THEORY: Everyone Knows Bruce Wayne is Batman

*i'm making this into a video so it's written like one, so that's why it's written like it is

Hey, this is LastVCR, which stands for... You know what I'll save it for after the show. And today I'm going to give you irrefutable proof that everyone in the Dark Knight trilogy knows Bruce Wayne is Batman. Except apparently Commissioner Gordon, cus I mean it's not like he's a detective or like has access to police databases.

Yes, maybe you've heard this theory somewhere before. But I'm diving deep and providing more proof than I've seen in most outlets. And for these purposes I'm only focusing on the Dark Knight trilogy, or at least as much as is tolerable (shot of Bane and Batman Talking). WHAT?! (another) WHAT?!! (another) seriously this movie may as well have been in sign language.

Anyways, Let's get started

1  - This one's the most basic, so let's get it out of the way. Bruce Wayne, billionaire of the city, basically a Kennedy of Gotham. Reappears out of nowhere, makes headlines and then, what like 3 months later? Batman, a person with excessively expensive gadgets, also appears. Yeah the people of Gotham figured it out, like the first time both of them were in the headlines together. But you don't just go around embarrassing the Kennedys, especially when they're bankrolling the city like the Waynes have been doing. From building infrastructure, sheltering orphans, to molding elections. The city just keep their collective mouths closed. Who cares that your local billionaire has a leather fetish, cus yeah Gotham may be bad now, but imagine how much worse it'd be without all that great Wayne money.

2 - REESE ISN'T FROM GOTHAM

 Morgan Freeman's line sums up this point. (clip: "...and you want to blackmail this person.) It's amazing script writing at its finest, but also, just literally what all of Gotham is thinking. That line isn't super clever to Luscious Fox, it's just common knowledge. Don't fuck with the guy who basically owns the town and knows karate. It's just that Kyle Reese doesn't have any friends, he thinks it's a big secret, cus he's a freelance accountant from out of town that no one has gotten around to telling about. 

3 - JIM GORDON
I take back my first remarks about Jim Gordon. Jim Gordon knows, obviously, and he's just playing surrogate father to a boy he helped once. That whole "It's Mr. Wayne isn't it?" Yeah right Jim! I'm sorry or do you not remember giving Bobby Kennedy your jacket the night his very prolific parents were murdered on your beat. You disgusting liar. And his first response when Bruce hits a police vehicle isn't: oh hey we're going to need your insurance information, because you were just involved in a multi-car collision and I'm a cop, AND I AM A COP. NO! He sucks up to Bruce Wayne, letting him fulfill his little fantasy for a second, like a parent would a child. And tells him to go on his way. Also, and this has no bearing on anything, why is this emergency vehicle stopped at a red light? I mean they've all got their emergency lights on anyway. Just Keep Going!

4 - THE BAD GUYS
 You know who's always honest? Assholes. Assholes and children. Oh I can't say that? Jerks, I mean jerks and children. And who are the jerks of this world? The "bad guys". And they all know Batman's secret identity. Let's go through the list super fast

1st- Raz Al Ghoul, self-explanitor, trained Batman
2nd - Scarecrow, I mean, cus he's an employee of Raz. I feel like that'd be pretty crucial information if Scarecrow's going to do his job well.
3rd - Joker, duh, he sees that the city is being held ransom by this like, rich asshole, just destroying infrastructure, murdering people, but the citizens and cops just keep sweeping it under the rug. So he's like, oh ok, you want to play this game for real? And he does (exploding hospital). The scene when he burns the money, that's a signal to the people of Gotham: "Hey stop letting money rule your life, I just literally killed every mobster from here to China, you can stop letting Brucebat pretend to be a... a whatever that is, I mean he doesn't actually look like a bat. I mean he's just got pointy ears. I mean he could be a pittbull terrier with those things. Anyways I mean The Joker goes to Bruce's apartment party hoping to find Batman, how could he not. He's like, oh Harvey and Batman will be there, now I have to go. I mean he could have easily found Harvey like, on the way to his car, lot less people there probably.

4 - Speaking of Harvey Dent aka Two Face aka Cigarettes are bad. probably exploits Bat Bruce more than anyone. When Bruceman brings up "the masked vigilante" at dinner. Harvey immediately jumps in and supports the Batman. Why? So he can get that sweet rooftop party money. Bruce leans in and is like hey I know I said Batman's crazy, but I like that you like Batman so let me give you like all the money. Harvey's transition to Two-face actually makes more sense that way. It makes more sense that Harvey would kill his way to find Bat Bruce, for dicking up his life in this weird charade.
5 - Catwoman - of course knows, I mean she's at his apartment, then a party, just like poking the bear, you know. Maybe her real mission was to see if Bruceman was really cripple so Bane could go on with his plan.
6 - Bane - well that's made pretty evident.
7 - Oh and Talia al'Ghoul... though it still doesn't make any sense that she slept with him. I've never figured that out, I mean I wouldn't sleep with the guy who killed my dad. Even if it was batman. (double check) Yeah, still not. Would not be ok with the killing...

in fact the whole trilogy can be explained this way

5 - GOTHAM IS FED UP BY THE THIRD MOVIE
This scene here where Bane steals all Bruce's money.... somehow. There's no way that transaction would be legal, not in this world, not in no world, no how, ever. Bruce would just call the bank, be like hey, check your cameras, I wasn't even there. Some guy hijacked the place wearing an inhaler
that, charges his phone. (clip) Real Thing. And they or his bank, or insurance would return his money. They, the people of Gotham, are sick of BatWayne so they allow the transaction to go through, so that Batman will hopefully stop futzing around with their city. And they make a concerted effort to arrest him.

lightning round
- what's the joker's failsafe? Like if his whole thing is blackmailing people then why doesn't anyone just kill him and keep all this money? Like, hey this guy has a gun. Just shoot the Joker, wouldn't be that hard. I mean if this is what the Joker does with money, those henchmen aren't getting paid. So what's their motive? Did it start out as a fight club/project mayhem thing?


Oh and MP4, it's just the file format videographers use to export videos. In the future I'll say it means Movie Pessimist or Media Preservers or something. But you'll know it's just a little inside nothing joke.

ESSAY: Snatch = Pulp Fiction

Snatch is a response to Pulp Fiction. It's not a copy, or a remake, or simply taking a similar tone, but a response, a compliment, the yellow to blue, the drum beat to the guitar, etc. There are similarities; snappy dialogue, a circus of violent yet enticing characters, and a whimsical sort of grit. I say compliment because it works intentionally to fill gaps that Pulp Fiction left blank and explores questions that Pulp Fiction asks. Here let me show you: 

In Pulp Fiction much of the main action occurs off screen. It plays up small moments like conversations and pooping leading up to the action but leaves out many large action scenes themselves (like Bruce Willis's boxing match or Marsellus Wallace throwing Samoan Joe off a balcony).  Snatch, almost beat for beat, makes a point of showing us that action. We see the big boss being a merciless killer, the boxing matches, gruesome torture. villains being villains, and trophies being hunted. It's like a conversation that Ritchie is having with Tarantino, like "hey I love your style, but what would we learn by doing this instead?"


1- The Characters
Let's start at the top of the food chain in both worlds. We have Marsellus Wallace in Pulp  and Brick Top in Snatch. Both of course play the role of the intimidating, incredibly violent mob bosses that everyone fears and works for. "Sure, but there aren't there tons of movies with crime bosses?" you might say, "well, none done quite like this".

Let's start with that gap we mentioned, the gap Tarantino leaves open and Ritchie fills in, what does Marsellus Wallace not do?

Throughout Pulp Fiction characters allude to the violent acts Marsellus Wallace has committed either himself (throwing Tony Rockyhorror out a 3 story window). Or violent acts he's getting others to do such as torturing Bruce Willis' manager or "taking a blowtorch and a pair of pliers to this motherfucker right here". All we ever really see of his brutality is him accidentally shooting some lady in the leg and very intentionally shooting Zed in the dick, both are pretty brief and neither incident seems to say: I'm a heartlessly brutal motherfucker. Wallace is a man wrapped around myth to the viewer, we imagine his acts the same way we imagine the monster in a slasher flick before finally getting a good look at it. Zed's imminent torture is more terrifying in our imaginations than we ever get shown. So Ritchie thinks to himself, "that's cool! But how do you show a heartless, brutal gangster and still make them intimidating?"

That's where we get Brick Top. The entire movie revolves around everyone tiptoeing around this scary and violent psychopath. But we witness all the terrible shit he does. Turkish's opening monologue about Brick Top feeding people to pigs? That's literally the next scene. And not only do we just see him feeding pigs but we see the reaction of these horrors in the faces of the two mammoth boxers witnessing the murder.

And every scene after Brick Top is more violent and ruthless than the last. In the commentary Guy Richie was talking to someone about how to make Brick Top as unlikable as possible and that person told him: people hate people that torture dogs more than anything. So that's exactly what we see. So that when he barbecues Brad Pitt's mom, we know for sure he did it. 


And the parallels continue with many characters, but like, I mean, there's a lot of characters, in both movies, so... moving on!

2 - The McGuffin 
Another instance of Ritchie's response is the rigged boxing matches that are undermined by the boxers. Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, Brad Pitt in Snatch. And you've probably figured out the theme here. Pulp Fiction boxing = completely off screen, we only hear details in a taxicab as Bruce reminisces with some French cabbie over cigarettes. While Snatch makes huge set pieces from the boxing matches, where we feel the tension in all characters involved.

And it goes on from there, from shootouts, to heists, chases, oh and the valuables everyone's chasing. 

3 - The Valuable 
The most memorable prop in Pulp Fiction of course is a light bulb inside a brief case. We, the audience, give the case value because the characters give it value. They murder people over it like, like all day. Quick aside, did you notice that we see Travolta and Jackson firing their weapons but we really don't see the bullets going into their victims except that Jerry Seinfeld looking mother fucker. 


In Snatch, on the other hand, the opening scene is all about attaining and introducing a giant-fuck-off-diamond, the EXTREMELY VISIBLE center-piece that will drive the plot of half the movie. And that people toss around, shoot each other over, chase, cut off limbs, you saw the movie, you get it. 

4 - Scenes and Pacing
You can compare this to more than just characters and plots. Whole scenes and themes are total throwbacks and comments on to Pulp Fiction. To test this I played the Pulp Fiction Soundtrack while watching Snatch on mute and a lot of scenes match up rather well. You start when Freddy Four Fingers whips out the guns, start up Misserlou, skip the dialogue parts in the Pulp Fiction soundtrack and it's pretty funny what lines up. I've outlined some examples that worked here:

SNATCH / PULP FICTION 

1- Heist Scene / Robbery

2- Meet a likable duo with great dialogue back and forth as they set out to do a job that will inevitably bring about their final scene

3- Meet the Mob Boss (Wallace talking to Bruce Willis with an opening monologue and Brick Top talking having his employees suffocated)

4 - etc. - some parts match up some don't but the overall gist is really the flow of the movie.

The opening credits in both movies rolls in high-octane crazy music. But while Pulp Fiction has a blank screen with text on it, Snatch has a fun, wild cartoonish opening with hilarious violence. 

5  - The Car Crash
Shot by shot car crash including, drum roll -  the trunk shot. For my money this scene is Guy Ritchie's clearest wink to Tarantino.
1- the cars wreck, fade to black.
2- the characters come to
3- A bunch of people, no, not just people, a bunch of women, which have seriously been absent aside from Mia Wallace and Mickey's mom, are suddenly surrounding the parties involved in the wreck as they come to.
4- And most importantly is THE TRUNK SHOT (known as the Tarantino shot), which makes me think it is a direct and deliberate response to Pulp Fiction. The wink here is equally clever. In a Tarantino film we'd be expecting to see one of the gangsters looking down into the trunk. Instead, in Snatch, we see no one looking into the trunk, defying our expectation. And telling us that Boris has left the trunk.

6 - A Hero
We have archetypal heroes in both movies, and while they have scenes where they take center stage, the entirety of the movie does not hinge on their decisions. Butch is the archetype of the American hero, Butch is a strong, but struggling middle class, boxer descended from war veterans, who has what it takes to stick it to the man. Turkish is a well-informed, quick-witted Brit who always comes out on top in banter, even if he is losing the scene.


7 - Shepard the Weak
The weak are separated from the strong which seems like something you could say a lot of movies, but these do it in a very unique way. Each party in each situation has power, power that changes hands through the course of the scenes. In Pulp Fiction we see Jules (Samuel Jackson's character) go from neutral, exchanging rhetoric w/ John Travolta - to powerful when he commands the room where they shoot everyone - to being at the mercy of Jimmy (Tarantino's character) and Mr. Wolf (Harvey Keitel's character) when they try to get rid of the body - then back on top in the bar scene finale. And you can see this change of power with every character in Pulp Fiction from Mia Wallace to Marsellus Wallace. 


And Snatch has the same dynamics, especially as the diamond switches hands between the Americans, the Russians, and the Pawn Shop owners, wait is this some kind of Cold war- nevermind. In most typical Hollywood movies, sure the main character gets captured, or goes through some mediocre played out "trial" but in these movies the shift of power occurs between characters simply interacting. Show me a movie where Kurt Russel has to pander and beg a whiney asshole about some coffee or Stalone gets kidnapped in a pawn shop and - ahem.

And these movies make a point of weeding out the truly weak from the truly strong. At the beginning of Pulp Fiction we may think the restaurant robbers are cool and maybe even badass on first viewing but by the end we see they're nothing compared to real strong people like Jules. And in Snatch we see the same dynamics play out in a restaurant. In a what? A restaurant? HE SAID WHAT?! A FUCKING RESTAURANT. As we see Bullet Tooth Tony completely show up three dudes trying to rob him of his brief case as he casually sips his drink, holding his piece. OH SHNAP! 

Is that it? Yeah I think that covers it. If you have your own opinions or things you think shoulda made it on the list, I don't care, I mean I'll read them, but I'm gonna just say I don't care because... well I mean someone's gonna try to be hurtful, I just, I just know it. 

THEORY: Parks and Rec is in Ann Perkins' head

ANN PERKINS IS DEPRESSED

Parks and Rec is a heart-felt show inexplicably revolving around Politics in America, particularly one politician, Leslie Knope. Knope's rise through the ranks in American government is followed by her close friends and coworkers, whom she motivates to succeed along the way. Except for one person, Ann Perkins: beautiful, helpful, positive, confused Ann Perkins who never really does succeed or advance except in one aspect, that she becomes a happier, more stable person. Why is that? Because Ann is the only real person in this show and everyone else is totally imagined.  Let's inspect Ann's life, alone, away from the Parks and Rec squad. Ann is:
1- A lonely nurse in a small town who can't advance in her field and doesn't have the will to move to a larger city.
2- Ann can't land a date b/c she's awkward around people
3- When she does date she mimics her bf's behavior b/c she lacks self-respect or identity
4- She isn't respected by any of her peers except Leslie and Chris.
5- Finally, there's a whole episode where she throws a halloween party which fails miserably, and the kicker is that she knows it's going to fail before anyone even arrives.


Point being, Alone Ann would be a great character on Girls. And I believe she's a lonely, depressed woman who has created this show in her mind as a fiction to inspire her to be happier and more successful, with the figurehead being Leslie Knope.

So this whole idea started when I was thinking about April and Andy. April and Andy's personalities are clearly based on pets. Andy is a dog: unwaveringly loyal, energetically positive, and ridiculously impulsive. April is a cat: aloof, distant, independent, and just messes with your stuff for no reason. Both of their names start with "A, just like "Ann", which is exactly what a sad spinster might to do her pets. And guess who'd marry their pets? Oh old spinsters, because Andy and April get married before any other couple in the show despite being the youngest people there.

Now the step before you marry your pets is to start writing fiction to pass the time and fantasize about what life could have been if you weren't a depressed nurse cleaning peoples' butts for days on end. Leslie is Ann's alter ego, her Superwoman if Ann was a sad Clark Kent. Ann imagines stories of Leslie's rise to success to distract from own life as a lackey nurse tasked with cleaning bed pans and giving sponge baths.*

Ann imagines fun stories about Leslie, a spunky, strong, successful woman who'll eventually become president. Leslie's hilariously funny antics are distractions from Ann's own morose reality. Leslie even ends up taking Ann away from her post at the hospital and giving her a nice new job in city hall. A job Ann is clearly unqualified for. A job that allows Ann to be around the group of (fictional) friends she has been fantasizing about. Closing the loop of crazy by finally living and working with her imaginary friends.

Proof also lies in the only two people she's close to, Leslie and Chris, who are absurd optimists, even by absurdly optimistic peoples' standards. They constantly compliment Ann the way that a life coach or a much needed internal voice might do. Leslie constantly complimenting Ann's beauty and Chris' "Ann Perkins!", etc. constantly assure her that she's a wonderful human being as everyone else puts her down. These people are actually just the voices in Ann's head combating her own depression. When she's putting herself down or ending another toxic relationship she imagines Leslie or Chris showing up with a assuring words on how beautiful and smart Ann is.

I think the most interesting character in this scenario is Chris. Chris is what Ann imagines happy people are like, effortlessly joyful, healthy, and optimistic. It's a depressed person's view of "normal" people, people unburdened by the chronic sadness that a depressed person must struggle with every day.

Let's look at Chris and Ann's relationship arc. When Chris is first introduced he is perceived by her and the audience as a wonderful, positive person and she dates him. While dating Ann works on being healthier and happier briefly, the way someone might do for a new years resolution. Then Chris breaks up with her without her even realizing it. In this scenario the breakup is her subconsciously giving up on becoming the unachievably optimistic person she has been straining to be. After that Chris devolves into an ironically enthusiastic caricature, as she now sees optimism as a foreign, ridiculous culture to be mocked. "I mean happy people must be faking it, right? No one could be as happy as these people seem," she says to herself, sipping on $5 wine alone in the shower with her dog Andy.

Yet Chris lingers, despite the opportunity to be
sent away (in the episode where he is supposed to go back to Indianapolis). This is because Ann realizes this goal and character are silly but that she should strive to be happier anyways. Soon after Chris realizes that to become truly happy he needs to go to therapy. This is Ann's intervention with herself, when she gives in and begins going to therapy. Therapy is tough and uncovering a lot of deep emotions (as we see Chris is now always crying). It's rough, so to cope Ann makes Leslie's stories become even brighter. Leslie falls in love, gets a great house, gets married, even Lil' Sebastian comes back.

To complete Ann's arc, the rest of the series around the fifth season is about Ann accepting her own level of joy and her position in life. She explicitly says this in multiple episodes. She is finally ok with being herself and single, she doesn't need a man in her life to be happy or define her. She sells all her old boyfriend's stuff in her "phases" in the auction episode. She also gets closer to April and Ron, which I see as her finally making friends in real life like she's been trying to do for so long.

Oh and what happens next? When Chris finishes his therapy and bounces back from his depression Ann and him inexplicably move and leave the Parks and Rec squad behind. Ann leaves, all this time on the show and she just dip sets while doing what she wants for herself, arm in arm with her imaginary life coach. If we see this from Ann's perspective this is her happy ending, she leaves her fantasy and imaginary friends behind in search of a real, more fulfilling life in a new city. This is the equivalent of Ed Norton shooting himself to get rid of Tyler Durden in fight club.

I could go on about how Ron is her father figure, constantly supplying wisdom and tough love, but always disappointed and distant. Tom and Donna are her online presence, spunky, confident, up to date on culture but ultimately shallow. Tom always posing as more successful and happy than he actually is, while continually destroying his relationships once his partner realizes that his confidence is a facade (much like an online dating profile). And no one cares about Jerry Larry Terry Gurgich, he's probably just GIFs on Reddit that she sees of someone being lit on fire.

*I just want to take a second to say I think nurses should be paid more than politicians, they deal with us at our worst and spend more time with you than your doctor ever will. My nurse friends are some of the most giving and selfless people I've ever known. I'm writing this from the perspective of a depressed person who happens to be a nurse but is unsatisfied with her job.