>Be Evan.

>Be two weeks before Jason killed himself.

>Watching another movie with Jason in the living room.

>This time it's Scorsese's The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio.

>Leo/Hughes is in a hangar somewhere, looking for new recruits for his business.

>Tell him whatever they're paying him, I'll double it, he barks at an underling.

>Jason speaks up.

>You know all biopics are horseshit, right?

>I figured as much, Evan says.

>They're just what the elite wants us to know about some particular event. They're plays. They're ways of getting people to buy into the charade.

>Here we go, thinks Evan.

>Jason begins yet another one of his famous rants. It seems like he does them several times a day. Everyone in the family is sick of it, even Maddie.

>He talks about the emasculation of the male populace, particularly the white male populace:

> Being a self-confident male is socially illegal now. Everyone feels marginalized because everyone is. We're all divided up. If a guy tries to be tough towards a woman or a white guy tries to be tough towards a minority, everyone's instantly against him, even if he's in the right. He's always the villain. Every time. Even if he's right.

>He talks about his '2 lives theory':

>Everyone alive in the modern age actually has two lives. There's the one they live through their own eyes, in their day-to-day. Then there's the life that they live in the greater society, which is experienced through the matrix of the media and the Internet. To this second life, most people do not actually exist. They are only observers. Only the famous and the powerful exist. And this second life is becoming more and more prevalent, taking more and more prevalence over the average person's day-to-day life, as more people live alone, the only experience they have of other people is through this second life. So, the question becomes, if you cannot achieve to the point where you are part of this second life, if you do not achieve to the point where you exist on this second level, do you really exist at all?

>Jason goes on like this for a good twenty minutes, all the while The Aviator is playing and Evan is irritated.

>He's about had it with Jason's constant bitching about the elite.

>Why do you constantly focus on what they're doing? he finally asks when Jason pauses to take a breath. If they're really as powerful as you say, does it really matter one way or another?

>Jason gets worked up, leans forward, gestures forcefully with a finger.

>Yes, it does fucking matter. We're being fucking ruled. And everyone wants to pretend like it's some fairy tale kingdom of democracy and capitalism. And everyone is really hurting because they all know it's not fucking true but they can't even articulate it. One of the things you get taught as a kid is that this country was formed so that people wouldn't have to be ruled by the people with all the money or resources or whatever. It's all horseshit. We never stopped being ruled. Our generation's spiritual crisis'll be more about, like, accepting our limits. The boomers were all focused on branching out and becoming something and trying to figure out who they are. And as a result of that, we'll be stuck with accepting what we're not.

>Why has it never changed, then? Why do we always fall back into the 'being ruled' thing?

>Jason looks sad, gets quiet for a moment.

>People are stupid, people are scared.

>Scared of what?

>Existence, I guess.

>That's deep, says Evan.

>It's true, says Jason. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy it, though.

>He paused, and then said the final thing.

>But don't buy into what people with power tell you. Never. Trust. Power.