LUTHER: Let me put it this way: technological revolutions aren’t the only kind. There are also inner reformations that can have much greater, more dramatic, thrilling results . . .
JOHNNY: Brilliant, Doctor . . . But surely you don’t mean to say that in the future inner reformations will make even more of a wave than this great scientific event . . . ?
LUTHER: Believe, don’t believe . . .
JOHNNY: Ha ha, that’s what I’d call sibylline. Just joking, Doc. I’m ready to believe you. My motto is: Believe Firmly and Sin Strongly. Ha ha ha!
LUTHER: Clever phrase, that. I’ll just make a note.
JIM : Excuse me, fellows. One moment. I’m getting voices over the audio . . . It seems land has been sighted . . . Yes, now I can hear them clearly. They’re shouting, «Land ho!» Can you hear them, Alastair?
ALASTAIR: Actually, no. Half a mo’, I’ll check with the Azores.
JIM : Yes! Land has definitely been sighted . . . The ship’s dropping anchor . . . They’ve landed!! Today, October 12, 1492, man has set foot for the first time in the New World. Alastair, what are they saying where you are?
ALASTAIR: Well . . . t he latest is that it seems the landing has been postponed for a month, that the land ighted was the Aeolian Islands . . .
JIM : No, no, Alastair, I heard it distinctly! DAN : Hello? Yes? Fine. Looks like both Jim and Alastair are right. The ship has definitely dropped anchor, as Jim says, but it still isn’t terra firma. It’s San Salvador.
A little island in the Caribbean archipelago, which some geographer has also decided to call the Sea of Tranquillity. But now the camera set on the flagship’s figurehead is operational. Now here’s Christopher Columbus setting foot on the beach, to stick the flag of His Catholic Majesty in the sand! It’s a great sight, folks. Among the palm trees a crowd of natives with feathers in their hair are coming out to meet our thalattonauts. We’re now about to hear the first words uttered by man in the New World. They are being uttered by a sailor leading the group, the bosun, Baciccin Parodi . . . PARODI : Mamma mia, Cap’n, look at them tits!
JIM: What did he say, Alastair?
ALASTAIR: I didn’t hear very well, but it wasn’t what we have in the press kit. One of the en·gine,ers says it must have been interference. This apparently happens a lot in the New World. Here we are! Admiral Columbus is about to speak!
COLUMBUS: A small step for a sailor, a giant step for His Catholic Majesty . . . Hey, what’s that they’re wearing around their necks? Holy shit, that’s gold! Gold!
ALASTAIR: The spectacle the cameras are giving us is truly grand! The sailors are running toward the natives with great leaps, man’s first leaps in the New World . . . F rom the necks of the natives they are collecting samples of the New World’s minerals, cramming them into big plastic bags . . . Now the
natives are also making great leaps, to get away. Apparently the lesser gravity would cause them to fly off, so the sailors are fastening them to the ground with heavy chains . . . Now the natives are all neatly lined up in a civilized way, while the sailors head for the ships with the heavy bags filled with the local mineral. The bags are extremely heavy, and the men have had to make a huge effort to fill them and carry them. . .
JIM : It’s the white man’s burden, Alastair!
1968
Make Your Own Movie
In 1993, with the final, complete adoption of video cameras even in the offices of the national registry, cinema both commercial and underground was in real trouble. The prise de la parole had by now tranformed moviemaking into a technique within everyone’s reach, and everyone was watching his or her own film, deserting the movie theaters. New methods of reproduction and projection in cassettes insertable into the dashboard of the family car had made obsolete the primitive equipment of the avant-garde cinema. Numerous handbooks were published on the order of Be Your Own Amonioni. The buyer bought a «plot pattern,» the skeleton of a story which he could then fill in from a wide selection of variants. With a single pattern and an accompanying package of variants an individual could make, for example, 15,741 Antonioni movies. Below we reprint the instructions that came with some of these cassettes. The letters refer to the interchangeable elements. For example, the basic Antonioni pattern («An empty lot.
She walks away») can generate «A maze of McDonald’s with visibility limited due to the sun’s glare. He toys for a long time with an object.» Etc.
Antonioni Scenario
An x emptyY lot. z Shek walks away. n
Variants Key
x Two, .three, an infinity of. An enclosure of. A maze of.
y Empty. As far as the eye can see. With visibility limited due to the sun’s glare. Foggy. Blocked by wire-mesh fence. Radioactive. Distorted by
wide-angle lens. z An island. City. Superhighway cloverleaf. McDonald’s. Subway station. Oil field. Levittown. World Trade Center. Stockpile of pipes. Scaffolding. Car cemetery. Factory area on Sunday. Expo after closing. Space center on Labor
Day. UCLA caJ?.lpus during student protest in Washington. JFK airport.
k He. Both he and she. n Remains there. Toys for a long time with an object. Starts to leave, then stops, puzzled, comes back a couple of paces, then goes off again. Doesn’t go away, but the camera dollies back. Looks at the camera without any expression as he touches her scarf.
Jean-Luc Godard Scenario
He arrivesa and then bangb a refineryc explodes.
The Americans d make love. e Cannibals f armed with bazookasg fireh on the railroad. i She falls1 riddled with bullets m from a rifle. n At mad speed 0 to Vincennes P Cohn-Benditq catches the trainr and speaks. s Two men t kill her. u He reads sayings of Mao. v Montesquieu z throws a bomb w at Diderot. x He kills himself. k He peddles Le Figaro) The redskins
arrive.Y
Variants Key
a Is already there reading the sayings of Mao. Lies dead on the superhighway with brains spattered. Is killing himself. Harangues a crowd. Runs along the street. Jumps out of a window.
b Splash. Splat. Wham. Rat-tat-tat. Mumble mumble.
c A kindergarten. Notre Dame. Communist Party headquarters. Houses of Parliament. The Parthenon. The offices of Le Figaro. The Elysee.
Paris. d The Germans. French paratroopers. Vietnamese.
Arabs. Israelis. Police. e Do not make love.
f Indians. Hordes of accountants. Dissident Communists. Crazed truck drivers.
g Y agatan. Copies of Le Figaro. Pirate’s sabers. Submachine -gun-s. Cans of red paint. Cans of blue paint. Cans of yellow paint. Cans of orange
paint. Cans of black paint. Picasso paintings. Little red books. Picture postcards.
h Throw rocks. Bombs. Empty cans of red paint, green paint, blue paint, yellow paint, black paint.
Pour some slippery stuff.
On the Elysee. On the University of Nanterre. In Piazza Navona. All over the road.
Is thrown out of the window by CIA agents. Is raped by paratroopers. Is killed by Australian aborigines.
m With a gaping wound in the belly. Spewing forth streams of yellow (red, blue, black) paint. Mak ing love with Voltaire. n Loquat.
o Unsteadily. Very, very slowly. Remaining still while the background (process shot) moves.
p Nanterre. Flins. Place de la Bastille. Clignancourt. Venice.
q Jacques Servan-Schreiber. Jean-Paul Sartre. Pier Paolo Pasolini. D’ Alembert.
r Misses the train. Goes on a bicycle. On roller skates.
s Bursts into tears. Shouts Viva Guevara. t A band of Indians. u Kill everybody. Kill nobody. v Quotations from Brecht. The Declaration of the Rights of Man. Saint-] ohn Perse. Prince Korzybski. Eluard. Lo Sun. Charles Peguy. Rosa Luxemburg.
z Diderot.· Sade. Restif de la Bretonne. Pompidou. w A tomato. Red paint (blue, yellow, black).
x Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Nixon. Madame de Sevigne. Voiture. Van Vogt. Einstein.
k Goes away. Kills all the others. Throws a bomb at the Arc de Triomphe. Blows up an electronic brain. Empties onto the ground various cans of yellow (green, blue, red, black) paint.
The sayings of Mao. Writes a ta-tze-bao. Reads verses of Pierre Emmanuel. Watches a Chaplin movie.
y The paratroopers. The Germans. Hordes of starving accountants brandishing sabers. Armored cars. Pier Paolo Pasolini with Pompidou.
The Bank Holiday traffic. Diderot selling the Encyclopedie door to door. The Marxist-Leninist Union on skateboards.
Ermanno 0 lmi Scenario
A forester a out of work b roams at length c then comes back to his native villaged and finds his mothere is dead.£ He walks in the woods,g talks with a tramph who understandsi the beauty of the trees1 and he remains there, m thinking. n
Variants Key
a A young man who has just arrived in the city. A former partisan. A jaded executive. An Alpine soldier. A miner. A ski instructor.
b Overworked. Sad. Without any purpose in life. Sick. Just fired. Overwhelmed by a feeling of emptiness. Who has lost his faith. Who has returned to the -faith. After a vision of Pope John XXIII.
c Briefly. Drives a mini Cooper along the superhighway. Is driving a truck from Bergamo to Brindisi.
d To his brother’s sawmill. To the mountain hut.
To Pizzo Gloria. To Chamonix. To Lago di Carezza. To Piazzale Corvetto and his cousin’s tobacco shop. e Another close relative. Fiancee. Male friend. Parish priest.
f Sick. Has become a prostitute. Has lost her faith.
Has returned to the faith. Has had a vision of Pope John XXIII. Has left for France. Is lost in an avalanche. Is ,Still performing the humble little
daily tasks as always.
g On the superhighway. Near the Idroscalo. At Rogoredo. Through
