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Jennifer Jason Leigh gets one in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Other than that, there's She's Not Having A Baby.

I don't know, Jordan. It seems like it would be hard to have a movie about a pregnant woman just getting a safe, legal abortion without a lot of hullabaloo.

Haha. xpost.

Does JJL really get one? I thought she just lies about being pregnant and needing a ride to the abortion clinic to play a trick on the sleazy guy?

though it's been a little while since i've seen it

I should emphasize that it would be hard to make a movie *ABOUT* this subject and make it interesting. I don't remember Fast Times really, but I don't think it's focused on that event, right?

i thought she actually did get one?

Oh, maybe that's why she was so easygoing about it afterwards...

Yeah, it's not central to the movie, it's just kind of a throwaway moment. But I don't remember her faking it.

Vera Drake?

Isn't there a scene of JJL actually at the clinic? Her brother watches her run into the clinic after he drops her off somewhere else (bowling alley?).

Also, I don't know the whole plot, but 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, the Romanian film that won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, is about a girl trying to get an illegal abortion.

It also happened in High Fidelity, right? But abortion has to be accompanied by some kind of controversy or angst otherwise it's pretty boring. Like a movie about someone going to get a pap smear.

Citizen Ruth is about abortion, right? I never saw it.

Maybe there needs to be one of those slow, contemplative, banal-moments movies in which a woman gets pregnant, gets an abortion, takes ibuprofen, and goes to work a couple days later.

Kind of like a female Brown Bunny.

Ciderhouse Rules was all about abortion, but I think it focused more on the horrible consequences of illegal abortions than anything else.

Yes. She could ride a motorcycle and then get head from Vincent Gallo.

xpost

I appreciated that there was an abortion in Six Feet Under that was treated sort of matter-of-factly.

http://www.imdb.com/keyword/abortion/

There's a monolgue in Adam Rapp's excellent play Blackbird (soon to be a major motion picture -- two people in a room). It's the one time I've actually plugged my ears during a play in the way I might cover my eyes at a movie.

JJL definitely gets a shmasmortion. Judge Reinhold picks her up afterward, because even though she didn't tell him, he's a good brother.

He's also a close talker.

He has a pet turtle.

And a weed whacker.

good to know xp. i have a horrible memory for movies and suddenly couldn't think of any, only of the smashorsion moment in knocked up.

my parents called yesterday and had just seen tsotsi, though, and i remembered it REALLY WELL, in detail, even though i saw it over a year ago. it's the really powerful disturbing shit that sticks with me, and i forget everything else.

Eric, why did you plug your ears?

For the same reason I'd cover my eyes to avoid seeing some graphic and upsetting moment in a movie.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/theater/images/clockwork_big.jpg

I had a dream last night that I entered a crossword puzzle competition. Barack Obama had decided to compete as well. I went up to him at one point and was about to say, "Hey, remember me from the fundraiser last month?" -- but then realized that I couldn't be sure if we were in the present or the past. So I said, "Hey, what's the date today?" And he said, "June [something-or-other] 2007." I said, "You know, on January 1, 2008, you're going to be leading the polls in Iowa." He smiled weakly and said, "This is why I don't listen to what people tell me."

I understand Eric, but what were they talking about in the movie? Schmashmortion?

In the play, you mean?

Oh, yeah, I didn't meantion that part, but that's what the monologue is about.

And, I mean, I've seen 1,000 plays, but that's the only time I've done that.

Now I'm curious as well. Was it really graphic, or... what?

Yeh, that's what I'm getting at. What was the monologue about?

Well, yeah, from what I heard of it it's one character talking about an abortion she had. The play (described here) is pretty rough in general, but really good. Still, a lot of groping and incontinence onstage.

And shooting up, etc.

sounds like a lousy weekend

Incontinence? Like verbal incontinence, or people actually peeing themselves?

Maybe that's the play I should take my parents to see when they visit at the end of the month...

Would that it were only peeing.

(They're junkies, remember.)

Citizen Ruth is fab, cuz it mocks doctrinaire pro-choicers and right-to-life fundies with equal fervor.

What is a "donctrinaire pro-choicer"? I am wondering if that is what I am.

Pretend I can spell, thanks.

I would say, in the context of the movie, it helps to be a strident lesbian activist who bays at the moon.

I'm wondering the same. I'm having trouble coming up with much to mock in a pro-choicer, whatever modifier is applied. It would be like mocking an anti-child molester.

Unless it's OK to mock those who oppose child molestation for being raving lunatics who bay at the moon. Then it would make sense.

Dan M@rt|n: which is worse, a strident lesbian or a Stridex™ lesbian?
jesse k3hr: pussy juice prevents acne

ok you two

for the record, I am mostly anti-child-molestation, but man... sometimes those anti-molesters just carry it too far.