David Dobel:
Since the beginning of time people have been, you know, frightened and, and unhappy, and they're scared of death, and they're scared of getting old, and there's always been priests around, and shamans, and now shrinks, to tell 'em, "Look, I know you're frightened, but I can help you. Of course, it is going to cost you a few bucks...” But they *can't* help you, Falk, because life is what it is.
[the geography teacher uses a pointer to demonstrate, on the classroom blackboard, the world of Pleasantville, which consists of Elm Street, Main Street, and the Town Hall]
Miss Peters:
Last week, class, we discussed the geography of Main Street. This week we're going to be talking about Elm Street. Now, can anyone tell me the difference between Elm Street and Main Street? Tommy.
Tommy:
It's not as long?
Miss Peters:
That's right, Tommy, it's not as long. Also, it only has houses, so the geography of Main Street is different than the geography of Elm Street. [Jennifer is frowning in bewilderment. She raises her hand]
Miss Peters:
Mary Sue!
Jennifer:
Yeah. What's outside of Pleasantville? [the entire class turns to look at her]
Miss Peters:
I don't understand.
Jennifer:
Outside of Pleasantville? Like, what's at the end of Main Street?
Miss Peters:
[chuckles and shakes her head] Mary Sue. You should know the answer to that! The end of Main Street is just the beginning again. [the teacher points at the intersection of Elm and Main. The class feels released to giggle at Jennifer/Mary Sue's clearly stupid question, and Jennifer frowns again]
Rev. Saviour:
I knew you were coming... so I sent everyone away... because I believed my final moment was at hand. Before you pull that trigger... and take my life, I would like the chance to tell you some things, perhaps to think about after I am gone. Don't worry about me stallin'. My people have orders to leave me to my studies for another 15 minutes. I will only take five. Can you bear with me? Will you? Then make up your mind. Today marks the change of not only a New Year, but a new millennium. Take a look around. The majority of the youth roam the streets... dealing in drugs, sex and violence, thinking these things have no real effect on life. Crimes without real punishment. An uncaring, unfeeling generation... without knowledge of self. This is the future of our nation, the future of our people. Do you think hatred and evil will go unpunished? The world is now feeling the heat... from flames it has kept burning since the beginning of civilization. You represent that fire. You and I are just a small part of God's plan. The evil men of this world have applied every method possible... to deceive its occupants. And each time with greater success than anticipated. But no more. Tonight, with this new millennium, God will begin to overcome this evil. I represent the truth... to the people. Without truth, nothing is sacred. The lie-that's what the devil is all about. You know that, that's why you're here. The truth is, we all play a grave role... in our own destruction. Your money. Your lifestyles. The things that people value and covet so dearly... are the bait that lures them out of the light. Through the love of others... I have power. The truth gives me this. Those that fear me send you here, here to murder all that I say. They use what you fear against you. Your fear of death, your fear of imprisonment. Where in this world is anyone safe from death? You see the lies you've been told? The path you take is not your own. Have you ever thought about how precious a life is? How difficult it is to create? How loosely and easily it has been for you to take away? Brother, help me. Help me to do what's right. Help me to stop the slaughter of our children. Help me to put an end to the disrespect... and the dishonor of our most valuable resource: the black woman. Help me put an end... to the destruction of the young mind through the use of drugs, alcohol. Help me to build up a population of great thinkers. People who create change... through thoughtfulness and spirituality. Will you choose that truth? Will you? Will you choose the light over the darkness? Hold it, stay where you are. Will you choose life? It's time. It's time, man. It's time.
Astrid:
Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning, the reason is simple, I couldn't understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much you would never tell. I could sell these things. People want to buy them, but I'd set all this on fire first. She'd like that, that's what she would do. She'd make it just to burn it. I couldn't afford this one, but the beginning deserves something special. But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky, has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her. I don't know how to express the being with someone so dangerous is the last time I felt safe...
[first lines]
John Connor:
[voiceover] The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that. My name is John Connor, they tried to murder me before I was born, when I was 13 they tried again. Machines from the future. Terminators. All my life my mother told me the storm was coming, Judgment Day, the beginning of the war between man and machines. Three billion lives would vanish in an instant, and I would lead what was left of the human race to ultimate victory. It hasn't happened, no bombs fell, computers didn't take control, we stopped Judgment Day. I should feel safe, but I don't, so I live off the grid - no phone, no address, no one and nothing can find me. I've erased all connections to the past, but as hard as I try I can't erase my dreams, my nightmares.
Spirit:
The story that I want to tell you cannot be found in a book. They say that the history of the west was written from the saddle of a horse, but it's never been told from the heart of one. Not till now. I was born here, in this place that would come to be called the Old West. But, to my kind, the land was ageless. It had no beginning and no end, no boundary between earth and sky. Like the wind and the buffalo, we belonged here, we would always belong here. They say the mustang is the spirit of the West. Whether that west was won or lost in the end, you'll have to decide for yourself, but the story I want to tell you is true. I was there and I remember. I remember the sun, the sky, and the wind calling my name in a time when we ran free. I'll never forget the sound and the feeling of running together. The hoof beats were many, but our hearts were one."
Sam:
You don't realize, this is good, this doesn't happen often in your life. We can work this stuff out. I want to help you, you know? We need each other...
Andrew Largeman:
This isn't a conversation about this being over, it's, it's... I'm not, like, putting a period at the end of this, you know, I'm putting, like, an ellipsis on it, cause I'm- I'm- I'm worried that if I don't figure myself out, if I don't go like land on my own two feet, then I'm just gonna to mess this whole thing up, and this is too important. I gotta go... you changed my life in four days. This is the beginning of something really big. But right now, I gotta go.
Jenkins:
Why is it when you do the dumbest things in your life they always seem like perfectly good ideas at the time? All I can remember is feeling completely exhilarated, like this was the beginning of victory, that we were going to win Ellington back, that I'd impress Deirdre, and that someday after the heat died down we'd be able to reveal ourselves to the town and be treated like heroes. But it's amazing how quickly you can go from one emotional extreme to the complete opposite. It's one thing to think that you're a brave kid, to think that you wanna fight for your town, that you'd put it all on the line, that you're selfless and heroic and live in a time that needs the actions of a bold few. But nothing scares a guy more than prison. Not pain or injury, not dying, not nothin'. Nothing's worse than the sudden thought that you'll have to look everyone you know in the eye, your family and your friends from high school who are just coming home from college, your coworkers, your neighbors you've known since you were six, there's nothing more shameful. And nothing will inspire fear more than the threat of shame like that. You run like you've never run before, without even thinking.
Canton:
[Captain Atherton has just been eaten by one of the monsters] I'm beginning to fear that our friends here may be some kind of strange offshoot of the Archaea Ottoia family.
Pantucci:
The Ottoia family, to think I was startin' to worry.
Canton:
At 4,000 feet the Ottoia are only as long as a pencil, with bodies about the size of a golf ball. But those at 20,000 feet have been known to eat full grown sharks! At 30,000 or 40,000 feet... [to Pantucci]
Canton:
Well you do the math.
Trillian St. James:
This is not good.
Pantucci:
Are we talkin' some kind of mutated sea monsters here?
Mason:
Who gives a shit what they are? Just tell us how to kill these motherfuckers.
Canton:
The Ottoia are very crafty. They hide in burrows, catch their victims with spiny tentacles, then they crush them between massive jaws.
Trillian St. James:
Then they eat you, right?
Canton:
No, they drink you. They drink you alive. Sucking all the fluids out of the body before excreting the skeletal remains.
Agent Jennifer Marsh:
This is James Reilly. Sixteen months ago, depressed over the recent death of his wife... a hematologist... Reilly staggered out into rush-hour traffic on the Broadway Bridge. Traffic copters were out in force. But only one caught all the action from beginning to end... Channel 12. The regular pilot was out sick that day, so the job went to Herbert Miller. He later told friends he'd gotten lucky. At the right place at the right time. The back of Reilly's skull... landed on the rooftop of this diner. So did his glasses. The skull was turned over to the coroner... but the glasses were retrieved by one of the diner's employees, Scotty Hillman. He put them up for sale online. And they sold quickly. Kids were home from school. Parents were outraged. They called the TV stations. The TV stations apologized... except for Channel 12. They'd been having a little problem in the ratings, but not that afternoon. Their numbers were sky-high. And knowing a good thing when it fell into their lap, they rushed a veteran reporter to the scene. This is David Williams. He got lucky, landed an interview with a local businessman... whose parked Cadillac had been struck by Reilly's falling body. When the interview ended, Channel 12, as a courtesy to those who might have missed it, aired the entire video one last time. Within minutes, Andrew Kilburn had pulled it off his TiVo... and posted it on five different shock-video sites. From there, Reilly's suicide was public domain... something for five billion people to feed on, laugh at, gossip about. Reilly had a son, Owen. He was brilliant. Good at electronics, mechanics and computers... but he was disturbed. He was troubled. He was withdrawn. Owen took his father's suicide very hard. He had to be hospitalized. And six months ago, he was released. This x-ray image is supposed to be Owen's father. The number on the left, the date his father died... followed by the the number of his autopsy report. Owen lives alone now at his father's house in Fairview. What do you say we arrest the piece of shit?
Ross McElwee:
My brother took this slide of his patient's breast tumor for his medical records. It's horrifying that this woman was attacked by this awful tumor. But I can't stop thinking about this image on a whole other level, having to do with denial. She simply denied she had this thing on her body; pretended it wasn't there. I mean, it's kind of like death itself, you know, this huge, grotesque thing that stares us in the face, but somehow we manage to deny it, to abstract it. Which is also what happens when I stare at this photograph long enough. And it's what's beginning to happen with my father's death too. I come down here, hoping to face directly his death and death in general. I wanted to - I don't know - somehow corner death with a camera and prevent it from becoming abstract, but, but now, ironically, this filming of my family, it's all beginning to feel like a distraction. Just another form of denial. And I need to stop. I mean, in a way I've been trying to gather photographic proof of my father's death and of death in general. But then, what good does the proof do me, or anyone?
