Faith

Extremely funny and extremely violent is a way of framing Quentin Tarantino's masterpeice of the moment, Django Unchained.

What works in the movie is what works in almost all story-telling: exaggeration.

Exaggeration to the degree where even exaggeration is pushed beyond the boundary exaggeration might be expected to go.

Malcolm McDowell the actor once asked me to write a 'sketch' for a possible tv show based upon a meglomanical character we both knew and loathed. Malcolm wanted to play the part and I kept that in mind as I wrote. "Keep it to one page," Malcolm said, "and when you think you've taken it to an extreme push harder."

He set up a lunch meeting with a tv producer at The Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard. We talked about this and that as we ate. When the check came, I pulled out my sketch, and handed it to the producer.

"What's this?" the producer asked. Malcolm explained that this was a sketch of a possible tv series in which he might star and the producer might find the resources to bankroll, as they'd previously discussed. "O yeah," the producer said, "I'll take a look."

"You gotta have a lot of faith when you're in this business," the producer said as we shook hands. Neither Malcolm or I ever heard from him again.

Cleaning out files in a desk drawer yesterday, I came upon the sketch. It's really pretty good, I don't think the material allowed me to push any harder.

Regarding Christianity--a major sub-context in Tarantino's film--the question has to be asked why do we persist in doing something that doesn't seem to work, has been tried over and over for over 2000 years with less than wonderful results, promulgates illusions of freedom which are bound to be disappointing in the end, and whose bottom line would be viewed as a failure by anyone with the slightest business sense?