(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)
Moving On: The Season Finale
It was just past 8 pm on a Tuesday when I received word that my grandmother was dying. She had been in a coma for several hours, and her vital signs were fading. Last Rites had already been administered twice.
My father had been dispatched to collect me. He and I drove back to Swarthmore in silence, my thoughts and focus facing forward as we sped north on 55.
The doctors could not pinpoint what it was that had caused my grandmother to collapse, but they were sure it had something to do with a previously undiagnosed case of emphysema. My grandmother was not a smoker, but my late uncle was. For 30 years, my grandmother and my uncle had lived together in a two-bedroom walk-up 10 miles south of Philadelphia. My uncle had died half a decade prior.
***
My mother insisted that it would be a good idea for me to have a few minutes alone with my grandmother in her hospital room. My grandmother had been laid out in a gown. She was all purple veins and tulips. It was cloudy outside, and that made the room seem damp. I held my grandmother’s hand. The skin on her fingers felt like loose scales. After a few minutes, I began wailing, while also pleading with my grandmother not to die. My cousin Carolyn had somehow slipped into the room behind me, and she was standing in wait now. I stood up, and I stepped back out into the hall.
A half hour later, the whole thing was over.
***
In the months that followed my late uncle’s death, I’d spend entire weekends at my grandmother’s apartment – a youthful presence enlisted to lift her spirits. I’d set up shop in my late uncle’s bedroom, where there was a library along with a cherrywood desk. The refrigerator was always stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I drank while sitting on a cast-iron porch after my grandmother had fallen asleep. There were records by Nat King Cole and there were TV dinners a la Stouffer’s. There were month-old crosswords jammed between the sofa cushions, and there was a faded page-one headline hanging on the back of a door that read, “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.”
My cousin Dave lived with his mother in a two-bedroom downstairs, and Dave was kind enough to let me tag along whenever he went out drinking with his friends. Dave had a suitcase full of cassettes featuring some of the premier artists of the 60s and 70s. Sometimes, when my grandmother would slide me a few bucks, I’d hightail it over to The Bazaar, where I’d pick out something odd and wonderful by The Who, The Doors, The Lovin Spoonful, or Pink Floyd. This is how I came into contact with great LPs like Quadrophenia and The River, Blood on the Tracks and Harvest Moon. This is how I came to realize there was more to the FM dial than the Hot Eight at Eight and Terry “The Motormouth” Young.
Somehow, it felt like that era of great discovery had officially ended now. There would be no more weekend trips to my grandmother’s apartment, no more late-night beers on her second-floor porch, no more Boxcar Willie playing loudly from her living room, no more writing by the desktop light. There would only be a three-day mourning period, capped off with beads and flowers in some dimly-lit slumber room where we would all be lined up like lemmings, made to exchange phatic pleasantries with 300 or more of our closest friends and relatives, all before driving single-file to a church, where some know-nothing preacher would stand behind a pulpit and butcher my grandmother’s first name repeatedly, all the while trying to convince us that this was not so much a day of mourning as it was a celebration.
Then we’d all line up a second time, and we’d bawl our way into the sunlight … an organ playing us out to the heartfelt strains of “Eagle’s Wings”. We’d load the old gal into a wagon, and 30 minutes later, we’d look on in tinted silence as she got lowered into the earth. From there, we’d all head off to lunch at some swanky black-tie joint. “What a fitting sendoff,” any number of people might say. “What a fitting sendoff.” Of course.
***
I do not remember exactly when or how I returned to Wildwood that Labor Day weekend. I do remember that I had two bags’ worth of groceries under each arm upon my arrival, and that the doorknob to my apartment had a medieval-sized padlock clamped down over it. The padlock had a handwritten note attached to it. That note read: “See Sam at the Shore Plaza for a key to unlock door.”
Sam was my landlord. Sam was also the owner of both Sam’s Pizza and the Shore Plaza Hotel. Sam stood 5’3 with a shiny head, and Sam spent most afternoons in the main lobby of the Shore Plaza. Whenever Sam saw me shuffling toward the apartment, he’d wander out onto the sidewalk. The building that housed our apartment was located directly across the street from the Shore Plaza. If I was walking toward the apartment alone, Sam would stare at me without saying a word. If I came shuffling down the block with a girl on my arm, Sam would call out from across the street, “She’s not living there, is she?” “No, Sam. She’s not,” I’d call back.
Sam was intrusive in an old-country way, and I was in no position to dispute that. My name did not appear on any lease, and I had recently become the only tenant left occupying our 4th-floor apartment. My lone roommate, Jen, had set out for school the previous weekend. Jen had hit me up for cash to pay off the remaining balance of our seasonal rent before she left. As a result, Sam could conceivably – and legally – double his take by kicking me out and taking on another tenant for the month of September.
I kept all of this in mind as I wandered over to the Shore Plaza to confront Sam about the padlock.
“You livin’ over there?” Sam asked, as he glanced around the Shore Plaza lobby.
“Umm, yes,” I said. “I’ve been living over there for the better part of two months. You know me. You say hi to me sometimes.”
“That place is a mess,” Sam said. He had obviously sent someone over to inspect the apartment during my absence. “You need to clean it up.”
I assured Sam that I would.
“What about the rent?” Sam said, just before he handed me the key to the padlock.
“What about the rent?” I said. “Jen paid the rest of the rent about a week ago.”
“No, no, no,” Sam said, snapping his fingers. “That was the rent for August. That girl who always live with you … What’s her name?”
“Jen,” I said.
“Jen,” Sam said. “Right. Jen told me you pay off the rest of the rent for September when she drop off her key here last Sunday.”
“How much?” I said.
“How much what?” Sam said.
“How much for September?” I said.
“280,” Sam said, flatly.
I dug into my pocket, which also functioned as a cash-n-carry, and I counted out seven 20s. “I’ll pay off the rest next Thursday,” I said.
Sam handed me a key for the padlock. “You’re a good boy,” Sam said.
***
September in Wildwood was the most beautiful thing.
September was the Stonehenge solstice, the magnetic fields of Finland; September was the pride before the fall, when thinning crowds meant fewer hours, and the island blazed in pristine shades of auburn. September was the engine cooling, the Sunday paper, the sublime sound of ebb tides rolling in outside your door. September was cold beers and citronella, deep-sea fishing on the fly. September was the month when summer suntans slowly faded, when a million grains of sand began to migrate off the jetties. September meant drunk firemen and Harley hogs, classic cars and kite conventions. September was the month when hardcore flotsam washed ashore, when motel decks, they set to buckling. September was the month when beatnik locals hawked their wares. September was the month that culminated with an end-of-season fire sale along the boards.
That fire sale was known as Super Sunday. Super Sunday was a six-hour street bazaar during which seaside merchants sold off as much surplus stock as possible, rather than box that stock up and take their chances trying to sell it the following May.
I worked in Tin Can Alley on Super Sunday. Around 6 PM, I leaned my shoulder against a pillar, and I tossed the headset microphone aside. I looked on as the night watchman fastened a steel chain across the central gateway to the pier. That steel chain had a wooden sign on it that read: “PRIVATE PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING.”
A few minutes later, I waved goodbye to all the maintenance workers as they stepped over the steel chain en route to a nearby bar.
“C’mon, man,” one of the maintenance workers said. He turned in stride and tossed me a softball. “We’re all headed to the Tiki. You comin’?”
I caught the softball and I tossed it back. “I’ll be down there in a bit,” I said.
With that, I set to closing Tin Can Alley for the season. I took my time and I let the breeze run through me. I watched a napkin as it fumbled down the strand.
Day 182
“Saratoga Summer Song” originally written by Kate McGarrigle.
***
(Moving On is a regular feature on IFB)
©Copyright Bob Hill
Film Capsule: Safety Not Guaranteed
Here’s the thing about Safety Not Guaranteed: This film does not dawdle. It does not get hunkered down in details, or tangled up in non-stop layers of self-importance. It simply hums along in the most charming way possible, somehow managing to sneak in unique arcs, well-paced character development, and an unexpected love story along the way. This movie is Little Miss Sunshine, Eternal Sunshine, Juno and Memento all wrapped into one. It’s your indie sleeper hit of 2012, people … anchored by dame Aubrey Plaza, who happens to be the hottest thing on wheels these days.
Allow me to put it another way: You know that reviewer who feels compelled to remind readers that “this is the reason people go to see movies” every time he spies a flaming spaceship barreling its way across the screen? Yes? No? Well, either way, fuck that guy. Safety Not Guaranteed is the reason people go to see movies, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has interest in such things.
(Safety Not Guaranteed is now playing in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, with a national rollout to follow. Click here for a list of regional release dates.)
F. Scott Fitzgerald on The Lost City
“From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building and, just as it had been a tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza Roof to take leave of the beautiful city, extending as far as eyes could reach, so now I went to the roof of the last and most magnificent of towers. Then I understood … everything was explained: I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora’s box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits – from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.”
Good Pictures/Bad Camera: The Upper West Slide
(Good Pictures/Bad Camera is a regular feature on IFB.)
Don DeLillo on Office Politics
“In the early afternoon it was always quiet, the whole place tossing slowly in tropical repose, as if the building itself swung on a miraculous hammock. And then the dimming effects of food and drink would begin to wear off and we would remember why we were there, to buzz and chime, and all would bend to their respective machines. But there was something wonderful about that time, the hour or so before we remembered. It was the time to sit on your sofa instead of behind the desk, and to call your secretary into the office and talk in soft voices about nothing in particular – films, books, water sports, travel, nothing at all. There was a certain kind of love between you then, like the love in a family that has shared so many familiar moments that not to love would be inhuman. And the office itself seemed like a special place, even in its pale yellow desperate light, so much the color of old newspapers. There was the belief that you were secure here, in some emotional way, that you lived in known terrain. If you had a soul, and it needed to be rubbed by roots and seasons, to be comforted by familiar things, then you could not walk among these desks for two-thousand mornings, nor hear those volleying typewriters, without coming to believe that this was where you were safe. You knew where the legal department was, and how to get a package through the mailroom without delay, and whom to see about tax deductions, and what to do when your water carafe sprung a leak. You knew all the things you wouldn’t have known if you had suddenly been placed in any other office in any other building anywhere in the world. And compared to this, how much did you know and how safe did you feel, about, for instance, your spouse? And it was at that time, before we remembered why we were there, that the office surrendered a sense of belonging, and we sat in the early afternoon, pitching gently, knowing we had just returned to the mother ship.”
Film Capsule: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
The Artist is Present – a stunning new documentary from HBO Films – provides an in-depth perspective on performance artist Marina Abramovic’s critically-acclaimed body of work, culminating with her 10-week installation at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art back in Spring of 2010.
At the time, Abramovic’s installation made headlines due to spiraling demand, the inclusion of several live nude models (some positioned in such a way that visitors needed to brush up against them in order to proceed), and the fact that fans were afforded a rare opportunity to sit one-on-one with Abramovic for several minutes in utter silence.
Like most of her performance pieces, Abramovic is the main attraction here. While conceptual purists may question the inherent wisdom of granting TV cameras full access to the creative process, they’d also be hard-pressed to deny the raw power and magnetism of this film.
In addition to the MoMA installation, Artist also traces Abramovic’s work back to its roots, including early acts of sadomasochism, self-asphyxiation, self-flagellation, and even month-long bouts of fasting … almost all of which occurred while Marina stood stark naked in front of the world, for several minutes – or perhaps even hours – on end.
To wit: Throughout the 10-week run at MoMA, Abramovic sat still and steady (albeit clothed) for seven-and-a-half hours a day, six days a week … staring straight into the eyes of willing participants, almost none of whom she’d previously met.
Before it was all over, the MoMA engagement attracted more than 750,000 visitors, many of whom would spend entire afternoons just milling about the periphery, observing how Abramovic interacted with her subjects.
For those who didn’t have the opportunity to see the MoMA installation, Artist provides a very real sense of how and why Marina Abramovic continues to set the avant-garde world on fire. For those who did have an opportunity to visit MoMA during that time, or perhaps even take a seat across from Abramovic for 10-15 minutes, it’s a compelling look back at one of the most memorable installations in modern art history.
Either way, you should definitely make an effort to see this film.
It’s fascinating, on a variety of levels.
The end.
(Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present opens at Film Forum in New York City for a two-week engagement starting June 13th, with a broadcast debut on HBO on July 2.)
Film Capsule: Paul Williams: Still Alive
Paul Williams cut an odd figure way back in the mid 70s – all poppin’ collars and cranberry suits, amber-vision glasses and gut-busting waistline. Williams was all of 5’2, with chubby cheeks and golden locks, kind of like what Edgar Winter would look like if a warehouse safe somehow landed on his head.
But that was then, and this is now.
Now, Paul Williams looks kind of like a wise and aging mogwai. And, what’s more, he’s 22 years sober. Both of these things help form the basis of Paul Williams: Still Alive – a charming documentary that follows Williams in real-time as he plays unremarkable gigs in Winnipeg, the Philippines, and the barren outskirts of Las Vegas.
The documentary paints a compelling portrait, to be sure. And it explains a great deal about why Williams seemed to have completely fallen off the map so many moons ago. But it falls short in the sense that it never really digs beneath the surface to dish the dirt on just how bad off Williams really was at one point, and how hard he had to fight and claw to will himself through recovery.
This is the meat and potatoes of how Paul Williams got to where he is today … a much healthier, less-recognizable shadow of his former self. And this is sadly missing from a documentary that seems much more preoccupied with unnecessary minutia, like Paul’s undying love of squid and the filmmaker’s ridiculous fear of traveling in the Philipines.
The problem here is (Director) Stephen Kessler’s fanboy allegiance to Williams, his acute fear of upsetting the man by attempting to ask anything the least bit daring, and his sheer unwillingness to risk their new-born friendship by challenging Williams to explain any of the broader issues that really matter most.
The whole thing comes full-circle in the end, and there are some really heart-felt moments during those closing minutes … moments during which Williams is forced to confront what a spiraling mess he was just before he hit rock bottom. But it’s far too late at that point. The film has already wasted a great deal of its time waxing eloquent about a fascinating icon from the 70s who somehow managed to fall so deep and hard down the rabbit hole, a great deal of us very naturally assumed he was dead.
(Paul Williams: Still Alive opens in limited release in major markets across the country this coming Friday.)
Film Capsule: The Magic of Belle Isle
Here are 18 leaps of faith any viewer must make in order to enjoy Rob Reiner’s new film, The Magic of Belle Isle:
- That the decision to name a movie about an attractive divorcee and a man who represents his own island The Magic of Belle Isle is not a very poor choice of metaphor.
- That the appropriate reaction after an unruly drunk in a cowboy hat fires off two warning shots from a gold-plated pistol in the middle of your six-year old’s birthday party is to break into laughter and say, “Well, I guess it’s time for cake!”
- That the idea of a drunk, aging writer who has lost the narrative thread is not one of the most played-out cliches in all of Hollywood.
- That naming your daughter Willow Tree is not a silly, pretentious thing to do.
- That doggy humor is not the screenwriter’s equivalent of mailing it in.
- That full-grown men who are mentally handicapped hop around like bunny rabbits all day long.
- That full-grown men who are mentally handicapped can be programmed to stop hopping around like bunny rabbits at the drop of a hat.
- That it’s not the least bit odd that the full-grown man with a mental handicap in this film has the same first name as Rob Reiner’s father, Carl.
- That a proud and brilliant black writer would choose to devote his life’s work to singing the praises of a wild west cowboy as the personification of wholesome American values.
- That a proud and brilliant black man who writes about cowboys would just so happen to be named Monte Wildhorn.
- That an entire town would collectively wrap its arms around a miserable old drunk who tells each of them to fuck off in no uncertain terms, because they’re all just such wonderfully, well-adjusted human beings.
- That Fred Willard is not horribly miscast here.
- That all birthday clowns are pissy, arrogant, grizzled assholes.
- That mothers don’t get the least bit aggravated when their daughters go digging through their childhood diaries.
- That completely irrational fairytale endings are always the best way to go.
- That the song “Don’t Worry, Baby” belongs anywhere in this film.
- That Rob Reiner was once the director of an Oscar-nominated film.
- That this film would’ve been the least bit coherent had it not been for Morgan Freeman.
(The Magic of Belle Isle is now available on Video on Demand with a national theater release scheduled for July 6th.)
Charles Bukowski on the Saving Grace of Writing
“The whole process allowed me to continue when life itself offered very little, when life itself was a horror show. There was always the typer to soothe me, to talk to me, to entertain me, to save my ass. Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself … I had the bottle and the typer. I liked a bird in each hand, to hell with the bush.”