20th Century Women (2016)
Lucas Jade Zumann: Jamie Fields
Photos
Quotes
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Dorothea : What is that?
Abbie : It's The Raincoats.
Dorothea : Can't things just be pretty?
Jamie : Pretty music is used to hide how unfair and corrupt society is.
Dorothea : Ah, okay so... they're not very good, and they know that, right?
Abbie : Yeah, it's like they've got this feeling, and they don't have any skill, and they don't want skill, because it's really interesting what happens when your passion is bigger than the tools you have to deal with it. It creates this energy that's raw. Isn't it great?
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Jamie : Interested in others.And I think, intelligent.All I ask is to get to know people and to have them interested in knowing me.I doubt whether I would marry again and live that close to another individual,but I remain invisible.Don't pretend for a minute as you look at me,that I am not as alive as you are,and I do not suffer from the category to which you are forcing me.I think, stripped down, I look more attractive than my ex-husband but I am sexually and socially obsolete and he is not.I have a capacity now for taking people as they are,which I lacked at 20.I reach orgasm in half the time and I know how to please,yet I do not even dare show a man that I find him attractive.If I do, he may react as if I have insulted him.I'm supposed to fulfill my small functions and vanish. It Hurts To Be Alive And Obsolete: The Aging Woman by Zoe Moss 1970
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Jamie : Age is a bourgeois construct.
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Jamie : I thought that was just the beginning of a new relationship with her, where she'd really tell me stuff. But maybe it was never really like that again. Maybe that was it.
Dorothea : In March of 1999, I'll start to feel tired and confused. When I finally go to the doctor, he will say that the cancer in my lungs had already travelled to my breast and brain. I'll try to teach Jamie what to do with my stocks, but my instructions will be impossible to understand.
Julie : Abbie will take me to Planned Parenthood. And I will go on the pill. I will go to NYU and lose touch with Jamie and Dorothea, and I will stop talking to my mom, I will fall in love with Nicholas, we will move to Paris, and choose not to have children.
Abbie : I will stay in Santa Barbara. In just two years, I'll marry Dave. A month after I get married Carlotta will die. A week later, Max will die too. I will work out of my garage and show in local galleries. Against my doctor's advice, I will get pregnant, and by the time I'm thirty I'll have two boys.
William : I'll live with Dorothea for another year. Then I'll open a pottery store in Sedona Arizona. I will marry Laurie, a singer-songwriter. We'll get divorced in a year. Then I'll meet Sandy, we will marry, and I will continue to do my pottery.
Jamie : My mom will meet Jim in 1983, they'll be a couple until she dies. On her birthday each year, he will buy her a trip on a biplane. Years after she's gone I'll finally get married and have a son. I'll try to explain to him what his grandmother was like - but it will be impossible.
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Jamie : Mom, I'm dealing with everything, right now. *You* are dealing with nothing.
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Jamie : My mom was born in 1924. When she was my age people drove in sad cars to sad houses with old phones, no money, or food, or televisions... but people were real. When she was sixteen, the war broke out and she had to leave school. Her dream was to be a pilot in the Air Force. She actually went to flight school. But the war ended before she was done. She became the first woman to work in the Continental Can Company drafting room. Then she met my dad... and I came. Then they got divorced. But people from her time never admit anything went wrong.
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Jamie : But people from her time never admit anything went wrong.
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Dorothea : That was my husband's Ford Galaxy. We drove Jamie home from the hospital in that car.
Jamie : My mom was forty when she had me. Everyone told her she was too old to be a mother.
Dorothea : I put my hand through the little window, and he'd squeeze my finger, and I'd tell him life was very big... and unknown.
Jamie : And she told me that there were animals, and sky, and cities...
Dorothea : ...music, movies. He'd fall in love, have his own children, have passions, have meaning, have his mom and dad.
Jamie : When they got divorced, my father moved back east and left the car with us. He calls on birthdays and Christmas. Last time I felt close to him was on my birthday in 1974. He bought me mirrored sunglasses. I saw the president fall down the stairs and I threw up on the carpet.
Dorothea : Since then it's just been us.
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Jamie : [to his mom] You know, when the firemen come... people don't usually invite them for dinner.
