Connections to NBK Movie

I re-watched Natural Born Killers a few nights ago and I saw a ton of things that reminded me of Columbine. Some are very obvious things like the theme of killing for revenge and the repeated motif of killing cops. Also, the making a video diary of everything and playing to the media....

Some are less so. Here's three of the things I noticed:

1) Mickey's appearance is very much in keeping with Dylan's, right down to the earring and sunglasses. To really get this vibe, watch the opening scene of NBK and then watch the "Dylan behind Blackjack" vid.

2) Bullet PoV -- again the opening scene of NBK shows a shot from the PoV of a bullet much like Eric's story for creative writing.

3) When Mickey is remembering his father's suicide, the father gets down on his knees to shoot himself just as Dylan is believed to have done in the library. However, in the movie, the father uses a shotgun.

That's just a few of the many things I noticed -- there are a lot of other Columbine echoes in the movie.

What have you noticed? Just how influential do you feel this film was to the boys? Could there have been an NBK without the film? If so, would it have been different?


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I haven't watched this film since 1996 or so, but it is evident just how much it influenced the both of them. To name the plan after it speaks volumes, obviously. Dylan does seem to be the one who incorporated it into his physical appearance the most.

When Mickey kills the Indian chief, Mallory chides him for this and shouts "bad, bad, bad" in an angry tone. In Rampart Range, Eric and Dylan both tap a gun shouting "no, no, no" in a similar tone.

JDM87 wrote:

When Mickey kills the Indian chief, Mallory chides him for this and shouts "bad, bad, bad" in an angry tone. In Rampart Range, Eric and Dylan both tap a gun shouting "no, no, no" in a similar tone.

Nice catch!  When you start playing close attention, the correspondences just keep popping up.

Thanks! Indeed. Also the supposed "do you believe in God" from Eric/Dylan could have been a play on Mickey's "do you believe in fate"...

It is pretty crazy how much Dylan emulated Mickey's appearance. He really wanted to be like him huh?

Dextromethorphan wrote:

It is pretty crazy how much Dylan emulated Mickey's appearance. He really wanted to be like him huh?

Sure seems that way.

The scene w/ the interview between Mickey and Wayne Gale also contains a lot of the same kind of "philosophical" mumbo-jumbo that appeared in the boys' journals and reportedly on the basement tapes. The whole nihilistic, social Darwinist spiel...

For example:

Mickey: You'll never understand. Me and you, Wayne, we're not even the same species. I used to be you … then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're an ape. I'm here … I'm right here … and you … you're somewhere else, man. You say, why? I say, why bother?

I'm glad you made this thread, I've seen the movie before but never REALLY payed attention enough to see how much this movie influenced them (mostly Dylan) now I'm not saying the movie "caused" the massacre but they sure seemed to take a lot from that movie. Personally I think it was an okay movie, was just pretty weird.

Some good parallels here!  I'll have to take another look at NBK (the movie that is. ;)) again for some of the influential mimicry.  I recall that Devon Adams mentioned that E & D knew all the dialog to NBK and could do most, if not all of the scenes, from the movie.

This thread is beginning to remind me of what Dylan mentions in his diversion program "Discovery Class" essay.  It's one of my fav Dylan documents as the level of (CHIPS program induced) arrogance is *eye rollingly* astounding.  Makes me chuckle all the same.

"The teacher was informative, and the information was valuable, but I already knew almost all of what the teacher had to say.  She talked about influences, and how they affect us.  Family, friends, media, T.V., radio, almost everything around us is an influence.  I already knew this.  She pointed out that influences make us act differently.  I knew that too."

gustopoet wrote:

2) Bullet PoV -- again the opening scene of NBK shows a shot from the PoV of a bullet much like Eric's story for creative writing.

I thought Eric referred to KMFDM song 'Stray Bullet', which, as he claimed, was describing the best his personality.

gustopoet wrote:

What have you noticed? Just how influential do you feel this film was to the boys? Could there have been an NBK without the film? If so, would it have been different?

This is very good question, and I've been wondering too how many things they took from songs, movies etc. I think it's not like their actions were inspired by mass culture, but rather it helped them to put their own feelings and thoughts into words and ideology. All the godlike stuff comes from KMFDM, and some quotes from Eric's journal sound similar to Mickey's monologue in cel.
What strikes me is that Natural Born Killers is, after all, a romance. Did they like it because of action and the dark humour or also because of showing mass murderers as a romantic couple? I think, they both, Eric and Dylan, in fact dreamed about going on NBK with a female. Eric had some kind of sexy killer fetish about Arlene, so he could be attracted to Mallory. In my pov, Dylan on the other hand desired a joint romantic suicide and was looking for some pretty, depressed girl who would be his soulmate. That's why he put NBK in quotation marks and write  'gaawd' next in his diary, just like going on massacre with Eric wasn't the real NBK he dreamed about.

gustopoet wrote:

Dextromethorphan wrote:

It is pretty crazy how much Dylan emulated Mickey's appearance. He really wanted to be like him huh?

Sure seems that way.

The scene w/ the interview between Mickey and Wayne Gale also contains a lot of the same kind of "philosophical" mumbo-jumbo that appeared in the boys' journals and reportedly on the basement tapes. The whole nihilistic, social Darwinist spiel...

For example:

Mickey: You'll never understand. Me and you, Wayne, we're not even the same species. I used to be you … then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're an ape. I'm here … I'm right here … and you … you're somewhere else, man. You say, why? I say, why bother?

That was exactly what I was thinking. This scene sounds so much like them..especially like Dylan in his journal.

gustopoet wrote:

Dextromethorphan wrote:

It is pretty crazy how much Dylan emulated Mickey's appearance. He really wanted to be like him huh?

Sure seems that way.

The scene w/ the interview between Mickey and Wayne Gale also contains a lot of the same kind of "philosophical" mumbo-jumbo that appeared in the boys' journals and reportedly on the basement tapes. The whole nihilistic, social Darwinist spiel...

For example:

Mickey: You'll never understand. Me and you, Wayne, we're not even the same species. I used to be you … then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're an ape. I'm here … I'm right here … and you … you're somewhere else, man. You say, why? I say, why bother?

That was exactly what I was thinking. This scene sounds so much like them..especially like Dylan in his journal.

tragedy79 wrote:

That was exactly what I was thinking. This scene sounds so much like them..especially like Dylan in his journal.

The other part that reminded me of Dylan's journal was Mallory's dialogue: "I see angels, Mickey. They're comin' down for us from heaven. And I see you ridin' a big red horse, and you're driving them horses, whippin' 'em, and the're spitting and frothing all 'long the mouth, and the're coming right at us. And I see the future, and there's no death, 'cause you and I, we're angels... "

Same sort of weird conflation of violence, blood, and spiritual epiphany....

@ 1:04:38 in Natural Born Killers, during the prison break, Mallory says: "Let's go out there, and run down the stairs, and go out in a hail of bullets. And then we'll die, and then we'll really be free."

@ 1:08:26 the warden's decapitated head is waving on a stick.

A correspondence with Dylan's quote: "You will find his [Brandon Larson's] head on my knife" reported in accounts of the BT.

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@ 1:08:00 Mickey flicks at Wayne Gale's injured ear and Mallory says "Oh, that is so gross."

A correspondence with some of the library witness reports that mentioned Dylan saying he'd always wanted to cut someone with a knife and then one of the boys reportedly saying "Oh, gross!" a moment later.

rigormortis wrote:

What strikes me is that Natural Born Killers is, after all, a romance. Did they like it because of action and the dark humour or also because of showing mass murderers as a romantic couple? I think, they both, Eric and Dylan, in fact dreamed about going on NBK with a female. Eric had some kind of sexy killer fetish about Arlene, so he could be attracted to Mallory. In my pov, Dylan on the other hand desired a joint romantic suicide and was looking for some pretty, depressed girl who would be his soulmate. That's why he put NBK in quotation marks and write  'gaawd' next in his diary, just like going on massacre with Eric wasn't the real NBK he dreamed about.

These are all great points.

So good, in fact, that no one in their right mind could possibly think that they weren't both heterosexual.

ThoughtBox wrote:

So good, in fact, that no one in their right mind could possibly think that they weren't both heterosexual.

Yeah, no kidding. Not to mention they both wrote about heterosexual erotic fantasies, both had crushes, and both were frustrated by their inability to find a girlfriend. One of the reasons that I think both boys were so attracted to Natural Born Killers is because Oliver Stone consciously injected an affirmative heterosexual love story into an otherwise absolutely nihilistic film. The only thing that seems to be presented in a sympathetic light in Stone's film is the normalcy of a heterosexual love and its relationship to creating a worthy society. Both boys seem to hold on to this shred of hope right up until the end, that heterosexual love and/or lust was worth aspiring to. They resented the "bitches" at Columbine and especially the "godly little whores" who they saw as depriving them one of the things they did see as having value in social relationships. I think Eric emphasized sex more and Dylan emphasized love, but both seemed to be more or less typically attracted to the opposite sex.