Why I Stopped Going to Foreign Films

Image: aerial view land

subtitle: I'm flying. Come and get me.

Voice-over: I've never done this.

Image: guy jerking off

Voice-over: But I've done this.

Image: woman asleep (or dead?) lying down, man folds her hands, adjusts sheet over her body

Image: girl runs and climbs a tree

Voice-over: I've never done this either.

Image: guy jerking off, guy fucking guy

Voice-over: But I've done this and it didn't hurt and for the next two weeks I had a photographic memory. I could remember the license plate on every car I saw.

Image: man adjusting/cleaning projector lens

Voice-over: I've never done this.

Image: two men masturbating

Voice-over: But I have done this. It felt very good. Afterwards I feel asleep for a day and a half. Afterwards I was calm and refreshed but I couldn't remember my name. Luckily though my wallet was right there on the bedside table.

Image: Japanese woman watches young boy pick weeds

Voice-over: This is something else I've never done.

Subtitle: What will you be when you grow up?

Subtitle: A doctor like your father?

Subtitle: By the time you're a doctor, I wonder where I'll be?

Image: guy getting fucked

Voice-over: I have done this though, it made me dizzy. I could feel every bone in my body, every rib, and the plates of my skull. I fell out of myself and I floated up to the ceiling. I went out the skylight and headed downtown. It was just before rush hour and all the little people were pouring out of their office towers. All I had to do was look and I could tell what their favourite food was, what they wanted for dinner.

Image: man and woman onstage in film, she dances he sits

Subtitle: I'm rich, but I'm lonely and unhappy.

Subtitle: What good are palaces and fancy automobiles?

Subtitle: They're an empty illusion — I want a home —

Subtitle: I want children —and a wife like you.

Subtitle: You should have known me when I was eighteen.

Subtitle: Then it's true.

Subtitle: You really love me?

Subtitle: Do you mean it?

Subtitle: You're not trying to deceive me?

Subtitle: You honestly love me?

Man makes a gesture with his hand and she collapses. He goes to her, revives her, audience claps, he bows.

Voice-over: I have never done this.

Image: guys kissing, one man comes on another's face

Voice-over: But I've done this. I had been dating a guy for two or three months. I t never occurred to me he might not like it, would take it as form of abuse. All my life he said people have treated me like shit. I thought things with you would be different. He was pale and also shaking. He wiped my come off his face and he left. I haven't seen him since but I feel confident I'll bump into him some day and we'll be able to go out for a coffee.

Title: Why I Stopped Going to Foreign Films Steve Reinke 1991