Red Wheelbarrow 2008 text FINAL REVISED.indd - De Anza College

from making a fool of yourself.
QUELLE:
You say that like it’s a bad thing. You
watch, maybe someone will steal from me
someday.
CHUCK:
I wouldn’t bet on it.
One thing that moviegoers outside of the States enjoyed most was
the hallucinogenic dream sequence. Truth be told, most people
remember it for that and not for the author of the original story.
What are you gonna do? Screenwriters and scenarists enjoy the way
she described the warehouse store; she had worked in such a store and
once was accused of a grease fire that once destroyed both the staff
room and much of the photo developing equipment. The original
story only mentions the name of the establishment, but that proved
enough to captivate one of the script-doctors.
(Scene 49: The GargantuaMart. The franchises
of the European hypermarkets, or hypermarchés,
didn’t appeal to Yanks very well. Studies
had shown that at times overabundance with
respect to choice actually lowered rate of
purchase. In North America, this adversely
affected cheese sales. The manager of the
New Jersey branch dreads the findings of this
study as many dread radiation poisoning, and
it shows on his face as Quell passes him by.
As a result, the store offered “Cheese of the
Day” in order to gain on the competition:
retailers, supermarkets, specialty stores,
creameries, etc. The marketing department,
in a fit of sadism and contempt for parttimers,
decided that the staff must dress,
speak, smile, and salute in an especially
profitable ordeal of humiliation. Quelle
trembles at the store policies that haunted
her dreams in her days of retail, wholesale,
and theme restaurants. In the middle ground,
the torch continues to pass on and on, on
to young girls with lip-studs recreating
the fusty pomp of fin-de-siècle nationalism
68 | Red Wheelbarrow