Limitations

[poliphilo]

That meme about things I've done and you haven't. I'm tempted to try it but it makes my head hurt to remember all that stuff.

Every one of those things I've done and you haven't is just another brick in the wall.

Personality is a prison as much as its a romper-room. The more colourful I am, the more I'm stuck with myself.

I'm Quentin Crisp. No-one is ever going to ask me to haul a sleigh to the South Pole.

As a writer I keep coming up against my limitations. I bang against them like a vacuum cleaner butting against the skirting board.

The least limited writer ever was Shakespeare. He creates an illusion of knowing everything. We haven't a clue what he was like in himself.

One of my favourite scenes from the movies is Rita Haworth and Edward Everett Sloane in Lady From Shanghai. They're in the mirror maze, surrounded by multiple images of themselves. He says something like "I'm awfully tired of us, lover." Then they start shooting.

Glass everywhere.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The Magnificent Ambersons.

There is a radio station here that runs old radio shows. Orson Welles makes many appearances, in stuff he wrote as well as the Shadow (he was the ORIGINAL Shadow) and a few other plays. The voice was very hard to ignore.

There's another example of what you were talking about. He wasn't allowed to be anything but brilliant. He wasn't so brilliant in his personal relationships - Rita Hayworth said, after they divorced that "he wanted Gilda, but he got Rita Hayworth."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The accepted wisdom is that he made one great movie then frittered his talent. I don't think that's true. I'm a passionate advocate of his later films, like Chimes at Midnight and The Trial and F For Fake.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Let me see...I've seen Chimes at Midnight. I"ll have to look the rest of them up.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Chimes at Midnight is magnificent. And it contains the best battle sequence ever.

And all done on a shoe-string with a handful of extras.