Sherman's March (1985)

Ross McElwee: Self

Quotes 

• Ross McElwee : I filmed, um, Dee Dee washing her dog, and I filmed, um, Steve going to the music company where he used to work.

  Ross's father : There, now. How is that going to be useful?

  Ross McElwee : In this film?

  Ross's father : Just in any film.

• [Ross and Charleen walk through overgrown ruins] 

  Ross McElwee : The place is like a tomb.

  Charleen : No, it's not. It's like pubic hair. Part, part the bushes. Go into the place. Go with it, Ross. It's not like a tomb. That's the trouble with you. You don't know the difference between sex and death.

  Ross McElwee : Sex and death?

  Charleen : Sex and death! This is life! This is, man, you can't even tell it when it sits on your face, you can't tell which it is.

• Ross McElwee : It seems I'm filming my life in order to have a life to film, like some primitive organism that somehow nourishes itself by devouring itself, growing as it diminishes.

• [commenting on graffiti] 

  Charleen : This is the way women - want to hear men talk to them. Now, see, Becky knows how to talk. "I love you and I can't help it and I don't care who knows it." What is she saying? "I give you my life and heart." This is the way I want you to talk to Dee Dee. This is what... This is the language women can understand. That's what they believe. They experience it in their own lives.

  Ross McElwee : Well, not all women, I mean...

  Charleen : Well, the only women I know believe that. That's the only way I can... could... understand you...

  Ross McElwee : But, I felt that way about a couple of people. It doesn't solve everything. That's the point. It doesn't guarantee...

  Charleen : You never solve everything, Ross. You never solve everything. The only thing you've got is a chance for a few passionate hits. You see how foolish it all is. You see what the army comes to. The bunkers, the island, the burned-out house. Hell, it's all a tragedy. It's just a matter of how you get through it. And the most interesting way to get through it is to say, "I can't help it. I'm full of passion and I'm gonna die this moment." It's the only way to pretend you're alive. It's the only way to - not be alone and depressed. You've got to kid yourself and you've got to kid her and then you'll both believe it.

• Ross McElwee : It's a little like looking into a mirror and trying to see what you look like when you're not really looking at your own reflection.

• [last lines] 

  Ross McElwee : [voiceover]  After the concert I thought things over, and then somewhat cautiously asked her if she'd like to see a movie with me on the following weekend.

• Ross McElwee : Its three in the morning and I can't sleep. I keep wondering how I should have responded to Pat's comment about not wearing any underpants. I mean that's not like telling someone you're not wearing any socks. Also, I've begun having my dreams about nuclear war again.

• Ross McElwee : In another way in which there were many failures, all of my love relationships have been a disasters - which could be, said to be the equivalent, you know, of trying to start of lumber business or a real estate business that failed terribly. I mean, that's also...

  Wini : Ross! There's no analogy between a real estate business and a love affair.

• [first lines] 

  Historical Narration : In 1864, during the American Civil War, Union General William T. Sherman began his famous March to the Sea. With an army of 60,000 men, he swept into the South destroying Atlanta, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; and dozens of small towns. His troops plundered homes, destroyed livestock, burned buildings and left a path of destruction 60 miles wide and 700 miles long, before finally forcing a Confederate surrender in North Carolina. Sherman's campaign marked the first time in modern history that Total Warfare had been waged on a primarily civilian population and traces of the scars he left on the South can still be found.

  Ross McElwee : Great. Do you want to do that once more?

• Ross McElwee : Two years ago I was shooting a documentary film on the linger affects of Sherman's March on the South. I'm from the South and all through my childhood I heard stories about how Sherman had devastated the South. My Aunt even keeps a sofa in her attic, which is punctured by sword holes put there by Sherman's soldiers as they searched for hidden valuables. She says she'll never allow the holes to be sown up. Anyway, I just got a grant to make my film and I stopped off in New York from Boston, where I live, to stay for a few days with the woman I"d been seeing. But, when I arrived she told me she'd just decided to go back to her former boyfriend. We argued and then I left and went to stay alone in a friend's studio loft which happened to be vacant at the time. Finally, I headed South to see my family and to try to begin my film.

• Ross McElwee : For a long time the consensus among my family members is that what I really need to do is find what they call: a nice Southern girl. And things will be fine.

• Ross McElwee : For a long time I've had this notion that love was possible - I mean, romantic love, you know, two people falling deeply in love with each other and somehow managing to stay together for more than two weeks. But time after time it seems that a woman would get involved with me and want some sort of commitment and I would decide that it was not right or vice versa. And no matter how passionate things were in the beginning, there was never an equilibrium and nothing ever seemed to last. At any rate, I find myself slipping back into listless contemplation of my single status.

• Ross McElwee : Pat's family seems to like me a lot. Probably because they think of me as: a nice Southern boy.

• Ross McElwee : You're in love with Will and you say that he's impossible, you know, beats you...

  Pat : He doesn't beat me. No, he really doesn't beat me. He pushes me around and he's threatened to throw me out of a sixth floor window of my apartment, twice. I mean, I don't have a bruise from it.

  Ross McElwee : Well, why do you put up with it? I don't understand?

  Pat : Because he has my heart.

• Ross McElwee : As for me, I keep thinking that perhaps I should return to my original plan to make a film about Sherman's March; but, I can't seem to stop filming Pat.

• Ross McElwee : Both my life and my film seem to be in limbo. For three days I've stayed locked up in my motel room watching re-runs of "Beverly Hillbillies" and "Love Boat." In an attempt to get things moving again I decide to go sightseeing.

• Ross McElwee : I haven't skated since I was about eight years old.

  Claudia : It'll all come back to you. Its just like riding a bicycle or making love, you never forget. If you've done it once, you can do it again.

• Claudia : That's where they are gonna put the tennis court. Is right down there.

  Ross McElwee : So, they will be able to play tennis in case of a nuclear attack.

  Claudia : Right. They'll have everything they need up here in case of a nuclear attack, to survive in style.

• Ross McElwee : I'm really intrigued by William Tecumseh Sherman. I think he's one of history's tragic figures. I mean, you have the irony of this man who, you know, was, spent four years in Charleston, South Carolina and called those years the best years of his life. Later spent time in New Orleans. Loved the South. Loved the people of the South. And then, during the Civil War, was ordered to wage war against the South. And not just, you know, conventional warfare, as it was practiced at that time; but, total warfare against a civilian population. He fought it very well. And - was thought generally to be ruthless and cruel and - and - um - totally - um - unkind; but, what people don't realize is that Sherman was actually very insecure. He was - he was plagued by anxiety, by - by insomnia. He wrote to his brother about - about how he thought he - contemplated suicide. But, somehow, despite all these - these - um - fallibilities, Sherman waged war brilliantly against the South and brought the South to its knees. So, then, what did he do? He offered the South exceedingly generous terms of surrender. Frankly, much more generous than the South deserved. And what did this get him? William Stanton, the Secretary of State at that time, publicly rebuked Sherman and rescinded the terms of his surrender. The terms of surrender that he had granted to the South. Humiliated Sherman. The papers of the North, the politicians in the North, branded Sherman - *branded* Sherman; incompetent and a traitor. So, here you had this man who - who was reviled in the South, hated in the South - he still is today, I can't talk about him around here - and yet, um, also rebuked in the North, despite his victory. Sherman retired from the army and vowed never to set foot in Washington, DC, again and went back to his native Ohio. He's a very, very tragic figure: William Tecumseh Sherman.

• Wini : I told you that for a very long time I believed that the only important things in life were linguistics and sex. Its easy to see how one would get involved with a Linguistics professor.

  Ross McElwee : Do you still believe that?

  Wini : Well, I think there are other important things. I'm very fond of this cow.

• Wini : Was the March to the Sea an attempt to show people that he wasn't a failure?

  Ross McElwee : I think probably so! Until the War Between the States came along, Sherman was a failure in all modes of public life. He tried to start, I think, a lumber business, a real estate business, an insurance business, and all of them failed. He was a terrible businessman.

• Ross McElwee : Don't you see the resemblance between me and Sherman?

  Wini : Physical resemblance, you mean?

  Ross McElwee : In that, he had a red beard and I have a red beard.

  Wini : Yeah, well, that's true. That's a - bit similarity.

• Ross McElwee : In this hippy life style...

  Wini : My hippy life style?

  Ross McElwee : It is a hippy life style.

  Wini : No, it's not!

• Ross McElwee : Life becomes an endless succession of pleasant chores and trips to the beach. I'm convinced that I've stumbled into Eden. Wini and I are very happy together and we live like Rousseau savages; except, occasionally we still talk about referential opacity and counterpart theory.

• Ross McElwee : My nights are plagued and tormented by a wide variety of insects. What little sleep I get are troubled by dreams of thermonuclear war. It seems to rain everyday.

• Ross McElwee : A sort of creeping, psycho-sexual despair begins to overtake me. But, suddenly, I hear on the radio that Burt Reynolds, himself, is in town shooting his next picture. I decide to see if I can find him and film him.

• Charleen : I am bored with your singleness! It is a bore for you to get to be middle aged and be lonely. It is! It's very boring for you to be lonely.

  Ross McElwee : Well, I've made attempts, though...

  Charleen : Well, see now, that's the other thing that's boring: failure. It is time to get on it. You have been insufficient in this quest; so, I have to take over. I have to! Because, otherwise, I'm going to be so bored with your loveliness, that I'm gonna have to dump you myself. I mean, we're just gonna have to, we've got to get on it. Really, now. You're too old to be one, alone and two failing in your attempts to couple. So, I'm coupling ya.

• Charleen : Forget the fucking film and listen to Dee Dee. This is your wife! This is your betrothed!

  Ross McElwee : Play the tape.

• Charleen : What she wants to hear, what all women want to hear, what children want to hear, is - you've got to be more passionate, Ross. If you had said, to Dee Dee, "Please, postpone your vacation. The only thing that matters to me is seeing you and being with you. Postpone your vaca-"

  Ross McElwee : I'd never met her!

  Charleen : I don't care, Ross! I'm telling you! You're not as interesting because you're so self effacing and polite. Now, its alright to have lovely manners. You must have them. Dee Dee wants you to have them. I want you to have them. But, I'm also telling you that that doesn't mean that you can't be passionate. Passion is the only thing. The important thing. You must say, "You're the only woman I've ever seen. I would die for you. I live for you. I breathe for you. Please! For god's sake, take your vacation and be with me because this is the most important point in my life!" You've got to learn to talk like that! You've got to learn to feel like that!

  Ross McElwee : I don't...

  Charleen : How can you be a film maker if you never have any passion?

  Ross McElwee : I have plenty of passion. I don't even know her. I don't know anything about her.

  Charleen : This doesn't matter! It doesn't matter that you don't know her. What matters is the quality of your passion. So what that you don't know her! That's not relevant!

• Ross McElwee : Can we walk through here?

  Charleen : Yes, we can walk through here.

  Ross McElwee : Where does it come out?

  Charleen : We don't know where it comes out! We just passionately gonna walk through here. We don't care where it comes out!

• Ross McElwee : Ashley Hall School for Girls - it dawns on me that I have somehow wandered into the very cradle of Southern womanhood.

• Ross McElwee : Charleen, you know, General Sherman was here though. This is were he stayed for four years.

  Charleen : What? He stayed at Moultrie?

  Ross McElwee : Yeah.

  Charleen : He didn't stay in this fort?

  Ross McElwee : Yes, he did.

  Charleen : Sherman did?

  Ross McElwee : Yeah, from 1842 to 1846.

  Charleen : Well, now I know we ought to get out of here. Come on!

  Ross McElwee : No. He liked it here a lot. He liked the South. He had friends in Charleston. And he was a painter. He painted portraits of his friends in Charleston.

  Charleen : He painted portraits?

  Ross McElwee : Yeah. And he did still life watercolors of the landscape. He really did like the South. That's why I'm so fascinated by him, you know.

  Charleen : Well, Ross, it's certainly, I don't think you'll find many people who live down here who agree with you that he liked the South. I mean, he did a whole lot of things. I mean, I mean the late great unpleasantness was really a great unpleasantness. He destroyed everything!

• Protest Rally Speaker : The Equal Rights Amendment has been before the North Carolina legislature for a decade. And the Senators who voted on Friday, did so to: quote - lay the ERA to rest for once and for all - unquote.

  Protesters : No! ERA - Now! ERA - Now! ERA - Now!

  Ross McElwee : [voice over]  With consummate timing, I insist upon talking to Karen about our relationship in the midst of ten thousand angry, Southern women.

• Ross McElwee : Dreams of apocalypse. I can't get through to Karen. Now it seems she's always with her boyfriend or talking with him on the phone or thinking about him. She seems distant and out of reach. This isn't exactly what I'd hoped for.

• Ross McElwee : I've come to the end of my journey with no car, no money and only one roll of film. What's worse is I don't seem to have a real life anymore. My real life is fallen into the crack between myself and my film.