Anything Goes : Reactions to the CO shooting at Batman Dark Knight. by Patrick "pH" Hampton

A tragic event and a tremendously sad day. The actions of one impacting so many...My thoughts and prayers with the families of the dead and the injured. On the business side, the debate which will arise from this horror will surely be fascinating. Already, Warner Bros. slow response to remove the Gangster Squad trailer from in front of future showings of TDKR has caused an uproar... Mourning today, debate later... RB

You couldn't of said it any better RB. Mourning today, debate later.

Definitely prayers to the victims and their families. Also, and people may disagree with this, thoughts and prayers to the suspects/suspect's family. I can not imagine being his mother and seeing your son carrying out such crimes. Today is a sad, tragic day. I can only wish that everyone affected by this tragedy finds peace and healing in body, of mind and of spirit.

Yes, mourning the dead is necessary. Having been the victim of a gun (shot gun), I also feel great sympathy for the wounded. The dead can rest in peace, unfortunately the wounded may suffer everyday, in ways you can not even begin to imagine. In many ways, we're all victims of mindless acts of cowardice and violence. We all know that insane people exist on the periphery of our lives, that we can, at any time and at any place, become victims of random acts of violence. This single man's act has diminished us all. In your heart of hearts, don't you yearn to film/write a definitive piece of cinema or literature that defines and influences gun violence in America and the world? To create a message of morality that sets us (and US) on a road to control of these nasty little gunpowder machines. In two weeks we land a craft on Mars, a machine to gain insight to our world, the universe and humanity. But here at home, the stage of art and learning has been ravaged and bloodied and raped by a man with small gunpowder machines... pathetic! Pray for the wounded, some will not make it. Some will wish they had not survived. Living with scars and pain for forty years from gun violence, I can speak as an expert witness.

I think it's really classy how WB is dealing with the event on there big summer blockbuster. And how Barry Meyers addressed his staff. Hats off to him.

Hey Max, thanks for sharing that.

Agreed. Tremendous post, Max. Thank you.

Thoughts, prayers and condolences to every single person in that theater, whether injured or not, because it was traumatic for all of them. But I have to say, I HAVE TO SAY (and this comes from someone who does not own a gun) I dislike seeing people use this tragedy to further their opinion on "gunpowder machines." As the man said, "mourning today. Debate later."

At Bob you are so correct that's the reason the media is bothering me. Warner Bros desided not to let out their opening weekend numbers which is classily in my opinion. Yet just this morning THR speculation of there numbers since it opened really got to me. If the company isn't doing it to draw attention to the tragedy and mourning what gives the media the right to do it? We should heard the stories of the ones who lives that got effected not the one who did the damage.

Patrick: Distressing, yes, that the media would try to find the numbers like that. Unfortunately, as a former journalist I understand the motivation behind it. It's part of the reason that I'm a former journalist. I started as a sportswriter and when I got into the news side I ran into something I could not be a part of. Remember when I say this, I left the field for this reason. To the media this is just another story. Horrific as it is, journalists know there will always be another one. So even though they will cover the heck out of this, they are always looking for another angle. And always looking to be the first with that angle. So when WB said they would not publish the opening weekend numbers, it was like waving a bone in front of the press. The dogs started salivating and simply had to find out these numbers. There was talk this would be a record release, and the first journalist to confirm this would have bragging rights. I found it a distressingly inhuman way to make a living, and even though I was very good at it, I left the field to sell insurance. I couldn't feed on the carcass anymore. I'd rather feel the profound sadness I feel over this event than have to ferret out the box office numbers because I had a chance to be the first.

Bob you honestly hit it on the mark. Your insight is amazing. Thank you.

Hey Bob, yes, great insight. I'm wondering if you're watching HBO's The Newsroom. I realize it's Sorkin and not necessarily reality, but they seem to be challenging some of those nasty conventions. Or at least showing how difficult it is to resist them.

Mark: I don't have cable, but I'll check it out online, see if HBO replays them online or if they're on Hulu. Thanks for the heads up.

http://youtu.be/16K6m3Ua2nw Here is an amazing clip of The Newsroom that has gone viral. @Bob I don't have cable either. Hulu and Netflix are better for a cheaper price. Just need the programing to get better.

Patrick: After you mentioned it, I found the pilot episode and watched it earlier today. I haven't applauded the opening of a new TV show in a long, long time. Looks like this could be my new favorite show. Thanks for pointing me to it.

It's Jeff Daniels and Aaron Sorkin. That's is just an amazing matchup. I know good tv. ;-) hoping one day to get there with my work to impact the world positively. Spread joy and knowledge with respect and honor. Things we have lost this day in age.

Last week's episode of The Newsroom in which they frantically debate what to announce regarding Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' shooting is particularly good, especially in light of the comments in this thread. This is an event of great importance to me. Had it not been for a last minute phone call with a videographer on January 8th, my partner and I would have been at that Safeway at precisely that time.

Thanks for sharing that Philip. Wow how the smallest things that seem ordinary can potentially save your life.

Many small things... and you never know... you just never know. It's a long story about what happened around that day. Someday I'll write about it at length.

This tragedy seems to be life imitating art, unfortunately. Those with darkness inside will be inspired to go deeper into that darkness as images and ideas are fed in. There was no need for any of these people to die. My sympathies and prayers are with these families.

I hate to be the one to do this, but I will. Life and art are nearly the same and are integral. They are about expression. We use the term art in a way that it describes creative people expressing their vision through various mediums. Unfortunately, murder was James Holmes’ choice of expression. I know many of you may not want to hear it, but it is true. It is more than apparent that James Holmes spent a considerable amount of time, thought and imagination in creating his piece of ultimate mayhem. These unfortunate events were his art and his life. So much so that with the willingness to take a life, he had to be willing to give his life. I agree that this man fell somewhere into the darkness that he could not recover from. However, whether or not he had the courage to venture there on his own, or circumstances drove him there, what he found there would never let him come back to his normal world the same man ever again. Also, it would be naïve to think or believe that none of us are capable of the same brutal acts. I can assure you that under certain circumstances, you too could do the same thing and possibly worse. It is the nature of being a human being to be violent. It is the way of the universe, to create and destroy. It is only through generations of evolution and metal retraining that most of us are not. But others are not as fortunate to have the upbringing or emotional support that some of us may have. You can look all throughout the world and find evidence of this in far too many countries. If someone were to think United States is violent, one should take a look just across our border and find the heads of many innocent people rolling around streets of Mexico's northern border. Look across the Atlantic to Africa to see how people must live in terror every day. How about the Middle East? How is Syria doing these days and what is this great country doing about that? Genocide is taking place while the world stands by and does very little. People who can cope, do not commit acts of violence of this magnitude. Well-rounded individuals find a way to manage their feelings and thoughts before they become too much for them and get out of hand. Many become artists. Some other people find more reckless ways of letting their feelings out i.e. drugs, alcohol, gambling and even sex. If you know anyone that does these things in excess, there's definitely something going on inside of them. Of course others can become traumatized by their inability to cope and become far worse creatures. They give in to their darkness and evil thoughts and commit minor to extraordinarily terrible acts of violence. Many have been immortalized in infamy. That too is a major problem, the glorification of brutality. But the world can’t stop hearing about it! What needs to happen is that the duality of human nature needs to be brought to the forefront and addressed in such a way that personal mental health issues of each and every individual are confronted and rehabilitated. Not through the use of prescription medication but by teaching our children early in life proven coping skills. But as our culture changes and even degenerates from a lack of true morality and honorable ethics, you can be sure that acts such as the ones we witnessed on Friday will become more and more prevalent as time goes on. People will find ways to vent their frustrations. Whether it be through guns, knives, swords, explosives or airplanes, people will continue to commit acts of violence because we still in our very simplest form, are animals and not all people evolve at the same rate. You can blame these events on so many things to make it easy. But the one thing that does ring true is this; until “we” as a collective species can outgrow our evolutional immaturity, mankind will continue to plod along and shoot itself and others in the foot, possibly unto its death. So, as artists, filmmakers, writers and so forth, we have the responsibility of inspiring our fellow man to take the next steps necessary to further our evolution. Politics cannot do it and education is just not enough. People have to feel it, they have to be moved. Something must ring true within the soul that tells an individual something has to be done. Then that individual must have the courage to act. Now the only way to move the soul is through art, as man has almost completely destroyed religion (a one-time great and powerful educator with great and powerful mentors) with its filthy corruption. But please know this. The only way to defeat evil is to meet it head on and challenge it. It starts with the individual who is brave enough to seek the darkness in his/her own heart, dance with it, learn from it, grow from it and then control it, because you can't kill it, it can only kill you (your spirit, your essence). Killing the darkness completely would remove a vital part of what makes us all human. Simply put, it is time for mankind to grow up and put away its childish things, hopefully before the last grain of sand runs out.

This goes to prove that both our governing body and the society, with all its culture and morality is flawed and unless we do something about addressing the root of what causes one to go to such darkness, we cannot even begin to think that such problems won't occur again. I absolutely agree to what Thomas says above. And by the very default nature of us beings, we are capable of both evil as well as godly deeds. But it is our teaching, guidance, support and upbringing that makes us capable and incapable to do and not do certain things. It is because we understand what is right. We surely can control the evil within us but the road to guiding someone to be able to do that is through love and understanding within our entire society and to show compassion and to forgive. This is not to say or offend the families who lost their beloveds in this unfortunate event. My thoughts go out to them and may God bless their soul. This is also not to say that the person responsible shouldn't be stopped. but like Thomas says, we must understand the root of the problem and that is the lack of support, understanding, compassion and love within our society as an entire world. And America is not the only one in this. The entire world needs to accept the problem and bring about a change. Also agree that Education isn't just enough, but it is a starting point. But the entire education system in itself needs to evolve and improve. And the main place for educating and teaching is at home, and not at a school! So that takes us once again to setting up a better way of life and a better society with better cultures, morales and also laws & ethics! in addition a society that understands each other and supports each other is key for a better and brighter future. Nevertheless, such a society is a distant prospect with the present form of governance in the major parts of the world. I do not have an answer or even an idea for that, unfortunately, but democracy is a very weak form of governance that has paved way to corruption at every level of the society all over the world which is the major reason for this sad situation of the world. I wish i had an answer for how the world can be governed in a better way but that is one thing that still needs to be figured out. For now, all we can do is bring about a change and a sense of awareness that there needs to be a change in the way we live around each other and that, once again, only through understanding & compassion will we be able to take one small step towards a brighter future.

There is a polarization in our nation that is worse than at any time in our history except possibly the Civil War As a culture, the bulk of us no longer are willing to accept as legitimate any opinion, lifestyle or struggle other than our own. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants hate and mistrust blacks, hispanics, muslims, asians, etc. And each of those groups feels the same way about the others. It extends to other things as well. People who are fortunate enough to still have their jobs think people who have been unemployed for a year are just lazy. I could go on and on, but what it creates is a "me against everybody else" mentality which results in acts of this sort when the extreme of mental illness also comes into play. I blame this intolerance on my own generation -- the Baby Boomers -- because it was not that way before we got here and during our early years on the planet. I believe the migration to this polarity in our country began in the '60s. Assassinations, protest marches Nixon/Watergate (actually the '70s extension of '60s culture) and the Vietnam War all boiled together into a stew of divisiveness. We hated "the Man" and "the Man" hated us for about a decade and a half and I fear the dye was set. We passed this on to our children and we now have two generations -- the bulk of this country's population -- that hate, truly hate, anything or anyone that is different from them. How else do you explain the polarization on Obama? How else do you explain people booing Sarah Palin's daughter at a hockey game? Her daughter! How else do you explain a disturbed person dressing himself in body armor, walking into a theater with four guns and extra ammo and murdering people at random? I don't fear terrorists, we will still band against outsiders. I don't fear nuclear annihilation. I don't fear global warming. What I fear is the guy down the street who grumbles quietly every time somebody's dog craps on his lawn. I fear there will come a time when instead of grumbling he will answer with an AK-47. A great sage once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Bob I have to agree with you. The biggest thing we learned as a younger generation from the baby-boomers is how to lay the blame around and not except our faults. Most of baby boomers turned out selfish and worried about the effect on their own lives not the lives of a nation. America was a great country because we worked together to make it great. Now because we outsourced and alienate our own people we are worried about how that person effects my life style. It's time we work to make this country great again by working together as one nation, under god, and end these days of terror.

I've put my two cents into a blog post on blogger. Here's the link: http://scifialiens-author.blogspot.ca/

Oh bother.