Why freelance writers prefer packet milk

From the “When movie dialogues coincide oddly with my own sad life” department:

In a scene in Nicholas Ray’s Bigger than Life, school teacher and middle-class family man Ed Avery (played by James Mason) reprimands the neighbourhood milkman Andy thus:

“This isn’t the first time you’ve gone out of your way to annoy me with your jingle-jangle in, jingle-jangle out. Why do you do it?”

“I can’t help it if the milk bottles make noise,” protests the surprised Andy, whereupon Ed produces a gem that all creative poseurs should keep in their kit-bag of ready-to-use lines:

“Don’t lie to me, it’s deliberate! You’re filled with envy and malice toward me because I work with my mind. So you make it impossible for me to concentrate.”

Actually the milkman isn’t at fault: Ed is paranoid, having become addicted to the cortisone that was prescribed to him as a pain-killer, and his behaviour is already verging on psychosis (soon he will be eyeing his little boy and recalling the story about God ordering Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac). But speaking as a freelance writer forever plagued by ringing doorbells and other unwelcome intrusions (and looking for ways to justify my current inability to get any worthwhile writing done), the words and the frustration behind them are easy to relate to.

So the next time an over-friendly grand-aunt pops her head into my room and marvels that I spend all my time at home doing nothing, I will channel Ed. (I can’t imitate James Mason’s menacingly silken purr, but I can snarl like an angry cat.)

All this is a complicated way of saying that I have new Criterion discs, and Bigger than Life is among them. (The others: Sansho the Bailiff and Au Hasard Balthazar.) Also that I hope to get back to doing some long pieces about old films soon – have plenty of unstructured notes lying about everywhere but haven’t yet found the time or the mental focus to turn them into something comprehensible. Cortisone might help.
 
P.S. Author Jonathan Lethem talks about Bigger than Life – one of his favourite films – in this excellent long interview at Cinema Scope. There’s also a fine video introduction by Lethem on the DVD.