Script: Cinematic Quarantine - The Alphabetical Neil Breen

Sorry for the light content month. I meant to do more, and then Life happened. This is my way of starting to make amends for that. Enjoy!

Cinematic Quarantine: The Alphabetical Neil Breen

It’s not exactly the newest news, because if I was reporting on something that was a recent happening, it’d be me exhibiting an uncharacteristically quick turnaround on video content. But for those of you that might be a little late to the party, but the current, to-date filmography of Neil Breen is now available on Archive.Org, in a move I completely without irony endorse- all media deserves archiving.

For a lot of you, this might be the reason why a lot of you take the plunge on finally watching one of the works of a filmmaker that has gone down in recent history with, mm, some strange fame. To you, I say: good luck, you’re about to embark on the journey I began the first time I fired up Double Down, and folks?

Danny Trejo, with DOC DESTRUCTO over his eyes: “...the fuck is this??”

Gary Busey lurking in the rafters, pointing, wearing Neil Breen’s head: “YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE, BUTTHORN!”

That’s pretty much what it was like.

But for folks who don’t know what who Neil Breen is or what he’s like- [black screen] whoof. Oh God. You’re. You’re about to walk into something you’re not ready to take on. You might not be about to operate a vehicle without a licence or a firearm with a manual, but you’re gonna walk into a natural park where a lot of the local foliage is a mild hallucinogen, and it’s only gonna build to a cumulative effect that might lead to you walking off a cliff.

And true, it might be a fake cliff that only leads to a camera cut. But also, it might be a bluff in the Nevada desert, and you might become a pile of bones that Neil Breen proceeds to use as part of his more artistic compositions. Are you confused yet? No you aren’t.

Neil Breen Runs Screaming Into The Desert

Not nearly enough, you aren’t.

A - ALIENS!

Some people believe that intelligent life is out there elsewhere in the galaxy, that there are clear and considerable explanations for the Fermi Paradox and why humanity as a species hasn’t made first contact yet- I’m one of those people, because I happen to think that if we ever make contact with anyone else out there that exhibits intellect like ours, they’ll be just as surprised as we are that we managed to bump against each other in the unimaginable vastness of space.

And then there’s some people who call into Coast to Coast AM, to describe the entertaining interaction they had with a Pleadiean over lunchtime. That’s Neil Breen.

Neil Breen believes that the life that is out there is already here… now. Of all things in his films, you can know this to be certain: humanity has been touched by forces beyond, and not in ways that are within our ken. You’ll come to understand this, because you will never be more certain that you’re watching a film made by someone altered by Alien intellect than Neil Breen.

Jim! How could you have done this, how could you have committed suicide? Jim! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe you committed suicide!

I can’t help you out of this one, Jim.

The logic exhibited by Breen in his filmmaking is that of someone whose spiritualism has been picked up and run with by the spirit of 90s new age, the optimistic paradigm of the sort of American that had the money and inclination to buy a Phillips CD-i when it was brand new, because for want of a dedicated multimedia machine, you weren’t going to find better price on the market. This is the man who had the arc of his life altered by Close Encounters of the 5th Kind. This is a man who thinks They Live was pretty good, but wishes it wasn’t so subtle. This is the sort of man that will tell you that the only glimpse of the face of God you’ll ever see, is in a rock that fell from space, that he bought at the local crystal store.

So be prepared for scenes like this. And this. And this. And in having taken all this, understand the one rule Neil Breen has in writing Aliens:

[ALIENS DID NOTHING WRONG.]

Because in the Alien, Neil Breen sees our future, better selves, an idealized version of Humanity. Sorta like the Vulcans, if they got more unfiltered Nevada sun. Gone from our lives will be the pettiness of our day to day, our annoyances with the various failure states we encounter as part of the late capitalism, and in their place will be clarity, purpose and a greater unity of thought.

THIS IS MY UNIVERSE!!!

We will, among the stars, be reborn, better.

Y’know, right after all the genoci-

B - BIOTECHNOLOGY!

It’s safe to say that Neil Breen is a transhumanist, because this man is so past the trappings of the human form that he’s already done away with underwear as a concept. Neil Breen wants you to know that he places trust on humanity’s ability to create self-sustaining technology that can do good… somehow, despite everything we’ve seen to the contrary. And I know this especially seems ludicrous coming from a guy who uses biochemical weapons to kill a lot of people in Double Down-

Oh, excuse me. [ANTHRAAAAAAAAX]

-but this is part and parcel to Neil Breen’s views. That out of destruction comes creation, such as this future cyber Christ with RAM stigmata.

People wonder why people interested in b-movies find Neil Breen so fascinating, and it’s down to one simple fact: he makes the exact movies we’d make if we were going to make a high effort parody of the sort of movies he’s trying to make in the first place. The self-parody detector’s dial is spinning so hard, it’s achieving overunity, and somehow recharging the battery.

Because Neil Breen knows this is the power of technology: to make a man more Humanoid, whatever the fuck that means; to recover from grievous injury near instantaneous from a piece of Somewhere Else that’s virtually akin to magic; to control time; to awkwardly phase through walls like you’re playing Jazztronauts with Stan un-upgraded.

Which is why the order of the day from Neil Breen, is to evolve or die, and seek the solution in technology. This is a man who crucified himself on PCBs to demonstrate how ride or die he is in this ideology, a man who has demonstrated his willingness to evolve through technology through incorporating drone shots.

DROOOOONE SHOTS.

This is a man who will descend into a purple otherworld and clone himself because it’s the pursuit of his ideal self: Two Neil Breens, with mood lighting. He’s invincible, but only for the benefit of others, you see.

Except when he will DESTROY THEM A-

C - CORRUPTION!

We live in the late stages of capitalism. I don’t want to get into some dark topics in my funny ha-ha video about a wild-ass moviemaker, but I also don’t think we need a crash course as to why we live in an unfair, cruel world where our only recourse against the violent ids of fundamentally broken people and the unremitting entropy of an uncaring nature is a flawed series of systems that is breaking under its own weight. It’s on us to fight to make it work, and it’s a fight I believe that we can wholeheartedly win, because I wouldn’t be making art if I didn’t. But it’s one where we don’t get many advantages to help us, that don’t lie in each other.

I think Neil Breen thinks pretty similar to me.

It’s also just.

i resign today. as president. of The Bank.

Neil Breen’s exposition is prose that will make it concrete in your mind that the middle name of Jesus Christ is profanity. This is fitting, because he also believes in the inherent invincibility of Truth as a concept, as though people who weren’t on the right side of history didn’t also plot amongst themselves in hidden backrooms and make deals amongst themselves. Yeah, that does sound shady, but also, and just

GOD DAMN DOES IT SOUND SO TRITE TO SAY THIS, BUT I’M THEORETICALLY DEBATING NEIL BREEN’S WORLDVIEW SO JUST GIVE ME THIS, MOTHERFUCKERS, I’M BEGGING YOU

Terrorists to some are freedom fighters to others. But then to Neil Breen, this-

[sinister old lady talking about very simple and basic sociopolitical processes like she’s revealing secrets from the Tome of Clandestine Mysteries]

-is only how the evils of the world come to fruition. Because to Neil Breen, if it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth. And In Neil Breen’s world, truth is a greenscreen explosion asset destroying a png of a mansion.

But wait, you ask: doesn’t technology come from society? From money, earmarked by governments or made out of the capital of major corporations, for the supposed purposes of driving innovation, but frequently only producing semi-useful to totally useless products made out of either military-industrial graft or the whims of society’s wealthiest people? Aren’t tech company billionaires among some of the most ruthless and inhuman people on the planet as we know them today?

Drug dealers divvying up the cocaine for Society’s VIPs.

Look don’t worry about it, the truly evil always assert themselves as such. And Neil Breen’s got the solution to that problem:

D - DEATH!

A lot of people die in Neil Breen movies. Like, a lot. I could write some sort of AM I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream monologue about the amount of human life expended in the plot of the average Neil Breen film, and how it’s still never enough to appease his cinematic Moloch. But the fact of the matter is, when a man thinks this world could be corrected by people catching smoke to a higher degree than even I Do? Brother. My man. Please come back down to the planet my dude, because we need to have a conversation about the things you’ve been writing in the margins of your textbooks.

This is a bunch of words to say: I got nothing, here. So roll it.

Death Montage set to Hidden Retreat from Tekken 6.

E - EVOLUTION???

Flowers grow from dirt, but dirt isn’t much but thicker sand if it isn’t fertile. The dead make a pretty good fertilizer, so long as you’re committed to the process of making them that. So in Neil Breen’s world, I have no doubt that the flowers will have a pretty easy time growing.

Can a cycle of destruction produce creation? I believe it can only be that way, because just like our history needs to be preserved and archived, the tools we used to make our world have to change to meet or needs. Yes, I happen to think we’ve gotten misguided in how we approach our problem solving, I think we’ve made big mistakes. And also, I can control what would otherwise be fairly limiting suite of mental illness with a couple of pills, and some herbs I can buy over a counter, and I have a line I can call that puts me in touch with people directly that understand how my mind works, the places it goes to, and how to walk me back out of those dark corners. Through these conveniences of a modern era, my life has achieved a degree of stability, comfort and self-actualization I couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago, literally, I didn’t even slightly imagine being where I was now when I was in my 20s and undiagnosed. If you think I’d give that up to return to some bygone era out of the want to prove something? Not on your life or mine. If you lived with what lurked in my brain, you’d know for certain: you came through to the other side of what you lived through, so you’ve got nothing left to prove to Anyone.

Yeah, that was maybe a little more sincere than you might expect from me doing a video like this, but the thing is: Neil Breen brings his full sincerity to the things he makes, so I only feel it right to bring mine.

The point is, Neil Breen’s worldview is that of a man who wishes Captain Planet killed more people. It’s the draconian view of a man that wants us to do better, the pursuit of the right idea in the completely wrong way. Because yeah, the unhinged guy wielding the agricultural flamethrower isn’t wrong when he says that ash makes the soil more fertile. This doesn’t mean people will dance at the flames of your radical soil-enrichment program, it’s actually people running in panic from the guy grinning and shooting burning propane everywhere. You could have just, y’know, added compost.

But Neil Breen isn’t about half-measures. Neil Breen is an accelerationist in the same way this Mexican Uncle in a Nissan is: with the throttle wide open, hitting shifts with a degree of cold, precise aggressiveness that a machine simply cannot manage. He is an infrared missile in pursuit of tomorrow’s understanding, operating on the logic that he knows where he is, because he knows where he isn’t, and if this doesn’t make sense, then you’re the outdated 3rd Gen fighter about to be wiped out of the air by the Shaped Charge of the Future.

But if there is something affirming we can take from his filmmaking, this window into his worldview, that of a Messiah Complex that’s as voluminous as the Backrooms, it’s this: that Human Achievement arcs toward the stars. That we are nothing but glory burdened by the chains of those that would have us limited. That our values are governed by people who don’t see value in the right things. That we as a people can persevere past them. That like all of us:

[YOU CAN.]