Travis Brashear
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Oct 31, 1999
- Messages
- 1,175
Here's a question about an issue that has always bothered me, and now that I've just picked up the limited edition soundtrack CD to the film, I'm reminded of it all over again...
Very early in the film THX-1138, one of the disembodied voices of the Orwellian surveillance mechanisms (perhaps it is "OMM", I'm fuzzy on this), asks a question that sounds like this: "Are you now, or have you ever been, [unintelligible]?" No matter how many times I replay this sequence, I simply cannot make out what this final word is (and let's be fair, Walter Murch's atmospheric sound design doesn't exactly help for issues of sonic clarity!
), and my letterboxed LaserDisc doesn't have closed-captioning encoded on it. I have also consulted the original screenplay, which does not make any reference to this dialogue, so apparently, it was a post-production addition on the part of Murch. The aforementioned CD I purchased has a rear insert cover filled with a collage of varied lines from the film but, perplexingly, they list the line as simply, "Are you now, or have you ever been?", which doesn't follow for me since a) you can distinctly make out another spoken word after "been", even if you can't distinctly make out what that word is, he he (though perhaps this mystery word is part of a seperate, one-word sentence, and not the end of the previous line?), and b) this makes for a non-sequitur sentence. Admittedly, many people might argue that the entire film of THX-1138 is a non-sequitur, but I'd still argue such a line would seem superfluous, since it is utterly without meaning or sense. So, to keep a long question short (too late, I know), does anyone have a closed-captioned VHS tape of this film that might shed some light on this mystery? Thanks to anyone who takes pity on me and at least tries...
Very early in the film THX-1138, one of the disembodied voices of the Orwellian surveillance mechanisms (perhaps it is "OMM", I'm fuzzy on this), asks a question that sounds like this: "Are you now, or have you ever been, [unintelligible]?" No matter how many times I replay this sequence, I simply cannot make out what this final word is (and let's be fair, Walter Murch's atmospheric sound design doesn't exactly help for issues of sonic clarity!
), and my letterboxed LaserDisc doesn't have closed-captioning encoded on it. I have also consulted the original screenplay, which does not make any reference to this dialogue, so apparently, it was a post-production addition on the part of Murch. The aforementioned CD I purchased has a rear insert cover filled with a collage of varied lines from the film but, perplexingly, they list the line as simply, "Are you now, or have you ever been?", which doesn't follow for me since a) you can distinctly make out another spoken word after "been", even if you can't distinctly make out what that word is, he he (though perhaps this mystery word is part of a seperate, one-word sentence, and not the end of the previous line?), and b) this makes for a non-sequitur sentence. Admittedly, many people might argue that the entire film of THX-1138 is a non-sequitur, but I'd still argue such a line would seem superfluous, since it is utterly without meaning or sense. So, to keep a long question short (too late, I know), does anyone have a closed-captioned VHS tape of this film that might shed some light on this mystery? Thanks to anyone who takes pity on me and at least tries...
