Among his many interesting suggestions, Dennis P. Bingham made one ambivalent comment upon which I'd like to comment (ambivalently). That is: I think parts of the comment are off-target, but I'm not upset about this. Rather, I think looking at the question provides some insight into interesting aspects of the film. Bingham suggested that part of Kubrick's postmodernism involves a play with familiar "cultural signs and types." Amongst these "types" which he identifies as "troubling" are: "a prostitute's Asian clients, a New York Jewish tailor (who looks a bit like Kubrick himself), an anxious gay man." All of these descriptions I find slightly off target, which I think underlines the fact that the types themselves may not be so fixed. [SPOILERS ALERT: IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM STOP READING NOW.] Example one: what Bingham identifies as "a prostitute's Asian clients." The character is not yet a prostitute when we first meet them, and they're in drag and in their underwear (semi-drag? un-drag?). Exactly which Asian stereotype is this? It's all a bit too mixed up and perverse to be easily decipherable. Later when these two men appear, they do indeed seem to be the girl's clients (with her father's blessings). At that point they're dressed in something closer to business attire, and then we might say they're stereotyped Asian businessmen--had we not already seen them in wigs and makeup. Example two: why is the tailor "Jewish"--or "New York Jewish," to be more exact? I read him as middle-eastern or Arab American. Is he a type? And he isn't really a tailor: he rents costumes. Does the tailor-ness make him closer to a type or narrow middle-eastern-ness to Jewishness? Third example: the anxious gay man. Are you thinking of the hotel clerk? Considering he's describing a hotel patron with a bruise being rushed out of the hotel by two big thugs, he doesn't seem nearly anxious enough! It's not really his anxiousness to me that codes him as gay, but rather the way he's so complicitous with the Tom Cruise character. The fact that the role is played by an actor I believe to be gay helps me code him that way. It also seems like one of the few rational justifications one can come up with for why he would be so forthcoming with a total stranger--doctor or no. To me this is a delicious scene, because the actor just seems to want to eat Tom Cruise alive: he's practically drooling, as I would be if I met Tom Cruise. This does also fit with the use of (Proppian) 'helper' characters in the film and helps lend it a fairy tale quality. (This is also lifted from _North By Northwest_.) Everyone the hero meets seems to help him: (a) because he's a doctor, (b) because he's charming as all getout, and (c) becaus otherwise the film couldn't happen. Try, just try, to find that many people to help you do *anything* in New York City. (Kubrick's isolation from reality perhaps takes its toll here--unless you don't want the film to be about the New York we know but rather a fairy tale version, which actually makes a bit more sense.) Perhaps my point is the same as Bingham's: one needs certain categories in order to read the film, but the film also refuses these categories to some extent. Sincerely, Edward R. O'Neill ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu