"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

The Smashing Machine (2025)

THE SMASHING MACHINE (2025) is one of those movies that comes along every once in a while that’s so geared toward my niche interests that it seems like a prank. How the fuck is there a movie where

1) The Rock finally does what I’ve been saying he should do for years and chooses a movie based on the director, artistic merit and acting challenge rather than its potential to be the highest grossing, most universally seen and least memorable generic middlebrow cinematic porridge ever squirted out of a tube

that happens to be

2) a remake of an obscure and now impossible to find sports documentary I watched and became obsessed with because it was from the director of the greatest DTV movie of all time?

If I was stupid and dumb instead of savvy and wise this would be one of those “this proves life is a simulation” moments for me. The new version is written and directed by Benny Safdie (actor from HAPPY GILMORE 2 who directed GOOD TIME and UNCUT GEMS) and released as a hip art movie by A24. Original director John Hyams is credited as a consulting producer, and man I hope he got paid because this is entirely built on his movie.

Set in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Dwayne Johnson (DOOM) stars as Mark Kerr, a collegiate wrestler who became a dominant fighter in the early days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (when it was still a pay-per-view tournament pitting different styles against each other) and then in Japan’s PRIDE FC. The movie depicts in a very naturalistic, understated style the dichotomy between this primal physical activity in packed arenas and the mundane life in between. He trains, he sees doctors, he gently corrects his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt, THE HUNTSMAN: WINTER’S WAR) for being out of date on his protein shake recipe. (It’s skim milk and one and a half bananas now. But it’s okay. He’ll just make another one.)

The fascinating aspect of the documentary best captured by Johnson and Safdie is the juxtaposition of Kerr’s brutal life’s work and his friendly, dorky, conflict-averse personality. He’s always smiling, talking diplomatically to Dawn and to promoters who aren’t paying him enough, and tells an opponent who may have ruined his career with an illegal move (Oleksandr Usyk as Igor Vovchanchyn) that it’s okay, it was a natural thing to do. And they take a picture together. I love the opening scene where, after annihilating his first MMA opponent, he keeps asking the ref if he can make sure he’s okay. He seems really worried about him.

Johnson is noticeably bigger than the real Kerr, but obviously his physique and his WWE job skills qualify him for the role more than most actors. Still, this is his first ever chameleonic performance, doing a voice and wearing astonishing prosthetics designed by Kazu Hiro, the man who turned Joseph Gordon-Levitt into Baby Bruce in LOOPER. (Also he worked on HIRUKO THE GOBLIN, ZEIRAM, PLANET OF THE APES, THE SHAPE OF WATER, BOMBSHELL, MAESTRO and many more.) Especially after he shaves his head there are times where it looks more like Kerr than The Rock.

Like the documentary (but in much less detail) this is also the story of Kerr’s friendship with Mark Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader), who acts as his cornerman before mounting a comeback himself and ending up in the same tournament. Which people expecting a traditional sports drama should probly not get too excited about. To me Bader doesn’t really capture the vibe of the actual Mark Coleman, but he does capture the vibe of an actual, no nonsense MMA professional, which is more important.

The various fighters Kerr faces are also played by real fighters (same thing Hyams would’ve done), but beloved ex-fighter and commentator Bas Rutten (SHADOW FURY) plays himself, training Kerr for the 2000 Grand Prix. This was the right choice – doesn’t matter that he’s 25 years older now, his unique charisma is irreplaceable. (And The Rock is about 20 years older than Kerr was anyway.) They’re so natural together I never thought how weird it must be for Rutten to be in scenes with a famous guy playing his friend, re-enacting things they actually went through together decades ago.

(Fellow commentator Stephen Quadros is also heard as himself, unfortunately sounding like he’s at a table reading.)

Safdie sticks to a simulated vérité and avoids expected sports drama formula, content to focus on raw performance, 16mm grit (d.p.: Maceo Bishop, The Curse) and the more-hideous-than-we-remembered fashion and furniture of the era. I’m not sure how painstaking they were but it sure gives the impression of an exact replica, with attention paid to every t-shirt logo, hideous ‘90s jock outfit, and depressingly generic furnishing in his apartment.

That illusion of a lack of artifice amplifies the almost mythical simplicity of the themes. His life seems very straight forward, all he wants to do is be a gladiator, pull his opponent to the mat and pound his face in until he gives up or can’t continue. He wants to win in front of a big crowd, which he compares to an orgasm, and also to a high. But the process of achieving that high, of pursuing that dream, has inevitably battered his body and he’s dealt with it by becoming horribly addicted to painkillers. He’s also gotten too cocky, can’t really imagine losing – even when pressed by a reporter he can’t come up with a guess as to how he’d handle it. So he (according to Dawn) doesn’t take training seriously, goes out and parties before a fight, leading to his first loss, which devastates him and soon he hits rock bottom and finally goes to rehab.

Mark and Dawn sort of work as caricatures of masculine and feminine stereotypes. He’s giant, he puts his muscles around her to protect her, he provides the money, she brings him shakes, caresses his muscles, likes to get dressed up and have a social life. He tries to be calm and reasonable while she is all emotion and chaos. The more he needs her to not be that, the less she can contain it. Much of the story here is that he needs the very simple discipline to stay focused on the next fight until it happens. Both of his trainers can clearly see that means staying away from Dawn, but they seem to stay out of it. He also starts to see that she’s a distraction from his sobriety, at times intentionally enabling him so he’ll be more fun for her. She’s a mess.

Not that he’s all neatly put together either. The way Johnson plays him there’s an unsettling effort behind that grin, like he’s using all his strength to be that gentle guy. More than once his rage escapes containment and the machine smashes a door or some furniture. From what we see in both the doc and the remake he’s never violent outside of the ring, but clearly he has an urge to pound his fists against his frustrations.

That brings up a question the movie seems to avoid: who the fuck is this guy? He’s just dropped in front of us as-is, with very little background or explanation. Even in the documentary, which talked to some of his family and friends about his childhood, no one seems to understand how he became who he is. So we either accept that he’s just an athlete doing athletics, or we wonder what sort of real violence he’s ever experienced, what kind of emotions he has in there. Maybe the addiction really just comes from the difficulty of the job. Maybe the smile is genuine and not a struggle. (That’s not something I wondered in the documentary, but I think Johnson’s performance suggests it.) We don’t know, and we don’t know if the movie knows.

Even more mysterious, though, is why Safdie remade an existing (if you can find it) documentary in the style of a documentary. The characters don’t talk to the camera like in the doc, but they’re often talking to the journalists backstage at the fights, so we get some of the information in the same way. Many of the most important scenes are adapted from scenes in the documentary: talking to the horrified lady in the waiting room at the doctor’s office (including the “Absolutely not” line), telling the Pride promoters he needs more money, the announcement and clarifications about which moves are now banned, complaining to the promoters about losing due to an illegal move and then going into a room and crying, asking a medic why he can’t have something stronger, the tearful intervention in the hospital bed (but it wasn’t Mark Coleman in real life), putting all his drugs in a bag and throwing them in a dumpster… And with the exception of the argument where Dawn goes and gets a gun, it mostly doesn’t enact stories that are told. It does transfer things said in interviews into conversations, most notably his explanation of winning in front of a crowd being like an orgasm and like getting high.

More strikingly, the movie really sticks to the same story and themes as the documentary, even though Kerr and his career existed before and after the handful of years he was followed by cameras. There are changes in emphasis, of course; in 2002 it was more necessary to explain what the sport was and what its worth was beyond shock value – now that UFC has been around long enough to be just one of the sports everybody watches (and morph into an evil corporation in league with fascists) that can be mostly skipped over.

Mark Coleman’s screentime is also reduced, which I think takes away some important context. In the documentary he can tell his story to the camera, we understand that he’s seen as past his prime and has an unexpected comeback while Kerr is in rehab. So I think it has more traditional underdog triumph than the fictionalized version. That aside, Safdie stays uncomfortably close to Hyams’ version.

The miracle of the documentary (or any documentary) is that they saw this guy was an interesting subject at this time, and that’s when they talked to him, they happened to be making the movie when he had his first loss, when he overdosed and went to rehab. They happened to have been talking to Mark Coleman and showing their relationship, so they happened to be there as Coleman’s triumphant comeback coincided with his friend’s fall. And I’m sure they were there for many other things, but they carved them out to leave these events. That was not the entire story of Mark Kerr’s life, but it was the part of it Hyams told a story about, to represent this man and this sport and these ideas.

So it feels like cheating, in my opinion, for this movie to represent those same things using these same events and this same time period. Even taking that route, why wouldn’t you want to act out some of the important events that the cameras weren’t there for, like Dawn finding him overdosed? Outside of what people say in interviews, a documentary is limited to the things they were able to be there to film. And then it conveys things to us through the order it shows the things and the ways our minds fill in the blanks. Fiction also leaves those empty spaces for us, but it’s different – in the documentary we understand that what we’re seeing is a record of reality and that the rest is our speculation. Safdie’s movie is all dramatization, so why not dramatize? Is that an illegal move now?

Consider this. When we watch the real Mark Kerr in the documentary THE SMASHING MACHINE, we see some real version of him but we’re conscious that there’s a camera crew there, we know there may be some limit to how candid he’s being. So when he’s shooting up and having a million pill bottles everywhere we think damn, this is what he was willing to show the cameras. When we watch The Rock as Mark Kerr in THE SMASHING MACHINE 2025 we see some of the same moments in time except the camera crew is not supposed to be there. The handheld style represents realism but we’re supposed to pretend there’s not a hand holding it. It’s a different reality.

(And hey, wait a minute, how does this take place only during the time he was making a documentary but not ever have him making a documentary? If John Hyams had been a character would he have played himself or would they have found a younger filmmaker to portray him?)

Not pictured in THE SMASHING MACHINE (2025): John Hyams directing THE SMASHING MACHINE (2002)

 

 


So… this one is a puzzler. Most people who see it won’t have seen the doc, if they even know there is one. For me, knowing it was distracting, but I also wondered if someone who hadn’t seen it might find it a little hard to follow the events, without being able to put their finger on what exactly is weird about the storytelling. But I would say I like the movie, or at least the experience of watching it. I keep thinking about it. It looks good. I love the score by experimental jazz musician Nala Sinephro, and some of the needle drops. The opening credits seemed to me like some sappy late ‘70s boxing drama, but it turns out to be a song called “You Can Never Come to This Place” by Japanese guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka, from the 1981 album The Rainbow Goblins, based on a children’s fantasy book. Great find.

I like that most of the cast is made up of fighters, and Blunt (who has acting as her day job) is also good. I give them credit for not softening her character too much – she’s more sympathetic than in the documentary, but only because the theme of her distracting Kerr from his goals isn’t underlined as much and they skip the part where they break up and then she shows up again like fuckin Michael Myers. Here I see her pain and understand why his dedication to the sport makes the relationship hard for her, but I’m glad they didn’t do what the trailer made me expect, which is change it to a love story when it was more of a my-girlfriend-is-the-absolute-worst type of deal.

Of course the main attraction is The Rock suddenly waking up to the smell of what The Rock is cookin after being asleep at the wheel for quite some time. I’d pretty much accepted he was gonna stay in a ditch forever, but here he starts Tokyo drifting, doing side wheelies, going off jumps. I’m so happy to see him actually hungry and striving in an acting role, and I think he’s genuinely great in it. Instead of just enjoying the comfortable presence of his persona we’re actually interested in watching this character, seeing what he’ll do.

The Rock was the first person I ever heard refer to himself as a “brand.” He’s one of those guys whose first language is motivational speaker quotes, talking about greatness and excellence but using a different definition for those things than I would. He didn’t seem to care as much about being the actual best as just being the biggest, the most famous, the most celebrated, the most profitable. So I hope he sees the parallel here when Mark is talking about seeking the high of the biggest crowd. The Rock was seeking that high when he announced the impending restructured hierarchy of the DC Universe, then he was perceived as losing, like Kerr did. Though he tried to argue it to a no contest.

Kerr found a way to live without either of the highs he was so addicted to, a humbler life apparently not worthy of inclusion in his own biopic, but I’d say there’s a good chance it’s a healthier, more sustainable one. There are plenty of ego reasons for The Rock to do a smaller movie that’s gonna get him critical acclaim and awards speculation, but I don’t hold that against him. I respect that, at least this one time, he stopped trying to fight Superman and made a smaller movie with a good director, aimed at a much smaller crowd. I hope the shitty headlines about it being his smallest opening ever don’t get to him. Shut up you dumb fucks, this is his chance to be The People’s Champion of the Arts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2025 at 6:49 pm and is filed under Reviews, Drama, Sport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

21 Responses to “The Smashing Machine (2025)”

  1. people are out here writing headlines about how little this film made when Southland Tales is a film that empirically exists in recorded history? the rock will be just fine

  2. I have been going back and forth about watching this movie. If I could find a good copy of the documentary I’d probably watch that instead, but the only version I’ve been able to come up with is one somebody posted on DailyMotion about 14 years ago that’s so low res it makes my eyes bleed.

    If this is the long-promised return of Dwayne Johnson, Actor, then I’ll definitely watch it, because when he actually wants to (SNITCH, PAIN & GAIN, about half of BLACK ADAM) he can be really good. Just gotta wait for it to land on HBO Max (which is where all A24 movies end up after a few months, in the US anyway).

  3. If anyone does try to watch the Daily Motion bootleg I should warn that part 2 doesn’t work (at least for me) so you will only get the first half.

  4. huh, you really think regeneration is his best? i always felt like it was very good, but in hindsight feels like just a warm up for DoR where he really went all out…

  5. Very insightful and empathetic stuff here, Vern, thank you!

  6. Ron – I’m using a technicality here, because DAY OF RECKONING had a very limited theatrical run and was treated as an art movie by a few critics instead of a DTV sequel. I really love them both in different ways. The relevant thing here is that upon release REGENERATION was the best DTV sequel I’d ever seen, fulfilling a prophecy I’d been pushing for years, so I sought out Hyams’ other work, starting with THE SMASHING MACHINE.

  7. A real shane a24 didn’t rerelease the doc.

  8. I don’t know, but I think that a pretty big indie studio like A24 has enough money to buy the rights to an obscure documentary and make sure it will be unavailable when their non-documentary remake is released, seems at least plausible.

  9. ahhh yeah that makes sense when you put it that way. it wasnt technically DTV, although around that time stuff like streaming taking over from physical media and tiny theatrical runs being made more feasible by digital distribution were changing the game so much that the label sort of transitioned from its literal definition to a lot of folks just using “DTV” as shorthand for a particular style of movie defined more by its budget and target audiences than anything else. nowadays when we have big budget and studio movies going directly to streaming, stuff like the deathstalker reboot getting theatrical runs, and “video”/physical media being a niche product that many “big” movies dont even get, its arguably no longer meaningful at all :/

  10. also man i cant believe i didnt think about how fucking crazy it is to restage scenes from the doc and not acknowledge that when they happened in his real life there was a fucking camera crew in the room! its breaking my fucking brain. and its a shame that giving this the same name will just make the original even harder to find. the least they can do is put it on the blu ray as a bonus feature or something…

  11. I wondered if this would go beyond the doc to really justify its existence, but I guess it is just the technically sound and well-made but unnecessary feature-length re-enactment it looked like. I trust your reviews in general, but as you pointed out you are pretty much the expert in a field of one for this movie among critics, so I was really interested in your take!

    Also, Day of Reckoning’s extremely brief (2 weeks in 12 theaters I think?) theatrical run is not just a technicality, in that it actually affected the home/streaming release. They cut it to an R-rating JUST for that theatrical release, and then for some reason the R-rated version was the only one they put on DVD/Blu/streaming in the USA. I had to order a combination French/English Canadian blu-ray of DoR (works in region 1) to get the Unrated version, and for those in the Euro-region I believe the German blu-ray was uncut. It makes an already extremely violent movie even MORE violent and unpleasant at times, but its also Hyams’ original creative vision and since it is a borderline horror movie/assault on the senses anyway I think its worth checking out if you can. It does add at least one “fuck yeah!” moment of excess also.

    There are probably rips of those specific versions online, but I don’t see any listed as “unrated” when I did a quick search. You can tell if its the unrated version immediately, as the headshot in the opening scene paints the entire wall with blood.

  12. I went into this one very skeptical, and was won over by the directing and performances. Silly me to forget this guy made UNCUT GEMS and GOOD TIME. The Rock gives an honest to god performance and seems less concerned with vanity than seemed possible. The flaw of the film is that it seems to be about more than we can know, and only really pops if you know that there are real guys there playing themselves. Reading about the doc after the fact makes me want to see that to compare. I agree with Vern that it feels like they are skipping events out of courtesy to the real Kerr, who didn’t want them dramatized in any way. To see him go into rehab and just cut to him leaving, very strange. Lets see the rock bottom!

  13. A little off-topic, forgive me

    This is a frankly HILARIOUS ESPN ranking of the top movie fighters, as provided by (frankly, dumb-sounding metrics) actual UFC fighters. You’ll note the guy who finished last…
    The womens’ bracket feels sideways. Where’s Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Rothrock or Jeeja Yanin?
    Also, is this the first I’m hearing of Wesley Snipes versus Joe Rogan?

    https://www.espn.com/mma/story/_/id/46367230/mma-ufc-best-movie-fighter-rock-gal-gadot

  14. I was asked by the person at the center of the recent discussion here to delete their posts. I hope you don’t mind that I also deleted some of the responses to it including some kind offerings of support. I appreciate everyone who genuinely wanted to help.

  15. No problem Vern. I am genuinely sorry for this individual and the obvious mental issues he/she is facing, but it’s also not right that you be threatened/coerced/badgered into not reviewing the movies you want to review. Just hope this individual’s stepped back from the ledge.

  16. @Glaive Robber- that article is equal parts amusing and frustrating. It also helps articulate a lot of why I think MMA is fucking boring, because all these MMA guys are basically like “yeah if you are taller and heavier you win because you just have to strike the other person from outside their range and then hold them down.”

    My happiest takeaway is that Jason Statham is pretty much universally respected and given props by these guys. Add to that his longevity as a leading man, popularity with mainstream audiences and action aficionados, and ability to do non-action acting roles, and Statham might be the most universally popular Western action star of all time? Too bad that mostly translates to mediocre movies, but maybe one day he will do something as intense as The Transporter again.

    First big “wtf?” is the article saying the people involved praised Jet Li’s skills in… Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?! I need access to this alternate version that apparently includes Jet Li!

    I don’t understand how Keanu is #12, he’s tall and has decades of training, and the only negative comment they include is that if you go with Matrix-era Keanu then he is closer to Bill & Ted Keanu than John Wick Keanu. Seems like he should have easily been top 10, if not top 5.

    Yeoh’s entry only mentions Crouching Tiger and Everything Everywhere All at Once… So they didn’t watch anything from her initial prime era?! Yes, Madam, Royal Warriors, and Magnificent Warriors would all like a word.

    Including Rebecca Ferguson and Emily Blunt but not Michelle Rodriguez… I can’t decide if this is recency bias, fame fucking (since Rodriguez isn’t “A-list”), or just old fashioned racism. I think Rodriguez has had more tough chick/action roles than these two combined. If nothing else I am offended on behalf of my late mother, who thought Rodriguez was a total badass. She would at least be happy to see Linda Hamilton in the top 3, I am pretty sure her physical transformation in Terminator 2 is what got my mom into weightlifting. ScarJo at number 2 is odd though…

    I’m not surprised Jeeja yanin is missing, I love her but she is more obscure and doesn’t have a huge body of work. Not including Cynthia Rothrock again feels like recency bias, I am sure most of the fighters they talked to a re younger because its a young persons’ game, but no Rothrock at all and no old Yeoh movies mentioned makes me think the people writing/organizing the article must all be under 40 years old also.

  17. Two things

    -These fucking lists… While I understand they just exist to promote outrage–and therefore, clicks–I sometimes feel they find the least informed people to author them (which I guess generates outrage). I remember some rag did a “Top Ten Doods Holding Down Action Movies in da ’90s!” list, and it was your typical “Keanu! Jet Li!! Chow Yun Phatt!!!!!!” fare. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to email the author “You couldn’t even give Dacascos an honorable mention?”, which got a “The iron chef host???? LOL” reply. nuff said

    -I was checking out that new Jet Li box from shout factory, and I was pleased to find that while the extras mostly consist of the normal ‘HK movie expert’ gasbags droning on, hidden within was an interview with Cynthia Rothrock.

  18. Let’s be honest, that article was still written for a website to generate clicks, not by people who actually care. it’s a fun idea, but there are so many people on there who I wouldn’t consider action stars with a fighting chance. I doubt that even the ranking is the actual ranking. I mean, I love Liam Neeson as much as the next guy, but there is no way that someone like him wouldn’t be on the last place. They criticize Jake Gyllenhaal as someone who “picks movies that make it look like he can fight”, but he is still ranked lower than Neeson, who doesn’t even look like he can fight in his action movies. (No offense.)

    But yeah, as a “Don’t take it too seriously” listicle, it’s a fun read. Next time they do that, I hope they give out clearer guidelines, though.

  19. A.L.F. aka Abigail

    October 17th, 2025 at 12:00 pm

    Hello,

    This, most likely, will be my last posting on this forum.

    Vern and I obviously feel completely differently about what dialogue my late friend being raped in conjunction with who supported her deserves. I said this in the meanest way I could plenty of times, at this point there’s no need to say it again.

    At the same time, Vern has been more balanced and sensible in my being mentally unwell in recent times than most people, including many here. This is in keeping with the person I knew when I was 12-15 and he was 22-25, through an absolutely proper internet friendship of mentorship and distance. I was the first person to figure out his secret identity – he didn’t tell me he was Vern, I knew him and saw Vern launch in movie newsgroups and did the math – I made the old Yahoo discussion list, I’m all over the early TILII columns – but eventually, I think he decided to sort of phase me out of acknowledgement, and I ended up going to public high school and living a more normal life.

    Vern’s feelings about anonymity and mine are different. I was petulant about that and I’m willing to respect it now. This sounds much colder than I mean it to, it’s a contextual introduction to why he was actually kind to me, and why I was hurt.

    After the sputtering, suicidal, upset, pained, sleepless nervous breakdown that this review, this movie and my emotional reaction to them were a part of, I contacted the two people on-thread who offered to be kind to myself. The great Bill Reed – who I had drawn two commissions for before, he kindly paid fifty dollars for drawings two years ago – and Glaive Robber.

    Unfortunately, my encounter with Glaive was so extremely upsetting that I do have to address it here.

    The day I was writing incomprehensible gibberish here, I wrote to Glaive. He began a very instructional, non-conversational list of instructions for how I was to stay with him in New Jersey starting the next afternoon. It was to be for about 32 total hours, with 12+ hours of bus a and train travel to get there from where I am now.

    His way of saying he was going to help me seemed odd, but I just thought some people are not socially oriented. At the very end of the conversation, when I was making plans to buy a bus ticket, he had sent me a picture of himself “so I knew what he looked like”. I sent one of myself “for the same reason”, and he began saying really fishy, improper and weird things about he was not comfortable with that I was “masc presenting” and that he only felt comfortable giving “housing” to a “female”. He clearly wanted some ass, trans or non trans, whatever, as long as it was “non masc presenting”. He started making excuses about “safety”, but you saw how I was writing in that thread – does a person writing like that seem safe with a person saying “Come to my house tomorrow. I will give you money.” with no conversation or humor or anything to it, to then have to deal with this weird “masc presenting” opinion of my visual facts and his presumption of my gender identity?

    He then blocked me on SubStack – which is where I was messaging him – so there invitational messages are now gone. I could probably get them from their security team, though.

    I am not masc presenting. I am queer, non-binary and would look a lot more femme if I was safe and would literally – not that anybody needs to know this – dress in drag if I actually had anyone in my life in which I could do that very simple action around without it being some fucking comedy routine. I’ve worn drag before and like it. I draw women all day because I cannot be in drag comfortably in the world. I am deeply, deeply not-cis. Glaive’s invitation was both sexualizing and dismissive. He was also offering money to be given once I got there in person, and it seemed suspect that he’d pay for bus fare and have a guest in his house to sleep in a couch in a one bedroom for 36 hours when a Motel 6 night costs what he’d be spending on busfare.

    I quickly realized how extremely improper he was being for someone in the mental state that was seen here. I have spoken to Vern about this privately. He was very kind.

    I would advise people not to interact with this person, or to be suspicious of his intentions if something like this were to happen to yourself. It dosen’t seem like that would happen, but you never know. This is a very quick way of saying something I have a much greater amount of unhappy feelings about. Glaive was being a scumbag.

    My life is currently very sad, I am denied simple and equitable paths of safety and generally don’t agree with the way I am deplatformed, disencranchised and disrepsected.

    I like Vern, but can’t be a part of the dialogue here anymore. I am sure he feels the same exact way.

    It was an honor to be friends with him as a younger person and I cannot possibly exist in any way without his influence. Thanks bud.

    The forced matter of my homelessness is an abusive family life fled for an abusive arts world. I tried to make friends with the wrong people, and the right people all died. Suicide or illness. One’s world grows smaller with time, but mine zeroed down to nothing.

    The necessities of life are important. Free money is not something that one is entitled to, but maybe people can understand that these are, in fact, particularly bad and intentionally thwarting circumstances that exist at a level of structural power abusing a weak person in a way much greater than my own jabbering difficulty as someone no longer socially relatable.

    The people saying “don’t give that kook your money” and lambasting me seem to presume there was some level of approval by Vern of that sort of thing. It is my opinion that it is not, and Vern’s feelings about me are probably personal and not the exact same things as the way I was given shit by readers in this thread.

    Bill, Maj, CJ – THANK YOU. I’ve always loved reading your posts, and thanked you very sincerely in posts that Vern filtered out because I was too direct, harsh or crazy. Understandable. But I still wanted to thank you.

    If anyone for any reason would like to be of any structural help to myself, it is not wrong to ask. I worked and paid my entire way in life from 2001 until homelessness was forced upon me in 2022, after which I kept getting brain injuries and kept getting different. I was not on any social service programs until 28 even though I could have been, and have not cynically monetized any aspect of my life improperly.

    If anyone would like to be of direct aid to myself, it would be extremely, extremely helpful. Direct contribution would be the simplest, most immediate and most helpful form of assistance. If you’d be willing, you could do so here: paypal.me/azcartoonist

    Should you require anonymity or awareness of others’ donations in such matters, MyGoFundMe is here.

    https://www.gofundme.com/f/urgent-help-me-find-shelter-and-healing

    This is a long-shot, but I repeatedly try to get indoors through some system where the average $850 cost of a slumlord apartment is loaned to myself and repaid at a rate of $200 per week by selling blood plasma. This can only be done to residents of residential addresses (I got put on a six-month FDA ban for selling blood when I tried to give them a piece of mail from a hostel – “hep c risk”, no joke) and is something I have been arguing people should do since sixteen months ago.

    (What the fuck, Tony. And what the fuck for feeling “betrayed” when it turned out I knew Vern was a bit all along, that he wasn’t an ex con or a Christian. He’d been reading since 1999 and saw every change. He was so pissed I knew and didn’t tell him. This guy said Vern taught him how to understand Christian love, apparently I was some huge betrayal for honoring Vern’s character. This guy also sucks. Whatever.)

    I can tell you the blood plasma place I’d be selling to, I can get notarized legal documents saying I’d repay you, I would give people who seem trustworthy access to my bank account if they did not trust my spending or donation history, and I cannot cite how much easier selling blood and going home and passing out is than being up for hundreds of hours at a time because you’re afraid of other homeless people touching you in your sleep, immersed in painful weather, or simply because it’s all too miserable to relax.

    Selling blood, going home and passing out sounds like a dream come true to me. If anyone would be interested in an honorable, equitable solution instead of this damnable charity structure, I would be much, much, much, much more interested in that.

    It doesn’t occur because people like to see me suffer, or they feel it deserves to occur.

    It does not deserve to occur.

    My writing, concentration and focus skills are not where they should be right now. I hope someone will consider helping at one of the links above – GoFundMe can sometimes take a week to process, so I do recommend PayPal more. In any event, I would be happy to be helped and to start the weeks and months’ long process of healing from the years of this.

    Thank you for reading. I hope you’re all having a good as day as possible. If anyone would ever like to speak to me about the social concerns I’ve stated involving movie people being horrible, I am always able to talk about that. Vern can provide my e-mail address privately.

    My very best to Vern, an important writer, pivotal influence to film culture for nearly 30 years and treasured memory of my younger life.

  20. What a hell of a thing.

    Weapons was really cool though.

  21. Most meta Slasher Search ever.

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