How many times did you have to watch this movie to follow everything Bogart was saying? Isn’t that what makes it great? That it’s right there in front of you, but it’s so hard to follow.  A shudder still goes up my spine every time he gives it to her. Every line out of his mouth is a gem.  What’s so important about the Maltese Falcon thematically to 9/11 you might ask? The concept of the fall guy, the sap, going over for it. I had hoped to make the point that, yes, it’s true that the 19 hijackers may have hated the US and indeed flew planes into the buildings. But also that they were set up.  They were recruited, indoctrinated, trained and facilitated by an iran-contra like secret government agency. Perhaps that secret government agency was called Able Danger. We’ll never know. They destroyed all the data relevant to their program in March 2001.  2.5 terabytes of data, supposedly equal to 1/4 of the printed books in the library of congress, according to Webster Tarpley.

Of course I always loved the Maltese Falcon, but for me as a modern viewer, I never liked Mary Astor. I never found her attractive personally and in that sense she failed as a femme fatale. I just didn’t get why Bogart fell under her spell. It wasn’t until I found out that she was the sexpot of the day, the Paris Hilton of her time, that her understated sexuality in the film made sense.

Able Danger is fiction, but was inspired in large part Vox Pop. First and foremost Vox Pop is a place to bring your laptop, surf the internet, drink insanely strong fair trade coffee, peruse the bookshelves for books that didn’t seem to appear anywhere else that posed and answered questions I had been wondering why weren’t be answered in the mainstream media, and ultimately where I could meet the community I lived in. Vox Pop is one of those rare businesses with soul.

When I discovered that the owner of the store, Sander Hicks, wrote a 9/11 conspiracy book called ‘The Big Wedding,” my initial reaction was, the same as I imagine most of America’s would still be, I thought, ‘What a kook! He’s wasting his time writing about conspiracy theories?’ It was only because I was such a fan of the cafe itself that I read his book. And that’s when I fell down the rabbit hole. It’s a short book, and it’s entertaining, but it’s a dense big-picture-read chock full of political and personal intrigue. ‘Gonzo Journalism’ is how I first heard it described, It was so well written and well documented that I spent the next year reading and researching 9/11.

Once again, the movie is fiction. The Able Danger story line is right out of a Dashiell Hammett novel. But the Vox Pop Cafe/Bookstore is real. The Big Wedding is a real book. The idea was to make a hero out of the man I initially considered a cook, to place his maverick investigative journalism into the context of a Sam Spade adventure. He is the modern day Don Quixote taking on windmill-dragon of our collective understanding of truth as determined by the corporate oligarchies that control mainstream media. If there was a Vox Pop in every community, I think things would be a bit different ’round here.

Why is this the greatest film? Because it’s so funny. It takes the most serious subject ever known to the history of man and forces us to laugh while we watch the end of the world. At the same time its one of the most profound films ever made; top two.  Happens to be Kubrick’s second most profound film, but it’s his only comedy right?  Why is it so profound?  Because the end of the world really will come about because of some moronic ideology –every dogmatic ideology is moronic — and Strangelove is profound because we can laugh at it in the movie — the film teaches us to laugh at our moronic ideologies. It forces us to laugh at them. Laugh at them and give them up or perish.  It is comedy as the most profound sign of intelligence. I like to pretend to believe that this film actually helped and continues to help us authentically understand our world. All the characters are perfect caricatures, which is to say they’re the perfect comedic ideals, the platonic forms, comic archetypes.. 

 Strangelove is the film I always wanted to make. This is perfect art. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the hubris to believe Able Danger approaches Strangelove, by no means. I just like writing the two movies in the same sentence — please don’t hold that against me. Oh no! Now some critic is going to hold one up to the other, and the bright light of the Strangelove sun will blind her to the moon that is reflecting it’s light. I woudn’t have ventured a comparison myself, but when, at the Q&A following the Brooklyn Film Fest Opener the comparison was made by someone in the audience, there was a lump in my throat and my heart quietly danced for joy. Somebody got it. 

In conclusion, I’ll point out that Mccain, for example, is one kind of caricature; 

I love this video. Yes, it was the inspiration for the opening of my film. This was a bit of an eye opener the first time I saw it too… so beautiful, so well done, so mind blowing….

You can see my homage here…

When I was writing Able Danger, I was actually going to make it about voter fraud. Not sure why I didn’t? It’s true that when W. won the SECOND time that I wanted to abandon American and move to Amsterdam. How could we make the same mistake twice? I really sincerely believe that G.W. Bush wasn’t elected either time. Doesn’t everyone believe that?  Why aren’t we doing something about it?  Do we really think the voting system has been fixed? First Florida, then Ohio. I can’t wait to see how the Obama doesn’t win. We are such a bunch of pussies! Or maybe Rove is going to take the election off? The shadow government will just off Obama later.  I really hope I don’t look back on this blog and say, ‘look I was right, I knew they were gonna kill him. See it’s right there in blog’  Well I’m not the first who thinks that. We all sort of expect it right? He’s too good to be true.  Isn’t that the most disgusting thing? That we all implicitly know that there is, in the words of Webster Tarpley, a shadow government that will off Obama if he gets to powerful and decides to really effect change that is too profound.  I knock wood that I’m wrong. 

But seriously, follow the ownership of the voting machine companies, they’re all republicans. It’s not that complicated.   Maybe it’s because this video just isn’t that ENTERTAINING! Poorly shot, bad camerawork… not sexy babes, no chase scenes…. so fuck it! Let’s just kill Arabs in the name of Democracy!

This video shows how simple it is. 

Anywho,  I think it’s because I actually became convinced that 9/11 is actually the bigger issue. Because everything in our political landscape is defined by 9/11.  And you don’t have to scratch too deep to become disullusioned with the official 9/11 story either….

Was it the voter fraud? I think it was the skull and bones…

Did anyone notice the way the police cracked down on critical mass in New York especially before the Republican Convention? Of course we noticed. Why did they do that?  Because Critical Mass are the true revolutionaries. The revolution has to be against the control of the OIL-military-industrial complex.  And the People who make the EFFORT to actually ride their bikes instead of using fossil fuel based forms of transportation are the only ones who actually put in the effort on a daily basis — the ones who get it.  They get that bikes are the most reasonable rational form of transportation that exists for urban living (yes, the netherlands is objectively better simply because it has bike lanes everywhere).

With the slap in the face of having the Republican Convention in New York, I think New Yorkers were just pissed off enough that Critical Mass could have actually been THE CRITICAL MASS. You know what critical mass is, right?  Originally it was just a chemistry term, critical mass n. The smallest mass of a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a constant level. But now it has come to mean; Definition:. 1. point of change: a point or situation at which change occurs. Support for the measure has reached critical mass.  

In short, with enough New Yorkers pissed off enough at the Republicans for holding their convention in New York that we were ready to march to shut them down, the police came out in force. And they came out hardest on critical mass.    Why? As I said, the crazy people who believe bikes, should have a place to ride and are willing to stand up to cars to express their belief  – needed to be shut down. And shut down hard. Giuliani understood this. 

While we’re talking about the Republican convention, does anyone recall the entire Republican platform? Remember this youtube classic? Yes, it does all come back to 9/11…

I can’t wait to see what the 9/11 count is at this year’s Republican convention…

Elina plays Kasia. Kasia is on the run. She needs help. She knows that our hero Thomas Flynn considers himself a noble do gooder. Actually she really does need help getting the truth out.

Elina always steals the scene. In a good way. She was perfect for the role in Able Danger. I’m so glad she decided to work with the first time director. I guess the script wasn’t that bad? In the youtube clip above you can see her memorable scene from Schindler’s List where she tells the Nazi in charge you can’t build that way and she gets it in the back of the head.