Maybe he specializes in short stories, like Flannery O’Conner or HP Lovecraft. Or maybe he’s a technical writer and does how-to books, like Bob Newhart.
back in high school in 1955, he tells Marty that he writes short stories.
Yeah, that’s one of the subtle time travel jokes in the franchise. When Marty lands in the past, he crashes the DeLorean into one of a pair of pine trees, knocking it down. In the future, the farm has been paved over and turned into a mall, named for the number of pine trees that used to grow there: originally two, now only one since Marty’s messed with the time stream.
I read in a magazine somewhere a theory that there were two alternative timelines, and our Marty simply traded places with alternative Marty. That is, the Marty with the cool author dad wound up in the universe of the geeky dad who was bullied every day by Biff. And Doc had never gotten the message to put on a bullet proof vest, so Doc was dead and there was no possible way of righting things. That sure would suck for him.
That’s what I was thinking. Also in BTTF II, when Marty finds out his dad had been shot in the alternate 1985, Doc shows him a newspaper story from 1973 about the murder, and I could swear the headline mentioned that he was a writer. So apparently he had been writing for quite some time, even if he wasn’t a novelist per se.
Another thing I’ve wondered about, though, is why Biff has his casino in what’s essentially the middle of a hellhole. Yeah, it probably wasn’t a hellhole at the time he built it, but when it did become a hellhole, why didn’t he relocate what looks to be his flagship property to a nicer area, or at the very least seek out living quarters for himself and Lorraine in a nicer area.
Louise did not actually shoot the man in self-defense, or even in defense of Thelma. The man releases Thelma after Louise threatens him with a gun, and neither of the women are in immediate physical danger after that point. However, the man starts arguing with Louise and finally tells her to “Suck my cock!”, which is when she shoots him.
IANAL, but even if Louise had good evidence of what had really happened, like an unbiased witness or security camera footage, I don’t think there was any way she was going to convince a jury she’d acted purely in self-defense/defense of another. If Louise had turned herself in immediately after the shooting, she was probably looking at manslaughter charges at best and murder charges at worst. And as expectopatronum says, things would have looked much worse for her if she’d been picked up at the end of the film, after fleeing the scene of the original crime and committing a series of other crimes in multiple states.
Regardless of the actual amount of prison time they were likely to serve, by the last scene (here it is on YouTube) Thelma and Louise have decided that they would rather go out on their own terms than surrender to the police. It is Thelma, who could hope for a lighter sentence than Louise, who first suggests that they drive off the cliff. She phrases her suggestion as “Let’s not get caught…let’s keep going.” Now, there’s certainly room to argue about whether this was the right thing to do, but the motives of the main characters are pretty clear: they’d rather die free.
Oh. I should have known. 
A mod once called me Darth Narder…
I agree with mr. jp. I have since I first saw the film, and I still do today after seeing it more than a dozen times. It is so straightforward I’m always surprised that people seem so confused about it all.
I’ve participated in many discussions about the film, and I can see that the only convincing thing that may steer people away from the dream-then-wake interpretation is the final scene in which
Diane commits suicide, mainly because of the weird “hallucinations” she has right beforehand, and the awesome visual imagery Lynch uses when she pulls the trigger.
People say, “if that portion is real, waking life, then what is with the weird stuff in that reality?”
The answer is that the old people that come through the door are her parents who represent her conscience. They are released upon her psyche by Satan himself, the great accuser, known in the film as “Burn”. You can consider it as metaphorical imagery, or as an hallucinatory experience by Diane. But it is important to remember that for David Lynch those distinctions may be meaningless. In real life he earnestly believes in an active and participatory spiritual world. This is reflected in almost all of his films.
I know he included some notes in one of the DVD releases that supposedly give clues to meaning, but I think those are largely red herrings. I do believe that Lynch has an uncanny ability to tap into imagery and symbolism that profoundly effect our conscious and subconscious minds in nearly unexplainable ways, and I think that he often just jams those images in films to achieve that visceral effect without concern for how it effects the storyline.
All that to say that I believe that it is clear that the original intent of the film is that Diane is having a dream that idealizes her situation in life, a dream that utilizes random imagery and events from her real life (like dreams do). She awakes from that dream to the harsh reality of life, made even more depressing after having lived the idealized version in her sleep. And then the inevitable ending.
Yes, I know, but the two can be used interchangeably. Books can refer to novels and vice versa. My point is, they didn’t make it clear which was which, particularly given what the book (or novel) looked like in the box.
The idea was to have Jeff Smith expelled from the Senate. After that, the baddies can easily hide the evidence. The filibuster was to prevent a vote on the expulsion.
Aha yes, I didn’t remember the scene well at all, I’ve only seen it once. But if that’s how it went down then…well then damnit, they (the writers) should have had it be innocent pure self defense! Whatever it would have taken to have a good ending. That one was terrible! So in this particular case I got their motive, I guess I just didn’t get why the writers’ motivation to MAKE it their motive and make it the ending. Did someone say they actually did do an alternate ending?
The problem is the plot of TPM only makes sense if everything goes exactly as it did in the film. Let’s say Amidala was weaker and signed the treaty, Palaptine would have never gotten what he wanted. Let’s say Darth Maul successfully killed the Jedi on Tatooine. Palapine wouldn’t have gotten what he wanted. That happens over and over.
Yes, but he was using the Jedi mind trick on them the whole time…errrr whatever the darkside equivalent of the Jedi mind trick is…
Uh, since Darth Maul was working for Palpatine, why would he have done that?
[hijack]
WOOKINPANUB, I’ve been reading your name for years as Wookie In a Pub. Since it isn’t, what does it refer to?
[/hijack]
She’s probably asleep right now, and I know you asked her but IIRC, it’s after the Buckwheat (Eddie Murphy’s SNL version of Buckwheat) hit “Wookin pa nub” (Wookin pa nub, in all the wrong places, wookin pa nub in too many faces).
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Palpatine is supposed to be a master manipulator and strategist. I don’t think it’s too much of a fanwank to assume that he had contingency plans in place for when things didn’t break the way he expected. Hell, maybe what we’re actually seeing is the contingency plan. For example, his original plan might have been to make sure Amidala died on Naboo before she could sign the treaty, turn her into a martyr to goad the senate into action, and use his position as the sole surviving representative of Naboo’s legitimate government to propel him into a wartime chancellorship, and from there, to Emperor.
Also, it probably doesn’t hurt that he can see the future.
The other pandas just call me Darth. Makes perfect sense.
I was watching **A Mighty Wind **last night, and one part of the plot confused me. During the group concert at the end, the New Main Street Singers open their act with the song *“Wanderin’”, *which the Folksmen seem baffled and angry about since they had planned it for their act. Wouldn’t a pretty high profile show at New York City Town Hall have had a dress rehearsal, or at least a program of the songs the groups are playing so that everyone would be aware of this?