—Director Michael Powell on his tumultuous relationship with actress Kathleen Byron, via: Million Dollar Movie by Michael Powell, one of the best movie autobiographies ever written.
Jane Greer
Stalked: Girl Without A Gun
I am republishing this true life story from 2007 for the same reason I republished Jew Without a Gun, my nightmarish report of being trapped with my family, unarmed and defenseless, in the 1992 L.A. Riots.
This is another cautionary tale — not about the riots — but about one frightened and helpless young woman who was being stalked by an ex-boyfriend. I met her in a gun shop where she, a fragile, naive pacifist, ended up because there was nowhere else to turn. There was no choice for this young woman but seek to arm herself with a lethal weapon.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre has sharpened the claws of the statist utopians, whose ultimate aim is not gun-control, but the complete disarming of law-abiding American citizens.
To the liberal/progressive/Democrat/collectivist, it’s perfectly natural to ban a 16 oz. cup of soda, mandate how your toilet flushes and set the water pressure of your shower head. And the crown jewel: Obamacare, wherein the state owns your body from cradle to grave. Naturally, it’s cool to abort a baby in the womb because, y’know, it’s mommy’s body and she has the right to choose… infanticide. But not so much with everybody else’s body. So the oh-so-sensitive and caring liberal/progressive rams through laws that make the state nanny to our children’s school diet. In short, they now have dominion over your child’s body and mind.
Orwell’s “1984” nightmare world where slavery is freedom has reached its apotheosis in the utopian programs of the American left.
But the greatest threat to the progressive totalitarian state is a free and armed citizenry.
Fade In:
“Thing is, he’s going to kill me.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“Yes, of course I have.”
“And what happened?”
She shakes her head from side to side, wraps spindly arms protectively around her chest.
“I got a restraining order against Ned — that’s my ex. But you know what good that is, don’t you?”
“Tell me.”
She inscribes a big zero in the air.
The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters
From where do we draw wisdom?
First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on Torah, on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history and the common sense advice of my wife Karen.
And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver lessons in human character that, for better or worse, shape modern man’s consciousness.
I know it seems ludicrous if not downright blasphemous noting Torah and movies as primary influences but the mind of yours truly, a screenwriter and movie-lover, is a stage of raging intellectual conflicts.
Here are several prime slices of dialogue that elegantly and economically reveal secret corners of our hearts and minds.