Description: Script of the movie Waking Life, based on Tara Carreon's transcription, but with revisions based upon a viewing of the DVD version of the movie, which was watched with subtitles.
Revisions by James Richard Skemp III
This chapter last modified: January 27, 2007
Notes: Special thanks to Andrew, Larry Redden, and Ed Sandberg for pointing out errors in Tara's transcription (numerous errors were fixed here, along with some scene information clarifications). Absolutely let me know if anything slipped by my look-over, especially in the quicker and the 'like, like, you know,' sections ;)
Read the entire Waking Life movie transcript, with revisions.
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[4 Alienation]
(The main character enters a house. Next, we see him taking off his shoes, laying down, and picking up a book, yet the pages appear to be blank. He looks at his alarm clock, and the numbers do not focus, but rather dance around. He lays back and we seem to hear the wind, as if we're near the ocean, after which the main character floats off his bed and through the roof, proceeding to fly over the burbs. We next seem to move from the sky to the ground ...)
***
(Main character walking down the street with a man who is holding a can of gasoline - J.C. Shakespeare.)
A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. Hey, you got a match? And they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left? I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.
(He pours gasoline all over himself and lights himself on fire.)
***
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Waking Life Script with Revisions
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