19-05-2011, 06:35 PM
Steve Franklin Wrote:Jan Klimkowski Wrote:The Lovers, Lee and Judyth, get the best lines in this screenplay:
Quote:"We've created a galloping cancer," [said Judyth Baker].… We are developing this weapon to eliminate a head of state. But what if we get Castro? Will they really just throw this stuff away?"Lines that are overblown, anachronistic, and strike me as hugely unlikely.
"It could be used as a weapon of mass distraction," [said Lee Harvey Oswald] simply.
"Yes… think I'll Hitler would have loved this, to use against the Jews in those camps. They could say a plague went through."
"Or to eliminate Negroes in Africa," Lee said with a cold tone in his voice."
Page 391, "Me and Lee"
If you're calling the term "weapon of mass destruction" anachronistic, there's a decent article at Wikipedia under that heading, which traces the first use in English to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937. It was used in reference to nuclear weapons as early as 1945.
But the line as transcribed and given to Oswald isn't "weapon of mass destruction"...
And there are other anachronisms in that cod dialogue, such as the prefiguring of AIDS as a racist weapon.
In 1960. Or thereabouts.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War."
Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta."
The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war