If You Have to Shoot, Shoot - Don't Talk

I've said it before. Mrs Gin-and-Tonic hates gin. Isn't it ironic?

Well, way back when, at the very beginning of our tawdry relationship, before the baby-making, before the mortgage, before the law degrees, before the long nights on the futon laying awake listening to the loud squeaky giggling copulation in the landlord’s bedroom upstairs, there was a pizza party. Not just any pizza party, mind you. As the self-appointed morale officer of the law school, I felt it my duty to break the monotony of finals season, by serving pizza and martinis in the mock-court room, and playing Casablanca on the over-head monitors.

Somehow, pepperoni and mushroom tastes better in a jury box.

Now, I was nothing more than a horny student and semi-suitor at that point, but the future Mrs. G&T was already smitten. As she arrived for the shindig at the appointed time, I handed her an atrociously concocted dry gin martini (not really shaken or stirred, mostly just swirled...), which she accepted with aplomb.

“You can really tell a lot about a guy by the martini he makes,” she said as she batted her eye lashes. She dutifully gagged the first couple of sips down, and quickly trashed the rest while I was looking away. It was OK though. It wasn’t really important anyway, and things obviously worked out.

What was important, however, were her words. They were wrong. Well, not entirely wrong, just not entirely right. See, I’ve learned since, that there are better ways to learn volumes about a person with just a few words and no alcohol at all.

It is part of my job, when a case actually goes to trial, to select a jury. With the very short amount of time that we are allowed, it is critical to gain as much insight into a person’s soul with as few words as possible, and the quickest way to do that, I have learned, is to ask them to identify their favorite movie.

Romantic, practical, aggressive, empathetic, athletic, academic, artistic, mind-less, shallow, geeky, savvy, arrogant, fucker: I can read you from the movies you like. You cannot hide from my all-knowing Gene Siskel-like gaze.

As for me, my number-one favorite, all-time best-liked movie is: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. I’m not saying it’s the greatest movie ever made, just my favorite. I can watch it in its entirety on DVD, in widescreen with surround sound, and then channel-surf past it a little later in the evening, and have to stop and watch a little.

So what does the movie say about me?

It is a movie made by a quasi-lunatic cinematic maverick. A rebel. An individual. It reinterpreted an entire genre and an entire historical era. The protagonists were mutually reprehensible jackasses. The antagonist was professionally sadistic. The characters are motivated solely by greed.

All of the characters, from the title roles down to the legless informant, were universally covered in a thin sheen of oil, sweat and dust. Nothing was clean, not even Tuco’s priest-brother, Father Ramirez.

Loyalties are fluid in the film. The protagonists lie and cheat and leave each other for dead more than once. Trust is non-existent. The only character who doesn’t lie is Angel Eyes, but at the beginning of the movie he goes to a man’s house, eats the man’s supper, then shoots the man and the man’s son. (Big Kahuna Burger, anyone?)

Only at the very end is there the merest hint of a shadow of redemption, but only from a great distance away. Blondie spares Tuco’s life and grants him his share of the gold. Tuco thanks Blondie by calling him a sonofabitch. Roll credits.

Goddamn, I do love that movie!

So can you tell anything about me from this movie? I’ll tell you what, go watch it. Then, come back and tell me all about myself. I do know this, no lawyer that ever asks me that question will let me on a jury.