Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...causes leading to effects, including the violent death of one of the four. This story could be filmed, as was The Unbearable Lightness of Being, although much would have to be simplified and unscrambled. The distinguishing characteristic of Immortality, however, is its refusal to acknowledge any distinction between basic plot and the voluminous speculations that a given action seems capable of prompting. The book possesses a vertiginous sweep of perspectives from the intimate to the Olympian, along with a sometimes comic eagerness to explain not only what happens to its characters but also the evolution of Western culture...
...thoughts they would never merely speak. Although the creators stress their sensitivity to the book's fans, they were not revisiting childhood pleasures of their own; most remembered the book dimly, and Norman had never read it at all. They took a free hand with the sprawling, surprise- laden plot to highlight its theme of two troubled children healing themselves as adult intervention offers no help, just hindrance...
Strange things seem to happen to people who write about Scientology. Journalist Paulette Cooper wrote a critical book on the cult in 1971. This led to a Scientology plot (called Operation Freak-Out) whose goal, according to church documents, was "to get P.C. incarcerated in a mental institution or jail." It almost worked: by impersonating Cooper, Scientologists got her indicted in 1973 for threatening to bomb the church. Cooper, who also endured 19 lawsuits by the church, was finally exonerated in 1977 after FBI raids on the church offices in Los Angeles and Washington uncovered documents from the bomb scheme...
Tony runs away, Maria tries to send him a message and events speed rapidly to a tragic conclusion. Sound familiar? It should. The characters and major plot devices in West Side Story correspond almost exactly with Romeo and Juliet...
...long could they do it? Not forever. Intimations of mortality started dogging the show around 1986, with Pam's dream season. Dallasites took their soap seriously, and the plot twist played like a declaration of facetiousness. After that, the show became a kind of dinner-theater version of itself -- flaccid, repetitious, drowsier than the Texas economy -- and receded discreetly into the haze of Has-Been. Even the ebullient Hagman had trouble keeping track of J.R.'s misdeeds: "I really can't remember half of the people I've slept with, stabbed in the back or driven to suicide...