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Tag: Ilsa Lund

Published on Leave a comment on Uncle Melvin’s Creative Writing Exercise for Adolescents

Great birthday gifts for girls

So where are the books? I dropped by Patrick Malloy’s on the way home from work and left them under the bar stool. My birthday present! Yes. I’m so sorry. But they’re still there. Third bar stool from the end. You can pick them up anytime because nobody wants them. Gone with the Wind! Mr. Malloy said he’ll put them on the curb in case a junk dealer comes by. Or he could put your books and essays in a pile and set it on fire. That would draw a massive crowd of cheering customers. 

What are the books about? Great birthday gifts for girls, like railroad time tables. One thousand uses for Elmer’s glue. You’re hopeless. There’s another book. Two thousand wascally wabbits for Elmer Fudd. A creative writing exercise that’s made for your unique talent. I do have the makings of a great writer. That’s, uh, not the talent I meant.

Rick relieves the suspense

Think of a movie with one of those emotional scenes that puts everyone on the edge of their seats. Like when I have to go pee and can’t. Like when Ilsa pulls a gun on Rick and he says, “Go ahead and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor.” How come? Ilsa had to dump Rick and it broke his heart. Now Rick had something that would save her and Victor, her war-hero husband, from capture by the Nazis. Letters of Transit signed by General DeGaulle, and they were desperate to get them.

The suspense is unbearable. What relieved it? Rick farted. How rude! If he’d done that to me I would have shot him. Ilsa still loved him. And she was nice. When she pulled a gun and demanded the Letters of Transit, somebody in the film crew farted and she didn’t do anything. She’d be in trouble if she shot the director. What about a production assistant? She’d probably get star billing and a new contract if she did that.

Back to the Ice Age

They had to re-shoot the scene and this time it was Ilsa who farted. So deafening it made the gun go off by itself. And shatter the crystal? Worse. It brought Captain Renault barging into the scene. Uh oh. He was the French poo-bah responsible for maintaining decorum in Casablanca. And he came to put Ilsa in jail for farting? Worse. He came to blow his whistle and announce that Rick’s Café was closed until further notice. 

Shocking! Very. And he magnified the effect by ripping off a really good one. The screen went blank. Did it come back? No one knows. The theatre projector guy was knocked out and they couldn’t revive him for days. That was it. What a terrific ending! So heart-rending! Yes. You could imagine Rick and Ilsa dancing while the soundtrack played “Dancing in the Dark.”  

Can I pick a film and make the script Oscar-worthy like you just did? That was so cool! Of course! How about “Ice Age?” A huge extinct woolly mammoth would be a creative challenge. I’m sure with your talent you could handle it. Thank you for the compliment.

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Published on 1 Comment on Time Again for Everybody to Come to Rick’s

Rick’s clientele

Refugees in Rick’s Café Americain are noted for having been driven from their fascist homelands because of their minds. Because they’re independent thinkers who can’t be intimidated into mindless conformance, into group-think. Can’t be parted from their individuality, their sovereign rights as citizens to use their judgment to call out injustices and other wrongs that inflict suffering. That offend shared responsibility to the community, to everyone’s future.

They flee oppression with their different languages, dress, and customs, because they have a conscience. Because they refuse to sacrifice their conscience, their values, their individual worth, to the demands of an authority that tolerates nothing but obedience. That achieves conformance by crushing those who refuse to surrender their minds, their free will, their autonomy and individuality, to the group. That insists on possessing its subjects’ consciences and subjecting them to total control so that they may never question its authority. May never question the rightness or wrongness of its rule. May never use their consciences to question at all.

Escape from “paradise”

To ask Why, because independent thinking that asks Why might awaken its subjects to the Reality of their captivity. To the Truth that their “paradise” of forced conformance is based on a lie: that it’s for their benefit when it’s not. When its real purpose is only to preserve the authority of their oppressor. To preserve the appearance of its legitimacy, its façade of unreality.

The refugees in Rick’s Café are non-conformists not to make trouble, not to disrupt peace in the family. They’re non-conformists to stand up against the façade of peace that’s maintained by possession and coercion. By dominance, disempowerment, cruelty, and invalidation instead of sharing, empowerment, fairness, kindness, and affirmation. To stand up for the values that enable real peace, real harmony. Upheld by the free will of its subjects from the bottom up instead of forced upon them from the top down.

For love of Democracy, for love of Diversity

For all their differences the refugees in Rick’s Café are alike in one respect: they are all democrats. They gather together in Rick’s sanctuary in harmony because the values they share are shared freely, not dictated to them by Rick or by anyone else. They are individuals free to display their differences as we are in a free society, in a democracy.To display their individuality, their eccentricities, their special talents, because that’s the point: to enrich their society with diversity. With contributions from every source, every member with anything to offer no matter how unconventional.

The scene is set in the film’s opening shot as the camera pans from the pianist singing “Knock on Wood” to every table. Where individuals from different countries, different cultures, different perspectives, speaking different languages, are engaged in animated conversation. Opening themselves to an intimacy of thinking, feeling, and judgment that would be unimaginable back home. Sharing lives, sharing thoughts, debating philosophy and ideals.

The cruelty of an unchanging status quo

The title of the film Casablanca's original story was Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Because Rick’s welcomes everybody. Everybody, that is, with a conscience who thinks for themselves. Everybody who has the character and the courage to stand up for what’s right, for personal responsibility, kindness, and justice. The very same reasons why they’re not welcome back home.

For them, it’s an honor not to be welcome back home. A source of pride that they’ve stood up for their conscience and attracted notice. That they prefer exile to the comforts of home where free spirits with a conscience don’t belong. Where change is not welcome that would challenge the thoughtlessness, the cruelty, of an unchanging status quo. Proud that they don’t rely on affirmation by group conformance but by their own native worth, their own individual creativity, their own free spirit of love and inquiry.

Allons enfants de la Patrie!

Who comes to Rick’s? The children of Democracy. Those who love Democracy and the spirits of those who’ve fought and died for Democracy. In the context of its time, "Everybody Comes to Rick’s" was right: Everybody united in opposition to fascism comes to Rick’s. There was nobody else then, not in America.

Today, there is somebody else in America. They’ve chosen another place to go: Plato’s Cave. We will visit them in their Cave, but another time. Rick has just given his musicians permission to play La Marseillaise. A momentous change of mind that will put Victor and Ilsa on the last plane to Lisbon and end Rick’s tale with a beautiful friendship. I don’t want to miss it.