{"id":4225,"date":"2021-04-13T18:28:25","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T23:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sighinide.com\/?p=4225"},"modified":"2021-04-13T18:28:25","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T23:28:25","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-richard-linklaters-waking-life-and-other-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/?p=4225","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts on Richard Linklater&#8217;s Waking Life and Other Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, this one too.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01-300x163.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"163\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01-300x163.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01-768x416.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01-1024x555.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sighinide.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/cap_Waking.Life_.2001.1080p.BluRay.X264-AMIABLE_00_18_37_01.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>See the guy on the right?  The tall blond guy with the long wavy hair talking with his friend?  That guy is me.<\/p>\n<p>And you can&#8217;t see it in the film, but the restaurant they&#8217;re walking in front of was a Wendy&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>I actually remember this conversation with my friend.  All that stuff I am saying in this scene- about the nature of man, the irrelevance of voting, etc. is from me, and I can remember that particular conversation almost word for word.<\/p>\n<p>I also remember some other stuff we talked about that day, mostly about art, that didn&#8217;t seem to make it into the film, though please note that I haven&#8217;t actually watched it.  My friend there was an art major.<\/p>\n<p>A brief skim of the flick and some clips on youtube indicate that this movie is an encapsulation of my life experiences and ideas about the world as a freshman and sophomore in college.<\/p>\n<p>I can actually see my professors here.  One guy in this film is my CS professor, another, a philosophy professor, and another character in here was the head of the math dept.  I think another guy in this film was my school counselor.  And of course I can see my friends, etc., and the school coffee shop, offices in the different school buildings, etc.<\/p>\n<p>One scene of note has some characters watch a movie that features a military.  I remember this class well- in my real life, this film was shown in history class, and it was about the Vietnam war.  The movie ended with a striking scene that has never left me of a Buddhist monk self-immolating to protest the war, which is mirrored in <em>Waking Life<\/em> with my character, who self-immolates at the end of his conversation with gas he purchased at a gas station.<\/p>\n<p> I don&#8217;t need to watch this movie to know what it is; it&#8217;s extremely obvious. <\/p>\n<p>Do I need to bother with Linklater&#8217;s other films?  I mean, not to watch them as art, or for entertainment, but in regards to these studies of mine.  IDK; probably not.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of a few more references to myself in <em>Legally Blonde<\/em> that I won&#8217;t bother to list here.  I mean, what&#8217;s the point?<\/p>\n<p>And now that we&#8217;ve discussed <em>Waking Life<\/em>, do I need to go into <em>Good Will Hunting<\/em>?  I mean, not that I&#8217;ve seen it, but do I even need to for these purposes?  I never watched it because at the time I thought it would be redundant; the commercials made it seem like a rehash of the same stuff that I was going through at the time.<\/p>\n<p>Same rules apply with <em>Good Will Hunting<\/em>.  Teenage male that looks and acts virtually identical to how I did at the time, supergenius IQ, went through a list of therapists because of his mental problems, child abuse in his past, etc. etc.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve only seen commercials and youtube clips.  I guess I could watch for the nostalgia factor, IDK.  Maybe just to see stuff from high school, I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Meh.<\/p>\n<p>Is anyone else getting kinda bored with this, or is that just me?<\/p>\n<p>At any rate&#8230; Jesus Christ, people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, this one too. See the guy on the right? The tall blond guy with the long wavy hair talking with his friend? That guy is me. And you can&#8217;t see it in the film, but the restaurant they&#8217;re walking in front of was a Wendy&#8217;s. I actually remember this conversation with my friend. All [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4225"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4235,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4225\/revisions\/4235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighinide.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}