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Inevitable Image Associations

Mon Oncle Ignatius

08:59 / 14.07.05

Are there certain images from films (or elsewhere) that occur to you every time you perform a certain action? For example, whenever I peel a boiled egg, especially after cracking the shell and then rolling it under my palm, the scene with Louis Cyphre doing the same in Angel Heart flashes into my mind. I have to then stop myself sprinkling a little bit of salt on the peeled egg,while wondering if I should grow my fingernails longer at all.

Likewise, when walking along a certain section of the towpath by the River Lea at Walthamstow Marsh (especially if the sun is hot), I always have the repeated scene from The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie where the characters are all walking down an endless dusty French road crop up, even though the scene in front of me is not exactly the same.

Both circumstances also always make me want to go and watch the film in question again.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:35 / 15.07.05

It's only occurred to me this morning (when it happened again) that walking through grass on a hot day always puts me in mind of the beginning of Blue Velvet, but without the sense of impending doom.

paranoidwriter waves hello

11:55 / 15.07.05

I get this happening all the time (honestly), although I can't remember many visual examples at the moment other than that I often see the bathroom scene in 'Pi' with the power-drill when I think too much. I mainly get quotes and / or the faces of the characters involved with dialogue.

e.g.

Whenever I do a manual job that requires brute strength and a lump-hammer, I always hear the leader of the gang of children in 'Hope and Glory', just before they go ballistic in the half-bombed houses: "Let's smash things up!"

Or when someone makes me a drink and I didn't see them do it, I hear and have to stop myself from mimicking the voice of Bill Paxton's horrible older brother character in 'Weird Science': "You spit in this?"

12:15 / 15.07.05

Funnily enough (or unfunnily enough, if you're me) I have the same headache condition that Max is supposed to have in that film. And everytime I have an attack, I see Max pushing the drill into his head.

paranoidwriter waves hello

12:17 / 15.07.05

Smoothly, it's tempting sometimes aint it?

Also, I've just remembered a classic example of this which I bet many Londoners get when walking through the corridors in the Tube network at night: yup, you guessed it, the famous Underground scene in 'An American Werewolf in London.' Oh, and for ages I couldn't eat rice after I saw 'The Lost Boys' and that scene where Kiefer Sutherland is teasing the vampire newbie as he's about to tuck into his Chinese take-away:

"How can _______ million Chinamen be wrong?" (I always hear it as "a billion", but I figure the original line must have included a more conservative number?)

12:32 / 15.07.05

I imagine it is ‘a billion’, paranoid.
Speaking of the same, I can’t see a bowl of rice with chopsticks without thinking of Woody Allen’s demonstration of how rice is meant to be eaten, in Play It Again Sam.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

12:39 / 15.07.05

Yeah, I get the tube thing with American Werewolf late at night. Not that I go on the tube late at night anymore. Too many werewolves.

Pretty much any unadorned brick corridors with narrow turns (eg at the Vibe Bar/Trumans Brewery on Brick Lane) always makes me think of Doom.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:47 / 15.07.05

Funnily enough on the Tube thing, a while back coming home from a gig I ended up in a station, I don't remember which one, late on a Sunday night and missed the last train to work (I never usually take the Tube, what with living in Hackney). It was one of those stations in which you have to walk miles to get to your platform before you realise it's all over, and then have to walk for ages back through the thing to get a bus, all the while worrying that you may be locked in. Place was festooned, FESTOONED, with posters for "Creep".

A few days later, I watched "Creep". Not a bad movie, all told, but strangely less creepy than actually walking through a Tube station where, to the best of my knowledge, there weren't actually any psychos or anything.

VonKobra,Scuttling&Slithering

15:01 / 15.07.05

Whenever I'm out on the Beach I get pictures of Spitfires crashing into the waves from that film about the Czechs in the RAF.
Whenever I'm on the Train I get visions of Battle Royale or Clockwork Orange.
And whenever I'm at work chopping stuff in the kitchen I get visions of The Dude looking for his Rug...

15:14 / 15.07.05

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this but when crossing the road through the flow of traffic I always have the urge to hit my hands on the bonnet of a passing car like in the title sequence of Shaft.
I don't do it because it's likely to get me punched, but I imagine it.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

15:22 / 15.07.05

phyrefox: That's brilliant - you may have infected me with that particular meme. I will try to remember not to do it though for similar reasons.

Then again - my aged parent on my father's side, as was, used to carry an old fashioned umbrella with which he would strike out at cars which didn't stop for him on zebra crossings. I've now inherited the umbrella, but it's a bit knackered - though when it's fixed, I may carry it again, perhaps bringing Shaft references into the equation. Those pesky Mofo car drivers had better be on their guard!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

15:28 / 15.07.05

it's a bit knackered

I'm not fucking surprised!

Mon Oncle Ignatius

23:10 / 22.08.05

I remembered another one - when feling tired and weary and old (which is on the odd occasion) and buying booze, especially spirits, at the off licence, I cannot get the image of David Bowie and Candy Clark from the end of The Man Who Fell To Earth out of my mind. Somehow or other, this actually cheers me up in some strange way, which is perhaps peculiar, given that it seems like a sad state of being that they end up in the film itself.

08:35 / 23.08.05

Everytime I enter a bus and have to stand because there are no seats left the scene from Fight Club pops up in my mind where Jack says "Everywhere we went we were sizing things up." Actually the whole conversation in that scene: "Is that what a man looks like?" "Self-improvement is masturbation. No self-destruction.."

The other thing is I always have to laugh when I look into my wardrobe and see a certain woollen jacket I have. It so reminds me of the Dude standing in front of the cooling shelve, sniffing a package of milk while the clerk is looking at him very sceptically.

09:23 / 23.08.05

Traffic makes me wanna do Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy- "Hey, I'm walkin' here!". Odd, because I've never actually seen the whole film. I could do the Sandra Bullock Miss Congeniality version- "Hey, I'm glidin', here!".
When I'm drinking with mates, any mention of The Toilet will cause me to start channelling Jack Carter. Ooh, next time I should totally ask for a pint of lager, then snap my fingers and demand a thin glass...
I suspect the reason they removed me from the deli at work could have been my Under Seige habit. "This is not a chef's knife!" "Casey Rybeck is an extreme psychopath! He hates authority and he hates America!" "Get my pies outta the oven!". Then again, it could have been the eight complaints and two death threats I recieved in the space of two weeks.
I had a real Matrix moment once- I was walking through Darling Harbour, not so far from where they shot the films, and realised everyone around me (mostly businesspeople on lunch) was dressed as a Smith, Trinity, Neo, or Morpheus. I was keeping one eye out for the Girl in the Red Dress. Sydney has to be the only city in the world where that can happen...

09:43 / 23.08.05

Being lowered into molten steel always reminds me of Terminator 2.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:02 / 23.08.05

Damn! You get that too?