Looper Question

MovieMoguls thread reminded me of something about the movie Looper. We all know that hitmen kill the person from the future and then dispose of the body until they “Close their loop.” But what if a looper didn’t immediately kill the victim and used them for future info? They could tell the guy, “Hey, there’s a lot of ways to die. Tell me stuff about the future that will benefit me. If you give me enough to make me happy, you die painless. Don’t and you’ll wish you had. I’ve got decades to spend on making you suffer before I actually have to kill you. And I’ve done this before. So if you try to bullshit me, I just might know it”

Might that be enough premise for a good story?

I think that’s actually a major part of the story: how the mob keeps the hitmen placated with the status quo and not have them think too much about anything. Keep the grunts drugged up and sexed up so that they wouldn’t want anything more out of life. Any hint that the hitmen try to get out, or keep gold for themselves and they get whacked themselves.

I thought the gold was theirs to keep as payment.

ETA: But yeah, I see what you mean. Our protagonist is unique in that he only redeems half his silver, causing the bosses to show some special interest in him. They see him as not just a short-sighted hedonist.

Put yourself in that place. Just imagine, you get knocked on the head, next thing you kinow you wake up, there’s a gun at your head, and there’s a tough looking man telling you it’s 1982. Can you right away give him the results of the next Superbowl, World Series and Kentucky Derby, plus some stock tips?

If that goes down tomorrow, in this here world where I have no reason to believe it’ll happen to me? No, of course not. But in the Looper-verse, where I know I’ll eventually get sent back in time to a specific date? Man, you can call me Gray’s Sports Almanac.

I think the OP was suggesting you could milk your regular victims for information not yourself when you got sent back. These regular victims presumably were not expecting to get sent back into the past to be killed.

I think pancake is right. Abe would have been watching for any loopers who suddenly started acting like they had knowledge of future events.

The OP was talking about a victim sent back for execution, not the looper himself.

The point is, most of his targets won’t have much immediately useful info for him.

edit - what **Little Nemo **said

The looper himself IS a victim sent back for execution! It’s what makes him a looper!

(Okay, okay: I won’t fight the implied hypothetical.)

Still, Big events such as 9/11-level things would certainly be remembered. And trends such as the presence of new technology could be gleaned from many people if not how it actually works.

But these guys were low-level thugs not financial planners. If you gave them specific information like “Buy Microsoft” or “Bet on Green Bay” they could use it. But something general like “There’s going to be a big terrorist attack on September 11, 2001” and they wouldn’t know how to translate that information into profits.

Might not stop a guy from trying, though. Who knows? You’re just going to kill him anyway. He might surprise you with something useful. Especially if you get a sports fan who remembers who won what, when.

The whole point is that the loopers were kind of morons. They don’t think about the future at all. They’re purposefully given crappy guns that aren’t very accurate. The smart guys get other jobs in the mob.

Even Joe is shown to not be that smart. In his original timeline he runs out of money pretty soon, despite the fact that he was saving half. In the new timeline he goes back to his old apartment, even though he knows it’s being watched.

Our earlier (pretty thorough) discussion of the movie: Looper - Discussion thread(open spoilers) - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board