The Dan Brown Code

As Dave read "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown, months ago, he thought to himself,

'This will never work well as a film.'

Now, as he sat watching the latest Tom Hanks blockbuster he thought,

'I was right.'

Dan Brown uses a very simple yet effective method of writing. He simply doesn't tell the reader something, then switches subjects and the reader HAS to keep reading or live forever without knowing. It reminded Dave of that old joke,

"How do you keep an idiot in suspence?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow."

When translated onto the big screen, this just makes the film somewhat jumpy. It leaves no time what so ever for the watcher to try and figure stuff out for themselves and probably lost a good deal of it's audience at various points along the way. And yet it was still big enough to get good old Tom.

Dave was, overall, enormously impressed with Dan Brown. If only he could figure out how to write a book which would cause endless amount of talk and documentries and then produce a second book, identical to the first but with a different title, which still managed to cause endless talks and documetries.

He'd be laughing all the way to the bank.

Philadelphia

Saturday night, Dave and Jean snuggled up on the sofa to watch a classic as the sun went down.

Philadelphia, winner of 2 oscars, 9 other awards and 12 nominations, one of Tom Hanks' finest.

Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks), is discrimated against for being gay and having AIDS. Although a fantastic lawer, he is fired without warning when his employers discover his condition. He then seeks justice taking his former employers to court.

-"What do you love about the law, Andrew?"
-"I... many things... uh... uh... What I love the most about the law?"
-"Yeah."
-"It's that every now and again - not often, but occasionally - you get to be a part of justice being done. That really is quite a thrill when that happens."

It was not the first time Dave had watched this movie, he hoped it wouldn't be his last. He could not imagine that there would be any good reason why anyone would not watch a film of such rare calibre.

Outside of the courtroom, a person is holding a banner "(G)ot (A)ids (Y)et? (GAY)". What was truely horrific about such a banner is the confident knowledge that people really would and do go out of there way to hold up such things at times like this in real life. A person is dying, their life cut drastically short and their fellow man will go out of their way to taunt them.

Where did it all go so wrong? What would it take to put it back on track?

The evil and corrupt rise to the top with little effort, the stupid and violent are on every street corner and religions and politics are tearing people apart, in some countries liturally.

"Prove to me," said Jean, "prove to me that good people can still succeed."

What can one man do against the tide?

Andrew Beckett won $5 million + justice, but died trying. That was the happy ending on a movie set.

Dave wasn't in a film.

Where would Dave's life take him?