The Life of David Gale
Overview
 
The Life of David Gale is a 2003 American drama film directed by Alan Parker
Alan Parker
Sir Alan William Parker, CBE is an English film director, producer, writer and actor. He has been active in both the British cinema and American cinema and was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.-Life and career:...

 and written by Charles Randolph.

Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...

 stars as the eponymous character, a college Professor and longtime activist against capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...

 who is sentenced to death for killing a fellow capital punishment opponent. Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...

 and Laura Linney
Laura Linney
Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress of film, television, and theatre. Linney has won three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She has been nominated for three times for an Academy Award and once for a BAFTA Award...

 co-star.
David Gale (Spacey
Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey, CBE is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and crooner. He grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television...

) is a prisoner on death row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

 in Texas. With only a few days to his execution, his lawyer negotiates a half million-dollar fee to tell his story to Bitsey Bloom (Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...

), a journalist from a major news magazine known for her ability to keep secrets and protect her sources.
Quotations

[Giving a lecture to his college students] Fantasies have to be unrealistic. Because the minute- the second- that you get what you want, you don't- you can't- want it anymore.

[Giving a lecture to his college students] Living by your wants will never make you happy; what it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you ever attain in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice.

This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness.

[while drunk] Socrates was ugly, Plato was fat, and, um, and Aristotle was a prissy dresser!

I fell off the wagon and hurt myself.

They wanted me to die knowing the key to my freedom was out there somewhere!

Death is a gift.

We spend our whole lives trying to stop death. Eating, inventing, loving, praying, fighting, killing. But what do we really know about death? Just that nobody comes back. But there comes a point in life - a moment - when your mind outlives its desires, its obsessions, when your habits survive your dreams, and when your losses... Maybe death is a gift. You wonder. All I can tell you is that by this time tomorrow I'll be dead. I know when. I just can't say why. You have 24 hours to find out.

Of course he sympathizes with murderers... he is one!

Hate's no fun if you keep it to yourself.

 
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