by Ralph Maltese | Sep 25, 2016 | Uncategorized
Maintaining the Maintenance
In 1964 I saved up my coins I earned from my job as an assistant cable splicer for Bell Telephone in New York City, and purchased a transistor radio. Back then to have mobile music, to be able to listen to Dean Martin belt out his hit Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime while walking up Sixth Avenue was a big deal. Granted, what music I listened to was limited to what my favorite radio station played. That transistor radio was the first non-hand-me-down electronic device that I owned. On my first day of ownership I pored through the instruction manual, especially the part about maintenance. I was required by the warranty to keep the radio clean and free from crime and dirt. This was difficult since I worked in a job performed often under the streets of New York City. It would be like asking Ed Norton to keep his vest sparkling clean and dry while he worked in the sewer.
I did my best. One of the instructions cautioned “Remove batteries if you do not use the device for a long period of time.” What was a long period of time? A week? A month? A year? Eventually the transistor radio went the way of all toys. I failed at my first maintenance responsibility and did not remove the batteries and the contacts were corroded. My defense is that at the time of my transistor radio’s death, I was in college, and maintenance of owned things was not a priority. But it seems that everything I have purchased since my collegiate years requires my attention.
One of the items that almost every family needs to maintain is a car. During my youth I changed the oil, rotated the tires, replaced the wipers, and washed and waxed the car repeatedly. Now my car sends me an email telling me what maintenance is due—five point engine checkup, fluid replenishment, and ash tray emptying. But the smaller items also require periodic checkups. And these maintenance instructions have become more authoritarian, more threatening than ever. “Probably need to clean the keyboard more often than the rest of the PC. Dust and debris [like shrapnel?] can collect between the keys and can affect their functioning. The surface of the keyboard and keys can be wiped over with a cloth lightly dampened with warm non-soapy water. You must avoid getting the keyboard wet as it may cause damage to the keyboard circuits.” Isn’t non-soapy water wet?
All our electronic devices must be plugged in and periodically charged, itself a consumption of energy and time. Maintaining them requires special care. “Dampen the corner of a soft microfiber cloth with a trickle of water. Never apply water or cleaning solutions directly to your iPhone. With the damp corner, gently wipe the iPhone, paying special attention to the touch screen, but avoid wiping the ports. If your screen is especially dirty, you should attempt to remove surface dirt with a soft brush or compressed air first.” I never imagined I would have to take my phone down to the local gas station to use its compressed air.
Even when built in obsolescence has run its course, and I have to replace my phone, I can’t simply use my trash can. “iPhone must be disposed of separately from household waste. When iPhone reaches its end of life, contact local authorities to learn about disposal and recycling options.” “Hello, Sheriff, I have an expired phone here. You wanna come pick it up, or do you want me to bring it to the coroner?”
And a significant portion of my life is devoted to maintaining non-electronic devices. “To keep your knives sharp at home, use a Chicago Cutlery honing steel; Use a cleanser made specifically for metal. Dampen a soft cloth and sprinkle some of the cleanser on it. Rub the stainless steel with the grain.” And, “For concealer and foundation brushes, clean at least once a week to prevent a buildup of product. And because these brushes are used on your face, the cleaner, the better. Brushes that are used around the eyes should be cleaned at least twice a month, while all others can be washed once a month.” Some of the maintenance instructions demand we only use exotic items to clean our devices: “Use specialized cleaning solutions to clean your coffee maker.” Like soap? “After going over the entire sink with the cleanser, rinse off the excess by using a feather from a Peruvian condor.” Okay, I made the last one up. But I am glad I do not live in a log home. “The best preservative family for house logs are the borates. They are less toxic to humans than table salt, they don’t change the color of the wood, they have no smell and they poison the wood as a food supply to just about every wood destroying organism known to man, including decay fungi, beetles, and termites. However, there are limitations. Wood needs to be retreated about every 5 years when it is in contact with the ground. The wood needs to have some moisture to allow for proper diffusion and you must apply and maintain a water repellent finish over the borate treated wood to keep them from leaching out.”
Devices I associate with simple removal require my attention. “Once a month empty a tray of ice cubes into the sink and turn on the garbage disposal to grind up the ice cubes.” Another maintenance hint. “Do keep your garbage disposal clean. Pour a little dish soap inside and let the garbage disposal run for a minute or so with some cold water after washing dishes.”
I could spend every waking moment taking care of the things I own. Henry David Thoreau, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, cautioned, “We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us.”
The older I become, the more I time I seem to spend on maintenance, especially the maintenance of my body and my health. When young every movement, every jump or hop was thoughtless, was conducted free of thought. Now every physical action demands thought, each twist and turn requiring my full attention. Even before the Parkinson’s, I awoke in the morning and performed triage—-checking the inventory of all ailments and testing the joints still working. Then there is the morning, mid-afternoon, during supper and before bed pill scheduling, a ritual that causes some consternation during vacations.
I try to maintain this flesh and blood frame by periodic visits to a variety of specialized physicians all of whom have their own instructions about diet and exercise (I have an exercise regimen tailored to the Parkinson’s and cardiac conditions which I include as part of my maintenance). Every day the newspaper or online information warns me about the avoidance of a food or drink and the ingestion of a miracle fruit/vegetable/herb that would contribute to a superb maintenance of my not-so-superb body. And during those few moments not spent maintaining the things I own (including my body), I reflect on the whyness of it all. Basically I get tired of all the “shoulds.” The “shoulds,” especially compared to the “coulds,” are often more time consumptive, boring, and occasionally painful. Another philosopher theorized that if we spent our time contemplating meaning and purpose we would go crazy so we focus on the mundane. Thoreau also observed “Our life is frittered away by detail.”
I realize that I have to maintain my maintenance. At what point do I decide that enough maintenance is enough? Am I living to maintain? When do I remind myself that the reason for the maintenance is so that, ostensibly, I could live. Where does life come in among the care for the car and the mobile phone and the garbage disposal unit? How do I build into my maintenance routine time to enjoy a food that is not healthy for me, that won’t lower my hdl or cleanse my internal system. How do I reserve time to curl on the couch and watch an old Barbara Stanwyck film noir, or to sit amongst the trees in my backyard allowing life to wash over me? Obviously each of us has to work out that balance. Despite all the physical maintenance, the eventuality is still the same, and the meaning of my existence becomes more important than that finality. My maintenance is not going to provide eternal life.
“Sitting is the new smoking,” so goes modern conventional advice. But I enjoy spending time in contemplation and observation. Einstein’s famous quote echoes through my mind. “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” I would much rather spend what time I have left imagining than lifting weights or using cleanser to rub the stainless steel sink with the grain.
P.S. I just spent four hours on the phone with tech support to correct a computer glitch. I love it when I spend time on my time saving devices which allow me to spend time on my other time saving devices.
by Ralph Maltese | Sep 18, 2016 | Uncategorized
Am I Who They Think I Am?
I was watching on television either the national political campaigners or the Olympic synchronized swimmers. I forget which, although both were pretty funny. Both made a lot of splashes, were upside down most of the time, and, despite their efforts, did not get very far in the pool. My mind drifted and I wondered if I was wise. How does one know if one is wise? Centuries ago young people considered “elders” with deforming arthritis in their knuckles to be wise because to get that condition they had lived to the ripe old age of forty. Socrates, during his Apology (defense at his trial) claimed he was the wisest man he knew. His reasoning was thus: Socrates sought out the most learned men he knew and questioned them. He came to the conclusion that he was the wisest man because, unlike the “experts,” who claimed to know, he knew that he did not know. Socrates’ tactic was, through dialogue, to reduce his “expert” to ignorance or “aporia.” This was a good thing because through admitting ignorance, thus unchained by social biases, scholars can begin the search for truth. There is a koan in Zen Buddhism, “Who were you before your parents named you?” This is usually interpreted as “who are you, your identity, before your culture, your time and place, infused you with its belief systems, values, and mores?” Unfortunately for Socrates, his wisdom did not mitigate his sentence.
I know that I do not know a great deal, unlike when I was twenty-one when I knew everything—I thought I knew why people behaved the way they did, what was right and what was wrong, the meaning of life, what was the meaning of the Beatle song, “I Am the Walrus,” and how to stretch Hamburger Helper with filler during the lean years. So am I wiser now because I have more questions than answers? Has my Parkinson’s slowed me down, including putting my perspective in first gear so that I see things more clearly? I am not certain. I do know that I fret less about things. My college roommate’s mantra was, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” I try not to.
There is a lot of small stuff out there. One piece of small stuff I don’t fret about is how people perceive me. Teaching taught me that. The ancient Greeks (who considered themselves quite modern, mind you. Millennia hence will we be considered ancient Americans, or ancient reality show watchers, or ancient internet surfers?) believed that every person had two faces—the face they knew and the public face or how people saw them (sometimes referred to as the “daemon”) Early in my teaching career I erroneously thought I controlled the image I projected as a teacher. I was the nice genial fellow who was there to help them navigate the waters of intellectual curiosity, and, well, learn things. I worked hard at developing that image. Through a great deal of effort I created what I hoped were engaging learning activities, struggled to be just and fair in my small domain, and I tried to demonstrate my genuine care for their well-being.
Then there strode into my classroom one September the lad who thought I was not that person I thought I was. The class filed in, some nodding greeting, some nervously seeking the last seats, others flashing mini-smiles on that first day. Grumio entered slowly with a glare spread across his visage and, all the time that he took to corral the last seat in the middle row, that glare was directed at me. That look of anger and possibly hatred was quite disconcerting. As I introduced the opening day festivities, expectations and goals, I found myself repeatedly returning to Grumio who never once took his eyes off me. How could anyone dislike me so much on the first day of school? Was my reputation that bad?
This dueling eye contact continued for a couple of weeks until I called Grumio’s counselor and asked her to find out what was going on. Ray called me into her office the following week.
“I called Grumio into my office and asked him about you.”
“And?”
“He does hate you…vehemently.”
“Hate me? Why?”
“We didn’t get that far. Want me to transfer him?”
“No.” I was never into transferring problems. “But see if you can find a reason.”
For the next month I taught Grumio’s class with my back to the blackboard, writing on it without removing my eyes from Grumio. My penmanship was bad enough but writing behind my head resulted in total illegibility. Aware of his hatred, I went out of my way to make every test and essay appraisal more than favorable to Grumio and my politeness to him increased exponentially. Still that awful set of dagger eyes put me on edge.
Finally Ray called me down to her office.
“Well, I found out why Grumio hates you…he thinks you are Mexican.”
“I am not Mexican.”
“But he thinks you are.”
“What’s he got against Mexicans?” Why pick on any race, especially one with a rich cultural history?
“Who knows with kids? Or with adults for that matter. Maybe his great great grandfather was at the Alamo or some Mexican girl with taste wouldn’t dance with him or maybe he once ate a bad taco. Who the hell knows?”
Now I was provided with an ethical dilemma. Do I not tell Grumio that I am NOT Mexican and continue to be the object of his seething hate, or do I get myself off the hook by telling him I was not a Mexican and thus tacitly be complicit in his hatred of an entire culture? Do I teach the remaining of the school year as his “bigotee” or do I join his clanship as fellow bigot? I opted for the former and continued to use my chalk with my back to the blackboard.
Sometime later in the school year, from some unknown source, Grumio discovered that my ancestry was not Mexican. His eyes softened somewhat, but he never exhibited any warmth or congeniality towards me. I tried to talk with him several times, but there are some rivers that cannot be bridged. My failure to communicate with Grumio and to help him eradicate his bigotry and seething hatred was one failure which still haunts me.
The lesson I learned from that experience was that I could set an example of proper behavior for my students, but I could not control how they saw me. How they saw me was almost totally dependent on what they invested in me. To some I was the helpful and caring loco parentis, to some the authority figure, to some the hated father or the good fatherly cop there to protect them from bullies, to some the only person between them and four years partying at a flaky college at their parents’ expense. Still others saw me as a societal failure from the first day of school—usually this attitude was learned from parents who judged all humans by the number of things they owned. “I mean, what can this schmuck holding a piece of chalk pulling in only forty thousand a year teach me? If he had any talent or brains he would be CEO like my dad of a company that makes tuxedos for dogs and other crap.” One of my educational goals was to acquaint my students with certain realities such as the fact that education/intelligence and wealth do not automatically go hand in hand. As my father told me repeatedly, give a million bucks to a gorilla and all you have is a rich gorilla. Look around you. I rest my case.
So I sit in front of the television or peruse the newspaper at the breakfast table and chuckle at the tremendous effort and energy human beings expend to project their public image, their equivalent of the Greek daemon. Cosmetics are a multi-billion dollar industry as is fashion design and hair styling and all the other ingredients of our public clothing display…all to create that daemon, that public image. Consider the money poured into shaping voters’ images of candidates all to control how the people see them, ignoring the fact that people see what they need to invest in that candidate. The candidate is a chameleon colored by the voter’s dreams. The truth about the candidate—what he or she has really done or said is irrelevant. If I want the candidate to be my hero or heroine, then no amount of reality will change that. In fact, the more bad things ascribed to my candidate, the stronger I defend my choice, clinging to what I want to believe. Studies have demonstrated that the adherence to an idea, no matter how stupid or irrational the concept, is directly proportional to how many people believe it. In other words, if I am running for office, I go for the numbers, and outrageous and stupid pronouncements only get me more air time (free) and thus more voters. If I can plug into their imagined fears, I have a good chance. Democracy going back to the ancient Greek’s version was built on the belief that voters could put aside what they wanted to see in a candidate and made their decision on what was really there. I wish Grumio had done that. Human nature, however…. The Stage Manager from Thornton’s Wilder’s play, Our Town, says in the cemetery overlooking the fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, “Wherever you go near the human race, there are layers and layers of nonsense.”
So am I wise? I think the trick to being wise is, like Socrates, to admitting to having more questions than answers, to wonder at the immenseness of the universe and to marvel at the mysteries of life. Shouting to the world that one is wise does not convince people it is true. Even Socrates saying politely that he was the wisest man did not save his life. No. I think wisdom has to be conferred upon one rather than simply claimed…a concept political candidates should observe. As the poet Rumi said, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” At least I am more relaxed, not sweating the small stuff. How people see me is what they want to see. I’ve got nothing to do with it. Whew! That’s a relief. Think I’ll go out in the backyard and watch the trees gently swaying in the summer breeze.
by Ralph Maltese | Sep 11, 2016 | Uncategorized
“Lights, Camera, Action, Squat.”
Tastes change over time. When I was a ten year old, the idea of sliding a raw oyster down my gullet had all the appeal of licking a movie theater floor. During my collegiate career any form of edible substance was acceptable. A Slim Jim was a highly touted study treat. The same is true with taste in movies. Re-watching The Creature from the Black Lagoon, I cannot recapture that childhood sense of suspense and thrill, as the heroine spends four hours watching the monster approach her before she considers the possibility that she can get up and run away from him. The film is the same. The film viewer is different.
One thing about the movies. Movie going is often a communal event. Kids will jump up and exclaim, “We’re going to the movies!” Teenagers, spending six hours determining what the group should do, inevitably fall back on, “Let’s go to the movies.” Does not matter what movie really. Movie going is an event unto itself.
During my economically lean college years, our favorite movie-going involved taking the P&W (Villanovans called it the Toonerville Trolley or the Pig and Whistle) to the 69th Street Terminal which housed two movie theaters. Not only was the purchase price within the range of students who survived on Peanut Butter Helper, but one store in the terminal sold, at a modest price, hot onion rings. We would chip in to the Snack Fund and buy a paper cup or two of those delicious, round, batter-crusted ovals and inside the theater we tantalized our fellow movie goers with the enticing aroma. Some withstood the torture, but most raced out in the middle of the showing to get some of their own onion rings. It was the sixties, and we knew how to be subversive.
The 69th Street Terminal Theater often showed two movies for the price of one, and, if we were lucky, one of those movies was from the twentieth century. The first film was usually a relatively new (though two star rated) endeavor involving spying, adventure, jewel heists, shootouts or Brigitte Bardot. The second showing was often a cinematic venture that we had already seen on the Student Union television several times, usually a western. One such movie involved Jimmy Stewart as the sheriff, and, since all six of us had seen the film several times, we knew what was about to happen, so we felt obliged to tell Jimmy how to survive the gunfight. “Lookout Sheriff behind the rain barrel!!,” we would shout. From behind the rain barrel up would pop a villain, but Jimmy heard us and wheeled and dropped the evil doer. When you have seen a movie nine times, you have to generate your own entertainment, although the other members of the audience did not see it that way. Necessity is the mother of invention, and as, college students, there was plenty of financial necessity to go around. We learned to entertain ourselves.
Cinema for me is one of those threads that weave in and out of the fabric of my life. When I met Polley in graduate school, we talked about, among other things, movies. A movie maven, she was horrified to learn that I had not seen Gone With the Wind—ever! Having watched that dreamboat Clark Gable six times she insisted that, for our dating to continue, I experience the fictional history of the ante-bellum south. Luckily for me, Gone With the Wind was playing at a theater in nearby Indianapolis, so we continued to date. I liked the burning of Atlanta best.
The cinematic sewing of the fabric of my life resumed one summer during my teaching career. Late one August I received another one of those calls from one of my assistant principals. “We want a different take on teaching the Cinema elective. We immediately thought the best teacher for this would be you. How about it?” I knew this was code. The summer before it was the Creative Writing elective. Two summers before that it was the Computer Assisted Composition course. Four summers before that it was the Journalism course. The code was encased in flattery for my teaching skills, but what the compliment really meant was that the teacher who formerly taught the course was sick of it or learned to hate teaching it, and before the assistant principal had telephoned me, nine other teachers had declined. These calls were always made about a week or two before the start of the school year, so I began a crash course in: semiotics, mis en scene, anamorphic effect and what a key grip did (supervises the other grips who support camera movement) and what role a gaffer played (electrician). The truly great thing about being assigned a new course is that, in order to teach it, one has to become a student again and learn everything he can about the subject….albeit in a short time frame.
At the very beginning of teaching Cinema, I decided that the approach would be similar to teaching literature. Art is often self-reflexive. It is influenced by the culture that produces it, and the culture is frequently changed by that same art. Cinema is the one art form that encompasses all the other art forms: literature, music, visual arts, dance, kinesthetics, etc. The major problem was convincing my high school students that they could actually learn something about the movies as an art form.
“Mr. Maltese. Really! We’ve all been to the movies—what can we learn about the movies, I mean, really…..can we watch Dumb and Dumber?”
No, we cannot. My biggest problem was what cinematic tour de force NOT to show. My first choice, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights, initiated a revolt. “Aw, Mr. Maltese, I have never seen a black and white movie in my life. We have color now. Why can’t we watch a color movie?!! Anyone else in here want to watch a black and white movie?” Many shaking of heads. In these situations I have a strategy.
“Would you feel better if you voted as a class?”
Many nodding of heads.
“Okay. Let’s vote. Who doesn’t want to watch City Lights, a black and white movie?”
Twenty-five out of thirty hands go up.
“Okay. Put your hands down. Do you feel better voting?”
Again, many nodding of heads. “Good. I am glad you feel the joy of democracy. Now, City Lights was one of the hardest films Chaplin made…”
“Hey, Mr. Maltese, we voted NOT to see City Lights!”
“That is correct. And, if this class were a democracy, we would NOT view City Lights.”
God bless democracy, but not in the classroom. Dumb and Dumber will not reign.
As I taught Cinema over the years the pattern was always the same. They protested, and then grudgingly liked most of the movies I showed. Most importantly some of them even learned. I would stop often, pointing out a cinematic technique or a contribution to the film’s theme, or a camera movement. The longer I taught any course the more reinforced was the lesson I learned for all my teaching. My teaching responsibility was not to indulge their interests (especially recalling my own adolescent predelictions), but to expand their interests.
I knew I was on the right track when a student told me one day, “My boyfriend hates you.”
“Do I know your boyfriend?”
“No, but he hates you because we will be watching a movie in my living room and he will have his arm around me, and I stop the movie a lot and point out the lighting or the dolly movement of the camera.”
“Oh, I see.”
When I introduce Casablanca, another groan goes up. “Another old movie!” But the end result is usually the same. I can tell by their eyes they are immersed in the film. Sitting on the edges of their seats awaiting Ilsa’s decision, most of the young ladies stomp their feet and yell at the end of the film, “She stood have stayed with Rick!!!! What a dummy!!” The little darlings. It just goes to show–quality will out. This, even though I taught Casablanca as a propaganda film and not as a romance. I point out the resistance fighter dying at the foot of the poster of Marshall Petain (the Nazi collaborator), Rick (representing America) tossing aside personal interests and getting involved, Captain Renault committing himself to the cause, and that wonderful scene in which the French people in Rick’s Café led by Victor Laszlo sing La Marseillaise and drown out the Nazi officers and their version of Die Wacht am Rhein. If truth be told, it is the greatest military victory the French accomplished in both World Wars. They should have employed that tactic more often. I remind students how the audience, seeing Casablanca for the first time in 1942, did not know how the war would end.
“Geez. Didn’t they have history books?”
“Hmm. Our next film….Citizen Kane.”
Technology drives cinema. This is different from some other art forms. Having a better keyboard or pen does not translate into better writing. But better computer graphics and more sophisticated cameras can open up possibilities for directors. High speed film helped Stanley Kubrick shoot scenes in candlelight for the first time. The zoom lens aided other directors in their camera movements.
Cinematic criticism is another story. While teaching cinema I required students to read several critical reviews of movies we viewed. I still occasionally read reviews if only to chuckle at the frequent sesquipedalism and pomposity of the reviewer. I am convinced that the more confusing and irrational the plot of the film, the higher ratings it will receive. Consider this portion of a New Yorker review by David Denby. “the impatience, the sharpness, the full-bore egotism that modulates into rueful self-recognition. Intellectual passions have hardened (in many cases) into arid rectitude; autumnal emotions such as sarcastic rage dominate the dinner table; and, in the future, the terminating scythe awaits. The positive side of the shift is that these roles bring out the toughness of aging hides.” It does not matter what film this refers to. It could be The Creature from the Black Lagoon. What I do know for certain is that none of this happened at my dinner table. And I have yet to experience “autumnal emotions.”
This kind of criticism must be fun to write. Here is my modern artsy attempt at a critical review of Soup to Nuts starring The Three Stooges. “The pugilistic triumvirate are once again thrust into a universal dystopia unplagued by a moral epistemological compass and unfettered by economic deprivation. Their tactile hostilities, buoyed by a fraternal covalent bonding that is only superseded by a primal quest for identity, result in a reflexivistic cascade of eye-poking and nose twisting…a wheeling tantrum tour de force.”
I do know this. Highly rated modern artsy attempts at film making and television (think Orphan Black, American Odyssey, Orange is the New Black, all decent shows) must include two scenes. There is the obligatory cocaine sniffing scene. At some point in the film, the protagonist must sniff the white stuff whether he or she is in the middle of a pool, the middle of a sky dive or the middle of a fire fight. This is another attempt by amateur film makers to be “cutting edge,” as if doing drugs is cool. The other scene that modern artsy attempts at movie-making must have is the toilet scene. A city slum apartment, a posh party or a fire fight in the desert is the locale for the protagonist to relieve himself or herself. One movie combined both kinds of scenes in one take. I don’t know why this trend is, but it is true. I am puzzled as to why directors believe that a human function that has been rehearsed by millions of people over thousands of years is worthy of a camera shot. I guess this is what they consider pushing the envelope. Suddenly, urinals and lavatories and outhouses have become the cinematic rage. It is as if modern movie makers have just discovered one of the most basic of human activities. I don’t remember a shot of a person relieving himself or herself in Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia (and there was plenty of desert to do so), or Singing in the Rain. This trend is also popular in modern television series. Entire plot expositions are delivered in rest rooms while the characters are in the process. Well, not all television series. I don’t remember such a scene in Downton Abbey.
I envision a conversation between a modern assistant director and his boss.
“Hey, Cecil. The picture kinda bogs down here. Suppose during the chase through the rain forest, we insert a potty scene? While Olivia is squatting, she flashes back to her and Antonio punting on the Thames and she realizes that she has loved Antonio all along. I mean it is a romance, right?”
“Sounds good. Work out the camera angles.”
When the actors finish these scenes, they must also spend several minutes staring profoundly. Staring pointlessly for five or six hours is another artsy attempt some directors employ, especially those from Scandinavia.
I also see a pattern in the assignment of rating stars. A four star movie is a film that neither the critics nor the movie goers understand. This cinematic triumph is rarely a comedy, and, if it is labeled a comedy, it is usually not funny.
An artistic movie is awarded five stars if we do not understand it, and if our minds drift during the first half of the movie, and we start thinking about mowing our lawns diagonally instead of using a crisscross pattern.
Despite the many poorly made movies that do not withstand the test of time, going to the movies is still a phenomenal artistic event. We sit in the dark and lose our world and embrace the fantasy that is projected on the screen, the two dimensional cosmos that we know is not real but which continues to elicit the tears and the laughter and the excitement and the dreams that drive the projectors in our brains. We want to shout out to the heroine as the monster approaches to “Get up! Get up! Run away!” But we cannot interact with the reality of the flat screen. We invest our energy in the temporary belief that what we see and hear on the silver screen is real and worthy of our emotional and intellectual commitment. We are drawn in. If the movies is made well, like a good book, it refreshes our soul.
by Ralph Maltese | Sep 4, 2016 | Uncategorized
Frankly, My Dear, I Give a Damn
My back was hurting from the Parkinson’s or from the humidity or from the way I slept last night. Who the heck knows? So I tried to find a comfortable position in my easy chair and searched through my six hundred television channels when I hit gold. The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the 1954 cinematic gem starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, and Richard Denning. This was the stuff that filled my eight year old brain with nightmares of beasties hiding in my bedroom closet. So I started watching, eagerly trying to recapture that youthful thrill of vicarious danger. Five minutes later I was wondering what was so nightmarish about an amphibian in a shaggy, baggy suit of badly painted green cardboard scales staggering slowly in the marshland. Some fond artistic remembrances are best left locked in the vault of undusted memories.
My mind drifted as I watched the aquatic monster stagger slowly toward the heroine who had tripped and fallen on an imaginary leaf and spent considerable time looking back at the snail-like approach of the Creature as he closed the distance. I figured she had about two hours to get up and continue running away so I began to reflect on my youthful movie going experiences.
Down the block from my apartment building in the Bronx was the Avalon movie theater. My older brother was an usher, and, for fifty cents, I would spend most of my Saturdays at the Avalon watching two features, ten Merry Melody cartoons, a short subject featuring the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, two adventure sequels sporting heroes like Flash Gordon and Commander Cody and at least one newsreel, The Eyes and Ears of the World, the latter affording us kids a break in the action and a chance to go to the snack bar.
Adults view the life of a kid as a simple time, but to a kid there are no simple decisions. Quarter in hand I agonized over what to buy at the snack bar of the Avalon. There were many factors to consider: 1) price; Ice Cream Bonbons were everyone’s favorite but they were expensive, and the four bonbons would melt quickly which affected factor 2) lasting power; would the candy, carefully rationed, last me through an afternoon or would the edible be gone before the first cartoon ended? 3) mood; was my sweet tooth monster requiring sustenance or did my salty taste buds want to be fed? Did I feel my young age or was I aspiring to be more adult in my choice of candy thus giving serious consideration to King’s Candy Cigarettes or Bubble Gum Cigars or a Licorice Pipe (horrible taste but elegant)? Before me in the glass case were arraigned my choices: Charleston Chew, Jujubes, Candy Necklace, Bonomo’s Turkish Taffy (Banana flavor, please), Jujyfruits, Chuckles, Boston Baked Beans, Bit-O-Honey, Necco Wafers, Mike and Ike and their cousin Good and Plenty, and Dots candy. For some reason the older kids who sat in the balcony preferred tossing Dots candy at their victims below. Cherry, interestingly, seemed to hurt the most. If I made the right choice, the candy would carry me through at least one of the features. To this day my dentist is still trying to extract a remnant of a Peanut Chew I worked on during a Roy Rogers and Dale Evans cinematic triumph, Rainbow Over Texas.
The Avalon was noisy as kids laughed and shouted at the screen and jostled for elbow position on the arm rests or screamed when the Creature from the black lagoon, eschewing the boat’s ladder, struggles mightily as he climbs aboard the vessel harboring the heroine whose back seems to be perpetually turned toward the monster in the shaggy suit. But the worse moments came when the characters on the screen were just talking, deep into exposition, or holding each other tight and kissing and exhibiting other forms of what we kids considered adult violence. That is when the wrestling broke out, and I had to be on the constant lookout for incoming volleys of Dots candy from the urchins in the balcony. Between watching the antics of my fellow movie viewers and spending considerable time scraping off the gum on the soles of my shoes (the Avalon theater floor was a virtual minefield of gum and other candy splotches), a significant portion of screen watching was lost.
No such minefields or noisy intrusions existed in the movie theater that my mother and father attended. Saturday nights my mother required my little brother Jimmy and I dress in our best school clothes (which were always hand-me-downs from our cousins) because we were going to the elegant Loew’s Paradise Movie Theatre (that is “theatre” with an “re”) on the Grand Concourse. I wondered why my parents brought Jimmy and me to these adult entertainment events. At first I assumed it was because on Dish Night at the Loew’s Paradise my mother would get an extra place setting if her children came along. That was not the case (although the Loew’s Paradise did furnish the porcelain dinnerware for our Sunday sit-downs which usually accommodated a substantial number of relatives). Then I considered that my father would prefer to pay our admission than to hire a babysitter. Only years later did I realize the true reason. Families of Italian descent do not hire babysitters ever. The children accompany their madres and padres everywhere—even the youngest family members are in tow: weddings, baptisms, funerals, shopping, father’s tax audits, mother’s dental visits, grandpop’s hernia operation…
Whatever the reason, the Loew’s Paradise Movie Theatre awed my brother and me into respectful behavior. The lobby of the Loew’s Paradise Theatre gleamed from the fool’s gold pillars and glistening chandeliers; the floor was carpeted in red velvet which ran up both balcony spiral staircases that flanked four entrances into the theatre proper and were guarded by ushers dressed in wine red uniforms festooned with gold epaulettes. The “Refreshment Bar” appeared longer than a city block. Inside the theatre itself, Jimmy and I were cowered into best behavior by the dark blue night sky sparkling with stars and other heavenly bodies that was the Loew’s Paradise ceiling. The rim of the semi-circle theatre was punctuated by statues that I had only seen in history books of ancient Greece. There was no danger of incoming Dots candy here, nor was there any danger of getting stuck to the floor by a wad of Palooka bubble gum. Nosireebob. Although throughout the single feature Jimmy and I still elbowed each other for the right to use the arm rest. Most of the movies we saw at the Loew’s Paradise were beyond my eight year old understanding. The only thing I remember about On the Waterfront was that the main character talked a lot like my friends. My parents really seemed to enjoy Dial M for Murder but I did not. After the woman stabbed a guy in the back with a pair of scissors, which was pretty cool, the rest of the movie was just a lot of talk, and Grace Kelly sitting around in gray prison garb looking depressed because they were going to hang her, and the good guys searching for a key. It ended with everybody having drinks, including the bad guy. Fifty years later I consider the film one of Hitchcock’s best.
Oh my, but a great deal has changed in fifty years. The elegance and ambient charm of the Loew’s Paradise Movie Theatre has been replaced by, as Jay Leno noted, “the concrete pillbox at the end of the mall.” Decision making commences at the ticket aisle. What ticket showing do we prefer? The 1:30 show, the 2:00 show, the 3:15 show, the 4 AM showing on the Tuesday of next month? Wait! Which show we want depends on the movie’s format: IMAX, SHOWCASE MX4D, CINEMAX, SHOWCASE XPLUS, 3D, LETTERBOX…
We enter the rat’s maze of cordon guiding us back and forth to the ticket booth. Besides us there may be only two other people in line but still we must navigate the lanes back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes waiting in line and pondering what showing and what format we should choose, I study the other people in line and guess which movie they plan to see. The older man with a tie and distinguished gray hair and his pearl looped wife are probably up for the artsy Swedish movie, The Woman with a History. And the young couple with the three young children are probably opting for the Disney animated classic Chipmunk Galaxy. I am often surprised as the sharply dressed elder couple announce “Two tickets for Spring Break Mania,” and the father of the family orders “Two adults, three children for Babysitter Slaughterville.” After we take out a second mortgage and purchase our tickets, the next choice involves the snack bar, almost as wide as that of the Loew’s Paradise, but with two hundred adolescents with t-shirts advertising the name of the theater manning twenty lines of moviegoers.
There are the old movie standbys. Milk Duds, Raisinets, Whoppers, Goobers, Sugar Babies, and Baby Ruths, and, yes, Dots. But, in addition to snacks, there are basically mini-meals. Nachos, Philly Cheese Steaks, Pretzel Chunks, Pretzel Chunks Stuffed with Cheese, Tacos, Fully Loaded Hot Dogs, Chicken Bites, Pizza (Cheese or Pepperoni), and the occasional Beef Wellington for a family of six. All this to be washed down with a gallon of soda (diet if one is watching the waistline) and followed by Ice Cream Parfaits, Peanut Butter Stacks, and Blueberry Cheesecakes. In the future people will make reservations for both the movie and the movie fare.
I usually opt for popcorn, but the next choice involves size. The smallest size, LARGE, won’t last me until I get to my seat. The largest size, TRIPLE JUMBO FOR THE UNASHAMED, has enough popcorn to feed every pigeon in New York City. I usually choose the medium size, EXTRA LARGE FOR THE LOW PROFILE SEEKERS. Our credit line is good, so we also share a drink.
The next decision involves seating. Middle? Aisle seat for a fast escape after the credits? High up toward the back of the theater or down low where the screen fills my eyeballs? Once the seating choice is determined, we spend considerable time arranging our coats, purses, popcorn and drink. In the days of yore, I would perch my drink on my left foot which lay across my right knee, but, with the onset of Parkinson’s I refrain from that action, not wishing to spray the two rows in front of me with soda.
Instead of action serials or cartoons or short subjects or even the EYES and EARS OF THE WORLD NEWSREELS, modern theaters display previews and warnings. Sitting in the semi-dark, we are cautioned to TURN OFF CELL PHONES. We are reminded that it is impolite to TALK WHILE THE MOVIE IS SHOWING. We are also advised that FLASHING LASERS AT THE SCREEN IS NOT COURTEOUS. What does it say about modern communal human behavior if we are told DURING THE FILM DO NOT LOUDLY DISCUSS POLITICS OR THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GREAT VOWEL SHIFT? Finally, BE CONSIDERATE OF YOUR FELLOW MOVIE GOERS. DO NOT DETONATE A GRENADE OR ANY OTHER EXPLOSIVE DEVICE DURING THE SHOWING. Apparently modern audiences must be reminded of these transgressions….ten times. At least ten times. All I know is, is that by the time these warnings are over, my popcorn is almost gone.
Then there are the previews which are always loud and are supposed to be tailored to the audience currently sitting in front of the screen, but I am not certain. We are there to watch The Sands of Time, a British-made movie about a post-World War I Turkish soldier who seeks redemption for his military exploits as he struggles against his weakening health due to being gassed and his nation’s entrance into modernity. The previews are Aqua Man and the Super Heroes Battle the Galactic Cyclops, Vampires Rule the Boardwalk, and The Cocaine Comedies. Sometimes there is a truly intriguing preview. Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones in a suspense thriller involving terrorism, betrayal, and courage. The Last Stand. COMING: FALL 2025. We are assured that all these previews have been approved, but they do not identify which second grade class approved them.
Unlike the Loew’s Paradise Movie Theatre, modern movie going takes some effort. For example, while watching a tender love scene between spouses, I have to work hard to tune out the explosions and gunfire of the movie next door, Dogfights in Hell. Perhaps, though, it is not the movies that have changed so much. Perchance it is the viewer, moi, who must adapt to the realities of cinematic changes and the cultural preferences that accompany those changes, some of which will be explored in my next blog entry.
