Not an avatar comment, but a quote comment.
eldiem, have you seen
Gothic? It is one of the worst movies ever made, but has a great cast and some hilarious scenes so it's worth watching. It basically tells about the weekend in Italy where Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley, and that Italian guy who wrote the first English vampire story (edit: Dr. Polidori) got utterly stoned and told ghost stories all night that inspired Mary to write
Frankenstein (and Polidori to write
The Vampyre).
My favorite bit is when Gabriel Byrne, playing Byron, takes a big swig out of a poison bottle and says "Laudanum! The elixir of life, according to Paracelsus ... and who are
we to argue?"
Who, indeed?!
