and Why?
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I took the most out of reading A Man Without a Country.
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”
I quite appreciate his philosophical asides, as main courses too. But Cat's Cradle is probably his most "significant" book in the exposure it got as well as how much of his best efforts went into it.
I would agree that Slaughterhouse Five seems to be his most well know and heralded work. The first one I read was Breakfast of Champions. A friend of mine bought me it and On the Road as a gift when I departed to college. Both impacted me in a big way at the time.
Fun fact: Bruce Willis sank his entire fortune into turning BOC into a movie only to have it suck so hard that it didn't achieve US distribution. Desperate for cash to save his home, he approached Tom Rothman for a multi-million dollar loan. Tom Rothman wrote him a check for $2m and said he owned Bruce Willis for two films of Tom's choosing, SAG scale. Movie 1 was Sixth Sense. Movie 2 was Unbreakable.
That is a fun fact, and given his performances in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, I might suggest Willis works best in IOU mode. -good films IMO.
I read somewhere that Shamalyan had rewritten Sixth Sense twelve times before he figured out Bruce Willis was dead. Unfortunately, that was the last time anyone made Shamalyan rewrite anything twelve times. Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie.
That's exactly how I felt when I saw it. I remember thinking the whole movie was a backstory and creation myth. I was actually really excited to see the next (inevitable, I thought) installment. Sadly, we got The Village and Signs, two of the biggest pieces of shit to ever make it to the big screen (or so I thought, then both got blown out of the water by that weird Will Smith/Shyamalan Scientology collaborative, After Earth--affectionately known to those who saw it as Afterbirth). To me Unbreakable should have been the start of something beautiful, but sadly became the pinnacle of a career that could have been.Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie.
I don't know, dude. That movie must have been an unholy type of terrible! I don't mind bad movies. I rarely complain about a bad movie, because I like the experience of going to the theater and all that goes with it. However, every once in a Blue Moon I'm just miffed that I'll never get those two hours back. AE falls under that heading. It was the least subtle, worst acted, bull-in-a-china-shop type of two hour long Scientology commercial that anyone could ever dream up. A monster alien that smells, and preys upon fear? C'mon, that's just lazy.
Unbreakable was the preamble to an interesting movie. It was not, unfortunately, an interesting movie
-I saw it once, in the theaters and I recall thinking Bruce Willis was really good in it.
Never worked with him. I know several people who have that say nothing but nice things about him. SAG = Screen Actor's Guild. Current rate is $859 a day.
Keep in mind: If you're an actor that gets a movie, a recurring role in a series and a handful of commercials, you're having a great year. The feature is 3-4 weeks of 5-day weeks. That's $20k. The series is maybe 2 weeks. That's $10k. The commercials are a day each. That's $4k. You're killing it and you're making $34k before taxes in the place where housing is the most expensive in the United States. You're also having a hard time keeping your table-waiting job because that feature blew a big old hole in your other gig. A DGA director might get $10k for a commercial.. but he might only get two commercials a year. Welcome to Hollywood. (BTW - that $859 a day is for movies like Transformers. Movies like Primer? $100 a day.)
Oh sure for the common actor trying to make it I have no doubt the up and down nature of the business means that they have to struggle pretty hard to make ends meet. Its similar to contract work in many other fields, you gotta make it when you can to get you over the dry spells. My point was just in regards to Bruce agreeing to 2 movies as a deposit on his loan was not THAT bad a deal considering that he was still going to earn a decent wage (relative to people outside of Hollywood) during the filming. It was a sweet deal even if the 2 movies had turned out to be duds.
Bluebeard puts a pin in midcentury American painting it should be required reading for anyone who wants to pretend to be an artist. Kurt himself said you could skip all of his books and just read Catch-22 instead.
I just picked up Mother Night this afternoon. Each quote posted here makes me feel more and more strongly that he was an incredible man.
Galapagos has been mentioned, but I also really liked Sirens of Titan because it deals with and plays with the notion of Fate. I read it at a time when I was just starting to grasp just how many things in the universe must necessarily influence each other and how people believe that the things in front of them are what shapes their lives. Plus, it revolves around a chronosynclasticinfundibulum, which is a fantastic Hang Man word.
My cat's name is Malachi Constant... Sirens of Titan is by far my favorite Vonnegut book, and one of my favorite books period.really liked Sirens of Titan
I love giving my pets full names, though in your case I hope that your cat avoids the "Unk" period of that character's arc. My dog is named Chunkford van Barfolomew and previously I had a pig named "Squeak E. Kleen" though I never knew what the E. could stand for.
Galapagos is my favorite of his works. I love that he is able to tell a story in such a way as to create a valid argument against his own brain. “And then, as though in trances, the people would actually do it.”“That, in my opinion, was the most diabolical aspect of those old-time big brains: They would tell their owners, in effect, ‘Here is a crazy thing we could actually do, probably, but we would never do it, of course. It’s just fun to think about."
I have yet to read Galapagos! But it was suggested to me before so I'll definitely check it out now. I think that self-argument is just a blatant and honest process of Vonnegut thinking out loud and trying to find a truth. In this way he's getting a lesson out of every book he writes, in addition to just preaching to the choir of his readers.
It is a Science fiction novel more so than the rest and his first? novel No real pomo stuff although the Barber talks in Vonneguts voice. I like it quite a bit.
Reminded me of one of the most remarkable scenes in any Pacino film I've seen.