Raised on Popcorn

My parents were young. I was their first child, the kid with whom they could tinker and screw up because they would go on to have chances with others. In my baby book under "First Movie," the word Vampirella appears in my mother's measured handwriting. This bit of movie trivia tells me nothing (and yet, everything) about this set of new parents. One) I have yet to discover a film of that title from the time period. So I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate information. So the question becomes, "Were you paying attention?" Is my birthday really the third of May? Is my whole life built on lies? Two) my mom might have half-heartedly accompanied my dad to any British, lesbionic, vampyre, bloody, tittie flick of the early 70s. Months later, she may have jotted down this particular title because it sounded about right. And then there's three) baby's first film was a porno. 

Knowing mom, my vote is for our second option. Any way you look at it, it's pretty...well, it's pretty much a great many things: tacky, hilarious, inappropriate--because, frankly, no matter the subject matter, we can be certain it was no Disney film. It's most assuredly super-fucking-radtastic, considering  the grindhouse/genre geek film-sploitationeer I've ended up becoming.  These days mom says I have weird or, "artsy-fartsy" taste in film. Mostly because I wouldn't watch Grown Ups. Not if Adam Sandler himself invited me over for foot rubs and a private screening held high atop the Hollywood hills in a hot tub filled with strawberry rhubarb ice cream. Also, I have not now, nor will I ever, find the need to pour into my eyes anything adapted from a dying kid/cancer/going off to war novel by tearjerkoff authors such as Nicholas Sparks. I do not watch, what I've noticed women of the mid-west regularly classifying as, "cute shows." Those features that focus on shiny-faced children. Or whimsy. Or talking animals. Or Colin Firth. Or a combo plate featuring any of the listed ingredients. 

And while I do enjoy my fair share of subtitled features, and documentaries about livestock and popular fonts, as well as the occasional Lars von Trier vehicle for his full-tilt pretentiousness--that is about as artsy, and as fartsy, as I get. I still regard popcorn as manna.  Something post-fetal occurs within me as the lights of a theatre dim. I am at my most comfortable when the disc in the DVD player is a horror picture.  Or an old western. Or a straight up gumshod Dana Andrewsy noir. In fact the cheaper a film was to make, the more likely I am to find it a masterpiece. For this I blame mom, dad and the lesbian vampires of the cinematic underworld.

I become very irritated when I overhear parents say, "Oh, we could never let Tyler watch something with lots of sexy-sex in it, but we'll take the most violent film on the shelf. Boys will be boys, ya know." That seems like highly ineffective parenting. As a kid, dad took me to the movies a lot. Between 1975-1988, I'm pretty certain I saw most main-stream motion pictures in the theatre. Off the top of my head: Jaws, Conan the Barbarian, First Blood, Angel Heart, Brubaker, An Officer and a Gentleman and Bad Boys.  And I can never remember him NOT engaging my questions, fostering conversation, or explaining the moral of a "story," while listening, thoughtfully to what I had to say about what we had just seen. Film is an interactive medium, (though, ssshhhh....not during) as is parenting. It's simply not enough to jump up, dust the popcorn remnants off, and be on your merry way. Movies create opportunity--opportunity to help your children understand the world around them, as well as the world we don't see. The one in their little heads.

On numerous occasions I have stated that when it comes to movies I'm basically a 9-year-old boy. And though I am neither of those things--the sentiment is nevertheless true. Self-diagnosing this DSM-4 defying pseudo-psychological condition was fairly easy. It didn't even require therapy, remote viewing, or an iso-tank. The mystery can be solved by acknowledging the fact that I was raised in a theatre. Not Catskills-born-to-Vaudevillians-birthed-in-a-steamer-trunk-theatrically-raised, but I was blessed with a set of happy-film-going parents who passed that love to me both through nature and nurture. 

Having been raised a heathen first class--I have no ear for the word of God. I do, however, respond quite submissively to the voice of Don LaFontaine. I don't know hymns, but I do know that the 20th Century Fox fanfare centers me in a way no prayer ever could. The torch-bearing Columbia may be the closest figure I have to a Mother Mary. And, despite Warner Brothers insistence on being the world's most evil media conglomerate, the WB shield means more to me than the crucifix. Beyond these icons I am offered not a necessarily the tangible, but something more heftily relevant than the stations of the cross. There is a measure of salvation in the lion's roar. And a designed deliverance just on the other side of the mountain. Childhood Sundays were for some kids spent in church, or on spent on chores, or in the bleachers. Me? I got to go to the movies. 

My first memory is of going to the theatre. The shrinking iris of time produces a pattern composed of a hundred bright lights--this constellation exists now only in my imagination and extends all the way to the tips of my eyelashes. A spiderweb of light suspended from the soffit of my memory, the collective warmth conveying a fragility similar to that of a worn postcard. What could have been such an easily disposed of memory, is over 30 years later tucked away for the sake of happy remembrance. Like a valentine. Like a pressed cloverleaf. In 1976 a little girl stood beneath a marquee, waiting with her parents just to see a movie. Inside that singular, otherwise forgettable moment, the definition of the person that girl would become began to form. 

I don't typically traffic in mantric bumper stickers. But if I did, mine might read: I don't go to church, I go to the cinema. 

The dark offers redemption. And occasionally forgiveness.

The dark offers absolution. And most often sanctuary.

What's most curious about my cinephile status is perhaps its genesis. Typically children are taken to the theatre to see a holiday production of the Nutcracker. Or the symphony, or a ballet recital, or the Ice Capades. In subsequent years I have been made to suffer through those miserable rituals. But the first actual memory I possess (one I hope never to misplace) and my first memory are of a movie theatre. They are one in the same. A filmy haze loiters just above my kodachromatic recollection--but the memory is never far from me. I wouldn't let it be. I would have turned 4 that May. My parents took me to an evening screening in June. I'm told I read quite early, whether that's my mom's way of feeling like a superior parent or it's somewhat true, I suppose I won't ever really know. So I wonder if I might've actually read the marquee that night, or if it's a slight of hand on the part of my brain that distinctly recalls the fat, black letters spelling out the title: The Outlaw Josey Wales.  

I got this thing about feet. And handbags.

Earbobs

I have given birth, which means hearing the first precious sounds of life uttered by a beautiful son who would go on to sweetly call me, "Mommy." I have sat in a arena while Barbra Streisand sang "The Way We Were". When the actor who voiced Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer passed away a few weeks ago, there was a moment of devastation because some warm audiological nostalgic was lost. I've heard Prince perform Purple Rain. Live. In the dark. By the way--the closest I’ve been to God. I have witnessed Brian Setzer play a gorgeous 1957 Gretsch-White Falcon. There were tears. Handsome men have whispered sweet somethings into my ear. And I’ve been told that I am loved. Having drank roughly a million beers, I treasure each dulcet “fah-link” of the opened bottled cap.  I've performed in comedic productions and had people laugh in the right places at the things I have said. I was fortunate enough to have parents with profoundly good taste in music, therefore, The Beatles are like air to me, like breathing. I have presented my spoken word and poetic efforts to crowds of people and received the compliment of genuine applause. I have been told by people I respect that I am a good writer. Upon meeting my absolute hero Elvis Costello backstage at the Chicago Theater, he asked me (rather lasciviously) in his darling accent where I had gotten such beautiful blue eyes. So, all in all my ears have had a pretty swell go of things.

But I am here to firmly state that there is no sweeter sound, no more gorgeous audible emission in the entire universe than that warm, snowy static followed by the melodic tone that precedes any original television series aired on HBO. It's the audible equivalent of macaroni & cheese.