....So Carol and I pulled up to this googleplex of a cinema, a huge cinderblock monolith with a web-work of clear windows in the center meant to recall the stained glass artistry of an old cathedral or the patterns and grandeur of ancient Egypt or Rome. On either side of this patternwork were long rows of oversized poster displays, lit yellow by halogen and also meant to remind viewers of past wonders, in this case those of an earlier and more dazzling Hollywood....
God, I didn't want to see a movie! In the past week, American banking had gone through its largest collapse since the great depression, and in the face of that fact and other financial news, I, as a breadwinner, was pretty much worrying with the rest of the nation about the possibility of a poverty unknown among working people since the 1930's. In the face of this looming danger, a trip to the flicks seemed wildly irresponsible, a flippant attempt to spend cash in the face of an obvious, forthcoming need,. Worse though, this flavorless, odorless, pre-fab movie-torium only reinforced that feeling. It served as a reminder, not of the wonder and surprise I had experienced as a young cinephile, but of that awful, blank feeling of entertainment as an industry and the celluloid equivalent of high-school cafeteria food.
Unfortunately, I had no way out of this little outing. First of all, unlike myself, Carol had had to spend the last several weeks pretty much cooped up in our house, so I couldn't exactly ignore her very pressing need not to go stir crazy. Worse though, I had in fact been the very jerk who pushed for this specific film before the week's economic collapse. After raising an actual fuss, I couldn't exactly call off my own demanded trip...
Oh, the hell with it! We went up into the theater's lobby, a large chamber of shiny plasic surfaces meant to seem both efficient and attractively futuristic but which was really more empty and blank than anything else. Frustratingly though, once at the ticket counter we found that we were actually an hour early for the next showing....
These things happen. Carol and I live less than a hundred yards from one of the very arbitrary lines between Eastern and Central time twisting through our home state, and at times we misunderstand which time zone something is in or which one is stated . In short though, we had a lot of time to kill, and we decided on a trip to a local burger-flippery called Schoop's.
Now Schoop's was a fixture on the old route 66 and the days of an allegedly more innocent and adventurous America. People had sat in these very booths on their way home from France or Korea, or on their way out on a psychedelic trip to some better, freer place; and the decor definitely showed these themes. Alongside coke ads from before my birth hung posters for James Dean, glossies of Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., album covers from the sexy 70's and art photography commemorating the history of The Blues. The booths, tables, seats and counter were shiny, hygienic plastic, a previous age's vision of a possible high-tech future; and the menu, of course, featured the favorites of every roadside diner: 'burgers, fries and other quick-friable treats as well as coffee, sodas and shakes. Carol and I both ordered cornbread, hers with tea and mine with "Joe", and we decided to take in the retro-pop on the sound system.
I needed to relax. Yes, on one hand Carol had spent the past three weeks as a prisoner in our home, but on the other, I'd been sweating to keep those paychecks rolling in. I did have to be doing at least something right, though. Not only had I gotten promoted to a higher-paying job through sheer physical labor, but my promotion has caused my previous supervisor to change departments due to a lack of any other equally suitable workers. Yeah, I suppose that, in light of all that, I could use a break. I got into the music and the food and let my mind wander.
The music was a top-40 hit of the late 70's, and it took me back to my high school days. I imagined myself back in tenth grade again, also in a diner, and still having the same food but with the friends of that time. We would all be dreaming of our intended futures as film directors, or comic book writers, or science fiction novelists. My friends and I were going to change the world, yes sir; we were going to re-make Hollywood, comics and sci-fi into something truly artistically worthy.
Sitting there though, I briefly missed that earlier, more cinephile life of mine, as well as my old friends from back in Cleveland, and all our old hopes and dreams. With that thought in mind though, I looked across the table to my beautiful wife. Clearly, I had not become a great writer or film-maker, but I had made a decent life for myself and our family, and after so many years together, Carol and I had literally evolved into a unity. Okay, we had done so through a long series of conflicts and unexpected rewards, but we were indeed together and basically happy. In a way my dreams of literary or show-biz success had probably been just hopes for recognition and affection, and well, now I had both. Still though, that teenage film-freak was still a part of me, and that part could still serve as an interesting voice on art and entertainment.
Heading back to the movie theater, I continued to contemplate the views of that allegedly artsier version of me, and I couldn't help thinking about how much our personalities affects our appreciation of films, music, television and books. A few weeks ago, my pop-culture brother had sent me a wonderful gift, the first two volumes of DC comics' anthologies of its original Sgt. Rock, and upon opening it, I had remembered reading those same stories as a young boy and thinking to myself that they gave me an incredibly tough and therefore real view of the war my father had fought in. Now though, quite incredibly, I found the stories very sentimental, even purposefully so, but I also saw a new and rawer kind of violence in them, that of someone making an entirely unselfconscious description of battle. The very bright grade-schooler who had read those same stories was not able to see that quality in the work, but the current man could. With this thought in mind, I contemplated the idea that reviews might want to write reviews not as a Consumer Reports of the movies, but as travelogs of their personal experiences in the theater.
I was in a markedly better mood by the start of the film. Trues, I could not foresee the fate of the world's economy, but I could certainly enjoy a movie, and tonight's fare, Duplicity, let me appreciate it in many, different ways. That young film-freak still inside me could contemplate it as an interesting portrayal of the world of private espionage; the simple fan of entertainment in me could just enjoy it as just a taught-plotted thriller with all the needed twists and ironies; and the wage-earner could just take it as a two hour break from responsibility. All in all, this wasn't too bad for a "B" flick.
Leaving the theater then, I was inwardly laughing at both myself and my situation. in a way, this movie had, like some of the great works of cinema, let me contact some other, unaccessed part of myself. In another way, though, that part of me was not some higher self, merely a happy, simple and earlier version of the current me. Still, some of the best experiences I'd had at the movies had done no more than that. And actually, that was a lot.
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