Two movies arrived in the mail the other day, favorites
from when I was eight and nine. Sasi is
eight, nearly nine, so a bit of father-daughter bonding was in order.
“Honey, do you want to watch a movie with Papa?”
“No.”
After a few fatherly threats and some emotional
blackmail we sat down to watch Abbot
& Costello Meet Frankenstein. I promised her it would be really
scary. She has her own idea of scary.
“Why does Mister Saw act like he does?”
“Because the screenwriters are professional whores
selling geek shows to the lowest common denominator of humanity.”
I should mention that it was I who suggested the
overheated-rat-eating-its-way-through-the-woman scene for one of Munchkin’s
early movies. Before you give me too much
credit, I stole the idea from a short story my dad introduced me to when I was about
Sasi’s age called “The Copper Bowl.” And before you wonder if that makes me a
professional whore, no, I didn’t get paid for the idea, I did it for love of a
good gross out.
“Does this movie have sound? If not: I’m outa here!”
“Yes, sound was around when I was a boy.”
“What about color? If not: I’m outa here!”
I explained it didn’t have color, but she would
survive.
“I’m bored!”
“It gets better after the opening credits!”
I have to say that I lost her about halfway through. She fiddled with her i Pad, though I would get
her to look up periodically: “Look at those eyes! Look, there’s a werewolf”
It wasn’t the masterpiece I remembered. It was okay.
I think Sasi may have found Lou Costello funnier than I did. He was …
okay. I didn’t find the monsters as
scary as I did fifty years ago, but they were scarier to me than to Sasi. Kids have lost the ability to take a creepy
looking hand reaching out of a coffin, or a hairy one with claws gripping the
edge of a door, and to imagine with anticipation and terror whom it is attached
to.
Costello has a running gag where he imitates Dracula
by wrapping a cloth over his lower face, like Dracula’s cape. When Bela Lugosi does that, he is truly
terrifying. His eyes, in closeup, even
in the scene where there are tiny bats flying in them, have to be the most
menacing in filmdom. When he lowers it,
especially when he poses as an affable human doctor, it is a different
story. I am not a fan of plastic
surgery, but gadzooks, if there was ever a candidate for a facelift! I think the white makeup and red (?) lips
were meant to make him seem deathly, but he looks like an aging drag queen, or
a former fourth grade teacher at my grammar school.
I got to wondering how big Lon Chaney, Jr. was. Movies are famous for making short actors
seem taller. A tiny pixy like Tom Cruise gets to play giant Jack Reacher, and
Sly Stallone looks like a behemoth, when rumor has it he is Tom’s height. (And if you think either of them is really
five-seven, I should buy stock in their shoe maker.) But it also shrinks the big ones, and every
so often you learn that someone is surprisingly tall. There is a character in The Wire, Slim
Charles, whose height and size are referred to in several episodes, but I never
knew why until I read that the actor was six-five. (He does slouch in most of his scenes.) Anyway, Chaney played Lennie in Of Mice and Men, and Lennie is a giant. I started comparing Chaney to Bud Abbot. Chaney
is huge. Two sites list his height as
either six-two or six-three-and-a-half. Either way, he is big, not fat big, or
bodybuilder big, just big. He was
probably very strong. I wouldn’t want
him chasing me, even before he turned into the Wolfman.
I was eight when I wrote my first play. A & C Meet FM inspired me; it was
perfect, the greatest movie ever. I wanted to top it and write the even greater
greatest movie ever, so I ripped it off.
Even at eight I had the instincts of a real writer: steal from the best. I was no novice at the writing game. At five I wrote my first poem, the day they
brought my baby brother home from the hospital:
Bruce, I love you,
I love you with all my
heart.
Bruce, I love you
Because you are smart.
Bruce, I love you,
I love you with all my
might.
Bruce, I love you
At first sight.
A year later, and more ambitious, I wrote my first
novel, a murder mystery called No More
Water Until Midnight, wherein the heroic detective (Jake) and a young Abe
Lincoln, track down the assassins of George Washington. Having written a novel an autobiography seemed
in order, so I wrote The Autobiography of
Jake. It was only four pages long (I
was still only six, after all), but I promised readers that as soon as more
stuff happened to me I would keep them in the loop. I think you will agree I have tried.
What could top Abbot
& Costello Meet Frankenstein?
The answer was obvious: The Three
Stooges Meet Frankenstein. I wrote a
script and enlisted three classmates; I would play the Monster, and they would
be my Stooges. Ricky Neetz, my best
friend, was one, probably Moe. I think
the others might have been Jay Jacob (yes, our class had a Jake Jacobs and a
Jay Jacob) and Laura Bornhoeft, but alas, we had no Playbill, so I am not sure
of the cast, nor of how Laura spelled her name. We rehearsed at my house, and
then persuaded Mrs. Fife, our third grade teacher, to let us present it to the
class.
There came the scene where the monster awakes. I lay upon a piano bench, wearing my monster
mask. The Stooges were supposed to turn their backs and indulge in Stooge-like
banter while behind them an ominous form rose from the bench. I would bop one of them, who would turn and
accuse his neighbor – “Hey, why’dja hit me!” – and slap the neighbor. I would bop the one on the other end, who
would poke the eyes of his neighbor.
When the hilarity built to the point where our class was peeing in
the aisles the Stooges would discover the Monster among them, and the climactic
chase would begin.
They didn’t turn around; they had forgotten the
script!
“Turn around!”
I whispered. But I was muffled by my mask. They looked at me quizzically. “Turn around!”
I whispered louder.
Finally, Ricky leaned over and whispered “Huh?” and was
able to make out my prompt. They turned,
and while they weren’t the greatest cast, we got through the scene and on to
the chase. Ricky got to kill me at the
end. I couldn’t afford to build a lake
and a dock for him to set fire to, as they did at the end of A & C Meet FM –
we were on a budget – and Mrs. Fife wouldn’t let us play with matches, so he
had to use a Bunsen burner (a can of Pledge with yellow paper, representing
flames, taped to it). I think my death
scene rivaled that of Glenn Strange (who played the monster in the film).
I learned things as a writer and a director that
day. No matter how brilliant the
writing, you are at the mercy of your cast.
Anyway, the other movie that came this week, my
favorite when I was nine, was Blackboard
Jungle. If I wanted to be the Monster at eight, I wanted to be Gregory
Miller (the Sidney Poitier role) when I was nine. I came much closer to achieving that. Maybe it is better if this one also bores
Sasi. If it turns out she likes it she
will probably want a switchblade for her birthday, and I don’t think Customs
here will let me bring one back from Thailand.
