Epstein's Eyes Shut

Jeffrey Epstein

I really don’t want to write this post. But I think it would be cowardice not to. I hate to speak of formal conspiracies, because they are intrinsically improbable, and the stuff of paranoia.

But the death of Jeffrey Epstein seems to require it. The level of incompetence required in prison officials in order to allow him to commit suicide in his cell is wildly improbable. At this point, that he was murdered by some group powerful enough to subvert prison management becomes the likeliest explanation.

It all makes me think of Stanley Kubrick’s final movie, Eyes Wide Shut, which involves the premise that there is a secret sex cult of the rich and famous—like the one Epstein is claimed to have run. The movie leaves it ambiguous whether this cult will go so far as to kill to preserve its secrecy; but this is a possibility clearly raised. 

The original story on which the movie was based was set in Vienna. Kubrick moved it to New York—the same place from which Epstein was operating.

Did Kubrick know something? Was he issuing a warning? Rather as he called out the madness of the elites in Dr. Strangelove? Veiled, perhaps, because he feared repercussions if he were too explicit?

This may also be why Eyes Wide Shut was his last movie. His wife has said he long wanted to make this film, but was not ready yet. He may have known he was ill when he decided to make it—he died just after filming, but before release—and figured now he could risk it, having less to lose. Or, worse, his sudden death just after finishing the movie might not have been natural, as Epstein’s seems not to have been. And just as the death of one of the characters in the film looks like murder masked as a drug overdose.

Makes a really good conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?

And here’s another faggot for the fire. I just saw a piece pointing out that Andrew Breitbart’s sudden death at 43 of a heart attack followed soon after a tweet that suggested he had some salacious information about such a sex ring:

“How prog-guru John Podesta isn’t household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.”

Less than a month later, he was dead.

There are other such suspicious deaths, if one looks; some keep a tally of what they call the “Clinton body count.”

It does seem plausible, given our lax sexual morals in the last several generations, that such a high-level sex ring is a real thing. Consider the recent #metoo revelations; consider the recent scandal in the US Catholic hierarchy over a homosexual sex ring.

Consider now that we are speaking of people with immense power and a great deal to lose if this all came out in public.

We kidded ourselves in the fifties and sixties that sexual morality had nothing to do with morality in general. But when we dropped our sexual ethics, especially when the upper class and elites did, we implicitly dropped morality in general. This is now perhaps at last dawning in the public consciousness.

The strongest argument against such a conspiracy is that it is improbable that so many people could keep an important secret for a long time.

But then, maybe it was not being kept a secret. Maybe Kubrick was telling us.

Eyes Wide Shut indeed.

The Simple Trick to Great Filmmaking--Or Writing

Marisa Berenson

It seems to me there is a simple and obvious difference between a good movie and a bad movie. A good movie leaves you with scenes, visuals, lines, that burn into your memory. This effect is so profound that sometimes I fear going to see a new film by a certain director, because I know there will be a part of my consciousness that I will never own again. A bad movie may hold your attention while it is on screen, but a few months later, you can remember nothing about it. Perhaps not even whether you have seen that movie.

This is what the great directors do. There are always memorable lines and memorable images.

The funny thing is that this in itself is a kind of formula, and not that hard to follow. A big part of this—and it applies just as much to good writing—is that a bad film follows all the conventions, and gives you just what you expected. A good film—or piece of writing—strives to give you something you do not expect. This is always what is memorable. George Orwell put it well when he gave, as one of his rules of good writing, “never use an expression or phrase you are used to seeing in print.”

To give one example, a bad movie will cast actors who are conventionally extremely good looking in the lead roles. Obvious enough, surely.

A good movie will instead cast actors who have an unusual appearance. If someone is conventionally extremely good looking, they will cast him in a character role—like George Clooney in Hail Caesar!, or Brad Pitt in Burn after Reading.

Then they will cast a character actor in the lead role, like Tim Blake Nelson in Buster Scruggs or Frances McDormand in Fargo.

Stanley Kubrick, with his photographer’s eye, was especially good at selecting lead actresses who were, although not extremely beautiful in the conventional way, entrancing to look at: Shelley Duvall in The Shining, Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon.