Six Takes

There is a lot to be said about movies, they are so often after love affairs or glory days. These days. Times were when on the last page of the local newspaper, you'd browse and dive into the third page of the third section. Most days, these mini-posters blur into each other as you ponder the adventurous romping love lives. Ad-mania. One day is an exception for me. It is nineteen-seventy three.

First Take
It is raining. Brother Richard of age twenty or nearly does not want to go. I have come back from a good hearty day's work of pounding the cash register with all the muscle I can muster, eaten a plate of lasagna and wander into the living room as the television tube has since been turned on. I sit in front of it.

I am confronted with titilating motion of stars flashing like lunatics, blowing kisses, Wally Cox funnelling foolishly. Suddenly a flash of seriousness starts when the MC straightens his tie and introduces the choice guests from unheard of towns. One, a housewife has just flown in from the wilds of North Dakota where for the past several decades she has been peacefully gathering information on how to deal with game shows. The other, a male, is fresh and spunky and just been inducted in the Military Forces. The show happens to be Hollywood Squares. Time out. Who was it? Was it A.B.or C. Vincent Price guesses right. The late Cox waves. Then a commerical spot.

I am about to be up and out when a rumbling Jack LaLanne voice shouts out the ad for a new movie. I say, I say. New Movie? OF what sort Kung Fuyon? Mafia Madness? Women On The Run? The man says, Pat Garrett And Billy the Kid. He rumbles out a few of the names of the cast of which the first to be mentioned is the man behind the guitar, a Bob Dylan. No kidding, I say to myself. Is that a fact. Well, glory be and guffaw. Gone Hollywood on us? It's glory be. And guffaw. For what good reason? Did there have to be one? Have to see this one.

It continues to rain. Brother Richard finally makes his way back from work and when I ask him if on this particular night, would he maybe like to drive down to the city to catch the latest cowboy flick, he grunts and wrenches his bloating umbrella with the words, "I just got in from school. I don't need to see a cowboy movie.." Mmhm. Yes, well listen. Brother Richard perhaps you don' t know that Sam Peckinpah directed it And it's had nothing but the greatest rave reviews. I'll even pay for both our tickets. He continues to stall. I'm hungry Is dinner ready? Yes, well Brother Richard would you go right on in and fill up the old stomach but keep me in mind for this movie, will you? You will think about it, won't you? Think about it!

He does. I show him the newspaper. Look, see? Sidney Poitier is at the Fiesta, Clint Eastwood is at the Fulton, let's go to the other one. Sounds great doesn't it? Hmmmmmmmm. I'll just have to be a little honest here. The rain is whistling against the walls of the house. I had this Billy the Kid movie picked out already in advance. You would be doing me a favor, I'll pay. Honest.

I climb a cumbersome flight of steps into the depths of a cluttered sleeping pad. Into the closet. I am dressed and ready to go, fiddling with my shoulder bag for essentials when Brother Richard steps in. You're not going alone, he says, it's raining. Yes I am. No. How come? I'm taking you, that's why.

Brother Richard drives into the city. Pellets are knocking crazy patterns on the windows. The next thing I know we're at a red light and down near the Fulton, a couple blocks over.

So we smile at the ageless ticket boy as he tears our tickets in half. We sit near the back with popcorn and jujubes. I am anxiously smiling.

All eyes are cast into the marvelous credits Nothing but the movie mattered now.


Second Take
Memorial day. Flags are fluttering with high spirits and the potato salad is passed around as grills fire up. At the park, bicycles everywhere. I bicycle up to the local Seven-To-Eleven grocery store to get an icee.

I stand there watching the woman's hands fill up the cone and then pay her 55 cents as I suddenly think of the movie I had been to and it makes me race home on my bike to think of a face in my past. I call Paul. Paul? I say. Yes? Yes, well listen, Paul. Are you doing something. Not that Im trying to be pushy or anything. But there's a new movie fresh out. It's supposed to be absolutely fabulous. He coughs twice. I guess I could go. What's the name of the movie, anyway?

We speed down the highway, talking of old times with no real reason than to reminisce casually. Paul is now a college student at a college that is running wild with psychology majors, he says. He loves Gestalt, he says. Likes classic cases, the difficult, the morbid. You know? The parking lot attendant punches our parking ticket.

It is the same theatre The ticket boy gives me more than once glance. Did he remember me? Probably not.

We drink sodas and I munch half of a Giant Tootsie Roll.

The music whistles. Ears are flapping like Uncle Wiggly's.


Third Take
I play with the mixing straw in my drink, looking down into the melting ice. A hefty pair of shoulder's brushes my back. Have you seen the movie before? No Would you like me to take you? I drop the corners of my mouth, How did you guess?

Gary slips me another drink at the bar without my thinking about it. Suddenly it's past midnight and Gary offers me a ride home.

He owns a nice car. Leather bucket seats, wood panel dash, four on the floor, AmFm stereo tape deck. The thing is fire engine red and he flames up a cigarette as he turns the key to his vehicle. "I've got a full tank of gas, so where can I fly you to. To the moon? The moon then."

Gary really likes his car. He tells me about the bill of sale, the parts that need tuned up, mileage and type of gas he pumps into at the service station. He likes Aerowax or Turtle Wax, either one or the other. He roars away from my driveway.

I dream all night about the kid standing there with one thumb up. The next evening Gary takes me to see the movie again. All Gary could say was, "That's him?" as one kid in the audience stands straight up and at attention and squints
furiously into the silver screen at the get-go of Dylan's first scene.


Fourth Take
A month has gone by. The flags have been folded and this time I see that the movie has come to a neighboring local town.

Summer session. In school. I meet this horn- rimmed spectacled face with a strange and friendly manner. I want very much to pay for the use of his help in class after he has explained Alfred Prufrock the night school evening I have slept through it. Prufrock is a vivid wealth of images by a man named T.S. Eliot he writes down for me. Norbert is the one and only face that swallowed the professors witness to a voice out of the past.

Norbert is studying to be a priest. He tells me he wants to attend seminary soon. He loves his religion. He wishs Catholics would learn to read the bible more. He thinks priests should get married. He loves children. He loves moms.

He drives to the movie like an angel. Which comforts me somewhat. Norbert begins to tell me about a literary magazine affiliated to the seminary. He likes Andrew Greely, likes Rod McKuen, but likes studying the lives of saints most of all. Well, charming.

A funny thing. After a small limp moment in the conversation, Norbert begins to describe a young fifteen year old girl who he is teaching catechism to at his bible school for a preparation to become a priest. He implies that she has a thing about him, but he wants to tell her that he can't be sure if he wants to keep his virginity or not, since he has dreamed of going to bed with her. I'll be your girl, I say. We make love.

We then climb along the third row into the movie theatre a little late. The kid has got himself in a tough situation with one of the jail guards and is now on his knees covering his head while the guard stands over him with a loaded rifle.

So this is a cowboy movie, says Norbert. Dylan gets a solo zoom, as he chews some sassafras and glances one-eyed up at the window of the jail, the kid is now being pulled out of there and Norbert whispers There Is Gold In Them Thar Hills as he swizzles his popcorn.

Now into a city bar. A disco band is parading around the stage. Norbert asks for a drink. He say, My God.Serve Us. Finally they do as he peers up into the lace top of the waitess and tells me that he couldn't believe the size of the indian woman's breasts in the movie. We dick up the plot. You know, he says. I was watching the late talk show and the guy on Mannix who plays Mannix that detective show was telling Carson abou the differences between television and motion pictue productions of stuff like that. You know, he said that it's just not legal to show the guy shooting point-blank and the other guy falling down at the same time Did you know that? No, I didn't, I say.


Fifth Take
It has been three weeks. The day I go swimming, I come home to read the newspaper to find that the town my mother grew up in is offering the same ad in the local as it did in the city's and it reads, Best Of Friends, Deadliest Of Enemies. Well, well I say. The town is big enough to get a late run. Must have been a pretty good town to grow up in.

So,I drive myself. I take a wrong one-way turn when I drive into the right town and a friendly cop informs me of this. By now, I am excited with another chance to be in a movie theatre watching the fellow sing his heart out This time, all by myself.

The room is filled. Waiting in a long line, I finally step into the lounge. The mirrors flash at me, I buy another candy bar. I emerge from the girls room to get a seat in the front row.

I bite the cellophane of my box of Dots and lift my eyes into the barrel of the kid's gun. If his big boots are big enough, I can't tell. Only his slick drawl, I notice. The barber in the movie was a hit again!


Sixth Take
When a happy ghost calls me up on the phone for the simple reasons that my mother doesn't know why I'm such a loner and strange about things he says, I am overjoyed to just say, how about a drive-in?

He says he doesn't have a car. I say I'll borrow my mother's. I pay for the tickets. I hit the tape recorder button as the happy ghost says Haven't heard Penny Lane in a million years. I take out a pack of cigarettes. A lighter. Three cassette tapes. And a sandwich.



I hope it comes on T.V., I say to Prince Marquee.