Smartfellas

Remember Goodfellas, the scene with Joe Pesci, as Tommy, terrifying Ray Liotta as Henry Hill? "But I'm funny, how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to f***** amuse you?"

A new movie is in the works called Smartfellas. The Smartfellas are a bucnh of pedantic, courholding intellectual snobs who suffer fools very, very badly in a scene paralleling the Tommy terrifying Henry scene in Goodfellas, Roger Charles a tenured professor and Ph.d confronts Linus Albert a probationary adjunct teacher with a Masters degree after a department meeting during which Albert innocently observed that he found Charles quite humorous.

Charles: Do you think I'm humorous? Do you think I'm aiming at discovery by observing human nature for the benefit of a sympathetic audience?

Albert: of course not Charles.

Charles: Maybe you think I'm witty. Do you think I'm using words and ideas to surprise the intelligent while I throw light at them? Or maybe you think I'm an absurdist, so full of despair that I refuse to recognize the validity of everything including my own desperation?

Albert: (backtracking) no Charles that's not what I meant I.....

Charles: (interrupting) Or maybe you think I'm satirical, amending matters by accentuating morals and manners to the self-satisfied?

Albert: Of course not, I simply......

Charles: (interrupting again) Oh right. You think I'm sarcastic. You think I enjoy inflicting pain by inverting the faults and foibles of my victims in front of attentive bystanders. Is that what you think?

Albert: (rallying) Well, I am a little concerned about your differentiation between irony and invective.

Charles: Don't you even know the difference between the public and private inner circle. The difference between direct statement and mystification. The difference between misconduct and a statement of fact. Can you ascertain the difference between a motive of discredit and an aim of exclusivity; to say nothing of the difference between crypticism and incomprehensibility?

Albert: I see no need for cynicism

Charles: Believe me Albert, I'm not trying to justify myself through exposing the nakedness of modern morality and before you even accuse me of being saerdonic, let me assure you that I'm not getting any relief by using pessimism to illustrate the adversity that I continually face.

Albert: Well then I don't get it.

Charles (motioning towards the door): I agree and since you obviusly don't get it you might as well get out, you got that.

Albert: Got it.