Sunday, December 27, 2009

My favorite Simpsons moment

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Barney: Next, they're going to show _my_ movie.
  Bart: _You_ made a movie?
Barney: _I_ made a movie?  No wonder I was on the cover of
        "Entertainment Weekly".
-- Barney's short-term memory, "A Star is Burns"

Barney's movie is in black and white.  It opens with a shot of a Duff
beer bottle on a windowsill.  Gauzy white curtains billow around it as
the love theme from "M.  Butterfly" plays.  A hand grabs the bottle and
turns it upside down; the camera pans slowly down to reveal Barney's
lips on the other end of it.

The next shot shows Barney from above lying on a couch under the window.
As a voiceover, he says, "My name is Barney Gumbel.  I'm 40, I'm single,
and I drink."  The scene fades to a road where Barney lies in the
gutter, drinking another Duff, then lying down.  The Duff pours slowly
into a sewer grating.  "There's a line in `Othello' about a drinker:
`Now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast.'  That
pretty well covers it."  The camera shows a time lapse view of clouds
moving during the day, which turns to night, then back to day again.
Barney has become an old man, bald, toothless, still lying in the same
gutter.  A tear leaks from his eye.

A woman watching the movie is moved.

 Woman: It's brilliant: savagely honest, tender...he has the soul of a
        poet.
Barney: You're very kind.
 Woman: Excuse me, did something crawl down your throat and die?
Barney: It didn't die!
-- Methinks the man doth protest too much, "A Star is Burns"

Back on the screen, Barney sits in a chair and says, "My name is Barney
Gumbel, and I'm an alcoholic."  The camera pulls back to reveal several
similarly-attired girls.  Lisa says, "Mr. Gumbel, this is a Girl Scout
meeting."  Barney asks, "Is it?  Or is it that you girls can't admit you
have a problem?"

The scene fades to a playing record player, then back to Barney on the
couch, a rose held to his nose.  "Don't cry for me," he narrates, "I'm
already dead."  He puts the rose in the Duff bottle on the windowsill;
its petals fall off slowly, and the curtain billows in front of it as
"Fin" appears.
  
  
(I can't find an English version of this video, but this is the clip... In Italian.... :0/ )

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