eyes wide shut

Fr. Chip and Brian review the 2019 blockbuster Joker; the origin story of the most infamous comic book villain ever. They also talk about American History X, 127 Hours, and Eyes Wide Shut, and they discuss how watching movies with difficult subject matter can help us gain perspective on the lives and trials of others.

No dream is ever just a dream. Or so Tom Cruises tells Nicole Kidman at the end of Eyes Wide Shut. In this episode, Phil and JF expound some of the key themes of Kubrick's film, a masterpiece of cinematic chamber music that demonstrates, with painstaking attention to detail, Zen Master Dōgen's utterance that when one side of the world is illuminated, the other side is dark. Treading a winding path between wakefulness and dream, love and sex, life and art, your paranoid hosts make boldly for that secret spot where the rainbow ends, and the masks come off. REFERENCES Arthur Schnitzler, [Dream Story (Traumnovelle)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamStory)_ -- Source of the EWS screenplay, sadly overlooked in the episode but well worth a read. Frederic Raphael, Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick (https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Wide-Open-Stanley-Kubrick/dp/0345437764) Bathysphere (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathysphere)  Frank L. Baum, [The Wonderful Wizard of Oz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheWonderfulWizardofOz) David Icke's "reptilian" theory of the British Royal Family (https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-36339298/david-icke-on-9-11-and-lizards-in-buckingham-palace-theories)  Thomas A. Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze (https://www.amazon.com/Kubrick-Inside-Film-Artists-Midland/dp/0253202833) Screenshot (https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/e/e38b53e4-e148-4e2d-b301-0b3bb15779ff/14VBmkoF.png) of newspaper article from Eyes Wide Shut Rodney Ascher, [Room 237](https://www.nfb.ca/film/room237/)_ James Hillman, Pan and the Nightmare (https://www.amazon.com/Pan-Nightmare-James-Hillman/dp/0882142259)  Gustave Moreau, L'Apparition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Apparition) Mario Praz, [The Romantic Agony](https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.13207/2015.13207.The-Romantic-Agonydjvu.txt)_ William S. Burroughs, “On Coincidence,” in The Adding Machine (https://www.amazon.com/Adding-Machine-William-S-Burroughs/dp/0802121950) J.F. Martel, "The Kubrick Gaze" (http://realitysandwich.com/149960/the-kubrick-gaze/)

In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and the opening music to Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, composed by Howard Shore and featuring the inimitable stylings of Ornette Coleman. After teasing out the intrinsic weirdness of music in general, the dialogue soars over a strange country rife with shadows, mad geniuses, and skittering insects. And to top it all off, Phil breaks out the grand piano. Header image by Bandan, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Danby_Insect.jpg) REFERENCES Ligeti, [Musica Ricercata, 2nd movement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIDN3EkWN8)_ Howard Shore and Ornette Coleman, opening music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liYqmdkS1hw) for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch Schopenhauer, [The World as Will and Representation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheWorldasWillandRepresentation)_ Suzanne Langer, [Philosophy in a New Key](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhilosophyinaNewKey) Henri Bergson, [Creative Evolution](https://archive.org/stream/creativeevolutio00berguoft/creativeevolutio00berguoftdjvu.txt)_ Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/) Viktor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/first/en122/lecturelist-2015-16-2/shklovsky.pdf) Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120663/) Hitchcock, Psycho (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/) Vulture, "The Evolution of the Movie Trailer" (http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/the-evolution-of-the-movie-trailer.html) by Granger Willson Official Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b726feAhdU) for The Shiningvs teaser (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFXGrTng0gQ) for 2012 Jan Harlan (director), Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278736/) David Cronenberg, Crash (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115964/) William S. Burroughs, [Naked Lunch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NakedLunch)_ Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, [A Thousand Plateaus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AThousandPlateaus) Gunther Schuller's interview (https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-gunther-schuller-part-1/) with Ethan Iverson Weird Studies, Episode 25: David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (https://www.weirdstudies.com/25) Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Oedipus)