Just before he is arrested as a communist spy outside the gates of a military base, the radio in Mick's Ford Anglia is tuned to a talk show on which two men discuss Zen Buddhism. Asked to explain what Zen Buddhism. He is engaged, rather, in consulting his map and in looking for a way into the military base in order to make a promised sale. He does not heed the radio's mentoring guidance, so immersed is he in his journey and his calculative projects. It is a very hard practice.
Nothing is acquired in a day. . . .
It comes suddenly. It comes in many ways. One could be arranging a vase of flowers . . . One, the expert on Zen might have gone on to say, might even be auditioning for a film when illumination comes. And yet what Anderson hits Mick with is none other than the script of the film for which Mick is auditioning, which is, by extension, the script of the film which we are at that moment seeing as well.