From the Life of the Marionettes (1980 TV Movie)

Walter Schmidinger: Tim Mandelbaum

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Quotes 

• Tim Mandelbaum : Maybe one should break down once in a while. I have several times. I don't know if it upset me. I think not. Usually about love. I need intimacy terribly. Where does one find it? I really mean it. Always the same torment. Then the body gets in the way and then the soul. And then one's loaded with hopes and expectations and compromises. God, I'm so theoretical!

• Tim Mandelbaum : I'm only a child. Then again, maybe not. I don't know about time. It doesn't exist, say those who've thought about it. I shut my eyes and feel like a 10-year-old. Physically as well. Then I open them and look in the mirror and an old man stands there. A childish old man, isn't that strange. A childish old man, that's all. No, something more.

• Tim Mandelbaum : My dreams were too lovely perhaps and as punishment - life shakes you when you least expect it.

• Tim Mandelbaum : Most gays like women - not because we're feminine ourselves. But, because we're more in touch with our feelings.

• Tim Mandelbaum : All this intimacy is just a dream.

• Tim Mandelbaum : I'm driven by forces I don't control. Doctors, lovers, pills, drugs, alcohol, work. Nothing helps. Secret forces. What are they called? I don't know. Maybe just aging. Wasting. I don't know. Forces I can't master.

• Tim Mandelbaum : I stare at my face in the mirror - it's quite familiar - and make sure that in this combination of blood and flesh and nerves and bone, there are two separate - I don't know what. Two separate entities. The dream of intimacy, tenderness, togetherness, abandon of the living. And on the other hand violence, filth, horror, threat of death. Sometimes I believe it all comes from one source. I don't know. How should I?

• Tim Mandelbaum : I had a dirty conscience. I blame my homosexuality for it.

• Tim Mandelbaum : Martin was a fine guy. We were very close but, as you know, no one's faithful. Not really. Homosexuals never are. Because of children. The sad fact we haven't any and can't adopt.

• Tim Mandelbaum : I always liked children. I'd have been a fairly good mother.