http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1569390873/

http://www.imdb.com/rg/VIDEO_PLAY/LINK//video/screenplay/vi1569390873/

"(Pointing to a homeless man on the streets) That image makes me think of a conversation I had the other day with a woman. She was a fastidious Judaic type woman in very sexual slacks. We were talking about the grid plan. I made the comment of how the grid plan emanates out of our weaknesses. This system of avenues and 90 degree angles. To me the grid plan is puritan and homogenizing in a city where there is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophony, total flowing of human ethnicities, tribes and beings and awareness and cruising.

She looked at me and said that she couldn't imagine it any other way. She said that everyone liked the grid plan. (coughs) And of course the question then is 'who is everyone?' I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter (pointing to the homeless man) cuddled up with 34th street and Broadway, uh, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry and disheveled and struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all their imagined rages and hellishness and self orchestrated purgatories- what do they think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plain of thinking is let's just blow up the grid plan and rewrite the streets to be more of a self portraiture about our personal struggles than a wet dream of a real estate broker from the 1870's.

We are forced to walk within these right angles-doesn't she find it infuriating? By being so completely lesioned to the grid plan, with this idiom of 'I can't imagine changing the grid plan', uh, she's really aligning herself with this civilization, she's saying 'I can't even imagine altering this civilization', she's aligning herself with this meek and maligning morality that rules our lives- she can't imagine standing on a chair in the middle of the room and changing perspective, can't imagine changing my mind on anything, in the end can't imagine having her own identity that contradicts other identities. And when she says to me that saying everyone likes the grid plan, isn't she excluding me from everyone? Who doesn't like the grid plan? It's so functional. You can take a right, a right, a red light, a green light...it's so symmetrical. By liking the grid plan, you're saying you're going to relive all the mistakes my parents made, I'm going to identify and suffer through all the sorrows my mother did, I will propagate and raise dysfunctional children like they raised, I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to recreate myself and my damages for the next generation..."


And such is the tone of the 1998 black and white documentary The Cruise following Timothy "Speed" Levitch, a tour guide of the Manahatten Gray Line double decker bus system. Timothy explains his relationship with New York City in the same way one would describe their relationship with a woman, or as he puts it "an angry vindictive woman". Originally joining the Gray Line tour bus system to meet women and get laid, he says that his purpose have become more pure and now he enjoys paying homage to New York, calling her a flower and hoping that she in return loves him as well.

His manners are flamboyant and his speech is one of a beat poet, voice reminiscant of Ira Glass from This American Life. The cameras follow him as he crashes from couch to couch, living out of a duffel bag. One shot shows him picking up an assignment at the Gray Line offices and the internal struggle he faces as he ulitimately refuses that assignment because it starts at a certain area and degrades his entire tribute to the city. In his observations about civilization, he concludes that "one of the greatest downfalls of civilization is the this need to work, to be employed. If I could do away with one thing in civilization it would be that. Well, it would first be my acne, but then that".

The relationship between the Gray Line tour company and himself is stressed. With the installment of mandatory uniforms for tour guides from "the regime", he huffs that "they are basically saying that their new policy is that Timothy "Speed" Levitch is not going to get laid by women he meets on the cruise". He describes it as an "anti-cruise", it is the attempt to imprison us on every level that we exist.

This hour and a half trip through the streets of New York City and the mind of Timothy "Speed" Levitch will certainly allow you to see the grid line and maybe a few other elements of life in a new life.