"Books were invented by Gutenberg in the fifteenth century and are, like all other inventions five centuries old, hopelessly archaic," Case often said.

He also liked to categorize books as "linear," "Aristotelian," and, when he was especially rhetorical, "paleolithic"; he justified this last adjective on the grounds that books consisted of words, an Old Stone Age invention.

Case had a Ph.D. from Yale and a D.D. (Dishonorable Discharge) from the U.S. Army. He had earned the former for a thesis on "Metaphor and Myth in the Films of the Three Stooges" and the latter for trying to organize a mutiny during the Vietnam War. His film criticism appeared in a journal called Confrontation. His essays usually began with the same three words as his Ph.D. thesis-e.g., "Metaphor and Myth in Hitchcock's 39 Steps," "Metaphor and Myth in Beach Blanket Bingo"-that sort of thing.

There was not much of an audience for such writing and Justin barely made a living. His dream was to become an editor at Pussycat magazine, where the big money was.

The FBI had been tapping his phone ever since Vietnam and had reels and reels of his conversation, which concerned almost nothing but films. Nevertheless, they kept listening, hoping something incriminating would slip eventually. A man with both a Ph.D. and a D.D. was obviously worth attention, even if most of what he said was totally incomprehensible to them.

Special Agent Tobias Knight, playing Case's tapes one evening, actually heard a long rap about Curly being the id or first circuit, Larry the ego or second circuit, and Moe the superego or Jung's fourth circuit. Things got even more confusing when Case went on to talk about the "cinematic continuity in the S-M dimension between Moe and Polanski." It got even weirder when Case said, "Polanski himself went to Chinatown three times-when his parents were murdered by the Nazis, when his wife was murdered by the Manson Family, and when he got convicted of statutory rape. We all go to Chinatown, one way or another, sooner or later." Still, the Bureau did not give up. Case was sure to say something incriminating, or at least intelligible to them, sooner or later.