Take me back to reality

You call this writing?
You call this writing?
This dialogue is shit!

That's John Turturro, playing a fictional Hollywood star who loses the plot on a movie set, in Nanni Moretti's brilliant film My Mother (2015). It's another of those small moments that I connect to magic, to theatre, and what it's all about.
In the middle of the film, amid the stresses of production and with Turturro's character forgetting his Italian lines, he finally has an outburst and fights with the film's director. In a section that speaks volumes about illusion, about a desire for authenticity, about wanting to break the fakery, Turturro, pacing up and down the set of a cafeteria, exclaims:

This is the last film I’m making, I retire!
Shit job...
Acting is a waste of time and a waste of a life!
I want out of here man...
I want to go back… [he picks up a food tray and hurls it on the floor]... back to reality!
Take me back to reality...


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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