Topic: Oddities
Quotes...
Terry Teachout over at About Last Night found some good ones...
"Robespierre and Saint-Just were ready to eliminate violently whole social strata that seemed to them to be made up of parasites and conspirators, in order that they might adjust this actual France to the Sparta of their dreams; so that the Terror was far more than is commonly realized a bucolic episode. It lends color to the assertion that has been made that the last stage of sentimentalism is homicidal mania."
- Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership
In theaters this weekend, Jersey Girl (Miramax) may cause a rash of homicides. Ben Affleck plays a movie publicist who raises a daughter after his wife (Jennifer Lopez in this film, oddly enough) dies in childbirth, then finds romance with video store clerk Liv Tyler. Yep, the elf princess from the Lord of the Rings films. One reviewer (the Philadelphia Inquirer) says "the sap practically oozes from the screen." Yuk. In order that I not turn into a homicidal maniac, I'll pass on this film.
Was the Terror that followed the French revolution really a bucolic episode? That's a cool idea.
___
Then this -
"I suppose I'm a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad, but irresistibly funny."
- Joe Orton, quoted in the Manchester Guardian (September 19, 1966)
Yep, that Joe Orton, who wrote "What the Butler Saw" - an actual farce, not Feydeau of course, but close enough for Britain in the sixties. The Beatles song "I Heard the News Today" is said to be a comment on Orton's suicide.
Posted by Alan at 18:47 PST
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