Author Topic: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"  (Read 39548 times)

Offline CellarDweller

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #40 on: February 16, 2018, 08:39:28 pm »
Of course, "confirmed bachelor" can also be code for gay.  ;D


I've heard that one be used.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline serious crayons

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #41 on: February 17, 2018, 11:02:04 am »
Sure enough. But then why did we debate so much about practically anything and everything for so long all those years ago if we weren't, well, pretending, that these were real people with real emotions and real reasons for doing and saying things? We could all have just said, "It's a movie" and had done with it ;D

Even in them days, and even when talking about the characters like they was real people, I asked myself what Annie, Diana, Larry, Ang, etc. might have been trying to do as much as what might have motivated the characters as people. Yes, "it's a movie," but an extraordinarily complex and subtle one, in which characters' thoughts aren't always obvious but are important, so there's plenty to debate. But you can also leverage the idea that if the movie takes the time to show somebody doing something, it's for a reason that serves the objectives of the story/film.

So even in them days it wouldn't have made sense to me to say, oh, they threw in this five minutes of screen time just to give us a glimpse into Junior's mind and understand that she's resentful about having to share time with her dad. The movie is too economical for that. (Heck, even the pavement-spreading scene has at least two or three meaningful things in it!) Obviously, a real life Junior might not know her dad was gay (in fact, that seems far more likely, given the time and place and her lack of direct evidence -- at the very least she probably wouldn't be so tactful and sensitive about it). But a real-life Junior doesn't have a camera following her around recording significant conversations.

So I don't mean "it's a movie" in the sense of, "it's just another installment of Spiderman, you're reading too much into it, a cigar is a cigar." I mean it in the sense of, how can we understand the characters in terms of what we know about them, how they behave -- but also the film's theme? What is the work of art trying to say by including that bit of dialogue?

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I don't suppose I did, because I was never sure how much time was supposed to have elapsed between the two scenes, and I don't remember any dialog about Cassie wanting to go to nursing school.

OK, I'll admit, I'm confused. I can't lay hands on my copy of Story to Screenplay and I tried to google it but wasn't entirely successful. Does he even mention a nurse in the movie, or is that just in the story?

There is, however, a mention of an unnamed waitress in the story: “Ennis said he's been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now for Stoutamire's cow and calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and she has some problems he didn't want.”

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(Kind of OT, but often I seem to have trouble figuring out/understanding how much time is supposed to have elapsed between scenes in movies and especially scenes in "serial"-type TV shows, especially when the amount of time is not constant. Of course an exception would be when in one scene the characters are young and in the next they've been aged significantly, or the other way 'round when an older character is supposed to be thinking back to something that happened when he or she was young.)

I've been watching Frankie and Grace, that TV series with Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. It's not very good, but it's mildly entertaining. (Jane Fonda, BTW, looks fantastic at 80. Lily's not bad herself.) Anyway, last night one episode skipped forward in time from the previous one. It's not entirely clear how much time has elapsed, but seemingly months rather than years. The characters' situations have changed somewhat. But it would have been much more confusing except that in the second episode Sam Waterston had grown a goatee.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #42 on: February 17, 2018, 12:55:10 pm »
OK, I'll admit, I'm confused. I can't lay hands on my copy of Story to Screenplay and I tried to google it but wasn't entirely successful. Does he even mention a nurse in the movie, or is that just in the story?

My copy was handy. In the script as printed in the book, p. 79, Ennis is given the line, "Been puttin' the blocks to a good-lookin' little gal over in Riverton. Waitresses part-time, wants to go to nursing school."

I forgot about the "waitresses" part. That's why I always assumed it wasn't a reference to Cassie, because when we meet her, she's a bartender instead of a waitress (probably makes more money that way  ;D  ). I suppose it could still be a reference to Cassie, but I've never thought the script necessarily bore out that interpretation.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #43 on: February 17, 2018, 12:58:38 pm »
What? Cassie was a bartender? I never got that impression.  ???
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #44 on: February 17, 2018, 01:12:55 pm »
Incidentally, I always specify "the script as printed in the book" because my favorite line in the entire movie, "Jack fuckin' Twist," does not appear in the script as printed the book.

What? Cassie was a bartender? I never got that impression.  ???

Well, IIRC, the first time we see her she's standing behind the bar, and around here, anyway, a waitress would not be behind the bar, even to get someone a bottle of beer. Bartenders are fussy that way. We do have women bartenders (just not in a bar where the patrons are mostly gay males). so I've always assumed she was tending bar. That would bear out her comment about being on her feet as much as being a waitress would. Years ago I tended bar for club functions, and being on your feet behind a bar does get tiresome.

Of course, on double checking StoS, on page 72, Cassie is described as a waitress, but what I remember seeing of Linda never gave me that impression. On page 73, there is a reference to another waitress, but I don't remember if we see another waitress in the film or not.

The wine that Cassie drinks is probably her "shift drink," if they have that concept out West. Around here, bartenders and waiters and waitresses get a free drink at the end of their shift.

(Incidentally, I don't mean to argue here, just explain my impression and why I had and have it.)

Of course, it's been so long, my memory may have turned into a mirror and I've got it backward now. My memory is that Cassie is behind the bar (bartender) and walks around it, but maybe she's in front of the bar (waitress). I'll be the first to admit that my memory may be faulty.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #45 on: February 17, 2018, 01:50:35 pm »
My impression is that Cassie is a waitress, that she's the waitress Ennis refers to, and that for all we know she wants to go to nursing school but, because again the movie is not about Cassie's career dreams, we don't need a scene in which she discusses that. You could even argue that it's an unnecessary bit of dialogue. They probably figured it adds a realistic dimension while not saddling poor Cassie with unnamed "problems," a remark that would draw more attention to itself in the movie because we know Cassie as a person.

There's no indication that Ennis has more than one girlfriend. And, going back to treating Ennis as a real person, he doesn't seem like he'd be really into the dating scene. Cassie threw herself at him and he passively went along with it for obvious reasons and that was that. He had no reason to break up with her until the events that preceded the apple-pie scene, presumably related to the IWIKHTQY scene on the beach.

I have worked in a lot of bars and restaurants (not recently). In a really casual place like this one, it wouldn't be unheard of for a waitress to step behind the bar. Especially in a small town. Far less likely at your UWH in Philadelphia, for sure. And yes, bartenders usually do make more money, but then theirs is a more skilled job (at least it would be in a craft cocktail place as opposed to a beer and shot dive like the one in the movie).

My parents liked martinis. One time on a vacation we stopped in a place sort of like this for dinner. They ordered martinis and the waitress said, "We don't serve none of them fancy drinks here." Like typical elitist liberals, we all laughed about that one for years.  :laugh:



Offline CellarDweller

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #46 on: February 17, 2018, 02:25:25 pm »
I always assumed that  Ennis was talking about Cassie when he  is talking to Jack about the waitress  who wants to be a nurse, only because Ennis was an introvert (to put it mildly).   I can't see him going out and having girlfriends.  I felt he only got married to Alma because he was expected to, was involved with Jack because Jack initiated it,  and was involved with  Cassie because she approached him and initiated  it.


Tell him when l come up to him and ask to play the record, l'm gonna say: ''Voulez-vous jouer ce disque?''
'Voulez-vous, will you kiss my dick?'
Will you play my record? One-track mind!

Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2018, 03:23:55 pm »
They probably figured it adds a realistic dimension while not saddling poor Cassie with unnamed "problems," a remark that would draw more attention to itself in the movie because we know Cassie as a person.

This is another one of the places where Larry and Diana expanded on Annie:

"Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal ... but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't want."

As usual, they did a good job of it.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #48 on: February 18, 2018, 12:17:20 pm »
This is another one of the places where Larry and Diana expanded on Annie:

"Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal ... but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't want."

As usual, they did a good job of it.

Yup. I had just read that line, and that's what I meant.

They wanted to expand on the waitress character, which makes perfect sense because they had to expand things to fill the screen time, and it adds another dimension on Ennis' character. But they didn't want to get into her "problems," probably for a lot of reasons. They wanted to make her seem like a perfectly fine choice -- for someone other than Ennis. They didn't want to saddle an otherwise appealing character with problems aside from the main one -- which was Ennis. They didn't want to shift focus to Cassie's life because it would be OT in a movie about Ennis.



Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: "You don't think so, or you don't think that I'm the one?"
« Reply #49 on: February 18, 2018, 11:06:22 pm »
I think Alma Jr. and Cassie were speaking in code, as it was and is necessary to do in Wyoming. "He's not the marrying kind" as you pointed out, is code for gay, and "You don't say much, but you get your point across" means "message received." Still, I think Cassie denies the reality due to Ennis's manliness and virility.

I was reminded of this just this evening, and nearly had a laugh out loud.

In the episode of Victoria that ran on Masterpiece this evening, at one point the Queen said of Edward Drummond, the secretary to the prime minister, that she didn't think Drummond was "the marrying kind."

The Drummond character was one-half of the gay subplot in the series.

 :laugh:
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.