528 - Westfront 1918, Germany, 1930. Dir. G. W. Pabst.

Friday, November 30, 2018

528 - Westfront 1918, Germany, 1930.  Dir. G. W. Pabst.

Three lilies, three lilies
Were planted on my grave.
Along came a proud horseman
And plucked each one.

The men are singing this song, with one of them playing the harmonica, while polishing their rifles.

They are German soldiers.  Staying in a French tavern while occupying France.  Somewhere near the border.  Somewhat near the front.

We have not seen them before and will not see them again.

They are a new group.  Processed through as if on an assembly line.  More men to fight.

But we are here because we began the film here.  And one of our soldiers has returned.  To this place.  This tavern.

Our soldiers include the following four:

The Lieutenant, who leads the group.  The Bavarian, who enjoys a good laugh.  Karl, whom we will follow more closely after now.  He has a wife, a mother, and an apartment in Berlin.  And Georges, The Student.

Georges has returned for Jacqueline.

Yes, the credits refer to her as Yvette (die Franzosin), and to him as merely The Student, but within the film itself she is never called Yvette, and the two of them refer to one another as Georges and Jacqueline.

He emerges from her room in the cellar with her.  The other men look at him.  They know.  This is the 5th Company.  He is from the 3rd Company.

Georges says he has to get back to his company.  He cannot let his comrades fight this war alone.  But the CO here is concerned.  Your men are on the front.  What are you doing here?

Just then an MP knocks on the door.  Georges could be found out.  He could be court-martialed.  The 5th CO protects him.  Opens the door.  The MP is not here for Georges.  He is here about another deserter.  From your company.  The 5th.  He deserted last week.  We caught him last night.  They will hand him over today.  Have your guns ready.

Have your guns ready.

If you have seen Paths of Glory (1957), then you know of the precedent of armies shooting their own men for desertion during World War 1.

Georges thanks the 5th CO, kisses Jacqueline one more time, and leaves.

In the big picture of this film he is not a deserter.  Not by any means.  But a hero.  A hero at least three times over.

He simply loves a woman.

How did we get here?

Let us go back and see.

We began the film listening to the evocative strains of composer Alexander Laszlo's opening score, a piece that could bring up simultaneously opposing emotions.  Love.  And sorrow.  It played underneath a cartoon-like series of opening credits, which, incidentally, did not credit Laszlo himself.

As the credits and score fade out, we fade in to an establishing shot of the outside of the tavern.  A parked buggy sits in the foreground.  It is after dusk.  The ground is graveled.  A light emanates from the left of three windows, the other two blocked by a single sheet curtain.  Inside voices finish a bar song and talk and laugh.  Georges The Student walks past us carrying a bucket of water.

As he enters we cut to the interior and look back at him.  He stands in the door smiling.  Enjoying what he sees.  They are singing.  Talking.  Flirting.  Three German men stand around a Frenchwoman at a stove.  Bruno, an older soldier whose name we do not know, and another man.  Her grandfather sits at a table to the left, an empty ladder-back chair beside him.  Karl and The Bavarian recline on the floor playing chess.

The Bavarian makes a joke about Karl's being a Prussian.  Georges lightly kicks Karl in the back, taking his side.  The Bavarian and the Prussian.  Immediately we see the fusion of heritages brought about by war.

Jacqueline comes to get the water bucket and lightly graces Georges' sleeve with her fingertips.  As her hand comes down on the handle, she brings in her other hand and grasps the handle with both hands on either side of Georges' hand.  Touching him.  Her right thumb to his left thumb.  Her left thumb to his left pinkie.  They make eye contact.  She looks him in the eye with a knowing glow.

Merci.

The moment is brief and lapsing, and might mean nothing.  One might watch the film a few times without seeing it.  But it is our first bit of foreshadowing that Jacqueline and Georges will love each other.

At the moment she is being hit on by the three men standing around the stove.  She laughs with them and playfully rebuffs them.  Georges sits down on the ladder-back chair next to her grandfather, picks up a small book, and turns and comments to him on the "ruckus," to which the old man merely nods disinterestedly while smoking his pipe.

When she says something, Bruno turns to The Student, offscreen, and asks him to translate.  He says she called him a Meathead.  The man reacts.  She smiles.  The older soldier says she thinks it is a compliment.  We do not know what she said or if The Student translated the words honestly.  It is hard to hear her, and the disc contains only English subtitles and not German or French.  But it our second subtle moment where we see how Georges has the upper hand with her, as he is the only one in the room who can speak both German and French and therefore the only soldier who can understand her and the only one besides her grandfather whom she can understand.

(There is a continuity issue here, as The Bavarian gets up and walks over to complain about how they are spilling the coffee.  When we cut to the grandfather's being served and then cut back, The Bavarian is back on the floor at the chess game.)

When she walks over to serve coffee to The Bavarian and Karl on the floor, The Bavarian makes a move on her.  This causes Bruno to walk over and fight for her.  The men pull at her as she laughs.  She emerges from between them and the two men wrestle, with her laughing while standing against the wall.  The older soldier walks over and swats The Bavarian on the behind, and just then, as if on cue, a bomb lands and the lights go out.  Blackout.  Bombing.  An air raid siren sounds.  Some soldiers flee to the cellar.  Others go outside.  Georges takes Jacqueline into the cellar.

Three men play cards in the cellar.

Georges and Jacqueline talk.

He teases her that her countrymen are impolite to be bombing them.  She expresses frustration and outrage over the war.  He takes her hands and comforts her.  Do not tremble.  Do not be afraid.  I am with you.

Then--

Je suis chez vous. . . . Chez toi.

I am with you. . . . With you.

He changes from the formal you to the familiar you, the you reserved for family, close friends, and loved ones.  He is saying, we are no longer on formal terms.  We are now on intimate terms.

She puts her palm on his chest.  She responds in French.

You are such a good man, Monsieur.

And then in German.

Good . . . man.

At least according to the English subtitles.  This is where I wish we had German and French subtitles.

You can clearly hear her say, "Oh, que vous etes bon, Monsieur," but the second part is not "guter Mann."  It is something else.

But the next part is clear German.

Ich liebe Monsieur.

He says, "I am with you" in her language.  She says, "I love you" in his.

She strokes his chin and puts her cheek next to his.  He embraces her.

I took the time to show the development of their love for one another, because watching the film nearly ninety years later and from another country, it could be easy to miss.  It seems to come out of nowhere.  You begin with a woman being hit on by four different men and then suddenly in the arms of a fifth man who was not involved.

But their love is important to the film, and Pabst wants you to trust it.

Because it has driven us to this moment where we now are.  Where we started this blog.

Back here in this tavern with a new group of men.  Where Georges has taken a great risk to see Jacqueline again.

The men went off to war.  On the front.  In the trenches.  A shell exploded and crushed the roof of a bunker with its wooden beams.  The Lieutenant, The Bavarian, and Karl were trapped inside.  The Student led a team heroically to rescue them.

Then the men started being hit by their own forces behind them.  Friendly fire.  They could not get word back.  All their lines.  They sent a messenger dog.  But they needed a runner.  The Student volunteered to go.  He ran at great risk from the 3rd Company on the front to the Trude Regiment to inform them.  They in turn called it in.  While there he was fed.  While there, he made his little stop to see Jacqueline on his way back.

When he returns he sees the crosses.  The wooden crosses being built by a makeshift carpentry shop.

We see a show.  To entertain the troops.

Karl gets leave and goes home.  And here is where the film becomes its most poignant.

G. W. Pabst has made a powerful film about war, about love, about hunger, about human relationships, about what it means to be human.

The acting and the film style may seem outdated, but if you watch past it and find your way into the world that he has created, you can see the power behind its moments.

When Karl gets home he is confronted by a discovery.  He has his emotions to process.  His wife has hers.  His mother has hers.  All understandable.  And complicated.  Under these dire circumstances.

It will come back to him when he comes back to the front.  If only.

We will have moments of drama.  Moments of warfare.  Moments of pathos.  Moments of catharsis.

With the sounds especially significant in Pabst's first sound film.

And soldiers will have to step over their dead comrades to fight and to walk through the trenches.  In the end there will be more dead than living.  And each one left will respond in his way.

At the hospital.

Set up in a church.

With the blind.

The lame.

The driven insane.

The hand-holding.

And the comfort.

Near the crucifix knocked over like another dead body.


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Karl.  The Student, Georges.  The Bavarian.  The Lieutenant.  Yvette, called Jacqueline.

Then the bombs come.  A shell lands.  The lights go out.

Down to the cellar.

The Student ends up with Yvette.  She is French.  He is German.  He speaks French.  Enough, anyway.  He comforts her.

A soldier appraises the shell crater.  He jumps in.  Makes jokes.  Talks like a carnival salesman inviting the others to join him.  Best accommodations in town!  Guaranteed shell-proof!

After all, why would another shell land on precisely the same spot.

Today only, half price for soldiers and free for dames!

They laugh and jump in.  How many soldiers does it take to fill a shell crater?  Thirteen that we can see.  A baker's dozen.

Fall in!

They all get out.

The Student and Yvette kiss.

Three others play cards.  The Bavarian, Bruno, and the older soldier.

They are called out.  Time to return to the front.

The Student hides for one last kiss.  Yvette begs him to stay with her.  He must leave.  He falls in with the others.

1st Division reporting.  2nd Division reporting.  3rd Division reporting.

1st Platoon reporting.  2nd Platoon reporting.  Company reporting.

They go to the trenches.

One starts to think of La Grande Illusion, released seven years later.

Or Paths of Glory, twenty-seven years later.

The men lie in narrow bunks beneath the mud-thatched roofs cut into the trenches.

Shelling.

A cave in.  They prop it with their rifles and their shoulders.

The student digs out his comrades.

Shelling.

It came from that direction?

Friendly fire.

Tell them to direct their fire farther ahead.  The shells are falling short.

The phone is not working.  The C.O. orders a man to run tell them.  Another man is already hit.  Falls over in his arms.  He orders again.  Sends a runner.  Calls for a medic.

The shells keep coming.  From both sides.  Both directions.

The two men stand propping up with the roof with their heads as the Student digs.  He gets Karl out.  He gets the Bavarian out.  He gets the Lieutenant out.

They send a messenger dog.  Not enough.

The Student volunteers to run to regiment headquarters.

He runs.  He is shelled at.  He falls and lies low.  He sees a dead body lying in a bunker.

The Student makes it from 3rd Company to the Trude Regiment, where they in turn call back to inform them that their shells are falling short.

He makes it.  He tells them.  They radio the message.  You are bombing our men!

The cook sneaks The Student a meal.  He hides it from the other men.  He lovingly watches The Student eat it.  He finishes it after The Student leaves.

The Student stops by the French tavern to see Yvette.  He spends the night with her.  The next day he returns to the front.

The men build Crosses for burial.

Later--

A show!

The clown hosts.

Veronika sings.

The men sing with her.

They call her the bee's knees.  The cat's meow.

The clown returns.  He tries to play the clarinet.  Then a guitar.  A man plays a tiny violin.  He keeps making the clown fall over in his chair.  The clown squirts water from his eyes.

They play marimbas.  Fast.  Very fast.  In sync.

The band plays.  The conductor stands and moves his baton without affect.

Soldiers march in the streets to the music.

Then--

Karl.


Georg Wilhelm Pabst.

You may have heard of All Quiet on the Western Front, but have you heard of Four Infantrymen on the Western Front?

The camera dollies down the trench.


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I'm not made of sugar.

See that you don't put chicory in my coffee.

That's some crater.  If a shell like that falls on your noggin, you're done for!

When we march out through the city gate
My dark-haired maiden, at home you must wait
Maiden, wave good-bye.
Under the green linden tree
Sits a little finch and sings
"Maiden, wave good-bye."

At the Brussels station you can buy heaps of sausage.  And bacon and eggs!
And schnapps!  I'll buy it all!
Their jaws will drop back home.

And my wife is still a sweet young thing.  Finally someone to cuddle with again!
Life sure looks different this morning.
You can't understand what it means.  You don't have a girl.
I do now.  Since yesterday!

Tra-la-la
All shout for Veronika

When the little daisies bloom
I will be your wife
Silk stockings make my legs look fine
That's the reason Max is mine

Violets and mignoettes
When you look passionately into my blue eyes
When the little daisies bloom
You will be my wife


It's either shady dealings or starve to death.

What are you doing?  Back of the line!
What's wrong with the old cow.
My Adolf is dead. / Think you're the only one?

But what's a woman to do?

Why can't you just make peace out there once and for all?

You're just running off?  What am I to do?  I'm a human too!

Get a hold of yourself.  We're heroes after all.
My friend, if we were heroes, we'd have been home long ago.

Is this the 5th?
Yes.
One of your men deserted last week.  They caught him last night.
Yes, that's right.  The orderly room is across the way.
They'll hand him over this afternoon.  Have your guns ready.

527 - A Brief History of Time, United States, 1991. Dir. Errol Morris.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

527 - A Brief History of Time, United States, 1991.  Dir. Errol Morris.

Roger Penrose was having a conversation with his friend Ivor Robinson while walking.  When the two of them got to a road and had to cross it, they stopped talking while crossing the road.  When they arrived at the other side, they began talking again.

While Penrose was crossing the road and not talking, he had a thought.  It gave him great joy.

But when he arrived at the other side and began talking again, he no longer remembered his thought.  Yet his joy remained.  And swelled to elation.

So later in the evening he asked himself why he was feeling such rapture.  He knew he was happy but did not know why.  In order to find out, he reverse engineered his day, working his way back through the events of the day until he arrived at the moment he was crossing the road.

It was that moment that had given him joy.

Then he remembered his thought.

He announced it.

When stars collapse indefinitely, they will become singular.

In other words, if a star is a great mass of energy that will one day die out, when it does die out its tremendous gravitational force will cause it to implode.  As it implodes, its gravitational force will increase even more, pulling everything into the center until the entire mass becomes a single point.  A singularity.

Euclid - A point is that which has no part.

Penrose - A star collapses into a point.  Therefore, it has no part.  It is a singularity.  A point of infinite density and zero size.

Penrose published his paper.

Gravitational Collapse and Spacetime Singularities

The physics community embraced it.

People around the world began studying an object called "a gravitationally completely collapsed object."

They wrote papers and gave speeches on "a gravitationally completely collapsed object."

John Wheeler of Princeton got tired of saying that phrase.  Imagine giving a speech and having to say it ten times in the span of a few minutes.  A gravitationally completely collapsed object.  A gravitationally completely collapsed object.  A gravitationally completely collapsed object.

Unwieldy.

So he coined a new term.

Black Hole.

That took.

Not only did scientists around the world begin using the term, but it also captured the imagination of the public at large.

In 1979 Walt Disney released a feature film called The Black Hole.  It starred Maximilian Schell, who had won the Oscar for playing Hans Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (and had been nominated for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and Julia (1977)), and Anthony Perkins, who had delivered one of the greatest film performances in history with Psycho (1960) (and had been nominated four years before for Friendly Persuasion (1956) but not for Psycho).

Maximilian Schell's character Dr. Hans Reinhardt is the mad scientist who wants to fly his spacecraft through a Black Hole and come out the other side.

"In, through, and beyond."

Ernest Borgnine as Harry Booth says that's crazy.  Impossible.

Our scientists tell us why it is a bad idea.

Stephen Hawking says you will end up like spaghetti.

Then he expounds.

As a massive star contracts, its gravity becomes so strong that light can no longer escape.  Nothing can escape.  The region from which nothing can escape is called a Black Hole.  Its boundary is called the Event Horizon.

If an astronaut were to jump into a Black Hole, his watch would slow down infinitely, each second taking longer, until the last second is never reached.  Time stops.

His image would also be preserved forever; however, it would grow so dim that no one could see it.

Brandon Carter explains that as seen from the outside, it would appear that time for the astronaut who has jumped into the Black Hole has slowed down.  The astronaut himself would experience things as being normal, but the outsider would see him as being frozen in a particular position.  Then he would never see what happens afterwards.

John Taylor explains that the person could fall into the Event Horizon and last a week without feeling anything different.  But eventually, as he approaches the Singularity, he will grow longer and thinner, longer and thinner.  He will get squeezed to the point that he is a long strand.  By two weeks he will be dead.

Brandon Carter claims that you would see everything happening, including the future, but at a rate so fast it would be like fireworks.  You could not analyze or understand what you are seeing.

John Wheeler compares a Black Hole to a boy at a ball wearing a black tuxedo in the dark.  He dances with a girl in a white dress.  While you cannot see the man, you can see the girl twirling around him, giving you evidence that he is there.  The stars that are still alive and shining spin around the collapsed stars, the Black Holes, giving us evidence that they are there.

Stephen Hawking says the area of the Event Horizon must always increase with time.  This increase in area once reminded him of Entropy, the measure of the disorder of a system.  Entropy also increases with time.

Jacob Bekenstein took that idea a step further and said the area of the Event Horizon was the actual Entropy of the Black Hole.  Hawking disagreed, because if a Black Hole had Entropy, then it had to have a temperature and therefore radiation.  But if nothing escapes a Black Hole, then it cannot have a radiation.

He would go on to discover that Black Holes do have radiation and that radiation does escape them.

Dennis Sciama calls it a Residual Radiation.

Shortly after Roger Penrose described the concept of the Black Hole, Stephen Hawking asked if it could be applied to the origins of the universe.

If a star collapsing on itself becomes a singularity, could we reverse time and imagine an ever expanding universe going back to the moment of creation, the Big Bang, and see if it too was a singularity.  A point of infinite density and zero size.

Hawking wanted to prove that the universe had a beginning.

He was working under the model of classical physics.  Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.  Which asserted that the universe was ever expanding.  If it was ever expanding, then it must have begun from a single point.

The problem Hawking found was that at that point (in space and in time) all scientific theories broke down.  Science could not apply to that point itself.

Later in his career, Hawking moved into Quantum Mechanics and applied the rules of uncertainty to his studies.

He then considered that the universe might not have a beginning.

He began to study the Imaginary Direction of Time.  Imaginary Time does not require singularities which form a beginning or end to time.

The classical theory presents time with a single beginning point and a single ending point.

The imaginary theory presents time with a rounded bowl beginning and a rounded bowl ending, or in a sense, no beginning and no ending.

Errol Morris continues his documentary style of interviewing subjects hands-off and letting them say what they wish to say.  He also cuts back and forth between them as if they were having a conversation.  Yet he has now grown sophisticated in his use of inserts of photographs, charts, graphics, video, and visual effects.

He balances his time between Hawking's personal life and disease, as shared by his family and friends, and his scientific work, as shared by and with his colleagues.  He also chooses not to focus on Hawking alone but also on the breakthroughs made by other scientists, such as Roger Penrose and John Wheeler, and the influence of mentor Dennis Sciama.

Here is a bit on Hawking's background.

Stephen Hawking considered two fields of study at Cambridge: 1) Cosmology - the study of the very large, and 2) Elementary Particles - the study of the very small.

He felt Elementary Particles were less attractive because there was no proper theory for them.  He felt that scholars simply arranged them into families as in botany.  But Cosmology had a well-defined theory in Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

His mother, his sister, his aunt, his classmates, his friends, and his caretaker discuss the development of his disease, identified as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

Hawking himself calls it Motor Neuron Disease in the film but not Lou Gehrig's disease.  Perhaps that is an American designation not used in Britain, as Lou Gehrig was an American baseball player.

The film presents Hawking as someone interested in many areas of life and not a focused student.  He himself admits that he wasted much of his time at university.  The disease may have helped him change that.

The disease did two things for him.  One, the idea that he had two and a half years to live gave him a great deal of focus.  He poured everything he had into his work.  Two, as with a blind person who develops a tremendous sense of hearing, known as Sensory Compensation, Hawking developed a tremendous ability to visualize pictures in his mind.

Hawking began to think in terms of pictures and diagrams that he could visualize.  This may have helped him to make discoveries that he never would have made otherwise.

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Stephen Hawking

The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Stephen Hawking and George Ellis

I realized that if I reversed the direction of time so that the collapse became an expansion, I could prove that the universe had a beginning.

As a massive star contracts, its gravity becomes so strong that light can no longer escape.  The region from which nothing can escape is called a black hole, and its boundary is called the event horizon.

One might say of the Event Horizon what Dante said of the entrance to Hell.  "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

The number of Black Holes may be greater than the number of visible stars, which totals about a hundred thousand million [one hundred billion] in our galaxy alone.

We also have evidence that there is a very large Black Hole at the center of our own galaxy.

If Black Holes have an Entropy, they ought to have a temperature.  And if they have a temperature, they ought to give off radiation.  But how could they give off radiation if nothing can escape a Black Hole.  As it turned out, Bekenstein was basically correct, though in a manner far more surprising than he or anyone else had expected.

A particle does not have just a single path through space and time.  Instead, there is an uncertainty principle according to which both the exact position and velocity of a particle can never be known.

I found that particles could escape from a Black Hole.  Black Holes are not completely black.

According to Quantum Mechanics, space is filled with Virtual Particles and Antiparticles that are constantly materializing in pairs--separating, coming together again, and annihilating each other.  In the presence of a Black Hole, one member of a pair of Virtual Particles may fall into the Hole, leaving the other member without a partner with which to annihilate.  The forsaken Particle appears to be Radiation emitted by the Black Hole.

And so Black Holes are not eternal.  They evaporate away at an increasing rate until they vanish in a gigantic explosion.

It seems that Einstein was doubly wrong.  The quantum effects of Black Holes suggest that not only does God play dice, [but also] he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

Black Hole Radiation has shown us that Gravitational Collapse is not as final as we once thought.  If an astronaut falls into a Black Hole, he will be returned to the rest of the universe in the form of Radiation.  Thus, in a sense, the astronaut will be recycled.  However, it would be a poor sort of immortality, because any personal concept of time would come to an end as he is torn apart inside the Black Hole.  All that would survive would be his mass or energy.

The possibility that the universe had no beginning, no moment of creation.

So long as the universe had a beginning we could suppose it had a creator.  But if the universe is completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would neither be created nor destroy.  It would simply be.  What place, then, for a creator?

Brandon Carter

Eventually, things would be going off so fast, and it would be so explosive that you yourself would be destroyed by the explosion, and that would be the end.  But it would be a very exciting way to end one's life.

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John Wheeler - distinguished-looking gentleman, gray suit, blue shirt, dark red bowtie, red handkerchief in pocket, glasses, thinning gray hair; later, light gray suit, white shirt with dark stripes, red-white-and-navy diagonally striped tie

Roger Penrose - young looking, dark hair, part on left side, cowlick, striped shirt, dark suit, seated at desk with globe on it and bust behind him

Dennis Sciama - red tie, gray hair, thick eyebrows

Brandon Carter - Australian, baby-blue shirt, green tie, charcoal vest, zig-zag patterned jacket

John Taylor ? - dark gray suit, light blue shirt, dark greenish-blue tie, dark hair with a little gray, paneled room, sounds like Michael Caine

526 - The Thin Blue Line, United States, 1988. Dir. Errol Morris.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

526 - The Thin Blue Line, United States, 1988.  Dir. Errol Morris.

Randall Adams, 28, and his brother drove to Dallas.  On their way from Ohio to California.  They arrived on Thanksgiving night.  The next day Randall got a job.  The next day, Saturday, he went to start his new job.  But his new job did not start on Saturday.  They were not working.  They were closed, as always, for the weekend.  His job would be begin on Monday.

Adams was a little eager.

So he started to drive back to where he was staying.

He ran out of gas.

He got his gas can out of the trunk and started walking.

David Ray Harris, 16, was driving his blue Chevy Vega.  He saw a man walking down the side of the street carrying a gas can.  He presumed the man was out of gas.  He offered him a ride.

The next day, Sunday, they hung out.  Drank beer.  Smoked joins.  Went to see a movie.

That night, at 12:30 am on Monday, November 29, 1976, Officer Robert Wood was shot and killed by a small-caliber pistol at point-blank range when he pulled over a blue Chevy Vega with the license plate containing the letters HC.

His partner, new female officer Teresa Turko, shot at the car as it sped away, and then went to her partner's side.

What happened?

Who did it?

Who all was involved in the subsequent case?

How did it turn out?


Errol Morris continues with his new documentary method, in this his third film, of setting the camera on a tripod and allowing the interviewees to speak, without himself or any other interviewer speaking.  We hear no questions.  Only monologues.

Randall Adams speaks.

David Harris speaks.

Judge Donald J. Metcalfe speaks.

The detectives.  The attorneys.  The witnesses.  The friends.  Many people speak.

We are left to piece the pieces together and decide for ourselves.  What happened?  Who did it?  Who all was involved in the subsequent case?  How did it turn out?

But Errol Morris does something new here.

He creates dramatic reenactments using actors to portray the stories.  Something that was not done at the time, and was considered controversial.  But is a standard now.  It is in fact an entire industry.  Production companies and entire TV channels now are dedicated to reenactment shows.  For better or worse.

Morris also goes to the trouble of tracking down footage from TV shows and movies referred to by the interviewees.  He has to find them, find who owns them, and pay for the rights.  And several of them are obscure.  Never released to the public.


Try not to read about this film before you see it.  Most articles give too much away and spoil the viewing experience.

The Thin Blue Line was a watershed film in Morris' career.  And for composer Philip Glass.  It made an impact as well.

525 - Vernon, Florida, United States, 1981. Dir. Errol Morris.

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

525 - Vernon, Florida, United States, 1981.  Dir. Errol Morris.

Henry Shipes could be a prototype for a Hemingway protagonist.

Imagine an ambulance driver in Italy.  A bullfighter in Spain.  A big-game hunter in Africa.  A deep-sea fisherman in Cuba.

Now imagine a turkey hunter in Vernon.

What do they have in common?0

As with the Hemingway heroes, Henry (Henry, as in Lt. Frederic Henry (A Farewell to Arms) and Harry Morgan (To Have and Have Not)), the turkey hunter in Vernon, possesses a dedication to his work, knowledge of his game, attention to detail, unrelenting focus, reliance on his code, and grace under pressure.

He thinks like a scientist.  He can look at a turkey track and tell you the weight of the animal, the composition of the dirt, its moisture level, and the amount of time that has passed since the turkey stepped on it.  He can hear nuances in nature, and distinguish among the sounds of turkeys, woodpeckers, and buzzards.

He has respect for his prey.  He knows their strengths as well as his own limitations.  And he works within those limitations.

He has infinite patience.  He knows when to arrive, how to approach, what to listen for, when to wait, when to give chase, when to shoot, and when to miss.

And he tells his stories with matter-of-fact conviction.

The only thing he is lacking is an author like Hemingway to put him in perspective for the rest of us.  Or to do as Steinbeck did for the Okies travelling to California.

Errol Morris simply aimed his camera on Shipes and allowed him to talk for himself.  And for the next forty years viewers have missed what was right in front of their eyes and ears.  Because he is different from them.  And they do not understand him.

Not all the characters in Vernon, Florida, share Henry Shipes' code-heroic qualities.  But most of them express to a strong degree the expression of straightforward human dignity.  And several of them are great storytellers.

It is hard to find a good review of this film.

Because the good ones have not yet been written.



Harmonica.

Humming.

There's No Place Like Home.

The camera sits medium-low in the middle of the road.  Houses line each side.  Tin roofs.  Partially rusted.  A chimney.  A white coupe.  No curbs.  Sandy mud slides out from the yards over the asphalt.

The mustard-orange Ford pickup--about a 1969 F-100 Flareside (Ford's name for Stepside, where the wheel wells arch outside the truck bed)--moves forward from a distance, as if to drive at us, emitting insecticide from its tail like a hazer.  The Ford has been configured for mosquito spraying.

It has a bright orange light on top, flashing like a rotating beacon, like a little lighthouse moving down the road, as if a warning for sea vessels and aircraft.  Another flashing orange light moves to a different rhythm on the front driver's-side bumper.  Not a turn single.  But an installed warning light.

The truck turns.  We cut.

It drives up another neighborhood road.  This time closer to us.  This time coming at us.

The harmonica plays.  The man hums.

The truck turns.  The fog rolls up over us.  I start looking for it to rub its back upon the window-panes.  And to linger upon the pools that stand in drains.  But this fog, this insecticide, is not yellow.  It is white.  And we are not in a soft October night.  We are in late afternoon of what looks like a Summer day.  Under a dull overcast sky.

We cut.

We are in town.  A service station.  The Chevron logo with the Standard name.  It is 1981.  Standard Oil is still a thing.  Round Coca-Cola signs near the Standard sign, facing in each direction on the pump roof.  A green-roofed store.  A post office.  City Hall.

The mud crawls out halfway into the street.  Not red clay.  Light-colored.  Like sand.  Tire tracks reveal the direction of previously exiting traffic.

Three flashing lights stretch across the street on a wire above, like rope walkers.  Two facing us, one facing the side street of the intersection beneath them.  The left utility pole leans in, as if pulled by the lights' weight over time.  The right pole hides camouflaged by two tall trees.  Another traffic light flashes across another intersection in the distance.

Three cars sit parked before the post office.  A brown-wood-paneled station wagon.  A red van.  A light-cobalt blue sedan with a dent in the right rear fender.

A woman in a white blouse with billowing sleeves runs out from behind the red van, as if to go to the blue sedan.  She sees our camera and turns and ducks behind the front of the blue sedan.  Then she adjusts and ducks behind the front of the red van.  One could watch this film several times and not see her.

As the mosquito truck turns from the right side street onto our street, an orange light flashes in midair, making its way vertically down the screen, a flare from the cab light onto the camera lens.

The truck leans to its right, pressing down upon the shocks, tilting at an angle.  As it comes out of its turn it gradually, almost imperceptibly rebalances itself, only to tilt again at the next turn.

The cab light flashes its orange flash.  The bumper light flashes its orange flash.  The paired street lights flash their synchronized orange flash.  The camera flare flashes its orange flash.  All flashing at different rates, never at the same time.  And yet, as the truck passes beneath the streetlights, there is a single frame where all five orange lights flash at the same time--the two streetlights, the cab light, the bumper light, the flare--not visible in real time but only on the freezed frame.

He throws up fog against the camera again.  And exits for good.

An overhead shot of the town.

Are we in Bodega Bay?  In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds?  Yet here the sky is clean.  Not a fowl in sight.

A car drives out.

A man walks.

We see about seven businesses.  The Standard station.  Locally named "Brock's Ser. Sta."  A brown pickup sits parked at the pump with a green fishing boat coupled behind it.  A sign to the side points down the side street.  "Henry's Oyster Bar."  The store two doors down has a rusted tin roof and a rectangular Coca-Cola sign above it.  Across the street and down sits the Exxon station.  Then the Market, the name too difficult to read.  A yellow facade with a green awning.  An Ice machine against the front wall.  A Sunbeam Bread delivery van parked out front.  The store next to it is named for its proprietor, also too difficult to read.  A sign to the side on the ground reads Meadow Gold Ice Cream.  A splash of what could be bougainvillea grows against the wall.  The green-roofed store from earlier is Parish Hardware.  Three lawnmowers sit out front.  A sign reads DeVoe Paint.

We hear the voice of our first guide.  Albert Bitterling.

"Reality.  You mean this is the real world?  I never thought of that."  He laughs.  He is from Chicago.  He moved down here with his mother.  Decided to "get out of there . . . while the gettin's good."

He tells us his story as we go to--

City Hall.

A baby blue Ford sits parked in front.  On the pavement.  This time a Styleside (Ford's name for Fleetside, the current standard, where the wheel well arches hide inside the truck bed).  Various debris sit in the bed.  Including a steel Johnson Wax bucket.  On the driver door reads in red stencil "CITY of VERNON."

A man in a navy ballcap, a dark brown shirt, white undershirt, blue denim jacket, and dark pants, rakes the leaves from the dirt with a green-trimmed rake.

Two benches face one another.  The empty one reads "Florida First.  Vernon Office.  Member F.D.I.C."  The other one, partially blocked by a seated Albert Bitterling, reads "D- and Lorraine Gilmore / D--wood Lodge / Panama City Beach / [phone number]."

A two-toned, rust-and-brown Chevy pickup is parked behind him with side-railings and after-market rear tires.  A brown Ford pickup pulls in behind him with side cleats and a white camper shell with two side slatted glass windows.

Bitterling wears a gray thermal shirt, a darker gray vest with red trim, a heavy brown flannel coat, a ribbed chook cap, tan slacks with a slight flare, dark socks, and light brown shoes.  He sports black glasses and a gray beard.  He grasps a walking cane in one hand and a rock in the other, which he later describes as a purchased jewel.  A folded, faded newspaper sticks out of his right breast pocket.

We cut to a wide angle.  Now looking back at Albert on the bench and the truck beside it.

You would not know that time has passed except that the baby blue Ford pickup has been moved forward and reparked, now in the dirt.  The man who had been raking emerges from the building and approaches the driver door.  He beats the door handle twice with his gloves and opens the door, starts the truck, and drive off.

Albert sits silently on the bench as a tanker truck drives past from the other direction.


Here are a few of the characters.

Albert Bitterling - Man who moved down from Chicago, tells story at City Hall; later shares his thoughts on life while standing by the river; shows a poorly developed photograph.

Henry Shipes - Turkey Hunter.

Snake Reynolds - Shipes' hunting partner.

George Harris - Man who expounds on the four bowls of your brain, later tells the story, along with Claude Register, of the man who accidentally shot himself.

Roscoe Collins - Police officer, handle Vernon 30, who sits in his car.  He speaks to Quincy on his radio.

Joe Payne - The man with the Gopher Tortoise and the Possum, tells the story of catching a mule skeleton, pulling him out, and finding 144 warmouth perch inside; sits between George Harris and Claude Register and listens to them tell their story.  He was given the possum for free and plans to sell it at Fun Day in Wassau for a $1,200-1,500 return.

Ray Cotton - The preacher.  Works carpentry.  Has prayed and believed God for his needs, including his van.  Leads worship and preaches, featuring an exegesis of the word therefore.

Coy Brock - The man in the boat who talks about God.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin - The couple who went to White Sands.


The people in this film sit and watch and patiently waiting.

Henry Shipes and his hunting partner Snake stand quietly in the woods listening for gobblers, for turkey, so that they can hunt and kill them.

Roscoe Collins sits in his patrol car watching for speeders, allowing them to see him and to slow down, planning to stop only the most egregious offenders so that it is clearly their responsibility if they get caught.

George Harris watches the mechanic put a new tire on a truck wheel.


The people also engage in show and tell.

Albert shares his jewel with us.  Later he shares his photograph.

Henry shares his turkey prizes--the feet and beards.  He points out tracks.  And buzzards.

Joe shares his animals.


All of them tell stories.



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Henry Shipes
But you know they're here.

You have to do this in a hurry, cause you're going to cover several places at one time.  Not at one time, but as quick as you can, cause they gobble better earlier part of the morning.  The later in the morning it get, the less they gobble.  So you usually, usually kill by, oh, six or seven o'clock at the latest.  There's been a lot killed after that, but that's the cream of the huntin', from daylight to 6 or 7 o'clock.

He's looking for a fresh track now.  And if he finds a fresh track, he'll stop, listen, and go in on it.  That's what he's doing, walking and listening right now.  Looking for a fresh sign that's crossed the graded road.  Where there's smoke, there's fire, you know.  You find a fresh track, you know there's a gobbler there.  Cause this is a prime area for turkey.

Look how that one's bogged down there.  Bogged an inch deep there in that dirt.  He weigh 18, 20 pounds.  Look at the size of the track.  Look how he's bogging up that hard dirt.  He probably crossed there late yesterday afternoon and roosted right back down here in these woods.

And if he's got a hen with him, it's very hard to call him away from that hen.  You can believe that.  Anybody that'll tell you they can call a gobbler away from a pack of hens just any time . . . Did you hear that?  Sounded almost like a turkey gobbling, but it's not.  It's one of them big woodpeckers pecking.  It'll fool you a lot of times. . . . Occasionally you'll call a big gobbler away from some hen, but very seldom.  I'd rather not even try to call one away.  Well, you always try, but you can't do it.  I never have.  Very, very, very seldom.

Joe Payne
They said he was 65 years old.  I don't know about that now.  That's a long time for a mule.

That's a great price for a possum, don't you know.

Worm Farmer
I've never studied no book on these wigglers.  What I know about 'em is just self-experience.  They got books on 'em, but them books is wrong.

Ray Cotton (leading singing)
Sing the wondrous love of Jesus
Sing his mercy and his grace
In the mansions bright and blessed
He'll prepare for us a place

When we all get to heaven
What a day of rejoicing that will be
When we all see Jesus
We'll sing and shout the victory

Coy Brock
I've never seen anything more perfect in my life than to see the perfection of God himself.


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https://www.theledger.com/news/20070902/welcome-to-vernon-fla-but-count-your-fingers-before-you-leave

524 - Gates of Heaven, United States, 1978. Dir. Errol Morris.

Thursday, November 8, 2018

524 - Gates of Heaven, United States, 1978.  Dir. Errol Morris.

God is supposed to know when the sparrow falls, when the lilies of the field bloom.  So surely at the Gates of Heaven, an all-compassionate God is surely not going to say, 'Well, you're walking in on two legs; you can go in.  You're walking in on four legs; we can't take you. - Mr. John Calvin "Cal" Harberts.


San Francisco Examiner
Thursday, May 5, 1977
Daily: 20c

They're digging up dead pets, old griefs on Peninsula.

The Times-Herald
Solano and Napa County's Morning Newspaper
Valejo, Calif. -- Home of Mare Island Naval Shipyard - Friday, May 6, 1977

Pet Cemetery Reburial Due


Errol Morris sees the headlines.

A pet cemetery in Los Altos is going out of business.  They are digging up 450 pet graves, placing the pets on refrigeration trucks, and moving them 92 miles north to Napa Valley.  On the other side of the San Francisco Bay.

From the Foothill Pet Cemetery.

To the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park.

This idea intrigues him.  So he decides to go and film it.

Errol Morris has never made a movie before.  Well, he has never finished one anyway.  He started a couple.  And just as with his time in graduate school he has ended up abandoning them.  But he has become a self-taught film enthusiast through the Pacific Film Archive, and somehow along the way he has gained the support of legendary German director Werner Herzog--with whom he collaborated on one of his abandoned projects--and Herzog has promised to eat his own shoe if Morris ever actually finishes this film.

Morris denies Herzog ever made the bet to him.

But something motivates him.  He hires a film crew.

He goes to the cemetery.  The Foothill Pet Cemetery.  On the corner of Foothill and Highway 280 in Los Altos.  Prime land.  Land that will one day be high in value.  Land that has "good visibility."  And should have made a great location.  If its owners, according to the owners of the other cemetery, had understood sound business principles.

Morris' camera operator has his own opinions about how to film what they are about to see.  The bulldozers digging up the graves.  The coffins going into the trucks.  Using a moving camera in dramatic fashion.  On a jib.  On a dolly.

But Morris does something similar to Stanley Kubrick when he was starting out as a young director.

He pulls rank.

Morris wants the camera placed on a tripod.  Framing the subject in a full shot.  Without moving it or cutting while the person is talking.  Not even zooming.  Ever.

Furthermore, he does not want his own voice or the voice of any other interviewer heard on the soundtrack.  Ever.

Which undermines the sound woman, who herself starts talking back to the subjects while recording them.

The cameraman protests.  He knows more about movie making than Morris does.  You cannot film that way.

So Errol Morris pushes him into a partially exhumed grave and fires him.

On Day 1.

This is not going well.

It appears Herzog will be spared from having to eat his own shoe.

"I went through three different camera crews before I found someone that I could work with," says Morris himself.

But he sticks to his vision.

And he films things the way he wants to film them.

And so begins the career of a man who seems to have singlehandedly invented a new style of documentary filmmaking.

A style so simple and so seemingly antithetical that it transcends its own genre.  And becomes lyrical.  Even spiritual.

By allowing human beings to be human.  And to say whatever it is they want to say.  For as long as they want to say it.  Without interruption.

Opening the door for their personalities and their points of view to come through.  Along with their idiosyncrasies and their shortcomings.  Their malapropisms and poor grammar.  Their inaccuracies and biases.  Their feelings and their fears.

The honesty is at times so discomforting that viewers wonder if Morris is making fun of his subjects.  "Ironic," they call it.  A euphemism for condescending.

"Let us laugh at how stupid people can be."

To which Morris has spent his career denying a sense of superiority.  Even putting himself under the same spotlight.  Allowing himself to talk at length until his own weaknesses shine forth.

Including his hubris.

Yet one can just as easily watch his films with a sense of compassion.  And humility.  At what it means to be human, human, all too human.

So how does this film begin?  And how does this career begin?  Not with bulldozers and caskets.  Not with headlines and gravestones.

But with nothing.

And then--



The credits begin in silence.

White on black.

They run for nearly a minute and a half.  For 1:25.

Then--

The opening image.

A man.

Late middle-age to early elderly.  Seated.  Still.  In a chair.  Beneath a tree.  A large tree.  A willow tree.  A large weeping willow tree.

In front of a big building.  An L-shaped building.  Or two buildings.  Spanish architecture.  Light pink.  Beneath a dull blue sky.

The sun hits harshly from above-left.  Casting a dark shadow on the ground to the right.  While changing the hanging, slender leaves from dark green to whitish yellow.

The leaves droop evenly above him like a hair bob.

A herculean helmet.  A thousand times larger than his head.

In a wide shot.

Completely still.

Completely silent.

For 21 seconds.

The man.  The tree.  The building.  The grounds.  The mown lawn.  The sky.

It is with this image that Errol Morris launches his career.  A career that will span decades.  From here in 1978.  Until today forty years later.  And still going.

It is with this image that Errol Morris plants his camera on a tripod in the ground.  Like a stake.  A flagpole.  And never moves it.  But keeps it still.

Staking his claim.

And we discover what deep-down we already knew.

That people want to be seen.  And to be heard.  To be understood.  And to be remembered.  And that they will say anything if you let them speak long enough.

This man is Floyd McClure.  His friends call him Mac.  Which is short for McClure.

And he has found his life's calling.

Have you found your life's calling?

Mac has.

He tells us.

"Right across the street from where I lived in Los Altos was the most beautiful land, as far as I was concerned, in the whole valley.  I knew exactly what to do with it.  I thought, 'This is gonna be my project of life.  I found the land.  I found the need.'"

He understands the filling of a need.

"To be successful in this world or life, find a need and fill it.  Anything I did in this life, I wanted to fulfill this dream."

Mac has found some land.  Land that slopes down the side of a hill overlooking the intersection of two highways.

And he knows what to do with the land.  What is it?  What will he do?

Will he build houses?  A subdivision?  Businesses?  An office building?  Shopping?  A mall?  Education?  A school?  Spiritual centers?  A church?  Hotels?  A resort?  Tourism?  An amusement park?

No.

He will do something else with the land.

What?

He will build a pet cemetery.

What?

Floyd McClure will build a pet cemetery.  He has prepared us for this answer with his opening story.  His opening words.

"Inspiration of the pet cemetery business."

He tells us his story.  He was born in North Dakota.  In Barnes County.  In Valley City.  In 1930.

"Then the World War II started."  And in 1941 he went to the farm.

He tells the story of his pet collie, and how his pet collie went with him everywhere he went.  He talks about "thrashing," hauling bundles of hay, and how one day when he returned from thrashing, a Model A came driving by and struck his pet collie.

"I grabbed my collie and I held him in my arms until he died."

We are now inside the building.  What may be his home.  In a home.  And if you look closely, you realize he sits in a wheelchair.

He sits in front of a scales of justice.  Unbalanced.  A lit lamp.  A pair of what may be his own bronzed baby boots.  And a painting of a dog on the wall behind him.  Frankly, it is positioned as if coming out of his head like Athena.  And one senses he would gladly play the role of Zeus to give new birth to people's pets if he could.

After his collie died, he set aside an entire acre behind his house, about a quarter of a mile away, to bury it.  The land overlooked the prairie to the north where there was a lake.

Mac speaks with no emotion, yet you can infer it in his words.  And you can feel it in his actions.  This much land.  This location of land.  For his collie.

He loved his dog.  His heart broke.  He grieved.

So now in California he has decided to dedicate his life to providing that kind of comfort to others who lost their pets.  Who loved their pets.

And if you listen, you realize that the soundtrack has not been silent.

Forty-seven seconds into the credits the birds began chirping.  Talking to one another.  Talking to us, if we could listen.

And they continued chirping through the long take.  As he sat beneath the tree.  And again as we pan across the Los Altos valley in Santa Clara county.

Just as the birds might be chirping near you as you are reading these words.  Unacknowledged in the human subconscious.  Until made conscious of them.

Living birds.  Living animals.  Communicating.  As he speaks of burying the dead ones.  The animals themselves are speaking in this otherwise quiet film.

A couple other men will tell their stories, of how they joined Mac and helped him build the pet cemetery.

But then we switch to Mike Koewler.  A different kind of animal.  A different kind of man.  The Rendering man.  The man who makes a living boiling animals down to their constituent parts.  To recycle them.  To reuse them.

And Morris moves back and forth between the two men, who spoke their monologues separately, but edited together seem to be having a conversation.  Good versus evil, if you ask Mac.  Practical versus emotional, if you ask Mike.

Mike is practical.  A businessman.  Providing a service.  A useful service.  That people need.  And he states that his business dates back to the time of the Egyptians.  He seems to find people like Floyd McClure amusing.  Can you believe how emotional people can be over their pets?

Mac is emotional.  Compassionate.  Soft-spoken.  Yet filled with rage at the thought of a loving pet not respected in death.

Mike explains that the public has a new interest in recycling, and his business has been recycling for 500 years.  What are you going to do if your horse dies and it is 102 degrees?  What are you going to do if you are zoo and a very large animal dies?  He has the resources to help you get it off your property and to dispose of it in an environmentally efficient way.

We go back and forth, between Floyd McClure and Mike Koewler, the men who helped them, and a couple of women who had their pets moved and how they felt about it.

Zella Graham.  The gray-haired woman with the silver horn-rimmed spectacles, dressed in a black dress, holding her black cat, singing to her cat like a cat.

A-ha-ha-ha.  A-ha-ha-ha.  Sing.  Sing, Babe.  A-ha-ha-ha.  A-ha-ha-ha.

Lucille Billingsly.  The brunette rich woman with round black glasses, dressed in a white blouse, looking like the painting of her white cat on the wall behind her--and seated at the same angle--wearing her own teal-green collar, which matches her teal-green trousers, describing how she misses her cat at night.  When she awakens and reaches for her.

The two women engage in a cat fight.

"She just wanted to be noticed.  She just wanted to be Miss Big."

The last shot we see of Floyd McClure is from behind.  Sitting in his wheelchair beneath the weeping willow tree.  Having lost his life dream.  Having defended himself for having had compassion.  Now quiet again.  Still.  Sitting silently looking over his land.  Carved up.  Emptied.  Packed down again.  Barren.

No longer containing even dead animal bones.

But before we moved north to Napa, we first visit Florence Rasmussen.

One more woman who lives near the Foothill Pet Cemetery.  Whose own pets no longer walk the yard before her.

She talks for 6-1/2 minutes.  And shares her life with us.  A raconteur.  My Dinner with Florence.

We spend the remainder of the movie with the Harberts family.  Owners of the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park.  The successful one.  The recipient of the 450 pets.  Which now has thousands of graves.  And is still in operation today.

John Calvin, "Cal," the father.  Scottie, the mother.  Phil, the older son, an aspiring businessman.  And Danny, the younger son but senior employee, the guitar-playing, pot-smoking casual philosopher who provides the film with its closing-credit soundtrack.

Cal asserts that The Pill is responsible for a pet explosion.  Now women are working, and they are putting off childbirth.  And when they come home and want someone to love but do not have a baby, they get a pet.

Their parents then, not yet having grandchildren to hold and love, do the same.  They also get pets.

As more people get pets, more people have a need to bury them when they are gone.

Morris follows each member of the Harberts family, as well as individual pet owners, who discuss how they feel about their pets or about the business.

He ends with Danny playing his guitar through his amp to the valley below.

Yes, Werner Herzog ended up eating his shoe, and fellow documentary filmmaker Les Blank filmed it.  But we care far less about that than we do that Morris finished this film and many others afterwards.  And that we have them.  And can watch them.


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In 1978 Cal Harberts states that the Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park will be around for many years to come.

In 2018 this article was published, showing younger son Dan still running the cemetery and dealing with a forest fire, rescuing his 97-year old mother Scottie, and returning to his black Labrador retriever Drake.

His son David is 29 and will one day run the business.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11688190/atlas-fire-bubbling-well-pet-memorial-park


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Errol Morris
That's one of the best interviews that I have ever done.  It's certainly the shut-up-and-listen school.  You don't interrupt.

It's a static frame.  The frame has a kind of majesty.  She's like in a proscenium delivering the story of her life.

The best lines I ever recorded as a filmmaker could never be scripted.  They just came out of nowhere.

It's a crazy world of contradiction, of despair, of betrayal.  It's all there.

I loved that family at Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park.  How Scottie and the two brothers . . .
Danny who had his crazy California enthusiasms, his guitar playing his marijuana plants,
Phil in the grip of this insane W. Clement Stone business success theories.  I still think about them all the time.  The R2/A2 formula.  Recognize, Relate, Assimilate, and the call to Action.  Or the want-to, the know-how, and the activity knowledge.

The same thing can be said for me as a filmmaker.  I'm looking for the activity knowledge.  I think I have a little bit of the know how.  But I still have the want to.

There's something about the people in Gates of Heaven I'm still moved by.  They're all believers.

Communication between one human being and another is tenuous.  But when one of those human beings is dead, more tenuous.  But what happens when one of those persons is a dog and dead.  Communication very, very tenuous at best.  And yet, there's this amazing kind of hopefulness of connection.

The Magic Hour properly conceived should be right at the end of day when the sun is low in the horizon, or dawn, when the light is beautiful, forgiving.  For me, I called twelve noon to one o'clock my Magic Hour, because it got so insufferably hot.  The light was so unforgiving that people would say almost anything.

How are you supposed to edit these sort-of tableaux.  There's no coverage.  There's just these individual shots of people babbling.

It took awhile just to figure out what you're supposed to do with this stuff.  It's just the interviews themselves were so crazy and interesting that, I don't know, I was lucky.

I had been editing it forever.  We weren't even sure that it would run through the projectors.  Wim said, "It's obvious.  It's a masterpiece."  I've always been grateful.  It meant to me there might be something there.  Maybe this is not all for naught.

Floyd McClure - Founder of Foothill Pet Cemetery
Not the garbage pit.  Not the garbage can. . . . God only gave us these pets to be our fellowship, our desire, our will, and what have we got to give 'em in return?

What is a rendering company?  A rendering company.  My mind pretty exploded with the thought, remembrance of a very bad nightmare, a dream of Hell.  It took me back to this rendering company in North Dakota, where all the little pets at that time when they died, a truck would come out and a big old driver would come and grab your pet and throw him in the back of this truck and take 'em to what I would call the boiler chambers.

Here before us lies Little Toby.  Little Toby was put on this earth for two reasons: to love and be loved.

Mike Koewler - Rendering Man
In the Old Testament, the guy cut off the sheepskin, put the lamb fat on him to keep him warm.

If you have a horse and that horse dies on a Saturday and it's 102 degrees and you can't get a hold of somebody to bury it, you're going to get a hold of a rendering company, because you want that horse out of there now.

I'll say, I'm in the tallow business.

I've had people call and ask if we'd bury it.  We tell them we don't bury animals, and they start crying.

People are very emotional about these things.  You get you some real moaners on the phone, crying.

Zella Graham
She isn't gonna cause me any trouble cause I ain't gonna pay any attention to her.  She just wanted to be noticed.  She just wanted to be Miss Big.  And here we've got all these other poor people that really needed help, and she was just trying to be Miss Big.

I don't know whether she really liked her animals or loved 'em or whether she was just trying to show off and make a big impression.  This was my idea, because anybody that would come whizzing up in a Cadillac with all of her furs on to a cemetery--and you know when they're digging animals, it's gonna be an odor there--didn't have much upstairs.  Cause I'll tell you, that was not the place to wear fur.

Lucille Billingsly
I think that something should be done so that it shall never happen again.  I think it was a horrible thing for us in this generation to have it happen.  And in a state like California, to have it happen, I think it's humane.

Florence Rasmussen
Here today, gone tomorrow, right?
Sound woman: "Wrong."