Yesterday’s BLOTT (Everybody Loves Me, What About You?) leads naturally to a reflection on humility. Is it possible to combine humor and humility? (Our first humbleness failure may be assuming WLBOTT is funny.) But for the sake of argument, let’s make this assumption and move forward.
There’s an interesting article titled “The Limits of Humility: 5 Zones of Ego”
Contrast this attitude [of arrogance] with Pema Lhaki from Seven Years In Tibet (1997) who, in response to being shown paper clippings of mountaineering triumphs as part of a bid to impress her, tells Brad Pitt’s character: “This is another great difference between our civilisation and yours. You admire the man who pushes his way to the top in any walk of life, while we admire the man who abandons his ego.”
“I see it in the people that do the real work, and what’s sad in a way is that the people that are the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better, usually don’t have the ego and ambition to be a leader.”
Completely overlooking the article’s attribution of this quote, I went on a hunt for the source. The journey was a fun and unexpected rabbit hole.
Anthologies are useful, because they help separate the wheat from the chaff.
But this begs the question: why did Volume 1 not make the cut? It what ways was it deficient?
Anyhow….
Anyhow, we digress. The quote is by the character Celine in the 2004 Richard Linklater move Before Sunset.
I’ve seen (and enjoyed the first movie in the series (Before Sunrise), and UC#3 is a big fan of the series.
Based solely on this quote, I plan to watch Before Sunset today, once my corporate responsibilities are fulfilled and I find myself in a place with no responsibilities.
The Before Trilogy
The Before Trilogy consists of three American romance films directed by Richard Linklater, and starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Beginning with Before Sunrise (1995), and continuing with two sequels, Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). The films were all written by Linklater, along with Kim Krizan on the first film, and with Hawke and Delpy on the last two.
Set and filmed in nine year intervals, the films chronicle the romantic relationship between Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy) at three periods of their lives. […] Before Sunrise was inspired by a woman whom Richard Linklater met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989.
….Amy Lehrhaupt. Almost 25 years ago, [Amy] Lehrhaupt met a young man named Richard Linklater and spent a night with him that he never forgot. Their encounter inspired Linklater to conceive and direct Before Sunrise, the first film in the series. She never saw it, though; unbeknownst to Linklater, by the time that movie came out, Lehrhaupt was dead.
…
Linklater met Lehrhaupt in fall 1989, when he was visiting his sister in Philadelphia. He was 29 and had just finished shooting Slacker, and was staying there for one night while passing through on the way home from New York. Lehrhaupt was several years younger, about 20. They met in a toy shop, and ended up spending the whole night together, “from midnight until six in the morning,” “walking around, flirting, doing things you would never do now.” As in Before Sunrise, most of what they did was talk, “about art, science, film, the gamut.” …. Unlike Jesse and Céline, who agree to reconvene in six months, the real-life young lovers exchanged numbers and tried to keep in touch while they were away. They called each other a few times, but it was “that long distance thing” that did them in. “It sort of did the fizzle,” he says, “So in the first movie that was a thing, the idea that they would intellectually kind of get beyond that and say ‘Well, we’re on different continents. What are the odds that it’s gonna work. Let’s just commit to this night.’ ” … Linklater didn’t know then that Lehrhaupt had died in a motorcycle accident on May 9, 1994, before she reached her 25th birthday. Before Sunrise started filming a few weeks later. Linklater only learned of her death three years ago, when a friend of Lehrhaupt’s, who knew about the encounter, put it together and sent him a letter…. “Who knows how we reverberate through each other’s lives,” Linklater reflected in [an] interview.
One reply on “The Humble “Before””
[…] unstoned, we continue to reflect on Richard Linklater’s Before series (see yesterday’s BLOTT). Here is WLBOTT‘s attempt at our own Before […]