was his character interacting with tony shalob? or was tony shalob jim's alter ego? I didn't really understand that. can somebody explain it?
___________Plus, did judy greer's character send her son away?
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I don't think it was meant to be some kind of Fight Club-esque multiple personalities thing. I didn't even think of that.
Also yes about Judy Greer's son.
Tony was a psychiatrist helping Jim get his anger out and facing his denial over losing his friends on 9/11
I don't think this was a "friends on 9/11" loss. We learn that the three people involved all worked on the 7th floor, so it seems unlikely that they were among the WTC casualties. I suppose people may have died in some of the nearby buildings if they hadn't been evacuated, but it seems more likely to me that the friends all died in an auto accident or something than that they were 9/11 casualties.
shareI kind of agree, or may agree with the original post. I'm not sure the psychiatrist (Tony) existed. No one else saw him, and when the man came in for the snack, they completely stopped talking (ala Sixth Sense). Tony ate that Snickers or candy bar like he needed it, like a sugar addict. It may have been meant that way, also when a beat up/unnoticed Tony left the building, the revolving door swung but he was nowhere to be seen.
shareAnyone else notice that as Tony is leaving the building, for a split second, he looks at the camera and smiles... some one fact check me though, i think thats what i saw but i watched at like 3 am and was tired....
shareNo, you are right, which makes me think maybe he doesn't even exist. Or he wanted to get hit by the chair in the first place.
shareWow, I never thought that he didn't exist...but it makes perfect sense now. I was thinking that it was very odd to have a therapy session in a cafeteria of your office building. I don' think that would ever happen. And obviously the Dr's questionning was very unorthodox. It really explains the smile too!
Bueller...Bueller...
I don't think it would have occurred to me that the psychiatrist was a figment of Gaffigan's character's [Jim's] imagination, but it would explain his [Tony's] eccentricities and flagrant unprofessionalism, such as posing leading questions and leaping from assumption to assumption... Add to that their unorthodox meeting place and the matter of the revolving door, and I think we have a troubled man at last facing reality, alone.
As for the deaths of his co-workers, the dialog indicates something to the effect that they were in offices on the other side of the hall "when it all went down". I think Jim's placing them on the seventh floor may have been yet another manifestation of his pervasive denial, falsely remembering himself to have been in a much less perilous location than he actually was.
Back to the original post, I do think the son gone, and the almost complete emptiness of his former room leads me to believe the situation to be permanent, the child with a heart of "sh*t and splinters" having taken up residence in an institution. Or grave.
I asumed throughout the whole movie that he wasnt there. Noone interacts with him, even at the end, and as someone pointed out he looks at the camera and smiles...And we dont see him going out the door, just them movien for a while before they stop...
shareThe tragedy that Jim's character witnesses was on the 7th floor in the AFTERNOON which means it wasn't the 9/11 tradegy. It's quite clear that Tony's character is Jim's character's alter ego because no one else (except for one guy who comes in to get a drink) is in the cafeteria or walks by. When the guy comes in to get a drink, Jim's character stops talking. No one would have been allowed in if it were a real professional counseling session--it's against all kinds of codes. Also, Tony's character embraced getting hit in the head and was happy after. Jim began to run away as if breaking away from troubled self.
This movie was too incongruous...even awful, however.
JMF
"One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp."
Also Tony's character mention a man in the from of Sandie's head helping him deal with shock.
sharegreat point about the doctor. i never thought about that. i have to admit, though, that when steve colbert tells the parents of that kid that he "has a heart of of splinters and *beep* i just died laughing. that kid was horrible.
vince
i would also like to point out that tony's character waved at the security guard before leaving and the two men talking never looked at him. at all. i found that odd then i read all of these message boards and i'm thinking that he is a figment of "Sandie's" imagination. and i can't remember, but didn't Sandie say he heard voices in his head? i could be wrong.
shareI was thinking all this too... until I watched a deleted scene that featured Dr. T interacting with another woman. Jim Gaffigan's character is waiting for his "turn" for therapy, and you hear a woman crying in the cafeteria. She comes out, still crying, and thanks the doctor. So while everything else suggests to me that his character is just imagined by Jim Gaffigan's character, I can't resolve that whole issue.
share
Darn those deleted scenes! The "not really there" idea was pretty compelling. Open reflection...if the Dr did exist, some of his unconventional methods may just be showing how disturbed he was by the event so 9/11. He needed some help himself (as most of us did!) This may be why he acted so unprofessionally. Or, maybe Jim G's character was in such a state of denial, he was just trying to get it all to surface by being such a jerk.
I still can't get what the smile was about. I think that was the only character acknowledge the camera?
I considered all along that Dr. T was possibly Sandie's imagination. But when I read the post about the deleted scene, I had to watch it again to see if I could garner anything from it. It's possible still that Sandie has made up the crying woman, or she could be real and he imagines her interaction with the doctor. One other thing about the oddity of Dr. T's "interactions" at the end is that the two guys at the front desk do not respond to him even though he has a large cut, is walking funny, and waves at them. Nevertheless, they deleted the scenewith the crying woman, so it's likely it didn't work with the idea Dr. T could be an alter-personality.
shareI haven't seen the scene, but a woman died in the "incident", and if Gaffigan's character made up the doctor, he may have been talking to her. Unless she talks to someone else, of course.
shareWell, if you watch the DVD bonus features, you do see Tony Shalob with another client and you also see him at the same play at Emmy (Maggie G), soooooo, really good theory! But I don't think that was intended...but that would have been cool.
And I really, really don't ged Judy Greer's kid going away...what did they do with him? It almost seems like they killed him. Because if he just went away to a disciplinary school, or mental institution, his room wouldn't be completely empty! She would have packed him a suitcase and kept his room the same for when he came home. Maybe that was a director's mistake. Or they killed him or handed him over to the state.
http://shareddarkness.com/2007/08/09/no-sleep-madison.aspx
^ For those interested, HERE's some quality Jim Gaffigan...
Tony also had a middle-eastern look.
Maybe why Sandie wants to hit him with a chair? To strike back at the hijackers?
What psychiatrist would meet with the staff in the common break room? They would have set up a conference room or somewhere private.
I choose to believe that Tony wasn't there, that Sandie was just thinking these things through in his head. Tony was 'the man in his head'.