Chickpea Soul

While perusing the worldwideweb this morning, I read a blurb about a film called "Cold Souls."  The film stars Paul Giamatti as an actor named Paul Giamatti.  He is in rehearsals for the Chekhov play Uncle Vanya.  The rehearsals are not going well for him and he feels frustrated, exhausted, and soul-heavy. Then in New Yorker magazine, he finds an article about the procedure of “soul extraction,” in which a man named Dr. Flintstein removes a person’s soul; the person, in turn, feels overwhelming relief; and the soul is shipped to a storage facility in New Jersey. Giamatti undergoes the procedure but is shocked to learn his soul resembles a chickpea. To make matters worse, his chickpea-shaped soul is traded on the Russian black market, and Giamatti, who decides soullessness isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be, has to travel to St. Petersburg to reclaim it. 

The filmmaker was inspired by a dream she had about Woody Allen, in which his soul looked like a garbanzo bean. 

So, of course, I want to, and will, see this film.  But it also begs the question, what would our souls look like if we could extract them and put them in a box?  And another question, can I turn my weird-ass dreams into a film-making career?   And finally, did I just grind up Woody or Paul's soul in my food processor?  Ack!