by Missy Jubilee
An alpha male film made by a female about an undercover odyssey into the very unsafe world of drugs, money, guns and infidelity.
This is a film that took 28 years to live through.
That was the easy part, because then it took over a year for me to write the script, and more than six months to make the film.
To fully understand what this film is about, and the issues it covers, I would suggest a re-watch of film number 172 I FUCK DA POLICE, which details my first interaction with Mark Standen in 1997, and film number 213 KAMEL, which details the background of the events that 214 SNITCH is based on.
These films are the contextual narrative building blocks for SNITCH.
Watch 172 I FUCK DA POLICE
Watch 213 KAMEL
Originally this film was slated for release in June 2024
However I had to wait for the outcome of court pleadings, and the receipt of several Freedom Of Information requests so that I could confirm and include certain information in the film.
Those matters have been resolved in my favour, and I am now free to publish the information in question.
Also during that time, I emigrated to Ukraine where Gemini Film Distribution (https://geminifilmdistribution.com/) is headquartered, and I relinquished my Australian citizenship to become a Ukrainian citizen from 15th September 2024.
The reason for this will become evident as you progress through the film.
However if I was to summarise the reasons, it would be:
- Personal safety – for example, not having a mysterious accident, not coming down with some exotic fatal disease, or not falling off the top of an office building
- Freedom from any further future prosecution in Australia due to Australia not having an extradition treaty with Ukraine. Although court proceedings are now complete and resolved in my favour, an appeal against the decision can always be entered. I do not trust lawyers, judges, Police or criminals – and as the film progresses, you will see that I am an equal opportunity hater – therefore I have chosen to re-home myself, rather than offer myself up as a target.
A good friend of mine once said ‘You’re a very good hater’
I know he wasn’t saying that as a compliment, but rather a statement of my obsessive nature when it comes to fighting self-righteous battles.
Nothing much has changed, except that these days, I would like to think I’m a smarter hater. So getting out of the way of trouble, rather than letting it find me is my preferred strategy.
Sun Tzu once said “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” – and if it’s good enough for Sun Tzu, then…..happy days
Film Synopsis
We have all been touched by our fathers, and their fingerprints are all over our personalities
For some, it leaves a smear of unguessed horrors that are loosed upon the rest of their life
The mere re-telling of this story helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties; to reassure myself that I was not simply the only one to succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination.
The Day Wonder Went Away
On 10th November 1997, wonder went away, and I forgot that life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference between those born of real things and those born of inward terror, and there is no rational reason to value one above the other.
At its heart, this is a film about fathers and father figures. More specifically, it is about replacing my father with three substitute father figures, all of whom were more flawed than my father.
Loek Weerdon: he was a man of perhaps forty-five years of age, short and heavy-set, with a bullet-shaped head that rested on broad, ape-like shoulders.
Mark Standen: despite his Falstaffian appearance, he was a hard and ruthless man. His piggish eyes were filled with greed; his fleshy mouth was always lustful; and his only natural smile was one of avarice.
Rick De Stoop: In his youth, he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of things, and had been a poet and an artist. But poverty, exile and familial relations had turned his gaze in darker directions. He was the only soul to sense and seek the real me within the repellent form which lies on this couch. He was never a fiend or even a madman, only an eager, studious, and curious man whose love of a peaceful life was undone by the tentacles of his unshakeable past.
The Fourth Wheel
The fourth wheel to this cast of men is me.
In this film, I would describe myself, my morals and my actions unflatteringly
I am a transient lover with a vagrant heart
I will suck you in
And beneath a blanket of lies
Have you believe you are the one
The only pin holding it all together
For a second
A minute
An hour
A week
A year maybe
However long it takes
For the hunger to create an ache
And the ache to create a longing
Then that longing
Will disappear completely
Stealing everything
But the song
That song is important because it can shield us from our shortcomings, and those we have unsuccessfully loved.
Or the ones we wish had loved us
The way we loved them
In this film, I am an accidental tourist living in a corrupt regime – a regime made of the finest of materials known to man.
Rock
Paper
And scissors
In November 1997, the piling-up of unbroken time-accumulations had become too much, and I wondered – good God! what nightmare was this into which I had blundered?
Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way, because only poetry or madness could have done justice to the noises in my head that year.
Strange and disturbing nightmarish things have a chance to mutate and grow more toxic in hiding if their surroundings are not stirred up.
Some people would say that questioning a person’s character, morals and motivations is the ultimate stirred-up cocktail of toxicity.
I would agree.
But it is not man’s relationship to mankind that motivates me to get out of bed and write.
It is some men’s relationship with their darkest uncontrollable demons – the unseen, but known, mutant evil gene that metastasizes inside them, and which they give safe harbour and protection to through a complex web of self-denial.
This alone arouses in me the spark of purposeful creativity
I ought to be hardened by this stage, but there are some experiences and intimations which scar too deeply to permit permanent healing.
They leave only such an added sensitiveness that any memory reinspires all the original horror.
Making this film has been akin to immersion therapy with spiders.
Common sense would say that having a glass jar of spiders dumped on your head will lead to either:
insightful awareness of the origin of deep fears or, the dangerous over stimulation of serotonin receptors that could lead to permanent brain fry.
In reflecting on these subjects during the making of the film – common sense, I assured myself, is merely a stupid absence of imagination and mental flexibility.
If I were to ask myself, what insights did you get about yourself when you tipped this film of spiders on your head, it would be this….
It’s hard to have done all one’s growing up by 16, but that’s a damn sight better than not growing up at all. But unhappy is she to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness.
The Influence of H.P. Lovecraft
With each film, I do a deep dive into a single author who is relevant to the narrative theme of the film.
This film’s spirit animal is H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft was an American writer of weird, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos, and his most popular works include The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, The Shadow over Innsmouth, and The Shadow Out of Time.
He died of intestinal cancer on 15 March 1937, at the age of 46.
I was drawn to H.P.Lovecraft’s writing with reference to this film for three reasons:
- His writings on the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism (the theory that human beings are at the centre of the Universe)
- Throughout his adult life, Lovecraft was never able to support himself from his earnings as an author. He was virtually unknown during his lifetime and was almost exclusively published in pulp magazines before his death. A scholarly revival of Lovecraft’s work began in the 1970s, and he is now regarded as one of the most significant authors of the 20th-century
- In April 1893, after a psychotic episode in a Chicago hotel, his father was committed to Butler Insane Asylum in Providence. His medical records state that he was “doing and saying strange things at times” for a year before his commitment. The person who snitched on him is unknown. Lovecraft’s father spent five years in Butler before dying in 1898. His death certificate listed the cause of death as general paresis, a term synonymous with late-stage syphilis. Throughout his life, Lovecraft maintained that his father fell into a paralytic state, due to insomnia and overwork, and remained that way until his death. It is not known whether Lovecraft was simply kept ignorant of his father’s illness, or whether his later statements were intentionally misleading and deceptive to protect his fathers reputation, or whether Lovecraft was denying the existence of the mutant defective gene being handed down to him by his father as some sort of ‘if I close my eyes, it doesn’t exist’ denial strategy. Many years later, Lovecraft would also be confined to a mental institution – causing him to lose all confidence in the ‘if I close my eyes, it doesn’t exist’ strategy.
- Following his admittance, he wrote: “In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative” – H.P.Lovecraft
Further Notes on Charles Harrelson
I choose to focus on the Charles Harrelson and Woody Harrelson relationship as the sub-plot for this film, because it so closely mirrored my relationship with my drug dealer father
Many questions surface when you realise that your father is a dangerously flawed, and probably sociopathic, human being
But all those questions become secondary to the core question, being – how do I get out of the way of this car crash that is headed straight toward me?
More specifically, how do I avoid being infected with this mutant defective gene that is being handed down from generation to generation in my family. Because if I can, I will have a better than 50/50 chance of not being my father.
I believe Woody Harrelson plays killers in many films because he is afraid that he has his father’s mutant defective gene also
By playing killers as characters, and being paid millions of dollars to do so, he avoids the real world temptation and consequences of playing the role of a killer in real life.
Also, Series Executive Producer Belinda Tobin makes a good point.
By choosing to accept the roles that have him playing a serial killer, Woody is actually paying homage to his father with each role because he makes the killer he plays so cool and interesting, that there is a trickle down image boost to all serial killers
Woody is the best advocate, and most influential recruiter, that the maniacal killer genre has.
No Country for Old Men
The Coen Brothers film No Country for Old Men references Charles Harrelson’s murder of Judge John Wood
The 2007 film premiered two months after Charles Harrelson’s death in prison, with Woody Harrelson playing the role of Carson Wells – a cop who is a contract killer.
While Charles Harrelson’s life is not directly played out in the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, the thematic exploration of violence, morality, and fate in No Country for Old Men was sourced from the grim realities surrounding Charles Harrelson’s life.
The connections between No Country for Old Men and Charles Harrelson are largely thematic, rather than explicit or intentional.
But there are some intriguing parallels, and these same parallels raise their prehistoric heads in Snitch:
- The Hitman Parallel
Charles Harrelson was a professional hitman, convicted for the murder of a federal judge. His life as a hired killer mirrors the profession of the film’s main antagonist, Anton Chigurh, and secondary hitman Carson Wells (played by Woody Harrelson).
Both Chigurh and Wells operate with a cold, methodical detachment, reflecting the moral ambiguity often associated with contract killers like Charles Harrelson.
- Woody Harrelson’s Role
Woody Harrelson plays Carson Wells, a character who is confident, experienced, and operates within a morally gray area.
Charles Harrelson’s infamy may have provided personal insight into portraying a hitman. Woody has occasionally commented on his complex feelings about his father’s criminal life, which might inform the depth of his character’s portrayal.
- Themes of Fate and Violence
The film explores themes of fate, justice, and the randomness of violence—elements that resonate with Charles Harrelson’s life story.
Charles was implicated in crimes that had far-reaching consequences, much like the destructive actions of Chigurh and other characters in the story.
The inevitability of consequences in No Country for Old Men might echo Woody’s understanding of his father’s life and choices.
- True Crime Resonance
Charles Harrelson’s criminal history contributes to the cultural backdrop of American true crime stories, a context No Country for Old Men plays into.
The bleak, unflinching portrayal of crime in the film aligns with the real-life narratives of figures like Charles Harrelson, whose life could easily be the subject of a similar noir tale.
- Personal Reflections by Woody Harrelson
In interviews, Woody Harrelson has spoken about his father with a mix of love, confusion, and distance.
Woody makes the very libertarian point that the consequences for killing another person are very dependent of your job, or station in life
If the Government kills, it’s called patriotism
if the Police kill, it’s called lawful use of force
If an army kills, it’s called heroic
If Charles Harrelson kills, it’s called murder
Toxic rationalism
I like Woody. I think he’s funny, weird and talented. I think he’s a great actor, Natural Born Killers is one of my favourite movies, and True Detective one of my favourite TV shows
But I think modern toxic rationalism was born the day Woody spoke those words in defense of his father