Other Stuff

Reentry

The Avalon reigned over the Corvallis independent and foreign movie scene for ten years, until it blazed out in a flame of glory to the songs and dancing of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW on the last night of her valid liquor license. Costumes and toast and noise filled the hollow of the auditorium--an auditorium that had been seeing less and less attendance due to the proliferating number of movie theater seats in a town already over-screened. But this night was the last night of the Avalon Cinema. The whys and woes were not part of the picture. It was the culmination of a grand experiment that rode a wave--a wave that was sure to crest limply, into the sands of time.

When midnight dawned on that final show, beer sales stopped. The screen became dark and people walked out into the street, stunned momentarily silent by the cool and quiet of the contrast, by the simplicity of buildings and skies compared with the chaos of revelry behind them. They walked away, leaving a trail of neon feathers and echoing laughter behind them skimming along the sidewalks trying to catch up. But when the gay partiers rounded the corner, peace stayed behind, drawn into the night sky. I stood there watching this, feeling the permanence of this change; knowing I had to shake it off since there were interviews to give and cleanup to be done and hearty pep talks to be spread among the remaining faithful inside.

The Darkside had recently stirred to life a few blocks away, inhaling the soul of the now dead Avalon.

With the cameras and hangers-on shooed into the street, I shut off the Avalon Cinema sign one last time. The buzz of neon had been a background noise in the Avalon for a decade. The room became stark in its absence.  

That was two years ago--June 2007. Now, in June 2009, I am finally able to walk back into the Avalon building. First time in two years. Oh, I'd been by there at night, peering into the window like an errant ghost afraid of its haunt. Cloaked in anonymity, I would say hello to the familiar shapes and shadows that remained of the old theater. Maudlin, yes. So what?

The nocturnal visits dulled the pins and needles of the inevitable daylight visit. The first step was to stop in at Sibling Revelry, the clothing store that came into being the same time the Avalon did. We sowed our businesses together, planting our hopes in the once fertile economic soil of enterprise. Our lives had become entwined by all the hours we spent in the same building at the same time. The Sibs, as they were known, managed to maintain a solid core of workers. Since the Avalon also saw little worker turnover we created a snug little community. We saw each other through deaths, life, divorces, and illness. We shared secrets, fears, love, and politics over counters and in the hallways. We knew each other's kids and kept up on how they were doing, while maintaining the respect necessary to get along for ten years under the same bow trusses. Dramas came and went with circumspection--as they do in every genetically or geographically bound collection of people.

The first time in two years I parked on that street in the daytime, I knew I had been missing the Sibs more than I cared to admit. The decorated pole was still outside their front door--standing there like a flowered welcoming sentry. Years of life had streamed by, but the sibs were as warm and welcoming now as they'd been throughout all the years before the Avalon became a husk.

The other part of the building that wasn't Sibling Revelry had seen two incarnations since the Avalon closed. It was this distance and change that made me feel like both an invader and a resident when I walked into what was once the Avalon lobby--my lobby. New walls turned this part of the building into something I didn't recognize. I pulled out and dusted off old memories as I looked up and saw the colour of the ceiling above and the slope of the floor below.

Two years before I wasn't sure I would survive losing the Avalon. I have in fact lived through all the losses I was so sure would take me down.

This is but one story played out in the storefronts of this town. Windows that once displayed the goods of one business now are draped with promises of a newer enterprise. One of the disadvantages of youth, besides thinking those bug-eyed sunglasses are beguiling, is having traveled fewer miles down troubled waters...without a paddle.

For many of us, this is not the worst we've seen it. The good thing about having spent some miles bailing out the boat is the knowledge that even if it sinks, the sun will come up, coffee will still taste good, and Rayban Wayfarers are still the best damn sunglasses ever made. Most of us will not think twice about once again casting ourselves into the rapids of commerce.

I think my river metaphor has been dried out into an arid creek bed.

It was one of those Oregon afternoons that's a payoff for staving off depression through the winter--except maybe this day was a little toasty. We had spent the hottest part of the day making short work of the cool mountain roads. Now we were back onto the valley floor, standing at the end of a dusty driveway. It was where its owner kept his shady oak tree, under which we now lingered. Listing on their side-stands were our motorcycles, singing out crackling and popping noises as the exhaust pipes and shields flexed their way back to ambient temperature. We three men of unsophisticated dress stood about, each with one hand in a pocket and the other holding a beer. The conversation was not likely to end up in an award-winning screenplay about quantum physics. But it was okay. It was a day off and our families were somewhere other than in earshot, and our pagers were turned off.

A sound rose from behind the rise. Like cheetahs zeroing in on an errant gazelle, we stopped our intellectual wanderings and turned toward the sound. It was a combustion engine set upon two wheels; of that we were all sure.
 
"It's an old Triumph one lunger."

"Nope. It's a side-valve Harley 45."

"I'm leaning toward a Shovelhead with loose tappets."

The sound got louder.

The first thing we were sure we'd see over the hillcrest would be a motorcycle helmet. Instead it was an exhaust pipe. Rising like antique grey sun, an old Ford tractor came into view.

We watched it go by, like we were the opening credits of King of the Hill. When it passed, after a puzzled pause one of us said, "I could use another beer." The other two nodded solemnly as we all walked from under the shady oak toward the house.

This story hasn't got a damn thing to do with the first part of this piece. However this whole essay seemed too short. In my defense, every year when the temp breaks 90 degrees I remember this particular summer afternoon.

No one said it was a good defense.

LOCAL COLOR

LOCAL COLOR is a loving look back at the pivotal summer in the life of writer-director George Gallo, a fine arts painter in real life.

Stop me if you've heard this before...Troubled teen pesters reclusive master to teach him the classical art form because school ain't doing it for him. Teen shows master his work. Master grunts at the work. Teen persists. And so on.

Sound like FINDING FORRESTER, with Sean Connery?

In LOCAL COLOR we have Armin Mueller-Stahl. For those of you not familiar with this actor, he usually plays the old German/Russian with an edge who takes over the screen when he walks into the frame. He graces LOCAL COLOR with that same presence. The guy is pushing somewhere around 80 years old and has worked his whole life, so it is very likely you've seen him in something--and noticed him.

Meanwhile.

In 1974, in the suburb of Port Chester, New York, the teenage aspiring artist John Talia, Jr. (Trevor Morgan) finds out that his favorite Russian painter Nicoli Seroff (Armin Mueller-Stahl) lives nearby. Driven by the adolescent notion that a renowned painting master would have anything to do with him, John pops over to Seroff's place to makes friends, and finds a bitter, alcoholic former painter.

When Nicoli travels to the Pennsylvania countryside for the summer, he invites John to go with him. John thinks he's going to learn how to paint. Nicoli needs a handyman. John's homophobic dad (Ray Liotta) smirks, "So, 'teaching someone to paint' is what they're calling it these days." I hope you're sitting down: John defies his dad and goes anyway.

Once in the countryside, we see the art of painting come alive as we are shown the hues and tones of the surroundings, and a glimpse into the methods that make a great work. Other sides of Nicoli's personality come to bear--primarily his sense of humor. It provides a nice contrast to the drunken rages. In an unexpected appearance, Ron Perlman (HELLBOY) is the pretentious art dealer adding to the dramatic landscape. He's not playing HELLBOY, and he is perfect in this part.

Carla (Samantha Mathis), the expected hottie neighbor, creates a focus for the kid's summer crush. Thankfully, this is handled masterfully and with sensitivity. The Carla character could have been a throwaway but Mathis added welcome depth, preventing the most significant female role in the movie from being nothing more than a place to hang a plot point. She synchronizes the recent loss of her son with Nicoli's loss of his wife to form a two-person community of grieving. Nicoli's drunken rages flow from the depths of his grief, which does nothing to relieve the tension in the master/student dynamic. However, this information gives us a deeper look and perhaps some understanding into how all these people fit together.

The most distracting thing in LOCAL COLOR is the language. Okay, we know the old Russian is pissed off--fine. But his adjectives and adverbs shouldn't be limited to one word.

LOCAL COLOR is not a perfect movie. But it has an old story most people don't mind hearing, accented with a love of its topic: painting. It is this love that threads the characters and story together into a very enjoyable summer in the Pennsylvania countryside. Those who know painting will find depth and poignancy in the way the subject is treated. Those outside of that world will be brought into it with awe and appreciation. And although we can see the story's end from a mile off, our affection for these characters allows us to grant Mr. Gallo some forgiveness.

Vertebrae and Sprocket Holes

I was trying to find the remote before my wife could see what was on the TV. Alas, it was hidden in the folds of the comforter and she walked in the bedroom to find me watching something I swore I would never be interested in. And I had no way to shut it off. The TV was ablaze with prone bodies in positions that boggled the mind. It was like a train wreck of circumstances and I was tied to the tracks.

Yes, she caught me watching a program about yoga.

As old as the practice of yoga is, it is still strikes me as "New-Agey." New-agey is a term many of us who are less evolved paste to things of a spiritual bent, things that we do not understand. For me, that would include yoga. But here I was, sitting in the bed, rummaging around in the covers, hoping my wife didn't catch me watching it.

The films you see at the Darkside are usually 35mm film. This consists of a mile or two of film, broken down into 18-minute reels that are delivered in metal cans. The film cans usually weigh in at about 75 pounds. Since I'm scaring the hell out of 50 years old, 30 years of tossing these cans around has caught me watching TV shows with middle-aged people looking healthy and pain free. How nice for them. It is a tough call--I do not embrace ANYTHING that goes on about centering my Chacos. To put the sandal on the other foot, the folks on TV seem to be moving pretty well and seem unabashedly healthy.

While my wife stood in the doorway looking at me with her hands on her hips, I realized I was busted and would need to eventually admit that I am yoga-curious. Yes, this was the first step, but we're looking at a long road before I spring for the hemp mat and the namaste tattoo. I've been dealing with the pain for decades. It will be a while before I can admit that I really do want to feel better without a daily dosing of ibuprophen and denial.

The film is shipped in spectacularly unloved metal cans that have been in use for what seems like forever. They are hexagonal tins, each the size of a small car tire. These cans are held shut by a latching mechanism that eludes description. Suffice it to say that they are an über bitch to get to latch or to get open--though they seem quite able to open themselves while they are being lifted into the trunk of a car. At which point four reels of film spill from the cans and take off running away from the car, spooling out film behind them like a celluloid wake. If you grab the tail of the film and yank it back, it hastens the speed of the fleeing reel like pulling a string off a child's toy top. At this point you try to launch ahead of the film and stop its advance by providing some sort of barrier. The problem with this is, the reels diverge at some arcane algebraic rate. This means if you stop one, the others will be left to their own momentum until they come to rest on the sidewalk or in the undercarriage of some passing semi.

The other prickly pear of this fruit basket of movie media is that film is really pretty delicate. Through the benefit of technology, the filmstrip upon which the image is printed is quite strong, but the surface with the image scratches easily.

Back when my film projectors were manufactured, film was a little on the fragile side. It could snap cleanly in the projector. And there was the small matter of film being very flammable, but if it broke it stopped pulling undamaged film through the projector. Now, the film is so strong you could uproot a tree by tying a couple layers of modern movie film between the stump and the trailer hitch of your diesel 4x4. Well, not quite that strong, but you get the idea. As strong as the film is, the thin surface layer that holds the image is still very, very prone to scratching. We have all watched a film through the bars of emulsion scratches. When you see a movie (in another theater) with an hour or two of a green nasty stroke down the center of the image on the screen, you can bet it's because the film didn't break. Which means the rest of the movie got dragged through the same problem that is scratching the film--a problem that would have broken old-school film. Since it costs over $1000 to make a new print, admitting to the studio that you trashed a print is not high on the list of things to cop to. If you see a badly scratched film on the screen, there are usually only a few reasons: The projectionist is so into social networking or his iPod he hasn't noticed that hideous sound coming from the projector. Or, he knows the print is trashed and is too chicken/apathetic to ask for a new one. Or, which is often the case if you ever do see a bad print in our theater, the theater that had the print just before we got it was too chicken/apathetic to let us know the print was trashed.

There used to be accountability for the condition of the print as it went to the next theater. Because it came to and went from the film depot. Back in the day, every Friday we dropped off and/or got our film from Portland. We gathered there from across the land, and we'd drink coffee and talk while we waited for our prints to come in from another theater. It wasn't uncommon for prints to move from the hands of one exhibitor to the next. So if the print had the reels out of order or reel three looked like it had fallen out of the film can and got caught up in the undercarriage of a Peterbuilt, we knew who did it.

The guys who ran the depot had the power to make your life miserable. If you gave them a screwed up a print and they unknowingly handed it off to another theater, you could count on a word or two next time you popped into the depot. If you really pissed them off, it was within their power to put your print in the back of the warehouse and tell you to come back in a couple of hours and see if it arrived. Though they would never do this, they had the power to do so. Usually the film was turned over to the offender when he/she had only minutes to get it to the theater before the first show.

Like any good thing, the centralization of local film distribution came to an end. Now most film comes anonymously to our door in the hands of some dude/dudette in a brown outfit. However, there are still studios that use the Portland film depot. About a third of the time I drive to the Big City and collect my prints from a big warehouse. The guy who runs my depot is an unassuming "kid" (less than 30 years-old) who puts out that quiet air of someone doing a job that is well below his ability, but who likes it that way. Maybe he does yoga. The depot is now housed in an anonymous industrial complex rather than a bustling block off of Sandy Blvd. Now the closest place to get coffee is a ubiquitous Charbucks. It's comfortably familiar that my Friday coffee fix is still overcooked black water.

Throughout all of this runs the thread that hundreds of pounds of film must be hustled from one theater to the next. It has been this way for quite some time. And for that time, people like me have been lifting and carrying these cans of film from trunk to loading dock. I drive for two hours, often in hot gridlock on 205, get to the depot, leap from the car, then lean into the trunk of my car and lift--not with my legs--the 75 pound film cans. You do not see a lot of people stretching out in the parking lot before lifting out the prints. Perhaps if you did, you'd hear less groaning when we put the prints down on the concrete depot floor. There is a certain AARP-esque social networking around comparing the reasons we groan. To be pain-free might inhibit a goodly portion of my Friday-go-to-town visiting.

Before I head back to the Heart of the Valley from Portland, I have to lift the new films into the trunk, then remain sedentary for the next hundred miles. That is, unless I stop at the restaurant supply place and get a few hundred pounds of inventory. That sound you are hearing is my back shrieking.

Someday all our movies will come to us on hard drives and servers that weigh less than my coffee machine. The guy at the depot will have to do less lifting and we will probably do less driving. No longer will it be cussing out tardy print returns over coffee. We might still be in the coffee shop, but we will be socializing and bitching through IM, FaceBook, and Twitter--whatever the hell Twitter is.

I guess there is no iPhone app that allows me to virtually stretch out my back before hefting the latest cinematic gem into my trunk. Even if there was, I guess  owning an iPhone, which I do not, would be a plus. It's really pathetic: I torture my back, wax grumpily about exercises that would help, and down the little brown pills like Gregory House M.D. downs Vicodin. I realize treating my back in this fashion makes about as much sense as treating nausea with pickle juice, but until the canonization goes through, I get to cling to some of my badder ideas.

The excuses why I have yet to move beyond my bad ideas are looking a little like last decade's laptops--quaint and of dubious value in the real world. I need to stop thinking of healthier alternatives as if they require wearing rose-coloured sunglasses and frolicking with unicorns. After all, not a lot I've done in the last 30 years has worked. Deep breath...now streeeetch for the remote...before your wife sees you watching yoga...change channel...now exhale and relax....

I wonder if they make a Harley Davidson yoga mat.