If your’e looking for a great crime movie with an excellent script and brilliant actors at the top of their game, go rent “The Brave One”.

There are so many great lines in this movie, but I think the D.H. Lawrence quote got me: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic – and a killer.”

Lawrence was an Englishman – and this should be taken in the context of his time: The late 1800’s to 1930. But I think the instinct survives today. Of course I’m a foreigner too so what the hell do I know.

Speaking of great mainstream movies that steal from great literature, here’s another that you’ve head a thousand times:

From “Self Pity” by Lawrence:

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

When I see a disabled dog in Marymoor park playing like it doesn’t matter I think of this poem … and sometimes when I’ve pulled a 12 hour day and got another 5 to go.

Poetry and Writing’s ability to inspire is quite amazing. Which is why I’m so glad the writers strike is now resolved and the architects of our culture got a raise.