Other Stuff

Forces of Habit

After I got out of the truck, I realized I had left my window open. The few tools on the floor were not likely to get stolen, but they were still mine, and I didn't want to take any chances. So I jumped back into the truck, put the key in the ignition, turned it to accessory, and with the other hand I cranked the window up. After turning the ignition off and pulling out the keys, I got out of the truck. I managed to get about 50 feet before I stopped in my tracks for a serious what-the-hell-was-that moment.
 
One doesn't need to turn on the ignition to roll up manual windows.
 
In this era of electric car windows the ignition needs to be turned on before hitting the go button. The nice thing about manual windows is that they crank up and down by hand-you know, without electricity. It was only the force of habit that had me turning on the ignition before using the hand crank to put up the window. "Force of habit" is what we call doing something that made sense at one time and is now quite stupid.
 
It's all about the memory, you know. In high school I did a little drama. Some of it was even on the stage and not in the classroom. Back in the day, I could place my hand on the unopened script and learn my lines by osmosis. Play after play, no matter what other "things" might be going on in my head I could retain lines.
 
Ah, youth. That was then. Now I'm in that time span known as "Not Youth."
 
As I get older I seem to get invited to various events where the depth and breadth of the mistakes I've made might be useful to others. Mostly I'm in it for the free food or unlimited cans of Diet Coke. Coffee will do, too. When a group Lainie is involved with put on a creative conference, I was invited to participate. This conference was scheduled during a day I had planned to spend on the motorbike. Every motorcycle that went by took a piece of my heart with it. Instead of riding the wind, I was burping it, ala Diet Coke. Anyway, at such events I usually spend about the first half hour wondering what the hell I have to offer. I'm old. The place was crawling with "young professionals" who have never driven a car with tailfins or used a phone tethered with a coiled wire. I tried to blend. As it was a local event, it didn't take long for my incognito to turn into out-cognito. "Ah, you're the movie guy."
 
People assume that because I run movies, I know how they are made. Or in an even more fantastic leap, they assume I can act.
 
And, being a little hard of memory, I forgot to qualify any help I offered to filmmakers with the caveat, "I can help with anything but acting." I generally do not do windows (glass or Microsoft) or appearances on camera. So, when I met this smart, well-spoken fellow preparing to film a fun, well-written short, I offered any pitiful advice or ghetto equipment I might have sitting about. But he decided I needed to help with the acting. With no recollection how I got conned into this, I found myself poking around the bottom floor of the Valley Library looking for the little room where I would do a screen test. I told them I was only doing this to prove I was not the one for the part.
 
Production started last Saturday.
 
I showed up on location: a quaint little church in Monroe. Someone draped clothes on me like I was a piece of exercise equipment. I was told what to put on and how to wear it. A nice woman told me to shut my eyes, and then she put some kind of powder on my face. When I opened my eyes, someone was putting a flower on my lapel. Someone else told me where to stand. A young woman stood next to me and announced she was my daughter. It took half a beat for me to stop trying to remember whom I was dating 23 years ago and remember that I was in a movie. Yeah, I was her dad-in the story. For this I was grateful, even though she was a lovely young woman.
 
I then remembered I forgot to memorize my lines. The script osmosis ability fled my arsenal of tricks right about the time I found my first gray chest hair. Fortunately, this day I had nothing to do but loom and look on disapprovingly. No lines. Looming: yeah, I can do that.
 
I may have mentioned that these filmmaking folks are a bunch of very nice, professional people. They have professional lighting done by some guy who seems to know his ass from an arc light. The talent has talent. The camera people are not afraid of the director so they admit when the boom or other camera comes into the frame. For the life of me, I cannot remember the names of most of them. When I was doing drama in high school, my drama teacher was half the age I am now. Today I can remember his name. But the name of the gal who made me try on six sports jackets? Not a clue.
 
Whether movies or writing, it is all about the stories. I arrogantly pound out characters in little rows and assume you are reading the words. Really, I'm writing something I don't want to be forgotten. In BLADE RUNNER, Rutger Hauer's character is on the rooftop looking down at the dangling Harrison Ford. The rain is falling and Hauer says, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."
 
Maybe these words are here so that a few people will push past the un-clever innuendo and piles of unnecessary adjectives to see a record of now because now will be gone and I want there to be a trace. There is a story on the other side of the self-aggrandizing writing that has to with part of a big building in a small town and how people came together to fall in love, one frame at a time; become enraged, one reel at a time; laugh out loud, one scene after another. This is the reel story. The short movie I'm classing up with my presence is a story from the mind of the writer/director. It is his story. He may not know it now, but he is telling this story for the future. Even more so, the real story of the film is the ability of a group of people to volunteer their time and effort for the chance to be part of the telling of this story. I stood for 45 minutes to get 15 seconds of film. What we see on that two-dimensional screen is a molecular part of a multi-dimensional process that delivers that image to the screen. The story of the people who made the movie is as indelibly printed on that film as the image itself. These are the things to be remembered.
 
The object of writing is to make a two-dimensional row of characters into a mental three-dimensional image. On a good day I realize I'm the luckiest guy in the world: I wield the machinery that melds writing and film into stories rendered onto a screen before the audience. I get to stand in front of a camera, behind a projector. From these points of view, I get to watch something come into being that will likely outlive all the people who made it. And, above all of that, I get to write about it. Hot damn.
 
So, it is all about remembering the stories. Though they are all destined to fade away like tears in the rain, perhaps moving on to whatever comes next will be a little easier if we know we left behind stories (and, perhaps, DNA) more durable than the bodies we are vacating. As the lights go out, it might be comforting to believe that someone might eventually read some words or watch some film we couldn't take with us. We live and die in the hope that in that rain of tears, there was one droplet that didn't wash away unnoticed.

Yep, it's hot.

When the snow hits, people can be seen cutting through the slush, wildly over the speed limit, plowing ahead like they are riding on magical Velcro strips glued to the road. They drive in blissful and reckless ignorance of the fact that they are, in actuality, driving on hard rubber tires that are bound to the laws of entropy. It would be comical if the only casualties of such hubris were said idiots and their steel projectiles. But no, pedestrians assume the crosswalks grant them protection from two tons of automotive steel coming at them across the ice. As soon as the little white dude in the "Walk" sign is truckin', people push off from the curb with nary a glance for cross traffic. Ouch.

So now comes the heat. It was 108 degrees Wednesday, continuing the "hot as the gates of Hell" trend of the last week or so. I thank the gods of air conditioning that I managed to resurrect the antique system in my car before the Willamette Valley became an oven. However, as I drive to work in relative comfort, I see people pedaling by on bicycles with the same aplomb as someone on a cool seashore enjoying a fruit drink with a paper umbrella in it. Unless these cyclists are from an equatorial country, I have to wonder what they're thinking. I have been riding a motorcycle for decades, and yet nothing makes me feel as vulnerable as being on a bicycle on city streets. And, maybe it's just me, but doesn't roasting in such heat during physical exertion tend to slow down ones' mental facilities? Bicycling with altered faculties seems like a really bad idea. And considering that folks in this part of the country see little reason to keep the ol' AC tuned and ready, there are a lot of people driving around in cars hotter than hot-pants, people who would rather be anywhere but in a hot-pants hot car dealing with a sun-addled bicyclist careening down the street being chased by sunstroke. Say goodbye to courtesy. I get the "being green" thing: riding a bike to save wear and tear on The Mother. Heck, we at the Darkside went over to compostable cups (speaking of doing the least you can do). However, I can't help but think that the gas used for the ambulance ride would defeat the bicyclist's intent.

I have a dear friend who loves to eat at Shari's and insists I meet him there when I pass through town on my way to pick up film. (As if an ambulance ride and dining at Shari's has any relation--no, none at all.) Think of it as Denny's with more artificial foliage, and booths that are more comfortable and offer some privacy. Yes, I'm aware that just about everything they serve comes right out of the back of a Sysco truck, but I took a chance on the Pesto Mushroom Grilled Chicken Sandwich and was impressed. My buddy has been going there so long he has an avuncular familiarity with the wait staff. There is little employee turnover at this restaurant, so the help knows what he'll order before he does. By association, I am just as transparent. Usually my iced tea gets to the table before I park the car.

On this particular trip it was hot--damn hot. My friend's mom, who has known me longer than my own parents, spotted us in our booth as she lined up with the rest of her luncheon party. She came over to give me a hug.

There are about ten people in the world for whom I will strenuously watch my damn language. She is two of them. So, with that being said, she knocked over a glass of ice water, right into my lap.

Sweet Sparkling Jesus, that was cold.

It is quite a chore to ease the mortification of someone who has just applied 16 ounces of ice water to your manly bits (or whatever bits you are sporting). I smiled and made light. She apologized. I laughed, and promised I would never write a column about it.

The wait staff was on the scene with assorted absorbent goodies. With the seat of the booth dry, soon I had nothing more than soaked jeans between God and Country. I remained nonchalant as my buddy's mom made for the door with apologies trailing behind her like an embarrassed cloud. As soon as she was out of earshot I speculated I might never pee again. Suddenly the 90+ degree heat outdoors seemed enticing.

Not one to cut a good visit short, I spent a moist couple of hours finishing my sandwich and fries, my buddy's fries, and way too much of that kind of coffee that turbo-charges peristalsis. When the time came to leave, I hoped to make a stealthy exit while no one was at the register to view my wet pants. Since the coast was not clearing, my buddy suggested we go anyway. Never one to waste potential comedy, I said, "Hang on. I gotta get rid of this coffee."

In a few seconds I announced I was done and stood up, exposing my wet pants to the wait staff at the register. With more than a couple of them pretending to avoid looking at my crotch, I said, "Sorry. Diuretics." Then I turned to my buddy and suggested loudly that he leave a big tip to cover the cleanup.

Fortunately, I had a pair of pants in my car, slated for drop-off at Vina Moses. My friend had driven his conversion van to meet with me, so I had a comfy place to change. Soon I was back on the road, with the top half of my body somewhat warmer than the bottom half.

There are less extreme cooling measures than dropping paralyzingly frigid liquids onto your lap. Or the laps of others. I made my way to Robnett's and scored one of those mister kits, like the ones they use at da Vinci days. (I can't remember the brand; it may have been Mr. Mister.) I set it up on the deck and spent an hour with my daughter, Emily, waxing philosophic under the halo of water droplets, blessedly oblivious to the hundred-plus degree heat lurking just beyond. Not an entirely unpleasant way to pass a toasty afternoon.

Of course, the best way to fight the heat is to support your local art house cinema. The Darkside Cinema has the advantage of being situated between the first and third floors of the Book Bin building. It's pretty much a thermostatic cave, making outside fluctuations in temperatures less noticeable. Our air conditioner went south for half a day and no one noticed. Inside the Darkside we're cool, friendly, well stocked with popcorn, and cool.

Not to mention that the ice water is free and refillable. Summer or winter.

July 4th, 2009

July 4th, 2009

With the changing of the face occupying the White House comes the promise of change. However, for some there is cynicism about the change being good. Those who tend toward cranky say the decay of our civilization is in full swing, and soon our political system will be as past tense as the Roman Empire: time to grab the flag and get the hell outta Dodge.

To this I say, ""Need help packing?"

Many people notice the whisper of a Canadian accent that belies my northern lineage. During the years we Americans had to live under a Bush, people would ask why I didn't move to Canada, being that I had access. The easy answer to that is two-part. First, I like it here. Secondly, I don't like Canada.

I love all my relatives who live in Canada. I love the lay of the land in Canada. I love the diversity of the big cities and the safety amid the cosmopolitan mix-less common here. In my tortured opinion, to enjoy these Canadian pluses one must endure the huge Canadian negative-namely the seething hatred of the U.S. that is churning just below the Canadian surface.

A few years ago I was going to start the biggest anti-"Tourism Canada Campaign" my humor and venom could muster. The inspiration for this came when I was hit by a car while walking in a crosswalk in downtown Victoria, B.C. The driver was drunk and when I got up I guess I was a little scary, being that he took off in a hurry. My traveling companion insisted on calling the RCMP (cops), which I insisted was a bad, bad idea: I would live. Not inclined to listen to me, my companion made the call. As soon as the cops found out we were Yanks, their attitude turned nasty, telling us there was nothing they could do since we wouldn't likely be coming back from the States to go to court. They were not polite about it. They wouldn't even take the license plate number of a possible drunk driver. Alas, I knew this is exactly how this would play out. I've lived there. I've endured this prejudice.

Someone of a pro-Canadian bent might ask how this "Perceived Anti-Americanism" is so different than the American prejudice rampant in France. First, the distaste the French hold for us is far from subtle. Second, have you ever been to France? It's worth the crap from the locals.

But this is not the main reason I would not move to Canada. The real reason is that The United States of America is my country. The bad guys in government and business cannot have it. They are not going to push me over a border so they can have their way. I'd rather stay and fight for what I believe this country to be and can be, rather than vanish into the north, thinking I can blend in by wearing hockey jerseys and ear-flapped hats. Maybe the fight here would earn me the "Don Quixote Idiot of the Year" award, but I would rather piss off our national landlords by staying here and working to improve things, than running to another country whose residents look down their noses at me.

I lived in Canada in the 1970s, when many U.S. citizens avoiding the draft were crossing the border looking for asylum. Most of these people were not cowards. Most were thoughtful people. There is a kind of person who would simply die if forced to live in a jail or a jungle. Neither of the government options offered when their draft number came up-prison or military service-would have been survivable for these people.

This is immensely different than Alec Baldwin in 2000 publicly threatening to pack up his bags and head for Canada if Bush were elected. There shortly followed a whole wave of people, both famous and not, making the same proclamation. If you're leaving the country in protest, no one who counts politically is going to notice. Matter of fact, the very people who are trying to take over the country will hold up the border-crossing gate for you. I'd rather think that just by being here, the very presence of those who disagree with the prevailing powers are making a stand.

This town is full of people who were on the front lines of the resistance to the Viet Nam war. They can tell you what it was like to watch the escalation of hostilities, one body at a time. It was the anti-war movement that created the Case Church Amendment.

The Case-Church Amendment was legislation approved in 1973 that prohibited direct U.S. military activity in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia without Congressional authorization. This ended direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, although the U.S. remained a belligerent of the war providing military support to South Vietnam until the Fall of Saigon in 1975. (Wikipedia)

The people who made this happen were not in Canada. They were here in the States, on the campuses and in the streets, fighting against creeping imperialism. They were, in effect, fighting to save their country. These people are patriots. These people were in it to make their country better. Okay, that, and for the chicks.

The peace movement in the 60s and 70s against the Viet Nam war armed future generations with the tools to fight against wars today. It fertilized the grassroots movements that moved the powers that be into the powers that were in this last election. We just saw a fundamental change in the usual White House occupants. This was best stated in a popular e-card: "We've now learned that a decimated economy, a clusterf***ed war, and the worst-run Republican campaign in history is all it takes for America to elect a black guy."

There are warriors, those who go over the oceans to fight in a war against forces that have been deemed a threat to the United States. The lesson some people have learned from Viet Nam is that there is a difference between the war and the warriors. Spitting on returning soldiers and calling them "baby-killers" proved to be an idiotic welcome for the returning disenfranchised. Those sadder-but-wiser soldiers could have been helping to bring others home-before there was a need to bring them home in body bags. Today we see people like Stephen Colbert, working with the USO to show support for the men and women sweating out their tours in the Middle East. Colbert's distaste for the war machine explodes from his show on Comedy Central four nights a week. With bludgeoning sarcasm, he lashes out at the most flagrant constitutional eviscerations perpetrated by our elected officials-violations that perpetuate the war. Stephen Colbert backed this up by going to Iraq for the troops (and the ratings). And maybe in a small way, he helped with that important distinction between the war and the warriors. In a rare break of character, the real Stephen Colbert ended his USO tour acknowledging the very real distance between the perceived service of soldiers and the "holy shit" way they really live over there.

To me, this is a sign that people on both sides of the picket line and the aisle are working together to end something-regardless of how it started and for what. This is my United States.

The tobacco industry was brought to its knees because of the work done by those who chose to stick around and fight. Now I can eat dinner in a restaurant without breathing in exhaled crap from the smoker at the next table. This was a fight against the most entrenched and virulent form of political influence and lobby. We won. Our country won.

This is the country I will not leave. Gandhi pointed out that everything we do is insignificant, but it is very important that we do it. Sometimes the key is to just hang around and be one more point of light in the wash of hope that change will come. In many ways the mighty have already fallen. The machinery is turning. We can still poke at the remaining Goliaths with the sharp stick of free speech, and the right to assemble, and the right to intone the god(s) of our choice. This is real hope.

This is work that cannot be done as effectively from afar. You can see our Fourth of July fireworks from Canada. They can be viewed as a glorification of war, or as the celebration of freedom. Pick one. Or both. Or, you can see fireworks as a call to action to make this country stronger. There have been many dark clouds over this country and chances are good there will be more. However, today there is no smoking in bars. Tomorrow all children will have access to health care.

We have unprecedented access to information that we can use to effect change. Yeah, you have to surf through oceans of porn, spam, and search results topped by those who can pay the most. But with less effort than moving to Canada, you can quickly find out who is gathering to talk about, to do something about, to show movies about the clouds that darken American skies. This doesn't remove the responsibility of thinking for yourself, or the responsibility of considering the skies over other countries. But, the Internet is a tool that can make things different this time around.

For this, I am excited and grateful. I think I'll stick around and see what happens next, eh?

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.

12

This is not your father's 12 ANGRY MEN.

The Russian drama, 12, uses the American play/movie as a jumping off point, but what happens after the leap is nothing like the 1957 original movie, 12 ANGRY MEN. Although the Russian version of 12 comes from a culture rich in drama and history, the story weaves in threads from current social, political, and economic conditions.

Once upon a time twelve men were locked into an old Russian school gymnasium to determine the fate of a Chechen teenager accused of killing his Russian stepfather. This is not a story about the deliberations of a dozen people who would rather be doing anything than jury duty. This is twelve stories--stories of each of the men who would rather be doing anything than jury duty. As the jurors first take their seats around the large table to deliberate, there is a homogeny of civility between and among the jurors. Individual personalities are kept hidden and they politely take their first poll of the jury. It seems the deliberations will be finished quickly, because there can be no doubt of the teen's guilt.

And then there is the one dissenting "not guilty" vote. And the veneer of civility starts peeling up at the corners.

The names are different, but the political and racial problems of Russia are not so different from our own. Each of the jurors carries into the room their lives, lives that mirror those of our own; it would be hard to find one of these twelve stories that could not be our own. These stories are told so well that each character--first referred to by his juror number, then by his profession--could be the focus of his own movie. The acting has such depth and life that you could spin these stories off, playing them out in living colour on the big screen. But here, the jurors' stories are told in narrative. The characters are rendered so perfectly and passionately that the way a cigarette is lit and the way it hangs from a hand tells you more than what the person is saying. The halt and hiss of a word plays out a scene that might be a complete act in an American film. The catch in the throat or the brushing of an eyebrow combined with the dramatic hard light from above makes words obsolete. This is a well-rendered work that starts from a familiar plot and folds back upon itself so many times that the end of the film comes too soon--even at 150 minutes after the opening credits.

Pictures, not words, narrate the sequence of events leading up to the accused boy sitting in the courtroom. He is the only person who doesn't speak during this legal process. 12 is rated PG-13. It earns this rating not from the language of the jurors, but from the on-screen depiction of the events surrounding the defendant's life. The life that presupposes his guilt.

The quiet man who offers the first not-guilty vote poses it with the request, "I want to talk, at least." They hold the fate of a young man. There should be some discussion pushed around the table before this kid is sent to a small cell for the rest of his life. The discussions evolve into something more personal--about how their lives didn't turn out the way they had planned--more than the guilt or innocence of the boy. And this complicates what seemed like an open and shut case that would be quickly voted upon so they can all get back to their lives.  

Inevitably the civility between the jurors fades. As they grow more familiar, the power struggle begins. We see a wide range of personalities, each employing his tactics to coerce the rest of the room to see things his way. When the anti-Semite, racist cab driver crosses into physical bullying, we see the strengths and weaknesses of the very different jurors. They come from the full spectrum of the Russian culture and they bring with them their own set of coping skills. It is the crossover between the assumed place of each juror that flexes the dramatic muscle of 12.

This movie had very little attendance during the first week at the Darkside. Maybe people think sitting through a two-and-a-half-hour Russian drama is not squealing good fun. The fact is, the movie is the perfect length. It takes as long as it needs to tell the story. When this happens, the viewer is engaged by the story, not the clock. (The movie is going to play another week. Who knows what happens after that; make sure you see it before the studio yanks it due to poor ticket sales.)

The sound of the Russian language is still in my head. The intensity of a non-romance tongue lashes out from the story and ensnares those not familiar with the sounds. In the darkened auditorium, when I looked down to scribble a note for this review I didn't need to see the subtitles to know what was happening on the screen. A huge part of this story is told in the sounds of the serious voices, but also in the other sounds: the steaming pipe, the badly played school piano, the bird stuck in the room, the violent light switches, the machine guns, the reverberating silences. Do not miss the chance to hear this story on the big screen.  

Neighbors

It is perhaps the ugliest one-ton van I have ever seen. And it is mine—for the time being. Most of the people that responded to my ad were “bio-heads”: those who saw the van’s diesel engine as a step toward sustainable biological energy. They want to convert it to run on the goo that collects behind restaurants. The newbies who want to get on the vegetable train (turnip truck?) tend not to know the difference between a piston and the radio tuner. But, there have been many of these people who have wrought from the barest of mechanical knowledge a reliable mode of transport that’s under the influence of plant oil.

Generalizations are easy. It is also easy to classify into some sort of social stratification the people who come to see the van. Implying that one sort is above the other.

A pair of guys in camo vests and hats emerged from their car like they were taking off tight sweaters. These guys defiantly beat anorexia, if they had ever had it in the first place. Somehow, they didn’t strike me as sustainability-oriented, so I doubted that their main interest in my van was to get into vegetable oil fuel. Now, I have lived among people who look like this, and I speak their language. This day I was dressed in grubbies and had dirty hands from resurrecting the truck, so I looked like their kind of people. To put the glove on the other foot, they were expecting what they disparaging referred to as “Someone from Corvallis.” They were men who worked with their hands, who liked to hunt, drink beer, chew tobacco, and think Palin was a good idea. Good for them. I liked them.

They wanted the engine for their tow truck—which would run on good old-fashioned dirty diesel, thank you very much. We shared stories about mechanical mayhem. When one of them took off in the van for a long test drive, I got to talkin’ with the other. He was going on about how his neighbor called the police because his trailer was parked a foot onto the sidewalk and how he had the pleasure of calling the cops when that same neighbor parked his RV in the street for more than a few days. I was, once again, very grateful to have the neighbors we have.

My wife describes our house as the one bringing down the property values in the neighborhood. That is the luck/bane of living in a “nice” neighborhood. When money is reliably passing from one wallet to the next, we fit in quite nicely with those around us. And then there is now.

Our house has seen better days. At 30 years old, there is a lot to do. When I see the neighbors’ procession of trades peoples’ vans doing everything from refinishing hard wood floors to cleaning out the heater ducts, I send up silent gratitude that these are skills I have. I can fix almost anything, though I lack the time. Our “Curb Appeal” suffers when I have to work on our cars in the driveway, rather than paying someone else to do it—in their garage. Or when we have to put off painting the house—again.

Fortunately, we are surrounded by good people whose friendship and tolerance would make it hard to sell the house and move somewhere else in Corvallis—not that our neighborhood has the only cool people in town. But, “our” people are like my old Carhartt jacket—they are comfortable and I miss them when they’ve been in the closet too long. Perhaps I could do a little better with that metaphor. However, I like living among people as familiar to me as the frayed cuffs of my rugged, mostly brown cotton duck coat.

So, for me to have my choice of neighbors and neighborhoods, it is our neighbors who have to put up with me. To keep from going even deeper into debt, I have to fix my own stuff, inside and outside.

Awesome segue. 

I'm good with cars. Really good. And I like it. Not in the way one likes kittens. More like the way people like boxing, and crossword puzzles. When an engine is ailing, one must determine why. Often it’s a guess, like a crossword. You write in the word with pencil, because if you guess wrong, you have to start over. This is a lot easier if you need only one guess. It is the same for automotive repair. You take your best shot then go in swinging. The object is to avoid doing anything that cannot be undone. You use a screwdriver or a breaker bar like a pencil with a stubby eraser—tread lightly: removing the mistake might tear the paper. 

When Sean’s number came up on my caller ID last week, I almost didn’t answer. It was the type of office day that was made for Valium and cheap beer. I was answering only the calls that would get me closer to the end of my day. Sean had nothing to offer me to that end, but he doesn’t usually call without a good reason. So I answered.

It is a homely Honda Civic, which implies there is any other kind. It would not start, he said into my ear. It was parked in a big shopping complex, so the chances of it being detected as a no-goer were slim—thus avoiding a hefty tow fee. Sean laid out the timeline of symptoms leading up to how his car came to its resting place in front of a Subway sandwich franchise. If this were a crossword, I would know what letters went into what boxes. I could’a done it in ink—I knew the answer. I grabbed my old Carhartt jacket and headed out the door.

With a grating lack of humility, I confirmed my guess and gave Sean a “Push Starting 101” lesson. With a little bucking and heaving, the old Honda came to life.
But he still had that look on his face—fear that a pyrotechnic and permanent car failure seemed imminent. This fear germinated nicely since his Honda was already running on fewer cylinders than the spark plug count.

Even though I knew I’d be pushing the neighbors’ goodly nature, I had Sean’s car in my driveway anyway. I feel these minor non-native car repairs should be kept to a minimum. Toward that end, I always meet my biker buddies outside of the neighborhood. No matter how delightful a Harley V-Twin sucking air through a big S&S and spitting it out through a couple of Vance and Hines might sound to me, the extent of my neighbors’ internal combustion celebration revolves around leaf blowers and lawnmowers. Who am I to upset that balance? So under the cover of daylight on a day when everyone in the neighborhood was home, I fixed Sean’s car. It was gone ASAP.

When his Honda stuttered up the hill from my house, I looked around sheepishly, but there were no stern gazes coming from the surrounding yards. Well, just like my cat, I figured if I got away with that…

The manual read: “Remove engine mounts from brackets and install new ones.” Seems simple. Eight hours later I was lying in the rain, coveralls soaked through, a nasty cut on my hand, and that last bolt refusing to go into the hole it came out of. But I knew I had the job against the ropes, and I was not going to back down, even if I had to smack the ref. To say my language was colourful at this point would be generous. I happened to cast a glance out from under my car and saw my neighbor’s feet. Nothing classes up a joint like fowling the air with obscenities while working on a pickup in the rain. I extracted myself from the job and apologized. She was gracious.

For a year now, this very neighbor had been trying to get me to look at a car that had been sitting lifeless in her garage for a half a decade. Now, it is not uncommon for my neighbors to pop in with an automotive question or two. But this neighbor, whose property overlooks ours, has had to overlook my busy driveway more than the others. I wasn’t going to reward such tolerance by declining her when she needed automotive help.

Riding the wave of guilt stemming from my gutter language, I walked over to her garage. I took a deep breath because I knew I was about to fall in love.

She was red with chrome in all the right places. A little worn from the years but still quite the looker. I caressed her in a way that would raise my wife’s eyebrows.

She is a 1952 MGTD. Slung low, and though the grill seemed to be bearing teeth, it felt like she was pouting. It had been years since anyone had taken her out. I was hooked and I could see my neighbor knew it. She handed me the thumb-drive with the manual on it. 

Working on this car would be like doing a crossword in an English much different than the English used in the manuals for my Chevy truck or Harley. What the hell is a spanner? When it comes to working on cars, I am a boxer. My toolbox is full of devices that force nuts and bolts to my will or they hit the canvas in a broken knockout. This MGTD needed a ballet dancer stroking a light touch, using tools made of silk and taffeta. Still, I stepped into the garage and lifted the “bonnet.” I moved slowly, as if I were leading a lady onto the dance floor. It was at this point that the hood pivot ripped posthaste from the cowling—leaving a bolt hanging, crowned with rusted metal. The sound alone made the angels cry and left me feeling a little faint. The owner was not surprised—she knew this car needed help. I thanked the God I’d been cursing just a few minutes before.

Those not impressed by the beauty of polished valve covers and the graceful coil of a fuel line will not understand how such things can lead to my near psychotic resolve to make this car live again. I had my first British love affair with English motorcycles. Marquees like Triumph, Norton, and BSA still make me smile. They also remind me of an old bumper sticker hanging on a wall in a Brit car shop: All the parts falling off this car are of the Highest English Craftsmanship. This is a humorous reminder that the English seem to think form triumphs over function. That’s American for This Might Suck.

This might be an opportunity to atone a little for all the years my neighbors silently endured my clattering diesel’s daily assent out of our cul-de-sac—fouling the air with sound and smoke from burning vegetables and dinosaur fuels. I'm sure it wouldn’t hurt them at all to see this red sprite of an MGTD flittering up the street—with a little help from me.

I'm getting better at doing my research first. My coveralls were dripping in the garage and hydrogen peroxide boiled in the cut on my hand. With my other hand it took all of ten seconds on the Internet to discover the info that would have saved me six hours of lying in the mud and grit under the truck. (I said I was getting better at doing research first, not that I had it dialed.) It made me mindful that if I made this kind of mistake with the MG, it might cost more than lost time. It could mean breaking a piece that may require years on eBay to find another. I explored the possibility I should trade in my coveralls for a tutu…or just be very careful.

The guys who came to kick the tires of my diesel van wouldn’t need too much convincing to believe that anyone who would drive a 1952 MGTD would wear a tutu. They would think the car was cute, only to wonder how much tongue weight it could handle if a trailer hitch were welded to the back bumper.

A couple of my neighbors cleave to the notion that any time is a good time to fire up the weed eater—even at 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I generously deem that this is not a passive aggressive way to thank me for sprinkling the ‘hood with cars so rich with personality. Truth be told, it may be their way of suggesting that occasionally warming up my yard equipment might be a good idea. And it doesn’t seem to help when I say that I eschew yard care as a matter of thinking globally by not mowing locally.

I miss a lot of the rural pursuits I enjoyed before becoming a member of the Corvallis community. I gave them up to become someone I would have made fun of, back when I owned camo clothing. But, it would be harder to give up the life I have now. And no matter how tall my grass is, I prefer popping a hood open in my driveway. It’s where I fit in the social stratification of our neighborhood.

The Cake Eaters

“Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.” (Let them eat cake.)

-Marie-Antoinette

THE CAKE EATERS is a movie about people who live in a small town, people trying to grow up in spite of their personal challenges, people who deal with loss. Bringing all these things together is the talent of Bruce Dern, Kristin Stewart, and Melissa Leo, Elizabeth Ashley, to name just a few of the more recognizable faces in this movie.

THE CAKE EATERS is the directorial debut of Mary Stewart Masterson. She’s learned a lot being in front of a camera, skills that she uses in this film behind the camera. She knows how to work with her excellent cast, bringing out great performances by reining in the more experienced actors to balance with the newer ones, so that no one steps on the other’s toes. The screenwriter is also one of the lead actors. He is perhaps the least apt of the cast, but you wouldn’t know without watching carefully. This speaks well of the director.

I saw THE CAKE EATERS last year, at the Ashland Independent Film Festival. Film festivals tend to be a kaleidoscope of bodies and movies and no sleep. When someone dragged me over to meet the fellow who wrote this movie, I was polite and in a hurry. I slipped his card in among the other cards in my pocket. After the standing-room only screening of THE CAKE EATERS, I dug up his card and began the year-long process of trying to bring this film to Corvallis. It took a while to get distribution, and I was glad to hear the writer had passed my name along. It speaks well of them that they kept my card, too—a small fish in the piranha-laden waters of theatrical exhibition.

THE CAKE EATERS seems to roll at its own pace and wants you to slow down and enjoy the stroll. The nice thing about the Darkside denizens is, they are generally not in a hurry. That means we don’t have to start movies right on time, and when we do get things rolling we can enjoy the ride. A lot like THE CAKE EATERS.

The sexual politics are either the lube that moves this story or the glue that holds it together—depending on which pun you prefer.

Kristin Stewart (INTO THE WILD, TWILIGHT, ADVENTURE LAND) plays Georgia. She’s too small to play the whole state, so she plays a young woman trying to come to terms with a body that flutters out of her control. Her neurological degenerative disease is as much a character of this movie as the people, but Stewart quietly incorporates the incessant twitching into Georgia’s character without stealing the scene. 

Easy, father of Beagle and Guy, is played by Bruce Dern, proving that some actors don’t lose it when they get snow on the roof. He puts on a folksy calm that seems like it might be a little passive aggressive. Easy just watched his wife die of cancer, but he’s not ready to lie down and die just because his wife did.

Georgia has her eye on Beagle (Aaron Stanford). Beagle has grown into his name—running a little behind the pack. Although he is a little older than Georgia, she leads the way in emotional maturity.

Stewart has an intrinsic adolescent snotty affect—perfect for this part. She looks at the camera with a little girl’s frustration—mouth slack with two front teeth peeking out. More like a small child than a teenager wanting to learn about sex—right damn now.

Georgia’s mom (Talia Balsam) fills the room with the feathers of a mother hen, trying to protect Georgia from herself and life. But life tends to happen anyway. The clock’s ticking for Georgia, and as she says when asked about her condition: “This is as good as it gets.” Our temptation to move into pathos or unkind judgment is tempered by our understanding of Georgia—her life is ending before it really gets started.

Guy (played by Jayce Bartok, the writer) is the son who took off to chase a music career—conveniently avoiding being on hand for his mom’s death. When he steps back into the life he left, Guy brings his own baggage along with his guitar case. Beagle stayed home. Tension? Hell, yeah. Especially when Easy greets Guy like he’s the prodigal son. Especially when both boys see that Easy is not clinging to the sacred memory of their mother the way they would like him to.

THE CAKE EATERS is simply shot with love and wit. There is a sweetness Masterson and her feminine sensibilities bring to a story that could have very easily become like sands through the hourglass. There is almost no emotional waste. As predictable as some moments in the film might be, we still want to see them happen—because we are already there. We know these people and we like them. They are funny and scared and lost and found. We will leave the auditorium a little sad that we won’t be back next week to check on our friends. That’s a sadness I can live with.

Of Cats and Men

Many a pet owner knows the sensation of getting up in the night and stepping barefoot into a "gift." No, not that kind of gift. A gift from the great outdoors. To avoid getting up seven times a night to let the cat in and out, one must allow free-flowing access to the house through an opening of some sort. Though it isn't just the cat that can come in. Reaching for a towel to dry my face first thing in the morning and blindly grabbing a visiting opossum hanging from the towel rack just doesn’t do it for me. Depending on my need to sleep through the night, I sometimes choose to leave the damn balcony door open and hope for the best.

Most nights I'm very vigilant about what comes in. This particular night, the cat had stayed in on our request, because a mountain lion had killed a cat nearby. As I made my way in the dark night to the bathroom I was not expecting to step onto something small and squishy. I could determine through tactile foot sense the species and hair colour of the poor victim. Now, since the cat was in for the night, this really sucked: it meant the rodent had to be in the house when the cat nabbed it.

But lo, when I turned the light on I saw the “gift” was orange. An orange earplug. Tending to bolt upright and violently out of a sound sleep if a piece of dust lands too close to the bed, I’ve become a user of earplugs. Now, what the hell was this one doing on the floor? Had I sneezed in my sleep and sent it spewing from my ear, ricocheting from the wall, onto the ceiling and down to the carpet? Realizing it didn’t matter, I put it back on my night stand and went into the bathroom—checking the towel racks for opossums on the way.

The next night it happened again. Same orange earplug. Same place on the carpet. My wife suggested I might have brushed it off while stumbling to the bathroom in the dark. Yeah, okay. But every night? And having it fall in the exact same place?

Then one night, I was shedding my clothes for slumber when I noticed the cat was on the bed. Since his idea of a good time is waiting until I am fast asleep and then climbing onto my chest and purring loudly into my nose, everything was right on schedule.

Then it happened.

He stepped onto the nightstand and started chewing one of my earplugs. (It was a new one so don’t be grossed out.) I watched him pick it up and jump to the floor. He dropped it in the magic spot where I’d been finding them every night. He batted it a few times, then wandered off. So I put the plug back on the nightstand. He stopped. He turned. He jumped right back up and put the earplug back on the floor where it belonged.

So what does this have to do with running GRAN TORINO at the Darkside? Gimme a minute and I’ll see what I can come up with.

I liked Clint Eastwood’s film GRAN TORINO, in which The Man Himself stars as Walt Kowalski--a redneck veteran who happened to fight in a war against an Asian population. Guess who moves in next door?

Now, this is Clint Eastwood. This guy can play whatever he wants in any movie he directs. If this were you, wouldn’t you make a movie you can star in where you can just have a good time? Welcome to GRAN TORINO. The story will not blow you away with its originality and plot twists. But, you know it’s Clint and you know what’s coming and you can hardly wait for it, ‘cause you know it’s gonna be good. Remember these words: “Get off my lawn.”

GRAN TORINO is a simple story about a man who has to deal with the world changing around him. What makes this movie work is Eastwood's cinematic currency. We’ve seen that look on his face before, in a dozen different movies, and we know what it means. Even if that face is not peeking out from behind a .44 Magnum, we have a good idea about how this is going to play out. We also get to see the character evolve into a better man than he was when the movie started. The end is exactly what you’d expect in a Clint Eastwood movie, but different.

The story is not perfect and the acting could have used, well, some actors, but what we see is Clint’s version of neighborhood diversity. This is the same man who made FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, which scored the Academy's Best Picture Oscar. Though you will not find that depth, or anything remotely resembling the depth of FLAGS in GRAN TORINO, you have to trust there is something there, and see it through. It may not change your life, but it will not fail to entertain.

Seeing THE CHANGELING, a film Clint directed this year, makes it obvious that Clint was having some fun when he made GRAN TORINO; it's the simplicity. THE CHANGELING was a huge production with big talent. Clint knows better than to squeeze as much glamour and pizzazz as he can into every frame of film. Sometimes it’s better to let the characters tell the story.

Just like most of us, Clint doesn’t live in just one world. GRAN TORINO tells that story in yet another way.

And now, an incomprehensible segue.

I hadn’t planned on going, since my days of doing the group rides with other bikers have been over for a while. It's not that I don't love what it feels like to be in a pack of a dozen or so Harleys, with exhaust notes in the higher decibel range. But, some years ago, after a very close call instigated by a newbie wanting to ride like they did in CHiPs: side-by-side, I gave up group rides. Then, at another event, a rather nasty fight broke out. That pretty much did it for me. No thanks, gonna pass on the group ride scene.

I felt my resolve dissolve when I heard Monty’s voice on the phone telling me—not asking—but telling me where everyone was meeting for the ride. I figured I’d show my face at the rendezvous, then bail. Well, that’s not quite the way it worked out. Very soon I was bringing up the rear of a group that had more than a few new riders, all trying to get their sea legs atop $25,000 machines. So, now the plan was that I would help escort the newbies to the park, and then do a touch-and-go at the gathering.

Arriving at the park, I saw that this was a little more than a couple dozen people taking a ride in the country. When you encounter 150 motorcycles jockeying for parking spaces on a one-lane road, smart people just park and wait for the smoke to clear. People were arriving from all over the state. The barbeque was lit and the beer coolers were opened. I was told later that this was an event called the Spring Thaw—a celebration of the beginning of the riding season, and it always attracts a lot of riders. This was information Monty conveniently hadn't shared with me earlier.

I knew a lot of these people standing around eating red meat and drinking bad beer. I'd ridden with many of them. Some of them I’d spent hours with, out in cold garages getting a bike back together so they could ride to work the next day. Some of them rode with me the first time I got a new Harley. Some of us did things we don’t discuss in polite company—and express gratitude to have lived through 'em. We spoke of those who had died, going down hard and not getting up. No matter how much I love cinema and movies, a huge part of my heart still lives in motorcycling and the people who love it too.

Sure as hell, as soon as I had decided to stay for a while, work beckoned. When I announced I was going to head out, someone wrapped his arms around me from behind, and picked me up off the ground. More than just a few inches. I knew who it was—the only person it could be. When he finally put me down, I knew leaving the party was really, really going to suck.

People who I had just met hugged me goodbye, and old friends left the macho bullshit at the door and hugged me like a long-lost brother.

I got out of there before they saw me crying.

The next day I traded oil spots on the pavement for oil paintings on the walls of the Portland Art Museum. For hours I walked the floors and corridors of that wonderful building. I saw sculptures and paintings that cut to my very soul and left no choice but to realize there is such a thing as perfect beauty in the world. Perfect brush strokes done with what had to be only one hair provided a glint in the eye or on the sword, showing a patience and commitment Photoshoppers may never emulate.

The audio tour devices looked frighteningly like cell phones. When one of our party walked up to me, I covered an imaginary mouth-piece and said, “I'm ordering a pizza. I can’t remember: do you like pepperoni?” The security guy looked at me like I was only the 5000th person to do that joke that day. I never imagined a man in a bad polyester jacket could make me feel like such an idiot.

We ate lunch and later had coffee at the same café down the street, with outside tables in the radiant sunshine. The perfect spot to watch the various mini dramas playing out in the park across the street. It was as good as it gets. Still, every time a motorcycle went by, I damn near broke my neck to look at it. Call it reflex.

So this is how I see GRAN TORINO. I imagine that Clint is not a man of one mind. He dabbles in the DIRTY HARRY side of his personality, even when unbuckling the budget belts on a star-studded production. GRAN TORINO is a bit of that vent. He can visit his roots with the knowledge that life has changed and he is no longer making spaghetti westerns. That doesn’t mean he must turn his back on them. Sometimes great art comes from looking back at who you were. It is important to know how much of who you were makes up that person you see in the mirror every morning. I think a movie like GRAN TORINO allows Clint a chance to look at the person he used to see in the mirror. It might help him remember that not all his movies were polished and sanitized for the mass market.

I was lying comfortably in bed when something woke me up. An earplug had been plucked from my ear. Well, this is annoying. I head Lainie’s voice say, "Kiwi did it." It wasn’t Kiwi. It was Lainie, who wanted me to get up and make coffee. As I swung my feet over the side of the bed I stepped on something squishy. It was another earplug. Kiwi was across the room looking at me innocently, pausing in an act of personal hygiene that involved a paw raised like he was about to give a high-five.

Not at all relevant to GRAN TORINO, is it? How's this: just because Clint Eastwood makes Academy Award winning movies with A-list actors—like, two a year—doesn't mean he can't have fun with a simple story and actors who haven't seen a lot of time in front of a camera.

And just because I run an art house cinema doesn't mean I don't love my friends who don't know Truffaut from a truffle.

And just because the cat was in all night doesn't mean I won't be "gifted" with something soft and squishy underfoot.