pride that I’ve influenced a couple of people not necessarily with my work but by recommending films,” Scorsese said. “ And then from their films, I get inspired. It opens up a whole new world.”
ACTION POINT: Film is a disease that is only cured with more film
