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This week’s clip comes from the climax of Rushmore, which also happens to be the climax of Max Fischer’s play-within-a-film Vietnam extravaganza, Heaven and Hell. There’s a lot happening in this 1:11. In Heaven and Hell terms, we find out that Surf Boy has died and that Esposito and Le Chahn will marry. In Rushmore terms, we get hints of the deepening relationship between Fischer and Margaret Yang, as well as Fischer’s unlikely reconciliation with school bully Magnus (he always wanted to be in one of Fischer’s bloody plays). We also sense that everything may turn out all right between Fischer and friends Herman Bloom and Rosemary Cross after all. “Sic transit gloria” indicates Fischer’s connection with Cross (he saved the Latin program at Rushmore to impress her because her thesis was on Latin American economics) and Heaven and Hell is, more generally, a tribute to Bloom (he was in the shit, after all). We also get a sly Apocolupse Now reference courtesy of the surfboard carried by the “soldiers” in the background. Apocolypse was directed, of course, by Francis Ford Coppola, aka Jason Schwartzman’s uncle.

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