This was sampled in a hip hop song, and I’m only now realizing it was Alex fucking Jones. I can’t remember who, but at 0:23 I was like I’ve definitely heard this rant before, and now it’s gonna drive me nuts til I find the song.

I love Linklater, but Waking Life is his worst movie in my humble opinion. It was almost impossible to get through for me. The only relief in that film is that Jesse and Céline got a cameo.

The Before Trilogy is his superior work. I’m still upset he didn’t make a fourth movie in 2022, but I get it. A trilogy is more marketable than a quadrilogy or more.

Anyone here trying to defend Jones at any part of his life should listen to knowledge fight. He’s always been a fraud and idiot.

My wife showed me Waking Life way back when we first started dating (around 2006 or so). She thought it was the best film ever. Her previous boyfriend and all her other college friends were liberal arts majors, so it was championed in their circle as a crowning achievement of film entertainment, possibly the greatest film ever made.

I, on the other hand, thought it was the most pretentious piece of artsy garbage I’d ever seen. And I was a huge fan of philosophy and human psychology in those days. I was so disappointed in that film and its poor attempt to convey its themes.

I felt like the philosophical discussions were all unimaginative topics, presented to the audience as if they were deep revelations. But there was no deeper message, no inspiring new thoughts to convey. Just a bunch of common philosophical themes that we’ve seen explored in dozens of other films. But this one refused to commit to an actual understanding of those themes, instead leaving them vague and open-ended, so you can project your own meanings on them instead of the creator doing actual work or showing any knowledge or understanding.

Heck, it didn’t even have a decent flow to the story. There wasn’t really a plot, just a bunch of disjointed thoughts that the creator wanted to say without knowing how to properly convey it on screen. There weren’t even decent transitions between topics, and the main character just sort of faded out of the story as it got lost in its tunnel of thought-dumping on the viewer. I absolutely hated that film.

I last watched it nearly 2 decades ago. I’ve wanted to rewatch it again and see if my feelings about it still hold up. My wife has rewatched it since, and she now agrees with me that it’s a pretty pretentious piece of work. Maybe we should both check it out again and reevaluate.

1. Waking Life is an excellent movie that every coming of age adolescent should watch. Preferably during their first few times experimenting with a hallucinogen, but that’s certainly not required.

2. Alex Jones got drunk on investigative journalism success. It is not a stretch to say that he and Michael Moore were very similar and on similar paths at one point in history (circa Waking Life, 1999-2001.). . Turns out one of them is both batshit crazy and great at mass manipulation, while the other is still righteous but struggles to get noticed.

If you didn’t know this, it’s important to hear. It’s important to know that someone seemingly righteous right now can be revealed to be a lunatic piece of shit loser down the line.

Their message can be righteous. Power corrupts, and manipulators often barely know they’re manipulating. They know they’re succeeding. They’re drunk on it and they stumble onward into grotesque success.

I won’t give spoilers, but another classic psychonaut movie of this era is, IMO, Keanu Reeves best performance. It is also rotoscoped and trippy and about hallucinogens. Alex Jones has a similarly small role, scene here.

3. A Scanner Darkly is an S tier movie. has drugged up Robert Downy, has Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and again Keanu’s best performance. His character is addicted to a fictional addictive hallucinogen. His space cadet demeanor between bill and Ted and actual actor is blurred expertly… It’s such a sleeper banger film.

Sincerely if you’re like 16 to 25 and just getting into drugs… Watch both of these movies. I promise Alex Jones has nothing to do with them other than that he was actual kinda a liberal beacon at the turn of the millennium. Weird to recount.

What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can’t any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone’s sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we’ll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.

This disjointed drunken ramble was brought to you by beer.

Go watch Waking Life, yes. But go watch A Scanner Darkly. Both have rotoscoped Alex Jones being Liberal. The latter is a better film.

I’m lucky enough to have a copy of this film on Blu-ray. It’s insanely rare. I got to see it all the way back in 2007 and it still seems almost no one has heard of it. It has changed my life more than any other film I’ve seen.

i know it isn’t easy upvoting alex jones content, so thank you for your service in educating people about what a true charlatan he is.

edit - this speech hit me so hard that i will never forget it. and to think now that it was HIS speech? fuck.