| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 03/01/2014 : 10:33:07
I've been thinking about the quaaludes scene and why it's so effective. Yes, it is wildly entertaining and involves slapstick schtick such as hasn't been seen since those 3 Stooges. And, yes, it gives the leads an extended comedy ballet to portray character excess such as is rarely seen on any screen.
But the real reason I believe it stays with you long after you've seen the film is because it's a relentless parallel for a mindset of greed.
Joan Rivers used to do a joke about Elizabeth Taylor when she weighed some 200 pounds. According to Joan, Liz would stand in front of the microwave saying Hurry up, hurry up!
That's the mindset. No possibility of delayed satisfaction. We want it now, Now, NOW goddammit!
So - back to Scorsese - these con-artist rich boys now can shit in gold toilets and fly 4000 miles for lunch and paint their lawn polka-dot blade by blade. They're living the high life and living it high. Their fave is quaaludes.
They find some ludes and prepare to binge bigtime. But the ludes are past their sell-by-date and they can't wait 'cus they've got a hot date. They think the ludes are duds, so the dudes take some more. And then some more. Nothing. And some more. Wait, was that ... ? And some more.
And when those out-of-date pills pop - well, that's the scene. And I can honestly say in a lifetime of movie going, I've never seen a scene so brilliantly encapsulate an era of untrammelled greed that has been informing global political and economic policy ever since.
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