My Problems with Requiem for a Dream

So many ideas, but today I chose this blog because I want to get it on paper. A storm is coming, and for some time soon I will not be able to type.

I was in my very early 20's when I saw the NC-17 version of Requiem for a Dream in Washington D.C. I've loved the director, Darren Aronofsky, since I saw his first movie, the symbol Pi. This film was highly anticipated by me.

First, the film is true to Hubert Selby, Jr's book of the same name. Aronofsky is a highly talented artist who uses original ideas (the "Hip Hop Splice for drug intact, for example). But in many ways this movie has little to do with the real World of a heroin addict. Also, I remember being banned from recommending anymore movies as my friends (one a film student) were leaving the theater. So yes, the movie did highly impact all of us. But accurate? No...

If you are going to make a movie so many authorities dub "The greatest drug movie of all time" you need it to be a realistic movie on drugs. As stated Aronofsky tried to cast actors who physically resembled the description of Selby's book. One of the most beautiful actress, Jennifer Connelly, plays a wealthy addict with a therapist who only needs sex to give her thousands when her parents do not return her calls. That is a clique. Her partner is Jared Leto, who actually looks like a friend of mine in jail now for heroin use. Both of these actors are very attractive people. I've seen junkies with such bad staff infections on their face, you only see sores and malnutrition marks. Not purple make-up under their vibrantly colored eyes.

Addiction is a disease, not a moral failing (I sound like a broken record). But to go that deep into such strong addiction, I believe the person is burying something. Bravo for the subtle line from Leto's character on Marion's father (Connelly's character) being, "big into women's panties". Who knows the motivations for Leto, other then selfishness.

Another major flaw is that the movie takes place in New York City. I'm sorry but it's not so hard to find heroin there that anyone has to flee to Florida to, "sniff out dope." No way. Heroin makes their users extremely constipated. If you want to take the wind out of a glamorous idea of drugs being 'cool' just say these words: How often do you have to do an anal probe? I missed that scene in the movie. The beautiful Connelly, on the toilet, straining and yelling with her neck veins bulging out. Lesser movies have had the courage to tell that side effect. She goes 'ass to ass' at the end and some people on YouTube find that sexy, yet no one added a toilet straining scene.

Also, when Connelly's character goes to Big Tim (one of my favorite actor's from The Thing, although he was so infected at the movie's end!), she is going to a New York City Penthouse, drinking (I assume) nice liquor, and she has to give a blow job for her fix. Yes, although I have never sunk to that level, there are exploitative people like him in reality. But in Penthouses? Get a better shrink and get over it.

Finally the score. Drugs are so ugly. Anal probes, nose dripping, losing fake friends as well as real friend who can not stomach your pain. Don't set this ugly struggle to such a beautifully orchestrated soundtrack. I have terrible insomnia, and when I listen to that music and see these actor's faces on YouTube lit up in neon colors as I sit in pain watching the morning light fill the room, it makes me furious. Gorgeous actors with purple make-up under the eyes, sublime visions of colorful frames and tears dabbed away on professional make-up jobs. Addicts who feen that much do not shower! That can't shower because their joints hurt so badly and air feels Arctic to them. They should be drenched in ugly sweat. Sweat that makes them look like they stink. They should look like leapers. Not the end scene where she looks like a supermodel heading for a photo shoot.

I will not dispute the ass to ass scene, although it is not in the book, because Aronofsky himself has been to such an event. I would not try to dispute that scene anyway. He did a good job showing how a person will sell their soul for pain to go away. At this point, for Marion, it's not about a 'high'. She is 'getting well'. That's heroin speak for feeling normal.

Briefly, I'll say that I believed Ellen Burstyn's story the most. Loneliness like that is an epidemic which parallels the woe's of a heroin addict. But I'm confused as to how she never got better after extensive treatment. What happened to her to make her psychosis permanent? As a side note to the film maker, I know that he did not use red (Marion never has red lipstick) in the film except for Burstyn's red dress, because he wanted to emphasis the importance of the dress.

Aronofsky is following the book, but he is too good of a film maker for this subject matter. Addiction is not epic in any way. People end up dying. I've always said that Gollum is a junkie. The reality is that you wake up alone in pain and terrified. You won't lose your arm because you only know how to shoot into one vein. It's not a subtle decline, but it is a bottoming out. Not many people have the option to look so good while withdrawing from the strongest drug and selling their soul. Film a white room with a person dialing every number they have manically in sweat pants and a dirty blanket around them. I just captured the life of a heroin addict going through withdraws. Addiction is a tragic struggle. I've seen movies like this, where people do self destructive acts to feel good, but I've never seen pain captured even close to what withdraw feels like to a person.

My favorite (and 'favorite' is not the right word) movie for this subject is A Scanner Darkly (a Bible reference), where he simply says: Let them play, and let them be happy. This is followed by a list of Philip K. Dick's friend's who have died literally or figuratively from drug use. When I see that list, I'm brought to my knees in grief.

People are a Drug

This morning I went to my 'group'. In reality it's a conscious raising group to deal with anxiety and be able to be a single, strong, superhero in a random and cruel world. Our group therapist calls it a "stress management group". Call it what you will, does not matter. What matters is that I need it!

Besides me, everyone in the group is on the heroin withdraw program (the methadone clinic patients). All are unique and sensitive (highly so) good people who are bonding to support each other as if we were family. We talk about everything, even the things that make us vulnerable, to each other; and we are strangers.

Today we had a talk about the 'need' to have people in our lives. Sometimes when you speak so long openly things come out that are not on the four front of our thinking. I blurted out that people are like drugs. We don't need them for our happiness. They are an addiction.

A woman objected, saying that without relationships it would be like the novel "On Waldon Pond". I suppressed blurting out that his mother did his laundry while he wrote that entire novel.

Do we need people to be happy? And what if their happiness or anger makes us act accordingly. I don't like being a slave to anyone, any drug, or any negative or positive emotion. But I am addicted to the idea of people being some cure. I admit this even though I don't want people's lives to be my own.

I told the group that I enrolled to be strong myself so that I don't need anyone but myself. There is no underlying blueprint that will make life certain and fair. It's a throw of the dice.

I lied when I said I did not need anyone, or hope to work up to the point of never needing anyone. The heart was meant to love (thank you Professor Zimmerman for that lecture.) I live for people. I watch them from afar. I listen. I react to them. I don't understand them. But they have their moments of cutting out the bullshit and actually expressing good stuff.

My good, if not best friend (at one point) talked to me for a while on the phone yesterday and she make a comment that sickened me. She said that she hired a black man and, of course (because he was black) he quickly quit the job. Never mind that almost ten employees (including me) quickly left. Why did she have to say that? But I can not eliminate her from my life. She can make a fairy house out of bark. She has loved me more then myself. She once cried when she saw a chicken on the highway because she knew it would get crushed by a passing car. But yet she said that. My point is that people- everyone- are too complex to sum up and cut out or worship. They keep me going. The good ones mostly.

The Reading List Of Dan McCloud

I met Dan MacCloud while at work as a waitress: serving the wealthy rabbit pate and veil at a French restaurant near Baltimore. Dan was a soft spoken, well mannered individual that we called the "Flank Steak Man" because that's all he ordered. Dan was unique among our elite customers because, unlike the suit and tie men who drove up in Jaguars because their wives never cooked, Dan had a large windowless brown construction van (I'm convinced just so he could say, "Hey I'm Dan The Man in the Tan Van"). He also had a grizzly beard like an Alaskan prospector, and a long, string thin rat tail.

Luck would have it that I had no ride lined up to get home (nearly an hour away from work) so Dan volunteered to drive me home. On the way home he asked what books I was reading. I judged him too soon (I admit) because I spouted out some authors I was quite sure he had no clue existed. Wrong! It turned out that Dan came from a rare background, having a father that worked as a NASA scientist and a mother who was the dean of the literature department at the University of Maryland. Dan was gifted with a first rate education, even attending the private school that Chelsy Clinton would later graduate from.

As a side note most of the east coast private schools are based on the Quaker religion (who knew?) and Dan later converted to the religion himself, minus the belief in Jesus. One of Dan's sayings was that he, "Saw light in everyone". He was one of those hippie types that did Owsley acid, found a different path then working a convention job (he worked under the table to avoid having his taxes go to fund war) and he lived on a Yacht that he built himself. He was probably a little crazy too.

Because I could learn a lot from this fellow, I asked him to recommend his favorite books to me. The following came from a manically scribbled list that was torn out of a notebook (I have put asterisks next to the ones I have read):

-The Polish Lieutenant
-Mosquito Coast
-Catch 22
-My Side of the Mountain
-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
-A Suitable Boy
-Sarah Canary
-In the Skin of a Lion
-Life of Pi*
-The Dog That Wouldn't Be
-Master and Commander
-Even Cowgirls get the Blues
-Huckleberry Fin
-One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
-Wild Swans
-July People
-The Shipping News
-A Walk in the Woods
-Madam Bovary
-Canary Row
-East of Edan
-All The Pretty Horses
-The Brothers Karamazov
-The Idiot
-The Red and the Black
-War and Peace
-Dead Souls
-Ship of Fools
The Iliad
-The Odyssey
-The Bible By Everyone

Also:
Anything by:
Ursala Leguin
John Steinbeck
F.Scott Fitzgerald
Amy Chan
Micheal Ondajel
&
Emil Zola

The Weight of Happiness & Appetite for Sunshine in the Heart

About two years ago I sat down with a Guinness and one of my favorite professors. He had a logic test on his syllabus which had not been solved in his 15 years of teaching. The prize was a beer. My brother solved it, I took the credit, I won a free beer.

This professor was such a beautiful soul; lusty and clever and honest. Directly wired in life I thought. We talked about jazz. How Frank Sinatra gave an olive from his martini to one lucky fellow he really liked every night. Then the subject turned to personal drama. Turmoil for him. His daughter was dying of cancer. I was fighting bad vices that anyone who knows me knows about. We could only talk about intellectual barriers because what we were going through was unspeakable.

He mentioned that out of all the things that can happen in life, being happy is not important. He referenced Cathrine Deneuve, the gorgeous French actress (so French!) who was asked in an interview at the height of her career if she was happy. She sat with a cigarette and her long blond hair (which that professor said reminded him of a cocker spaniel's mane), sultry accent and replied, "Happiness, what is that?!". Ah the French.

In my own life I have to ask myself that a lot, because I'm not happy very often. I get angry, jealous, resentful- just frustrated with people in general. But I love them so much- hold such high standards- that if they let me down it stings. They usually do though. But I still love them- just from a great distance apart.

Happiness is only one emotion of the broad spectrum of feeling that passes through me every day. And I don't want to group emotions into black and white categories anyway. Happiness is a hard one. I take it when it comes.