It’s been a week on the road for Jimbo. When I applied for my job they said there would be 10% travel, but when I interviewed for the position, I was given the impression that it would be nowhere near that amount. It seems, however, I manage to be on the road about a week out of every other month.
Last night I saw 196666 on my odometer. The needle on the speedometer covered the first six, so all I could see was 666. For a moment I thought my car was possessed by the devil, but then it changed to 667. At that point I slowed down or sped up and my speedometer needle moved and I realized that my mileage was 196667, so I looked at 666 for ten more miles.
I was busy while I was gone and didn’t have any spare time. I’m home today and resting up. Last weekend we watched the movie Ed Wood. It was interesting, but I don’t recommend it. However, this afternoon I watched the Ed Wood movie Plan 9 From Outer Space. I understand it has been voted the worst movie ever made. I only made it through the first half-hour or so and I am in complete agreement with the voters. Wood used way too much stock footage; his actors were not very good and his cuts from scene to scene were too abrupt. It looked like something an amateur could have made. By the way, his spacecraft were much too fake and they fluttered like aluminum pie pans, which I think they were.
I also watched the 1995 movie, The Last Supper. It was kind of a whodunit, but we know from the very beginning who the culprits are. It had Cameron Diaz and Ron Perlman in the cast as well as cameos by Jason Alexander, Charles Durning, Mark Harmon and Bill Paxton. Nora Dunn played the sheriff, and despite her comedic background, she played it strait.
The premise was, if it were 1909, and you met a young artist named Adolph Hitler and were sharing a drink with him, and you knew what he was destined to do, even though he had done nothing wrong, yet, would you do him in? The suggestion being that one criminal act of murder would save many more later.
A group of graduate students in Iowa are having dinner. One of them has car trouble on his way to dinner and a character played by Bill Paxton gives him a ride. The students invite Paxton to eat with them and, during dinner conversation, he opines his theory that Hitler had the right solution to handle the Jews, and he becomes unruly and pulls a knife. During the ensuing struggle, one of the students kills him with a knife. They bury his body in their back yard and drive his truck into a river. Later we find that Paxton is a rapist and a murderer, meaning that killing him could have been a justifiable act. However, the students realize the impact of what they have done and begin to invite to dinner persons of radically conservative political beliefs and pour them a glass of poisoned wine prior to proposing a toast. After dinner they bury the victims in the backyard.
One of the students is an artist and, in somewhat of a twisted metaphor, he paints on the ceiling of their dining room a stylized version of part of Michaelangelo’s fresco from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. His detail shows God reaching out to touch fingertips with Adam, symbolically giving life to man. While down below, around the dining room table, the students are taking away lives, and not just symbolically.
Ron Perlman is a conservative television commentator whom the students watch on their TV and express their disagreement with him. When the opportunity comes around for two of the students to meet him, they invite him to dinner. During his dinner conversation, he convinces the students his views are in line with their own. While the students are caucusing in the kitchen deciding to change their minds about killing him, he is left alone at the dining room table and is able to ascertain the wine is poisoned and the students were going to do him in. He pours everyone a glass of poisoned wine and they drink their last toast to him upon their return, while he declines to drink with them, because he has already had too much to drink.
At the end of the movie, we hear Perlman giving a speech and realize that he is, indeed, a modern-day Hitler. We realize that he was able to use his powers of persuasion to deceive the students into believing he was something he wasn’t. We assume that he will use the same powers to deceive the general public and that we are all doomed someday to follow his leadership.
On a happier note, the students are able to grow a good crop of tomatoes in their backyard graveyard and Cameron Diaz does a good job of landscaping the graves with flowers, and looks good doing it.
In all, if you like a mystery with a twist, you may like The Last Supper. You might find Ed Wood interesting, but I had a little trouble with Johnny Depp dressing in drag and making exaggerated, wild-eyed “Ricky Ricardo” faces. Ed Wood does have the distinction of having the two actors who played Hunter S. Thompson on the big screen in the same movie. You may recall Depp played Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that Bill Murray, who also appears in Ed Wood, played Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam. If you want to go to work on Monday and tell everyone you saw the worst movie ever, then I would recommend watching Plan 9 from Outer Space.
At least, that’s what we think here in Jimbo’s world.
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