collections 5:11

The following is a stream of consciousness copied from a conversation via AOLIM (this conversation was not with the real Danny Elfman, but rather an associate who chose to remain anonymous):

Leet like Vulgar: You know who's cooler than shit?
Leet like Vulgar: John Woo.
dannyelfman: i don't know who that is. but i'm wiki-ing him now.
Leet like Vulgar: He's an action film director. Even though he didn't direct martial arts, martial arts films as we know them today have been highly influenced by him along with every action film on the market.
dannyelfman: awesome.
Leet like Vulgar: Yeah, anytime you see a guy take a gun in each hand in a movie and click shots in different directions as his arms arch in the directions of other enemies, John Woo's work was taken into consideration.
Leet like Vulgar: And everytime you see someone do a summorsault or a cartwheel to dodge bullets, John Woo was taken into consideration.
dannyelfman: i'll remember that.
Leet like Vulgar: Yeah, he took normal gun fights and made them beautiful in the same way that Akira Kurosawa invented the stand offs you see in old western films.
dannyelfman: ahh. sweet.
Leet like Vulgar: As far as my opinion goes, everything well done in American films was originally well done in Asian film first.
Leet like Vulgar: Even computer animation is intuitively judged against Japanese animation.
Leet like Vulgar: Even the awkward silences in modern indie film can be traced back to Asian roots and the miscommunication issues that stem from those cultures and were found in their films during the nineties. Up unil about ten years ago, no one in American films had awkward silences... they were just moving with the social flow that Americans wanted to see at the point.
Leet like Vulgar: Don't even get me started on fashion and the Asian influences there. Pfft.
dannyelfman: haha. i won't.
Leet like Vulgar: I guess I'm an advocate for what deviants in Eastern culture make, but I think I need to consider what inspired those men to deviate from their culture to begin with. It was the west, you know? It was the provactive conflicts created by writers like Tennessee Williams or even the subculture of war or criminality inclusive in American media.
dannyelfman: mhmm.
Leet like Vulgar: We're probaby the only country in the world where war is a subculture and not entirely deviant or a culture on its own altogether.
dannyelfman: yeah, probably. ugh.
Leet like Vulgar: I can't bitch about it. War is part of human nature... I just find the subculture of men ranging from ten to fourty who prefer to immerse themselves in the fiction of Tom Clancey or in a Call of Duty video game, even though they'll never have to use a gun their entire lives. It's pathetic, really... but something that must be taken into account for the sheer numbers who advocate that lifestyle.
dannyelfman: okay.
Leet like Vulgar: Even worse, deep down, I might just be one of those people... a kid who keeps a sword in his room never to use it. I own a tool for killing, but I'll never be put in any situation where I'm forced to use it. I believe that was one of my influences on joining the military, not because I desire to kill but because the in our country, there're so few means to being a hero as defined in literature. I guess I should be thankful that my education takes priority.
dannyelfman: yeah. definitely.
Leet like Vulgar: Although for the most part, I'm a peaceful, detatched boy with delusions of grandeur that overencompass the small conflicts that exist in every day life, I'm a boy who's lived in various conflicts for years... conflicts with myself, with my peers, with the government and the world around me and so forth. I can't deny that there's a part of me that embraces that conflict which is what promotes me to write in the first place, but I do regret that all that conflict with my just ideals will only wind up being the fictitious motivations of some character who can only mirror me. By living through Vincent or Tsubasa or anyone, I'm only just staving off my desires to find my own action-packed life, not that my real life isn't conflictual enough... I just have no causes to fight for outside of what my characters embody.
Leet like Vulgar: I think the worst part in American society is that all causes can be broken down into two categories. The causes which you take up arms for, as though within the military, and you fight for someone else's beliefs even though they aren't your own, or the causes where there really is a serious issue but the only means of fighting those causes is by throwing money at some organization who wants to complain until something is done about it.
dannyelfman: yeah, really.
Leet like Vulgar: I don't want to spend money that I don't have to save abused animals though. I'd rather pick up a sword and deal with it face to face, peering into the darkness of my own soul in order to find the strength to stand against that which surrounds me... fighting pain with pain, to propagate some absent embodiment of vigalente justice.
Leet like Vulgar: Vigalante*
dannyelfman: vigilante.
Leet like Vulgar: Thanks.
dannyelfman: haha.