good will hunting & badeges of ability

Peter Kilander peterk at enteract.com
Mon Aug 2 19:51:56 PDT 1999


kelley, I agree one can read the story from a Horatio Algier perspective. But, another way to look at it is that Will doesn't try b/c he doesn't want to work for The Man. (remember the NSA interview scene?) He reads and does math problems on the mirror b/c it's fun and interesting, not for money or prestige. He hangs with his buddies b/c they'll take a bat to the math professor for him. Solidarity. He knows what's what.

Then a doctor shrinks his head and a pretty, wealthy woman messes with his mind so he takes a road-trip to Cali and sells out.

Just kidding. Maybe he does some good in California, like joins Doctors without Borders or something. Didn't he mention Chomsky, or am I wrong?

I saw Chasing Amy again the other day. There's another movie you can read a few different ways. It seems to say relationships won't work out between sexually conservative guys and experimental, wild women. And if they had a three way at the end, they all would have hated each other. But they stopped hanging out anyway.

Chasing Amy's director, Kevin Smith, has a movie coming out titled Dogma, starring wonderbuddies Ben and Matt as wayward angels, Chris Rock as the thirteenth apostle and Alanis Morisette as God. From last Sunday's New York Times:

[clip] Among the members of the American press in Cannes, the reception was ecstatic. But Smith's additions to the standard text have disturbed some religious conservatives, including William A. Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which describes itself as the nation's largest Roman Catholic civil rights group. Clouded by the threat of protest, the film's release in the United States has been delayed.

"Smith says his movie is 'intended as a love letter to both faith and God almighty' " Donohue said at a press conference in June. "But in the movie, Joseph and Mary have sex and a descendant of theirs is a lapsed Catholic who works at an abortion clinic; God is played by a singer known for her nude videos and songs about oral sex; the Thirteenth Apostle resembles Howard Stern; the Mass is compared to lousy sex. This sounds more like hate mail than a love letter." ( Donohue said he had not seen the film but based his objections on a draft of the script posted on the Internet.) [end clip]

Peter



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