Nothing is Real

 

This is my third entry in the Back in Black: Another Film Noir Blogathon hosted by Hamlette's Soliloquy and The Midnite Drive-In.

 

The film noir category of films may be firmly entrenched in most people's eyes in the 1940's and 50's, with it's ubiquitous femme fatales and private detectives and unscrupulous gangsters et. al. Additionally some more adventurous souls might include what certain people call "neo-noir", that genre which has all the elements of the classic movies, albeit in more modern settings and in color. 

I submit that there is a qualified third division of that theme in what has been referred to as "tech-noir", adding elements of science fiction into the mix. The header at the beginning of this piece features a poster from the film Blade Runner, which although it's setting is in the future, (or it was the future when the movie came out in 1982... although the setting year is now past {2019, in case you've never seen it}), has elements that could easily fit into any standard noir of the 40's. 

I submit that thematically film noir elements can appear in virtually any genre. I have yet to see a noir musical, but that doesn't mean it's not possible... Wikipedia lists as an adjunct to it's list of classic film noir movies both "noir westerns" and "noir comedies". As I have noted before, the first "noir" I actually watched, and the one that inspired my interest in the genre was a Steve Martin parody of the film noir genre, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (which I highly recommend...) 

 

 

 The Thirteenth Floor (1999): 

Firstly: Read the top part of that movie poster above: Question Reality. Remember that. Otherwise you are going to be scrambling for a grasp.

Secondly: I HIGHLY recommend you go watch this movie before reading another word. Trust me. There is no way I can talk about this movie without revealing stuff that is intricate to the whole story. If you thought The Matrix was complex you'll be just as lost without a road map reading this review. And spoiler alert applies for the entire damn review. Go watch it first. You've been warned.

The film opens in a familiar setting for anyone who is well acquainted with the classic film noir setting; a standard late 1930's world, in which an older man (Armin Mueller-Stahl), is out dining and dancing in typical 1930's fashion. 

 

 

 

 

 

He leaves a message with the bartender, Ashton (Vincent D'Onofrio), to be given when called for by someone named "Douglas Hall". 

 

But then reality shifts. It turns out that the 1930's world is part of a virtual reality simulation that had been created by Hannon Fuller (Mueller-Stahl, again) and Douglas Hall (Craig Bierko). Hannon had been testing out the VR game, without the knowledge of his partner.

 

 

It seems that there is something going on in the real world that Hannon wanted to clue his partner in on. But, wait! Just before Hannon can contact Douglas he is murdered. And guess who the prime suspect is...? If you said Douglas, well, congratulations! You are officially at least a film noir novice, if not an expert.

The police, especially Detective Larry McBain (Dennis Haysbert), think that Douglas is guilty. And to make matters more complicated, Douglas seems to have trouble remembering where he was when Hannon was murdered. Also evidence keeps pointing it's accusatory finger at him as, indeed, being the guilty party.

 

Appearing on the scene is Jane Fuller (Gretchen Mol), who claims to be the daughter of Hannon. Except that Douglas, who has known Hannon for years, was not aware that he even had a daughter. 

 

Douglas, who initially isn't quite sure whether he is innocent or guilty, decides to enter the VR world to look for clues. One of the first clues he actually discovers is that the virtual reality characters are more or less real, at least in their own minds. They are living lives independently of the interaction with the virtual reality players.

 

 

Lost yet? Go back up and read the first sentence of this blog entry...

 

 

As Douglas enters the world he finds that he is actually taking over a simulacrum of himself, only this character is known by his associates in the VR world as "John Ferguson" (also Bierko). And he meets up with the VR persona of Hannon who is a book dealer named "Grierson". He also meets the bartender, Ashton,, who turns out to be another simulacrum of an associate of his in the real world, Whitney (also D'Onofrio). But when he gives his name to Ashton, the bartender acts like he's never even heard the name "Douglas Bell", even though the older man, who was Hannon in the Grierson simulacrum had specifically named Douglas as the recipient of the note. 

See, in the 30's VR world, after Hannon/Grierson left, Ashton had opened the note and read it. We later find out that the note informed Douglas that reality is not what it seems. Ashton deduces the fact from the note that the '30's world is only a false world. And had even proven it to himself by going beyond the barriers in the simulation and discovering it for himself.

Only, now if you are paying attention, that would mean that Hannon was trying to tell Douglas that the virtual reality was just virtual reality. But then, why would Hannon try to tell Douglas something he already knew in the first place?

Go back up and read that first sentence again, if you've already forgotten it...

Because, as you've probably deduced by this point, the "real" world that Douglas knows is not so real as he had assumed.

 

 It turns out, of course, that "Douglas" did actually kill "Hannon", but it wasn't "Douglas" that killed "Hannon". There are even more plot twists yet to come.

Remember that first sentence now?

The Thirteenth Floor has elements of what I like about Philip K. Dick stories and films. Dick's overriding theme in many of his books is that reality is not always so cut and dried. Ever see Total Recall? Or A Scanner Darkly? Or Minority Report? The whole concept of what we think we know not necessarily being the real thing is a common theme in his books, and although this story was not written by Dick, I would be willing to bet that the author of the original novel this movie was based on, Simulacron-3 (by Daniel F. Galouye), was inspired by Dick's work. The original novel had a previous life in film in the form of a two-part German TV presentation "Welt am Draht" (1973), which I intend to give a watch sometime later next week. 

The film here barely made back it's original investment. It was budgeted at $16 million and only pulled in about $18 million in ticket sales. In the science fiction world of 1999, it competed for a Saturn Award as the Best Science Fiction film, but it had competition from the likes of Star Wars I- The Phantom Menace, Galaxy Quest and the eventual winner, The Matrix. It only has a 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which I think is a crime. It's not near as dense and confusing as it's competitor, The Matrix, nor does it drag as much as that movie. The only downside to it, as far as I can tell, is that it takes a bit more effort to grasp on to the intricacies of the science part. As far as the entertainment value, well, if you approach this film from a viewpoint that it is a gritty futuristic version of the classic film noir, you won't be entirely disappointed.

One could say that the "reality" of the simulated 1990's in the film is much more exciting than the humdrum existence of what was real for the 1990's (or maybe we are all part of a VR world now, and this world is just a distraction for an even more humdrum existence of the people controlling us in the "real" world. (BTW: in the film the actual real world was the future of 2024, so I can say I'm a little disappointed that the VR simulation that was effectively "predicted" to occur by now hasn't come to fruition. Science fiction often does that... I'm still waiting for my flying car that should have been reality by 2015, according to the Back to the Future films.)

That wraps it up for now. Drive safely, folks. Or, maybe you don't really have to worry about doing that...

Quiggy

 

    

 

Poison Pen

 

 

 

This is my second entry in the Back in Black: Another Film Noir Blogathon, hosted by Hamlette's Soliloquy and The Midnite Drive-In

 

 

In 1987 I was in the process of deciding where I wanted to continue my search for a college degree. By that time I had been working off and on in the quest, just flagellating in my decision of what area I wanted to focus. In that aim I had (finally) decided on a degree in history. I ventured south, to San Marcos, where the Southwest Texas State University (now just Texas State University) was putting the finishing touches on a new history department building. OK, to be honest, part of my decision was finding out that the female to male ratio of students was 2:1, but hey, I was 26... what do you think influenced me more?

While I was visiting the campus, parts of it were roped off, because a film company was using portions of it to make a movie. The movie was a remake of a classic film noir movie from the 40's: D.O.A.  The new film starred Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Unfortunately I didn't meet either of them,  (It would have been cool if the producers spotted me and asked if I would be in a scene, but that didn't happen...) But, be that as it may, seeing the movie later on the big screen was a neat thrill, since by now some of the buildings had become familiar. And it's still fun now, even 40 years later.

For instance: There is a scene early on where the Quaid character wakes up in the Ryan character's dorm room. As he leans out the dorm window, it turns out that the dorm is what was, at that time, the university library (affectionately known as "the cheese grater" by locals).

 

Also, at a later point in the film, Quaid and Ryan go to a funeral. The church where the funeral is taking place is actually the theater arts building (thus explaining it's round shape... "theater in the 'round", y'know...)

The finished film was entertaining mostly because of it's (now) home town connections (although my current residence is no longer there...)  It had been filmed mostly in nearby Austin, although it is never really stated anywhere in the film where the location is. The bar that the main character, Dex, is in when he gets poisoned is The Continental Club, whose house band is on stage, Timbuk 3. (Remember them? Their biggest hit was probably, for you, "Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades").  If you weren't familiar with any landmarks in the area you could easily suppose it was in California. Or Atlanta. Or Tampa Bay, Florida. Or some other southern US locale. (It is repeatedly emphasized how hot it is, and since this is taking place close to Christmas, you certainly wouldn't confuse it with Chicago or New York City, anyway...) BTW: a side note, that scene in the film that involves a tar pit? There is no tar pit in the Austin or San Marcos area. They built that thing for the film on the campus of St. Edward's University.  

 

 

D.O.A. (1988): 

As pointed out earlier, this is essentially a remake of the 40's classic Edmond O'Brien noir classic, so the film opens much as that older film did, with our main character, Dex Cornell (Dennis Quaid) walking the streets to his destination, the police precinct, where as it turns out he is going to report a murder, himself being the victim.

 

 

He begins by telling the police what has happened to him in the past 36 hours. It all began a day or so earlier, when he was still going about his duties. See, Dex is (or I guess now that should be was...) a professor of English. He is teaching his students, not in English, as much as I guess it was a creative writing class. One of his students, Nick (Robert Knepper), pressures Dex to give him some input on his creative writing assignment, but Dex hasn't actually read the tome that Nick wrote yet, so he brushes Nick off. 

 

 

Additionally in the class is a young student, Sydney (Meg Ryan), who obviously has a crush on her professor.  

 

 

After leaving the class he has a confrontation with a fellow professor, Corey (Jay Peterson), who is incensed that Dex passed him over and recommended another fellow professor, his friend Hal (Daniel Stern) to the dean for the next tenure slot at the university.

 

Shortly thereafter, while in his office, Nick falls to his death outside his office window. Suicide? Well, if that was all, then this would just be a straightforward drama and not a film noir...

Later, Dex has some brief confrontation with his soon to be ex-wife, Gail (Jane Kaczmarek), with whom he is still in love. 

 

 

(BTW: Just a personal note. It was a result of seeing Kaczmarek as a guest star on the TV show Big Bang Theory that inspired this blogathon. I had one of my "Hey! I know that girl!" moments. When I looked up her filmography I saw that she had been in this film, so I got with Rachel to do this blogathon just so I could review this film...) 

He goes to a bar where he ends up hooked up with his enamored student Gail. The next thing he knows he wakes up in Sydney's girls' dorm room. He overhears Sydney who is talking to her brother:

Sydney: "OK, Eddie, I give up where do the female reindeer go?"

Sydney won't explain the joke to Dex, but she does reveal that nothing happened between Dex and her because he passed out. He still feels like crap, however, but he initially thinks it's just a plain old everyday hangover. After Sydney leaves, Dex goes to the hospital where he finds out, to his horror, that he is dying from being poisoned and has less than 48 hours to live. 

 

 

Thus we get into the meat of the noir. Dex is not so willing to go gentle into that good night. (Would you?) He wants to know who the hell poisoned him. And a lot of red herrings are going to come our way as Dex stumbles around trying to get to the bottom of it all.

He becomes convinced at first that it was his ex-wife, whom he had just earlier discovered had been having an affair with his student Nick. But upon arriving at the house he witness her being murdered. Unfortunately, he only glimpses the murderer as he (or she) leaves, so like the mysterious "one-armed man" from the old TV series The Fugitive, no one believes him, especially the police.

  

  

Dex begins a long and somewhat convoluted search for his murderer. There are many missteps, as would be expected in a classic film noir outing. At one point he even suspects Sydney, since it was with her he was getting drunk at the bar and he finds out that the poison was somehow passed on to him through his drinking that night. He even pretty much kidnaps her and forces her to accompany him on his quest, even though he determines that she was not involved.   

Somehow, he determines, Nick's murder (I did say it wasn't suicide...) has some connection point. In the process of his investigations he discovers that Nick was the benefactor from a rich woman, Mrs. Fizwaring (Charlotte Rampling), who was paying for his college education. Ostensibly, the story is that his father tried to rob Mrs. Fitzwaring and her husband several years earlier. Even though Nick's father was killed after shooting her husband, Mrs. Fitzwaring was paying for his college education. 

 

 

The real reason she was doing is one of those neat little twists that you don't entirely see coming. But even that little revelation is not all of the story. Since this movie is not one of those I can assume  everyone has seen, I won't reveal how that story plays out, nor will I reveal the real reason Dex was killed, although if you are familiar with the "Macguffin" trope that was a part and parcel of many Hitchcock films, you might already have an idea of what the basic reason was, if not actually who was guilty.  That Macguffin crops up often enough it's hard to miss, even though it doesn't actually become relevant until late in the movie.

In the process to get to the end of the story, Dex finally gets Sydney to tell the rest of the joke. And it is worth the wait. "Where do the female reindeer go when Santa and the male reindeer are out delivering Christmas gifts?"

(I'll bet you're expecting me to tell you the punch line... Hah! Go watch the movie!)

D.O.A. was not a huge success, although it did manage a profit. It debuted at #3 that week, but tapered off pretty quickly. It's early success may have had more to do with the fact that it starred Quaid and Ryan, since there wasn't a heck of a lot of big name stuff out in early 1988. The biggest movies of the year didn't even start hitting the theater until that summer (this one was released in March). It got decent reviews. Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars. It has an 89% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

My opinion is that it is probably the best of the 6 (count 'em, 6!) versions of this theme, that of a guy trying to figure out who poisoned him. I admit I haven't seen all of them, particularly the recent 2022 version. A poorly received 1968 Australian version, Color Me Dead, and an equally pretty shoddy 2017 remake can't even compare, and even though I like the original, I will stand by that opinion. 

The best part of this film lies in the fact that Quaid can pull it off without over-stretching it. Which is more than I can say for Edmond O'Brien in the original. And that said with the caveat, like I say, I actually like the original. Just that sometimes O'Brien seems to be overdoing it in that one.

Come back tomorrow for the third entry in this film noir triumvirate, when I will be getting into what is often referred to as tech noir, a little film that impressed me called The Thirteenth Floor.

Drive safely, folks. And keep a watchful eye on your drinks,

Quiggy

 

 

The Back in Black Blogathon is Here!

 

 

"Film noir" has always been a favorite genre of film for me. As I have stated before several times I was introduced into the film noir world through a Steve Martin film which parodied the genre, but it inspired me to look for classics.

My friend, Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy, has an equal enthusiasm for this genre, so we teamed up for this blogathon. Over the next couple of days several other film noir enthusiasts will be joining us in celebrating what is often termed as "Noir-vember". Keep checking back periodically to see the great films that have been chosen. Additionally, it's not too late to join in if you have a last minute entry. Check out this link to the announcement page for the brief rules (and a definition if you don't know exactly what film noir is.) 

 

Blogathon Roll Call:

 

 

The Midnite Drive-In points out how the past never really disappears in Out of the Past. 

 

RealWeegieMidget Reviews focuses on a French couple's marriage in turmoil in La femme infidèle.

 

The Midnite Drive-In remembers hometown vibes found in D.O.A. (1988): 

 

Hamlette's Soliloquy shows what happens with a bunch of crooks with The Asphalt Jungle. 

 

 

Smoke in the Library covers another band of ne'er do wells in Odds Against Tomorrow. 

 

 

Bill LeFurgy gives film noir the silent treatment with The Docks of New York. 

 

 

Kristina's Speakeasy takes a look at doppelgangers with Hollow Triumph.  

 

 

Make Mine Film Noir delves into the world of Philip Marlowe with Murder, My Sweet.  

 

Diary of a Movie Maniac goes deep into the horror noir of Angel Heart. 

 

Movies Meet Their Match clues us in on early Hitchcock with The 39 Steps. 

 

Seven Doors of Cinema looks at the fringes of fantasy, of sorts, with The Woman in the Window. 

(There's also a video review: See the blog entry above.)

 

Crítica Retrô gives a look at Johnny Eager, which switches the standard gender roles of noir. 

 

More to come. 

 

The Past Pervades the Present

 

This is my first entry in the Back in Black Blogathon hosted by Hamlette's Soliloquy and yours truly.

 

 

The essence of "film noir", in my opinion, can be stated as I often do, as a place "where the good guys aren't all that much different than the bad guys except that the good guys have a moral compass". Think of the classic Humphrey Bogart film The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade is our good guy (or "hero", if you will), but he is only the hero because the rest of the cast is peopled with such characters as Peter Lorre's greedy little twit, Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet's amoral Caspar Gutman, Elisha Cook, Jr.'s psychopathic gunsel Wilmer and even the less than scrupulous femme fatale, Bridgid played by Mary Astor. Bogart is no less likely to skirt the rules of polite society, but at least he has a sense of honor.

Film noir really got it's start in the print medium, in the pages of pulp magazines like Black Mask. The gritty rough and tumble characters that appeared in those stories eventually gave way to films in the 40's. I like the way David J. Hogan puts it in his book Film Noir FAQ: film noir "forces us to acknowledge that the presumably solid foundation upon which we base our assumptions and our very lives is temporal and dangerously unstable. It's likely to not merely shift beneath our feet, but give way completely, turning the routine of our lives upside-down and annihilating our expectations. We're plunged into a disorienting place where everything we thought {emphasis mine} we knew is wrong". 

The characters in the film noir world, often, are just "average Joes" who find themselves caught up in circumstances they were not expecting. We get characters who are normal guys (and most often they are "guys") who find out that things are not panning out right.  A detective may think he's on a run-of-the-mill case, but it turns out that, aside from being able to take on the bad guys with a reasonable amount of success, when it comes to dealing with women, his brains turn out to be on vacation and he's using a different part of his body to do the thinking. These women are what are referred to as "femme fatales" (and these, too, are most often women.)

Occasionally that pattern reverses and it's the woman who is the "average Jane" and she finds herself falling for a man who has a rather unscrupulous demeanor. (Sorry, Wrong Number would be a perfect example). And that is just a simplistic description, because the film noir world has many different scenarios. The best of them, however, can be summed up as this.

A favorite publishing house, Hard Case Crime, recently took to reprinting old pulp novels, as well as new material written in the same style. You can find many older issues of these reprints in used bookstores. I liken the stories to be akin to "film noir in print. If you'd like to investigate this, check out their website: Hard Case Crime. I recommend a few to start: The Murderer Vine by  Shepard Rifkin, Shooting Star by Robert Bloch, Lucky at Cards by Lawrence Block and a recently written sequel to the aforementioned Maltese Falcon story, The Return of the Maltese Falcon by Max Allan Collins.

 

Out of the Past (1947):

 The film opens in a small out of the way town, Bridgeport, where a mysterious figure named Joe (Paul Valentine) shows up looking for Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum). Joe is looking for Bailey because, well, this guy "Bailey" is not the local gas station operator he has led people to believe he is. He has a past that he is kept hidden. (Out of the Past indeed...)

 

Joe has come looking for Jeff because a former acquaintance, Whit, wants to see him. So Jeff takes his current girlfriend, Ann (Virginia Huston), on a road trip up to meet with Whit, and through a flashback which makes up the first half of the film, Jeff reveals his real background.

 

 

See, Jeff was originally known as Jeff Markham, and he was in the business as a private eye, along with his partner, Jack Fisher (Steve Brodie). Jeff had met with a big time gambler named Whit (Kirk Douglas), who hired Jeff to track down his girlfriend, Kathie (Jane Greer). 

 

 

Recently Whit and Kathie had had a falling out, mainly because Kathie had shot Whit and absconded with $40,000 of Whit's money. Ostensibly, Whit wants her back (because he misses her..? Maybe...)

 

 

(Just a side note: {and this has nothing to do with the story}. At the 13:40 mark of the film, while Jeff is talking to Whit, I would swear that Kirk Douglas farts. I can't find any reference to it anywhere, but watch Douglas' expression just after the event, and you tell me...)

So Jeff goes to Mexico City, although without his partner Jack. And, of course, he easily finds his prey. And ends up following her as she transitions from there to that mecca of vice south of the border in these old films, Acapulco.

 

 

Although his task, that of bringing Kathie back to Whit, may not be so cut and dried. What complicates the matter most is that Kathie is a hot number, and Jeff begins using his other brain instead of the one God gave him for thinking. The trick, for a private detective tracking down people, is to not get involved. But Jeff breaks that cardinal rule. He gets involved, and develops an infatuation for Kathie. For Kathie's part, is she falling for him, too, or is she just stringing him along? At the beginning it could be a mutual infatuation, maybe, but keep in mind, as it later becomes evident, she knows why Jeff has made contact with her. And, though she claims to him that, yes, she shot Whit, but she didn't take the money,  

Several things happen in succession. First Whit shows up with Joe in Acapulco, but Jeff thinks he managed to brush them off with a lie that he hasn't found Kathie.  Also, Jeff's partner shows up. And Jack turns out to have less scruples than probably even Whit. He tries to blackmail Jeff, if Jeff doesn't come across with a good chunk of that $40,000. Jeff tells Jack the story that Kathie told him; she didn't have the money, so Jeff can't give Jack any part of it. But Jack doesn't believe him, and they get in a scuffle, and Kathie shoots Jack, then runs off. Jeff also discovers a little bank book she left behind that reveals she had made a deposit recently. Wanna take a guess how much was in that deposit...?

 

 

So, thus Jeff ends his story that he has been telling Ann about his past. She wonders where Kathie has gone, but Jeff tells her he doesn't know. Which brings us back to the present where Jeff is meeting up with Whit. And a surprise... Kathie is there too. At some point in the past Kathie had come back to Whit. Whit, despite the fact that Jeff had failed him on the Kathie caper, still wants Jeff to perform another job. He wants Jeff to get some incriminating evidence that a shyster lawyer has on him when he used the lawyer as a tax dodge. 

 

But that's not all, because Whit, in case it was not obvious, is a guy who never forgets anything. Nor is he the type to let bygones be bygones. He called Jeff in on this caper, not because he truly likes Jeff's reputation as a guy who plays fair. Whit has plans to even the score for the way that Jeff almost tried to cross him by planning to run away with Kathie. As such, he and Joe, as well as Kathie have set Jeff up to be framed after they have eliminated the shyster lawyer. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, since Jeff is also going to be the fall guy for killing his partner. 

 

 

(BTW, I guess I missed something. After Kathie kills Jeff's partner in the first half of the film, Jeff supposedly buries the body. But I didn't see any reveal that the found the body in the interim. So there is no proof he was killed, nor is there a body. Jack could have just disappeared... so the murder conceivably is a "moot point".) 

But Jeff smells a rat early on, and tries to throw a monkey wrench into the plans. He has his own way of getting the upper stance on the situation. There are more double crosses in this film than in a boxing match. It goes back to that thing I said early on; even though we are sympathetic for Jeff because he is ostensibly our "hero", Jeff is not so upright that he isn't willing to take chances with the law to get the upper hand. Ultimately, as bodies keep piling up, we don't really know which side of the fence Jeff is going to end up on. 

So, it should come as no surprise that, even with the love and devotion of Ann on his side, Jeff may just end up leaving with Kathie. But that too may be not so much a case of a love of Kathie, as much as she may just have the winning hand in the dealing of blackmail. 

Out of the Past is regarded as a quintessential film noir film. It ranks #23 of a list of the greatest movies in that genre on Rotten Tomatoes and holds an 88% Fresh rating on that website. It gets better reviews in retrospect than it did at the time of it's release, I guess. In 1948 James Agee wrote "Out of the Past is a medium-grade thriller", and that it was "fairly well played, and very well photographed", but that "Robert Mitchum is so very sleepily self-confident with the women that when he slopes into clinches you expect him to snore in their faces." On the other hand, more recent reviews call it the "ne plus ulta" of film noir, and it "is an exemplary noir steeped in doom and sensuality."

Wikipedia says it earned a profit of $90,000, which may not seem like much, but given that it was released in 1947, and was not the kind of film that would appeal to a wide range of film goers even at that time, I'd say that was a decent showing.

In 1984 the story was tweaked a bit, but still comes across as sort of a remake, in Against All Odds, which starred Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward. Although that film did not fare as well with the public or the critics, I suggest it makes for a nice double feature that you can compare with the original.  

If you are starting out watching film noir for the first time I always recommend the Bogart classic The Maltese Falcon,  of course, but if you move on from there, you couldn't go wrong with this one as your next foray.

Drive safely, folks. And remember... your past is always with you, the best you can do is to accept it and hope that it doesn't come back to haunt you.

Quiggy