Hacker Cinema
Vision Quest
1985 · Film · 105 min
Directed by Harold Becker
After deciding he needs to do something meaningful with his life, high school wrestler Louden Swain sets out on a mission to drop weight and challenge the area's undefeated champion, which creates problems with his teammates and health. Matters are complicated further when Louden's father takes in an attractive female drifter who's on her way to San Francisco.
2 positivefrom 2 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
It's a nice list. I've only seen a few of the movies on there. Offhand, that includes "Hotel Artemis", "Vision Quest", "Moon", "Automata", "It Follows", "Omega Doom", "Predestination", "Cube", and "Freejack". But quite a few more look very interesting and will be going on my personal "to watch" list. Thanks for sharing!
I have a handful of "regulars" that I watch repeatedly. Most of them are at the point now that I've seen them so many times that they can work as "background noise" when I'm coding or doing something else. IOW, I can turn the volume down fairly low and it serves a purpose, but I'm so familiar with the story already that I'm not likely to get drawn into actually paying attention to the movie (as opposed to whatever I'm working on) unless I'm at a point where I need a break anyway.
Some of the ones that are on that list for me:
The Matrix
The Matrix Resurrections
The Social Network
Inception
Sneakers
Hackers
Antitrust
Rad
Tron: Legacy
Vision Quest
Rocky (really the entire Rocky franchise)
The Karate Kid
Kickboxer
Bloodsport
Hard To Kill
Above The Law
I was on my high school wrestling team when Vision Quest was in theaters. That movie was religion to us wrestlers, mostly, obviously, because it was about high school wrestling. But the movie was much deeper, expressed by that one scene.
Kareem did leave out the best line from that scene, though - basically, the summary: "It ain't the six minutes. It's what happens in that six minutes."
(Trivia: Vision Quest was Madonna's first movie appearance. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing, though. LOL)
Love that reference to the Vision Quest scene. It's a great scene (embedded in a great movie!) and was very on-point for what he was saying.
As an aside, if you haven't seen Vision Quest, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Since we're talking movies, I'll throw in a handful of movie titles that I find inspirational and /or uplifting as well:
Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Rocky Balboa
Vision Quest
Tin Cup
The Pursuit of Happyness
The Social Network
Rad
Hackers
Wargames
Iron Man
The Man Who Knew Infinity - based on the book of the same name, which I also recommend.
It depends on what I'm doing. If I'm reading/studying and trying to mostly absorb material, I usually listen to either synthwave (and related: darkwave, horrowave, retrowave, whatever you want to call it), or classical.
If I'm writing code or doing something active like that, the above applies, but add heavy metal to the list of things I might be listening to. But if I'm listening to metal it's almost always only bands and songs that I'm extremely familiar with (eg, have listened to a given song hundreds or thousands of times in my life) as those are less likely to be distracting to me, as opposed to something new where I feel obligated to really pay attention to the music.
One other option is I will sometimes put on a movie that I've watched many, many, many times (eg, The Matrix, Hackers, Antitrust, Tron:Legacy, The Social Network, Rad, Vision Quest, etc) minimize the viewer window and just have the audio in my headphones.
Very rarely I might go with some sort of basically "white noise" track like
"Howling snowstorm and crackling fire" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=volQGswo3dg
"Cyberpunk city sounds" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5zX1eRKEDM&
"Twin Peaks Double R Diner" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npVellnR6D8
"Coffee shop" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMAPTo7RVCo (unless I'm actually sitting in a real-life coffee shop, which I quite often am)
etc.
One of my favorites is this one from The Social Network:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC5wVJrhzl0
Another is the scene in The Fighter where Micky Ward is talking to his girlfriend and there's the "I'm tired of being a fucking disappointment, I told everybody I was gonna win that fight and get back on track, blah, blah" bit.
And plenty of scenes from the Rocky movies, Vision Quest, Rad, The Karate Kid, and a few others...
Honestly, for me, it has a lot to do with a general feeling of having something to prove. Not just to other people, but to myself. I grew up dirt poor in rural southeast NC, but never felt like I was any less capable or important than anybody else. But I haven't done anything to make a mark on the world yet, so I feel driven to do something, to "be somebody" or whatever you want to call it.
If you've seen that old movie "Vision Quest" I guess you could say that I feel a bit like Louden Swaine did. Except I'm already a lot older than that character was in the movie.
Most of the answers you'll probably get are pretty cliched, but that's OK... they're popular answers for a reason. So, might as well get it out of the way:
Figure out what you like doing, and find ways to spend more time doing that.
Ok, that said... in real-life, sometimes we have conflicting desires and tradeoffs have to be made. If I like doing "X" and "B" but "B" pays way better, and I also want "Y" which requires money, then maybe "B" is the better choice, even if I actually like "X" a little more. Or not. The point is, there are no perfect decisions... life is a series of trade-offs, learning experiences and opportunities to re-evaluate things. If I have any useful advise to give, I'd say something like:
1. Above all, stay true to yourself vis-a-vis principles and values. Don't compromise on who you are or what you believe in, just to make a buck or whatever.
2. Try to avoid decisions that lock you too firmly onto one path. While it's true - after a fashion - that it's "never too late to $FOO", inertia and lock-in are powerful forces. Sometimes you have to pick, jobs, locations to live, significant others, etc., but try to always keep an eye towards keeping your options open.
3. All of that said, read "Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces Watch the movie "Vision Quest" Think about what you want your purpose, your quest, your defining goal to be. Pursue it whole-heartedly. Watch that old Kevin Costner movie "Tin Cup" as well. It's silly, but there's some great wisdom there.
4. Realize that the old saw about "Winners never quit and Quitters never win" is true but represents a double-edged sword of sorts. Read "Moby Dick" and imagine Captain Ahab muttering to himself "Winners never quit, winners never quit..." There's a fine line between determination and obsession. Unfortunately you might not recognize it until you cross it. Some lessons you just have to learn through experience.
5. On the sexual frustration thing... I'm hesitant to say this, because it can open a big can of worms for some people and lead to more obsession, but... If you're not good at connecting with women, there is useful knowledge to be found in the "PUA community" (or "Seduction Community" if you like). There's a lot of BS as well, but some people do gain from getting involved in that. http://www.fastseduction.com