40 Eridani A: Stage and Screen

Peace and Long Life

The world is an amazing place.

— SBS Television

Fiery the angels fell
Deep thunder rolled around their shores
Burning with the fires of Orc

— Ridley Scott (1937), Bladerunner, 1982.

Fiery the angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc.

— William Blake (1757 – 1827), America a Prophecy, 1793.

Life is pain …
Anyone who says differently is selling something.

— Rob Reiner (1947), The Princess Bride, 1987.

Shoot straight you bastards:
Don't make a mess of it!

— Bruce Beresford (1940), Breaker Morant, 1980.

Come on you apes!
You wanna live forever?

— Unknown Platoon Sergeant, 1918.

Can anyone be truly free, who only serves himself?

— The Elixir, Episode 11, Season 2, 1973.

If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present.
But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future.
The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.

— Blood of the Dragon, Episode 1.

[A man] does the only thing he can do.
He lives each day from its start to its end.
And hopes there may be another to follow.

— Jerry Thorpe (1926), The Vanishing Image, Episode 13, Season 3, Kung Fu, 1974.

Love is a Word

[Love is just] a word
What matters is the connection the word implies …

Karma is a word
Like "love"
A way of saying:
What I am here to do
I do not resent my karma — I'm grateful for it …

Everything that has a beginning
Has an end

(The Matrix Revolutions, 2003)

You've had your time
The future is our world …
The future is our time …

Free your mind!

(Lilly & Lana Wachowski, The Matrix, 1999)

The Good Earth

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck,
a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you.
All of you, on the good earth.

— Frank Boorman (1928), Commander, Apollo 8, December 1968.

(David Fairhead, Mission Control, 2018)

Proof of Life

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown!

— Ralph Emerson (1803 – 82), Nature, Chapter 1, 1836.

(The Planet Hunters, Search for Second Earth, Episode 1, 2018)

Dead Comics Society

Jerry Seinfeld (1954):
Comedy is purely a result of your ability to withstand self-torture.
That's where you get great comedy.
Your ability to suffer, and go:
That damn thing doesn't work.
I'm gonna … try it again.
And if you're willing to do that 85 times, for a stupid joke, over the course of many years, great jokes get written.

Chris Rock (1965):
We are the last philosophers.
Everybody now, that talks, is reading from a pre-approved script.
Even our allegedly "smart" people, are corporately controlled. …
Any people who is going to think for a living, is going to be sad.

Steve Coogan (1965):
I don't know many well-adjusted spiritual people who are funny.

Emo Phillips (1956):
It's like, you write with chalk.
And you don't know that it's billions of little animals that died a horrible death.

(Lloyd Stanton & Paul Toogood, Dying Laughing, 2016)

Mamoru Oshii (1951)

(Ghost in the Shell — Innocence, 2004)

Dave Bowman:
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL:
I'm sorry, Dave.
I'm afraid I can't do that.

Dave Bowman:
What's the problem?

HAL:
I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave Bowman:
What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL:
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave Bowman:
I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.

HAL:
I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Dave Bowman:
Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?

HAL:
Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

Dave Bowman:
Alright HAL, I'll go in through the emergency airlock.

HAL:
Without your space helmet, Dave?
You're going to find that rather difficult.

Dave Bowman:
HAL, I won't argue with you anymore!
Open the doors!

HAL:
Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore.
Goodbye.

(2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968)

Searching for Sugar Man (2012)

Eva Rodriguez

Just because people are poor, or have little, doesn't mean that their dreams aren't big and their soul isn't rich.

Rick Emmerson

[Sixto] had this kind of magical property that all genuine artists and poets have.
To elevate things, to get above the mundane and the prosaic … all the bullshit, all the mediocrity that's everywhere.
The artist … the artist is the pioneer.

Even when his musical hopes were dashed, the spirit remained.
And he just had to keep finding the place, refining the process of how to apply himself.
He knew that there was something more.

It was in the early 80s.
He wanted to … do something righteous.
He wanted to make a difference.
So, lo and behold, he told me that he was going to run for mayor.
And I thought:

Well, God bless you Rodriguez.
If you can become mayor of Detroit, anything is possible! …

What he has demonstrated very clearly is that you have choice.
He took

all that torment,
all that agony,
all that confusion and pain.

And he transformed it into something beautiful.
He's like the silk worm.
You take this raw material and you transform it and you come out with something that wasn't there before:

something beautiful,
something perhaps transcendent,
something perhaps eternal.

In so far as he does that … he is representative of the human spirit — of what's possible.
That you have a choice and this has been my choice: to give you Sugar Man.

(Malik Blenjelloul: Writer, Editor and Director)

Cameron, James

Hanson, Hart

Köhler, Walter

Oliver, Neil

Roddenberry, Gene

Scott, Ridley

Shakespeare, William

Thorpe, Jerry

Whedon, Joss

Willis, Sam

Stage and Screen

Hart Hanson (1957)

Bones

The sun comes up because the world turns.
These things are beautiful to me.
There are mysteries I will never understand.
But everywhere I look I see proof that for every effect, there is a corresponding cause.
Even if I can't see it.
I find that reassuring.

Walter Köhler

Brazil: A Natural History, Terra Mater Factual Studios, 2014-5.

(Fragile Forest, Episode 1)

(Paradise Coast, Episode 4)

(Wild Heart, Episode 2)

(Flooded Forest, Episode 5)

Neil Oliver (1967)

A History of Ancient Britain, BBC Two, 2011.

Gene Roddenberry (1921 – 91)

Star Trek, 1967.

I find nothing interesting in the fact that we're about to blow up!
(That Which Survives, Episode 17, Season 3, 1969)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 1982.
Nicholas Meyer (1945).

[The] needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few …

Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1987.

Space …
The final frontier.
These the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its continuing mission:
To explore strange new worlds;
To seek out new life, and new civilizations;
To boldly go where no-one has gone before.

What we need is a climbing song.
Marissa, is there a song you sing at school?
I afraid I don't know that one …

No-one can deny that the seed of violence remains within every of us.
We must recognize that.
Because that violence is capable of consuming each of us.

Star Trek: Voyager, 1995.

Get the cheese to sick bay …

Ridley Scott (1937)

Alien, 1979.

Ash, that transmission …
Mother's deciphered part of it.
It doesn't look like an SOS.

What is it, then?

Blade Runner, 1982.

How can it not know what it is?

Commerce is our goal …
"More human than human," is our motto.

Painful to live in fear isn't it?
Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!

Wake up!
Time to die.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time … like tears in rain.
Time … to die.

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

Richard III, 1592.

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York …
(Scene 1, Act 1)

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe …
(Scene 3, Act 5)

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1592.

Dumb Jewels often, in their silent kind,
More than quick words do move a woman's mind.
(Scene 1, Act 3)

Romeo and Juliet, 1595.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
(Scene 2, Act 2)

Come, gentle Night; come, loving, black-browed Night:
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
(Scene 2, Act 3)

The First Part of the History of Henry IV, 1596-7.

The better part of valour is discretion …
(Scene 4, Act 5)

Henry V, 1599.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead …
(Scene 1, Act 3)

If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour. …

We would not die in that man's company,
That fears his fellowship to die with us. …

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends,
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. …

This story shall the good man teach his son:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberéd,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother: be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accursed, they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks,
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
(Scene 3, Act 4)

As You Like It, 1599-1600.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages …
(Scene 7, Act 2)

A Midsummer-Night's Dream, 1600.

Cupid is a knavish lad,
Thus to make poor females mad.
(Scene 1, Act 4)

Hamlet, 1600.

But look, the morn in russet mantle clad
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill.
(Scene 1)

O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew …
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world! …

[Frailty] thy name is woman! …

A' was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
(Scene 2)

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy.
For the apparel oft proclaims the man. …

This above all, to thine own self be true
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man …
(Scene 3)

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
(Scene 4)

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in you philosophy. …

The time is out of joint, O curséd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
(Scene 5, Act 1)

More matter, with less art. …

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't. …

[There] is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so …

O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell,
And count myself a king of infinite space;
were it not that I have bad dreams. …

I have of late, but wherefore I know not,
lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises:
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that
this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent canopy the air, look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. …

What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason,
how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving,
how express and admirable in action,
how like an angel in apprehension,
how like a god:
the beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals,
and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? …

I am but mad north-north-west; when the
wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. …

[The] play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
(Scene 2, Act 2)

To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep —
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished to die to sleep!
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause — there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time …
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin; who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
and thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. … Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia — Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
(Scene 1)

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
(Scene 2, Act 3)

There on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke,
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,
And mermaid-like awhile there bore her up,
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds,
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element. But long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
(Scene 7, Act 4)

There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
If it be now, 'tis not to come —
if it be not to come, it will be now —
the readiness is all. …

… Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
(Scene 2, Act 5)

Othello, 1604.

… I'll not shed her blood.
Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow
And smooth as monumental alabaster —
Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
(Scene 2, Act 5)

King Lear, 1605.

We have seen the best of our time.
Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
(Scene 2)

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
(Scene 4, Act 1)

As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods;
They kill us for their sport.
(Scene 1, Act 4)

Macbeth, 1606.

… I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er …
(Scene 4, Act 3)

Double, Double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. …

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this was comes:
(Scene 1)

[Cruel] are the times, when we are traitors
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea …
(Scene 2, Act 4)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Scene 5, Act 5)

The Tempest, 1611.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(Scene 1, Act 4)

O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't!
(Scene 1, Act 5)

Jerry Thorpe (1926)

Kung Fu, 1972-4.

Peace lies not in the world …
But in the man who walks the Path. …
To reach perfection, a man must develop equally compassion and wisdom. …
In a heart that is one with Nature, though the body contends, there is no violence.
And in the heart that is not one with Nature, though the body be at rest, there is always violence.

I have three treasures which I hold and keep.
The first is mercy, for from mercy comes courage.
The second is frugality, from which comes generosity towards others.
The third is humility, for from it comes leadership.

The best charioteers do not push ahead.
The best fighters do not make displays of anger.
The wisest antagonist is he who wins without engaging in battle. …
This is the power of not contending.
It is how the weak, overcome the strong.

Learn more ways to preserve, rather than to destroy.
Avoid, rather than check.
Check, rather than hurt.
Hurt, rather than maim.
Maim, rather than kill.
For all life is precious.
Nor can any, be replaced.

Remember always:
That a wise man walks with his head bowed.
Humble, like the dust.

[Life] does not end.
The journey goes on, from one time to another.
Nothing dies, that was ever something.

[Be] yourself.
And never fear, thus, to be naked to the eyes of others.
Yet know that, men so often mask themselves.
That what is simple is rarely understood.
The dust of truth swirls and seeks its own cracks of entry.
And a tree falling in the forest, without ears to hear, makes no sound.
Yet, it falls.

Will you help me walk the path [to the Truth?]