The Genius 2000 Video First Edition Transcript: Ate

Scene 1: Ate

Narrator: Retribution and destruction.

Scene 2: Eli at the Mall of America.

Eli: Pretty damn glorious in here sometimes. Feel pretty good sometimes. I back up a little bit (leans back and makes sketching motions). See the problem is, when I really start to nod, when I'm tired or not into my art I start to go fuckin' into the paper, and my perspective just goes out (leans forward). I'm like working; it gets all scratchy and shit. (Cut ahead). Welcome to the Mall of America.

Max: You want that in here?

Eli: Welcome to the Mall of America. Welcome to the end of civilization.

Max: What a dark future--

Scene 3: Max passing out literature on UC Berkeley Campus, night.

Max: Noam Chomsky's birthday, send him a letter. Noam Chomsky's birthday, send him a letter on the web.

Scene 4: Andwele in loud bar.

Andwele: I don't think the world is headed to a very positive place. And I think that the new millennium represents, unfortunately, chaos and mayhem. And I want to be able to spend time with my family and friends before that goes down; and I'm actually really afraid to have children, and to branch out, because I don't want them to suffer through chaos and mayhem. I think that ah--

Max: I think we can prevent the chaos.

Andwele: You do? No, I don't think, I don't think preventing the chaos is possible. No, I don't think, because you can't, you can't reach out to every person, and it's the people you can't reach out to that are gonna create the chaos and incite controversy 'cause that's what they do best. That's what they do best. What do you think Stalin?

Scene 5: Stalin in loud bar.

Stalin: Hi, my name is Stalin; and it takes to be a genius just to be alive; and, do you have it, yes, everybody does. Does anybody that I think personally to have it, yes, there are; they're many and different kinds. And what's the 2000 year mean? It means a new millennium, a new year, and, you know, a new sun rising, that's it. Ah, does it mean this, ah, maybe. Does this mean to you or other people? Maybe. How are the concepts of genius connected with the year 2000? (Last call bell rings). Normal, the same; probably better than five years ago; probably worse.

Scene 6: Ivan reading Lesson Two.

Ivan: "Christianity is a battle in the discussion of media control; Crucifixion is an act of protest demanding access; the Second Coming is god's final messenger; God is the ineffable union of history and individual cognition: Genius 2000."

Mouse: Is this shit on? Is this shit on?

Scene 7: Max reading from Walter Benjamin's "Theologico-Political Fragment."

Max: "The rhythm of Messianic nature is happiness. For nature is messianic by reason of its eternal and total passing away. To strive after such passing, even for those stages of man that are nature, is the task of world politics, whose method must be called nihilism."

Scene 8: Ted Sawyer at Christmas party.

Max: --So, ah--

Ted: Do we want to keep--"God is the ineffable union of history and individual cognition." Well, I think we just sewed that up, in a lot of ways. I mean we created God; we're sticking to the story. For the purposes of this discussion, we're allowing it to be the ultimate paradigm--

Scene 9: Hooper in his office.

Hooper: Now, the other thing that has, the other major, ah, human--the other major event that is related to human beings is the awareness; the other major development that's related to human beings is the awareness that our activities have, that we now know, can im--can impact the earth at levels that have the potential of catastrophe that compete with, ah, the comet striking the earth and raising a cloud of dust and eliminating dinosaurs and their friends from the face of the earth. Now in the past it's been easy to say, "Well we're just little, we can't do all that much," but things like the greenhouse effect are real, and we now know it. So there's also a greater incentive for some, finding a way to make decisions in a way communally, or centrally, 'cause the market economy doesn't do it. You know, you're not going to be able to con--convince people simply to do all the things necessary to diminish the greenhouse effect or some analogous phenomenon in the future. You have to, people have to be thinking about these things in advance, and then deciding in advance whether you want it. If you want it, fine; but that's it.

Scene 10: Ted Sawyer at Christmas party.

Max: --That's like, history is the 2000 part and genius is the individual cognition part.

Ted: Are you pretending that the year 2000 is going to be momentous, or do you really think it is?

Max: No, I'm just pretending.

Ted: Okay.

Max: I mean, it's not in my power to make it momentous.

Ted: But I mean, it's not a matter of being in your power; it's, the question is, do you think it will be, or do you think that, um, like all these other things we've discussed, it's really just a production, it's something that we're trying to create. I mean, I know that collectively we can make it momentous.

Max: Yeah.

Ted: You know, like, we can collectively decide to blow it up.

Max: Yeah. Which is what I thought I was gonna try to do.

Ted: Then it would just be the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Max: Yeah. I mean--

Ted: You know? But--

Max: I don't really know. I mean, I guess, like I can live with things if they don't, you know?

Ted: I mean, I really hope it doesn't--I really don't want the year 2000 to be particularly momentous. You know?

Max: Yes, well I've always believed that anticlimax--

Ted: But maybe that's because I'm sort of pessimistic.

Max: Well I've always believed that anticlimax is sort of the essence of all truly wholesome progress. You know, um--

Ted: Yeah, definitely.

Max: And I don't, I don't like a lot of--(cut ahead) I guess like the conservative side of it is also important.

Ted: Where did this Genius 2000 thing come from?

Max: Right up here.

Ted: Okay. So--and how many people are in the loop on this? Are there a lot of people going around talking about this?

Max: I'd say, ah--(tape runs out).

Scene 11: Ted and Max at Christmas Party.

Max: --Wrap though, let's finish up on the ah, the thing that you were saying before about like momentous events and shit like that, you know?

Ted: Well, I mean I was thinking about it a little bit while I was in the bathroom during a momentous event, and ah, I started wondering about it. I guess what I always associate the year 2000 with, and the Second Coming with, is more of a vision of the apocalypse, which I'm not really down with. I think that's pretty sad and pessimistic, and yet somehow I find myself, you know, worried that that's how collectively we're going to interpret--

Max: What if ah--

Ted: --the year 2000. And then I think about a lot of other people, like there are a lot of people who think--they don't think the year 2000 necessarily, they think more like 2010 or whatever, when the Mayan calendar lines up, which is another, like, almost numerological point of view for interpreting the universe, um--

Max: Which is kinda bunk.

Ted: Equally as bunk, perhaps. But if it--

Max: But check it out bro--

Ted: But I mean, it's like, if they believe in that system of meaning, maybe something will happen for them--

Max: No man, maybe fuckin' God's gonna fly down from heaven in a big 747, you know, and give us all a jug of wine and some banjos, you know. But ah, here's what I'm thinkin' dude--

Ted: Not calliopes?

Max: Yeah. No, no autoharps. Um, but what I'm thinkin' dude is that I think, I think about iconoclasm, you know, and what that means, and like how we've seen iconoclasm down through history. And how we've seen systems that pretended to be coherent and complete get broken, you know? Get broken by new insight. Like Galileo and Copernicus, or like Einstein. You know, Newton thought the universe was a big square box, you know, and Einstein proved that that was wrong and it fucked things up. And I think that whole--I mean, and then you have Duchamp or, you know, Dadaism, you know; I mean you have iconoclasm; you have, you have the Greek iconoclasts, or you have the Puritans in England, you know, you have Cromwell, and no more Books of Common Prayer or whatever the fuck. You have iconoclasm going all down the line, right? And you have Pollock, I can paint drunk, you know, I can paint like a fuckin', you know, I can slop shit around, and it's still painting. Or Whistler for Christ's sake--

Scene 12: Charlotte, Max, and Carah in diner.

Charlotte: --As they develop those skills, they tend to lose some of their autistic savant skills.

Max: Really?

Charlotte: Yeah. Well, they're just not as facile with them. You know, their calculations might be slower.

Max: That's how I am. See, if I was more ah, had more like broad-based things I wouldn't be as good at this.

Charlotte: Well--

Max: That's why. Right Carah? You know what I'm talkin' about, right?

Charlotte: And then they said ah, who was it, E.B. White said "often genius is stored in a cracked pot."

Max: Stored in a crackpot?

Charlotte: In a cracked pot.

Max: Oh.

Charlotte: Because often geniuses, you know, are a little bit odd by ordinary terms.

Max: But you know what I think it is, is 'cause like genius is like ah, it's like nature. And you can't confine nature. If you do try to confine it, it's always gonna always break out of its container. And ah, that's the reason why we don't understand what genius is because the only thing we understand is all these cracked pots that we had, that we tried to put in in so we could find out what it is, and we didn't realize it's all around us in nature. It's like the force; like Luke, feel the Force. Right?

Charlotte: Well--

Scene 13: Matias in his apartment.

Matias: Je suis quoi?

Max: Napoleon?

Matias: Moi? Non.

Max: Oui.

Matias: Je ne vais pas etre Napoleon.

Max: Allright, fuck. Um, le Genius 2000, en la Louvre, in la Louvre--

Matias: Dans la Louvre--

Max: Dans la Louvre, en l'annee--

Matias: Deux milles--

Max: Deux milles, oui.

Scene 14: Carter's dog Deuce in the car, looking upwards, with Pachelbel's Canon on the stereo. Sits patiently a few seconds then jumps off the seat.

Scene 15: Ted Sawyer and Max at Christmas party.

Max: --That's--

Ted: But there's almost always been sort of an oracle element, even in those things, an idea of a center, you know. And even the concept of a web, um, at least as we know it biologically, is something that does have a center. Um, and maybe it's somewhat true of computer networks as well, that there is a center through which, you know, the interstices through which all of these things have to move. All of these--

Max: I think the web could be a total dystopia--

Ted: Yeah--

Max: --Period, no question. And I think that's a whole nother bag of worms, or whatever, barrel of monkeys--

Ted: But what we're talking about essentially is the fact that somebody has always wanted, I mean, when you talk about a system of meaning needing to be broken by an iconoclast, um, or the fact that it has traditionally occurred that way, you're talking about the fact that people have tried to use their control of meaning for power, and they do have power. If you can say, you know, and be believed, that this is how things happened when JFK got shot or when Monica sucked Bill's dick or whatever it is, um, and everybody accepts that as the truth then you have power. Especially if they recognize that it emanates from you and that you are the oracle. And people tend to be protective of that power--

Max: Right--

Ted: And that's why you have to break it--

Max: And also--

Ted: --But when people are more interested in sharing power--

Max: Right--

Ted: --And seeing different points of view, I think that would be the great momentous thing that could happen in the year 2000. A recognition of, you know, the validity of everyone's point of view; not that everybody's right, but that there are, that, like--

Max: That to me is the culmination of like these little seminal principles of American democracy--

Ted: Exactly.

Max: --You know, we've totally misinterpreted ourselves as like this fuckin' battleship--

Ted: Right.

Scene 16: Max trying to ride a tall custom-made bike. Almost gets going then bike falls over.

David Shlagel: Well that was pretty damn close. Another hour I'd say he might have it. (Cut to very tall bike.)

Max: Talk about this one here, this is a real good-lookin' one.

Ryan Johnson: This is, this is the bike. Um, the original design for this, you know, came from the basic tall bike, but because the regular tall bike is so back-heavy, generally you sit about here, and that puts your center of gravity right above the rear wheel, so you know, they tip up a whole lot. You probably didn't want that to happen when you're--the seat of this is thirteen feet, that's the world record, twelve and a half, we broke it, six inches higher.

Max: And that's for a rideable bike.

Ryan: This is rideable. I can get on it by myself with just a tree. It's not in operation right now because of loose crank bearings; the chain'll derail and then I fall over.

Max: Yeah, how, I mean how many bike chains are in that, like four? 'Cause you gotta make those.

Ryan: About six bike chains. And--

Max: There's the pedals--

Ryan: It's six frames, five frames high, and you got universal joint steering because the only other way to do it is to line up--

Scene 17: Max, Pat, and Max's parents driving.

Max: All right well mom, I just want to tell you that even though, I know, I know now that I will never ever be a genius, that I'm still going to try to be a good boy as long as I live, and I'll never go to the dark side of the Force, okay?

Charlotte: Thank you dear.

Max: Even though I'm kinda resentful that there's no such thing as a genius and yet every moment of every waking day I was told that one day I would be a genius.

Pat: Oh, how can you put so much pressure--

Scene 18: Max, Pat and Bryan playing music.

Scene 19: Shot of water spinning in bacteria growth tank in Hooper's lab.

Hooper: No, Hi-8 is just a--is this a Hi-8?

Max: This is Hi-8.

Hooper: This is, yeah sure it is.

Scene 20: Ezekiel and Justin in coffee shop.

Zeke: I'm Ezekiel Bakal, originally from Jerusalem, but, when I was in, when my mother was pregnant with me, she went to the, that's a true story, she went to the--

Pat: She went to the same high school as Saddam Hussein?

Zeke: No she didn't, no, she went to the grave of Ezekiel the Prophet, and she prayed over there, that I would be lucky, and you know, and have a good life, so it's happened, I met you, now--

Max: Now you're famous. Allright. And you're Justin?

Justin: Yeah. Justin "the Millennium" Pickens, that's right.

Max: Justin "the Millennium" what?

Justin: Pickens, that's right.

Scene 21: Pat taping John at the ice rink.

Pat: Whoa, lost ya.

John: Hello.

Pat: John, say a few words.

John: I'm John, I'm from Minnesota.

Pat: No way!

John: And--

Pat: How long you been skatin', Johnny?

John: And--ah, well, today?

Pat: No, in your life. How do you think the new millennium is gonna affect skating?

John: To tell you the truth, I don't think it's gonna affect it at all.

Pat: Okay, allright. Who's the greatest genius of ah, of ah, skating? Wayne Gretzky? Dorothy Hamill? Elvis--

John: Of skating? I'd have to go with Steve Yzerman--

Pat: Elvis, Elvis, ah, whatever his name is? Steve who?

John: Yzerman. Steve Yzerman.

Pat: Who's that?

John: He plays for the Detroit Red Wings.

Pat: Okay. What can he do that no one else can do?

John: Ah, it's not necessarily what, you know, he can do that no one else can do. It's just the type of person he is--on and off the ice.

Pat: Excellent, excellent. Allright. Well, I'm gonna put this on the tripod.

John: Yeah, you better get back to the action.

Pat: Okay John. Thanks for your time.

John: Hey, thank you.

Pat: Best of luck.

John: Thanks.

Scene 22: Max, Carah, and Charlotte with a large purple and gold Genius 2000 banner (part of which appeared on the Monday Night Football broadcast of the Vikings-Jaguars game in December of 1998).

Max: (Standing behind the banner.) No, it's too like, an homage to me. It's like a banner cheering me on.

Carah: Well it is, it's your idea.

Max: It's all of our ideas. (Max moves to side of banner and holds it up.)

Scene 23: Rick using nunchucks.

Max: I don't think that's on tape Rick. It's kind of exciting though. (People clapping.)

Scene 24: Max and others at the bar.

Max: I just heard the word genius. (People talking)

Mouse: (Holding Lesson Two) You know what my favorite part of this is? "God is the ineffable union of history and individual cognition."

Richard Ferguson: One of those like--

Rick: Come on man, you're slippin' on that one buddy--

Richard: --One of those animal nights--

Rick: --He got fuckin' mad bites on his neck--

Max: Whoa, what did he just say about a whole new world bro? What did he say about that?

Richard: --All over her body and her ass too--

Max: Richard--

Mouse: --And our technology and our understanding and our communicative abilities are all rapidly, rapidly accelerating; what's happening is we're having a convergence point, right--

Guest: It's the crown shakra--

Mouse: Exactly, we're opening the crown shakra, and what it is, is we're having this whole global experience of people connecting together, right? And our modes of abstract thought have been extrapolated out to crazy levels. Right? And we have the technology to fulfill all these things, right?

Rick: You guys smoke too many fuckin' cigarettes, man. Damn.

Mouse: --But we're also a really self-destructive species, right?

Richard: No shit.

Rick: Fuckin' second-hand smoke kills man.

Mouse: --So as we approach this time, where have all these expectations, of what's gonna happen, whether it's the Second Coming, or whatever--

Max: Shut up man.

Mouse: --It's all a catalyst--

Rick: Don't tell me to shut up man, fuck you guys.

Max: I'll beat you up.

Mouse: --Anyway, my favorite line symbolizes this, "God is the ineffable union of history and individual cognition," because your individual cognition, and the history that we're expecting; not the history that--

Max: That's genius bro, that's Benjamin dude, that's a major philosopher that you we're just talkin'--

Rick: Let's get the fuck outta here.

Mouse: --Are coming together, and you're sensing this bigger picture--

Scene 25: Man outside 7-11.

Man: "Asz nash tabat kaluk, asz nash tlat kaluk"--I can't say it anymore.

Max: Say it!

Man: I don't remember it all.

Max: Say it!

Man: "Asz nash tabat kaluk, asz nash tlat kaluk, asz nash grimbatul"--that's all I remember. I used to try to speak it--

Max: Oh I wish you remembered it.

Man: That was a long time ago. I remembered--

Max: That would've been a powerful spell if you'd remembered it.

Man: I remember one, I remember one, my favorite saying from the Lord of the Rings. I used to say it to alot of people I knew. "Elensil lumen nomentielvo"--A star shines on the hour of our first meeting.

Max: You know what I think is better is, "He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

Man: Sounds like something from Babylon Five.

Scene 26: A shot of three pelicans on the Lake in downtown Oakland.

Scene 27: Carter on street.

Carter: You know what I think is the hard part about this Project? This Genius 2000 Project?

Carah: Huh?

Carter: Is that ah, case in point, me right now, I am tired.

Carah: Yeah.

Carter: I've been up for a long time. I'm thinking about my job tomorrow. And that I don't want to lose my job. And ah, contemplating like radical changes in how you think and live, people associate that--'cause I'm, you know, I mean, I'm like a pretty average person, so maybe I can speak for average people--that thought makes me tired. And yet it's a really important thought to have, you know. So maybe that's the idea, is to like get people to recognize that contemplating like a change in how you think about stuff is supposed to be--it isn't about like writing a bunch of letters to Greenpeace magazine, or signing several petitions, or going door to door--it's not supposed to be more work. It's supposed to be less work. It's supposed to realign things that are ah, so that they're ah, more naturally in tune with how your brain works, so it's easier to think about stuff.

Carah: Go back Rosie.

Scene 28: Hooper in his office.

Hooper: But the other, the most, the beautiful aspect of genius is, the better use of the phrase, the word, is the realization that human beings, in general, have a genius. All of us have elements of genius. Special abilities, special ways of putting ideas together, special ways of expressing beauty in music, special ways of expressing love in a sort of communal sense sometimes. That's the, that's also a genius, and it's the one that in a society, in an economy and a social system which tends to be sort of built like a pyramid, with some folks up at the top and other people down at this bottom of this pyramid, who tend to be regarded as less geniatric--no, not less genial, geniatrical or something--

Max: Genious, O-U-S.

Hooper: Yeah, ah, so when you have that, you tend to forget the genius of most people, as individuals and as a group.

Scene 29: Shot of the Genius 2000 Project Symbol, (the Dark Pixel, a black circle with "Genius" and "2000" in cross form superimposed).

Narrator: "Jesus said, 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The Gospel of Thomas.

Scene 30: Credits and musical outro.

Pat: Let's do "What Goes On in Your Mind."

Bryan: I'm out of tune. (Cut ahead to music.)

Credits: Genius 2000 is: 7-11 Tolkien, Alan Hooper, Andwele, Andy Larsen, Bill Herman, Bryan Qualy, Carah Balkman, Carter Lebares, Charlotte Herman, David Shlagel, Eli Anthony, Endup 1, Endup 2, Endup 3, Exekiel Bakal, Fish Man, Ivan, Jeff Jenkins and Friend, John, John Keller, John Olson, Justin Pickens, Leo, Matias, Max Herman, Michael Warton, Mike Mikkelsen, Mouse, Pat Mountain, Ralph, Rebel Owens, Richard Ferguson, Richard Rose, Rick Tolden, Ryan Johnson, Stalin, Ted Sawyer, Third World 1, Third World 2, Third World 3, Tim Sawyer Jr., Tim Sawyer Sr., and many more. The Project would like to thank: The Walker Art Center Shock of the View, and the Bay Area Video Coalition. For information about the Project, and to purchase this video online, go to www.geocities.com/~genius-2000.

End of Ate Section.

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