Some Private Thoughts

How I miss you so much already. I have so much sorrow for having lost you as a friend. It's true---I let things get out of hand in my mind, as I am prone to. In some ways, I knew exactly that it would cause you to say what you did. It was almost as if I were trying to make you say that, on some level, just to get a reaction out of you.

You say: I was a good friend. I don't think so. A good friend would have found a way to stay friends. I spent so much emotional effort this year, trying to make contact with you again, trying to restore our friendship.

As I mentioned before, I had a lot of old feelings to burn off. A lot of it was guilt over my actions from years before, that I was the cause of your pain. I wanted to tell you that. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, for the pain I helped cause you. I wanted to tell you that I would do it all differently, if I could. I was trapped by that, for all these years. For some reason, it was important for me to tell you that I would do the things now I should have done, those years ago. But I know that is not what is meant to be. Yet somehow it was important for me to convey it. Forgive my wretched clumsiness, I beg you.

If I had a wish, it would  be for you to give me yet one more chance, to be friends. I know you need one. I need one too. We can be friends to each other, I truly believe, and leave the old things behind. I'm ready to do that. I think it took your last message to really wake me up, and let me move beyond the old.

I'm ready to help you, if you want. You know that I know things about you that you have told to no one else. I am not scared of the dark things in you, that scare you to talk about. Maybe I am the only person in the world for which that it true. But it is true.

When you are ready, come back to me. I will never give up hope of hearing from you---ever. You are too close my own soul. And yes, I love you, as Jonathan loved David, "like his own soul." (1 Samuel 18:1-4).

@The Nomad, Boulder

So it begins...
Last night I found myself down in Boulder for the first time in many weeks. I had wondered how I would feel being back there, thinking it might fill me with a heavy heart, but instead all I felt was great release and joy. Perhaps it was the warm wind coming down off the mountains before sunset.

I was there to attend an event at the Nomad Theatre, a peformance space on Quince Street in North Boulder. But I was not there to see a dramatic performance, but rather to go to a town hall meeting of Occupy Boulder.

I'd read about on Facebook and had decided to go, as the first step in what seems to be my new direction in life, which is to attend and observe as many events as possible of what appears to be this chaotic proto-revolution and revolt that is in progress, and which I believe will grow only stronger and bigger in 2012.

The meeting started around five o'clock. The purpose was to discuss strategy to combat an impeding rule from the Boulder City Manager that would basically outlaw the current occupy encampment at Sister City Park.

The building is an old quonset hut---a very quaint space. There were already cookies laid out on the table at the entrance, and a row of clipboards with email signups and petitions.

About a hundred people showed up. Ironically it felt much like a theater performance. They even were handing out folded paper programs with a "cast list"---an lawyer for the homeless, an ACLU representative with an Arabic name, and a grey-haired local activist woman. As I watched them speak on stage, and discuss the proposed ordinance, I couldn't help but be struck by the complete blending of dramatic performance and politics, all rolled into one.

I loved watching it, partly because it all felt so haphazard. What the hell is this all about? Nobody really knows. It just feels like democracy, as if we are rediscovering something long lost in this country.

I enjoyed it all, until the fourth speaker, who was a Denver lawyer who spoke about filing injunctions. He went off on a tangent decrying the "Tea Party" (which got some applause from the audience) and speaking about how this whole thing was not an issue of individual rights but "collective rights." That made me cringe. Then he spoke about how this issue wasn't about the Constitution, but could actually be fodder for the Organization of American States human rights council, which he said was the human rights organization "for this part of the world." The old liberals in the audience let out sighs of happiness at the bashing of the Constitution and the mention of unelected world government, whereas I felt disgusted. It reminded me of how much I differ with many of those in this "Occupy Movement."

But that's OK. I can deal with that. For now I'm just going to keep going to these "performances."

Solstice Decision

On Dec 20, 2011, at 5:55 PM, Matthew Trump wrote:
Uncle ChainSaw,

> Have decided to start traveling the country after Jan. 1 visiting as many Occupy sites as possible and handing out free food and the Word. Am spending NYE at Occupy Boulder.
>
> After thinking I would not go, am starting to strongly consider going to the Million Tent Occupy in DC on Jan. 17.
>
> See you there?
>
> -m


On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:55 PM, XXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:

Puzzle tzar,

Welcome back to Jazz and Justice.

I have a few old tents I could take for a, hopefully crowded, walk mid January.

XXXXXXXXXXXX



On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Matthew Trump wrote:
Awesome. See you there. I'll be the one in the camouflage hunting cap.

To Aurora

Forgive me.
I don't need the things you said
that I need from you,
that you can't give me
I know they are not in your power to give
I know where your struggle must be
I felt the deep despair in you
and rejoiced at being needed as a friend
at being greeted with such relief
as a balm to your anguish
even as I suffered with you
I felt your pain and reached out
And spoke in the only language I knew to you
The clumsy metaphors of our old ways of being
To at least show that you are loved
Thinking I might provoke your tears
To help speed your healing
Instead I drove you away
And earned only sorrow
for both of us
I hope someday the songbirds sing again
That I hear your voice in gladness and friendship
In some epoch when the stars have come back out
Forgive me.

You Gotta Believe

Sunday evening's fun activities with my nieces culminated in a game of "drawing," with Sarah pretending to be a teacher leading Maura and I in making a drawing. It starts with "Put your name on the top of the page...and the date..." And then we have imitate everything she puts on the page, using the same color markers from the plastic tub. She handed them to me as she finished, so I could copy what she just did.

At one point she used a brown marker to color in an entire section she had already drawn. She made it dark and thick on the page. When it was my turn, I asked, "Is it ok if I do it lightly?" I asked. "I don't want to dry out the Magic Marker."

"It's not MAGIC, Uncle Matt!," said Maura, completely amused at my comment.

Generation gap, I guess.

Beautiful Day

It was over sixty degrees today here in Colorado. I was lucky to get to spend the day down in Westminster with my sister's family, and in particular with my nieces. We watched part of the Broncos game (my sister has a case of Tebowmania). During halftime my nieces and I went out into the park across the street to play soccer. The "soccer" was really just them kicking their balls around while I tried to intercept them. But after about five minutes it gave way to a sunnyday snowball fight. A perfect last Sunday of Advent, all in all.

Fresno Loves Me Redux

This afternoon I got a call from my friend Nick Z. who lives in Portland. I knew him back in college and he has gone on to be a successful playwright, among other things.

He wasn't calling about anything theater related, but rather because I had seen his post on Facebook requesting people to purchase raffle tickets for his son's private school fundraiser. I was happy to jump in with the chance to help a friend. Besides the first place is a trip to Hawaii, one of the few states of the Union I haven't visited yet. I had a chance to go there many years ago in college, and foolishly didn't go. I told Nick that I intend to get to Hawaii in 2012, and it would awesome it were free.

He asked when I was coming back to Portland and I told him I intend to be there sometime in Spring, but I'm not sure when. I told him that I was planning to be there after heading down to Fresno again, as I wanted to see a friend of mine there in a new show.

Since Nick is a theater professional, I entertained him to no small measure by my stories of being entangled with the amateur theater community of Fresno, and how I had become an acting coach helping Rick to perfect his Gary Cooper imitation, something I blogged about a couple months back.

"The director of the show even started asking me for advice," I told him. This part I didn't blog about. It's a fun story.

The show that my friend Rick had an interesting history. It turns out that the original director of the show was a local Fresno guy who had gone to New York and made it big directing Broadway musical shows. His specialty was choreography. The locals had brought him back in order to direct a show in his hometown, but for some bizarre reason, they made him direct Stalag 17, which a serious drama about American prisoners in a German prison camp in World War II.

Moreover, the returned local guy directed the show only through rehearsals and up to opening night. After that, he promptly returned to New York and left the show in the hands of a local woman with the strict stipulation that nothing about the show be changed. He enforced this stipulation by review of nightly video feed of the show to New York.

The whole weird situation left no small amount of grumbling among the cast. By far the strangest part was the curtain call at the end of the show. Instead of a straight conventional bow, the cast came out onto the stage area of the black box and then, spread out among the cots and tables of what was supposedly spartan prisoner barracks, launched into a chorus-line type dance routine, with both the SS Nazis and the American prisoners pretending to march happily together and doing several awkward leg kicks. Tick warned me about it in advance, yet nothing could prepare me for how absurd it looked when I saw the first time.

I should mention that every night I went to the show, I sat in back near one of the stage entrances, all by myself, mostly because I'm claustrophic and like to spread out. I noticed during the second night that the replacement director sat only a few feet away from me and one row down. I could tell it was her because of red hair, and the fact that she was taking notes during the show.

After the Friday night show, I told Rick that the dance-number curtain call was the stupidest thing I had even seen. He told me that the grumbling was getting worse and worse each night among the cast at having to do it. "You gotta get them to change it," I told him. "It's the worst thing about the show."

On Saturday night, the last night I went to the show, I noticed the director sitting near me again. At the end of the show, I was prepared to see the same absurd Nazi-American dance number, but instead the cast came out and performed a simple conventional bow to the audience. Something had changed.

As the applause died down and the actors left the stage, I waited for everyone to leave, as I usually do. The director stood up in her house and walked past me. As she did, she asked me directly, "So did you like the curtain call tonight?"

You could have knocked me over with a feather. What the hell? Why was she asking me that? "Oh yes, much better," I said.

Outside in the alley I asked Rick what had happened. He said that before the show that night, the cast had risen up and finally demanded that to the replacement director change the curtain call, and she had agreed, notwithstanding orders from New York.

So it didn't have anything to do with me at all. Just a coincidence that the director had asked me that. She had obviously seen me sitting there on previous nights.

Just a coincidence...

Meanwhile Rick has started rehearsals for Crimes of the Heart. It opens a couple days before New Year's Eve. I'm looking forward to seeing him on stage, and to being back in Fresno, where Rick said that the folks in the company still ask about me, and where somehow I have become a theater guru.

Fictons, Foreshadows, Flasbacks: Senior Dance Showcase @ University Dance Theatre, Colorado State University

Seen: this evening

So here I am, back where it all began.

Last week after I went to Fiddler on the Roof at the new building of my old high school, I realized it was probably time at last to go see some kind of show at the old building, the one I and my friends knew as Fort Collins High School, and which is now the University Center for the Arts for Colorado State.

The renovations were done over the last decade---the entire building was gutted and remodled. I'd been inside since then, but only in passing. I hadn't poked around much, or gone to any kind of performance.

After looking over the schedule at the CSU website, I decided the senior dance recital was my best bet. It was to be held in the University Dance Theatre inside the building. I was curious to see where that was, in relation to old school plan.

I got to the box office about an hour beforehand, which left me time to walk around the building, which was open, as an campus building was, during finals. I walked along the first floor and up the main staircase where we used to sing the Alma Mater on the landing every Friday at noon.

What I was most curious to see is what had become of the old auditorium where I had performed on stage. The sign above the entrance indicated it was now the Organ Recital Hall. I tried the door: it was open. I walked inside and saw the old space I knew, now dominated by a giant pipe organ on the old stage.

The lights were on, but the auditorium was empty. Delighted at the chance to be there, I walked up towards the stage. I could see that besides all new seats, the stage itself had been extended about fifteen feet and was occupied by a grand piano. I could see where the old stage still was. It seemed some of the same wooden planks were there, by their wear compared to the newer part.

I walked up onto the old part and crept out towards center stage in front of the pipe organ. The first thing I remembered was the very first time I came out on stage, as Mr. Webb in Our Town, thirty-one years ago, introduced by the Stage Manager, my friend Ken, who passed away a few months ago while I traveling on the West Coast.

I paced around a few minutes and remembered other lines from the other dramas I had been in.  

My skin...it's...healed...

As I stood leaning against the wall soaking in a few moments of remembering, the door opened on stage and a young Asian man poked his head in. He saw me and said, "the concert is over now." Evidently there had been a vocal recital there earlier in the evening.

I explained to him my story in brief, and that was just there to reminisce. I told about parts of the auditorium that had changed. He seemed to know more than he should have.

"The tower...," he said, pointed upwards. "It's blocked off now."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I climbed it once. There used to be all sorts of secret passages backstage. I guess those are gone," I said, looking at the massive pipe organ.

Having gotten my fill, and having exhausted my memory of my lines from various roles, I left and went back down the hall towards the dance theatre, which turned out to be inside the space once occupied by what we called "The Small Gym" of the high school. My main memory of that place was the ritual of card pulling at the beginning of each semester to select classes.

Before the performance I sat in the nice chairs in the remodeled hallway and kibbutzed on the conversations of the dance students and their parents and boyfriends.

The recital was well attended and entertaining. I'm not much to judge either the choreography or the performances, so I can't say much.

There were four solos, and two ensemble performances, the largest of which had about twenty dancers on stage. Of course over eighty percent were young women---beautiful and graceful. The content seemed so innocent when the world is so uninnocent. There were no political statements or anything of that type in the content or choreograph. I couldn't help thing how little has really changed from the days when co-eds were required to take "eurythmy" as part of their undergraduate coursework.

May it always be so innocent, I thought to myself.





















 

All About Eve (1950)

Seen on TCM, last month.

It seemed appropriate to begin my discussion of Monroe by this, her first real speaking role. I've seen it a couple times now, and also fairly recently, so it is fresh in my mind.

Bob Osbourne, the host of TCM, loves this movie, as I've come to infer over time. It took me a while to understand why classic movie buffs like him love it so much.

Simply put, one can argue that this movie, released as it was at the midpoint of the Twentieth Century, is in fact the quintessential motion picture, and the movie that defines the transition to Postmodernity itself. Certainly it would be on the short list of any movies that one could nominate as such.

I realize that this is a strong endorsement, but it is a very powerful movie. Among other things, it is perhaps the defining role for arguably the greatest single actress of the 20th Century---Bette Davis. And of course it is the movie that introduced Monroe to the world.

But what really makes this movie so singularly great, in the way I've described? Specifically why is the movie that defines the transition to Postmodernity?

It has a lot to do with the fact that it is a movie about the theater, that is, the legitimate theater, as it was once called. Most of the characters are Broadway actors, and the movie is about the world of stage actors.

One can see the essence of the importance of this in the famous "party scene", the one which Davis utters arguably the most notable line of her screen career: "Fasten your seatbelts..."

Watching this scene the last time I saw the movie, I could not help be struck by the lines uttered by the "actors" to each other. The lines dripped of insinuation, irony, and sarcasm. There was a tension of subversion and misdirection in almost every line.

To today's audiences, irony delivered in this way is quite normal. To say we're used to it is an understatement. In fact, it is the norm today. Yet sixty-one years ago, it was not the norm. It was, in fact, shocking for most audiences to see people behaving this way to each other.

It hit me: we're all supposed to be actors now. It brings to mind something I read, about how until recent times in history, actors (that is, stage actors) were held in fear and contempt by ordinary society because of their seeming "magic" ability to change personality. Actors could not be trusted to be "real" according to normal definitions of character. They were fluid.

This kind of transformation is the essence of drama. The surface is not the real. There is a deeper level. The purpose of drama is to reveal it.

The core idea of Postmodernity is a takeover of society by the dramaturgical. Everyone now knows that personality is fluid. Irony is king. We must all "act" this way and must all be aware of this in each other. The real is fleeting and an illusion.

In other words, we are all supposed to be at that party scene from All About Eve now, all the time.  And like the characters at the banquet that frames the story, we are all supposed to be privately miserable while clapping our hands with a smile on our face.

The movie has even deeper levels. One of the richest aspects of it is the focus on the transition of the feminine character in Postmodernity (hence the title), anticipating the emergence of the ubiquitous "princess" of contemporary society. The vanity of women, once considered a vice, is now promoted shamelessly as a great virtue. The goal of love has been replaced by the desire for universal attention through fame. Nowhere is this more eloquent than in the very last shot of the movie, when Eve, supposedly the young ingenue, is usurped by her even younger version, who seems shockingly contemporary in her ego-driven nature. One could almost argue that it hinges on horror at that moment (especially coming on the heels of the scene in which George Saunders delivers his "I own you" speech in the New Haven hotel room).

Horror, yes---another one of the cornerstones of Postmodernity.

So what about Monroe? Her performance is limited to one scene---the aforementioned party scene. She is introduced as the bubbly "new find" of Saunders' character, and treated by him with contempt. She's a throwaway to him.

But the great meta-message of the movie if you will is how much Monroe utterly dominates the scene during her brief time on it. It is impossible not to look at her.

Even though it is supposed to Anne Baxter (Eve) who is the young starlet, Monroe is utterly in a class by herself among the other actresses there. It is as if she is a new type of woman, emerging out of the already nascent world of Postmodernity destined to become its archetype and queen. She has synthesized all the elements of the entire previous generation of Hollywood actresses and is the living personification of the next phase of American culture.

It would be easy to say that next to her, Davis looks old fashioned. But the genius of the movie is that Davis is supposed to be old fashioned. But so is Baxter.

Here she is...there has never been anyone like her on screen. Just watch her eyes as she is listening. There is genius in them. It is unmistakable.

Operation Monroe

These last few weeks I've been laid up with a shoulder and neck injury---tendonitis, as it turns out. My mobility limited, I've taken refuge in my old habit of watching old movies. Since I don't have TCM where I am staying, I decided to rejoin Netflix and catch up on some classic films I've been wanting to see. Usually this would be too daunting of a task---too much choice, but I decided to make it easier on myself by assigning myself a theme. Last month on TCM was "Blonde Bombshell Month," and since I didn't get to see most of those movies, I decided I would go with that as a basis, but would go to even one more level---a Marilyn Monroe film festival.

Rather shamefully, Monroe is a big blank spot in my appreciation of classic films. As I've mentioned before, I think I saved watching many of her films until I'd absorbed the generation of actresses before her---Stanwyck, Rogers, Davis, Crawford, Garson, Dunne, Hepburn, Garland, Young, and their contemporaries. They got their start in the 1930s and would have been the actresses that Monroe watched while she was a girl.

Now I feel like I'm ready for a fuller appreciation of Monroe. My first three disks from Netflix are sitting on my DVD and ready to be loaded. It's going to be a fun couple weeks.

Fiddler on the Roof @ McNeil Peforming Arts Center at Fort Collins High School

Seen: last night (December 3)

So there I was, back at my old school, the place where I first set foot on stage as an actor, and where I did nearly all of my theater work.

Except it wasn't really. The old building, the one I went to, was closed in the 1990s and is now part of the CSU campus. The new one was built on the edge of town to replace it. Back in the day, we used to pride ourselves on our cool building---towers and pillars and all that. We thought it made us better than the other schools with their inferior postwar boxlike buildings.

I got tipped off to the production by a friend on Facebook and decided to go. It was my first time in the new building. I drove through the cold and ice and navigated the maze of the parking lot to get to the entrance.

I can't say that I was impressed by the building itself. It was completely the kind of cheap blah structure one might have feared they would build. I felt no connection to it all. The only jolt of feeling like I was in anything like my old school was seeing a girl in a purple and gold letter jacket in the lobby. That took me back.

But the auditorium is nice and expansive. It's named after the beloved orchestra director back from my day.

Driving there, I couldn't help but muse at the irony of the production I was about to see. During my three years at FCHS, I had three large dramatic roles, one per year, and was also the stage manager of the fall musical comedy during my senior year. One of the dramas was about the life of a small New England town at the turn of the century. One was about a soldier going off to die in Vietnam. In both of those. The third was one based on the Old Testament and was about the trials of believing and trusting in divine Providence. The musical comedy that I stage managed was about the excitement of the outside world coming to a small Midwestern town.

It occurred to me that if you rolled all of those productions up together into one, you would probably come up with, well, Fiddler on the Roof.

In fact, in my last role, I played a Jewish father of a large family. But in that case, my children didn't have as nice a fate as Tevye's daughters. Not at all.

What can I say about the production? It was a high school musical. It made me wish I could see our production from the fall of 1982, to compare it. The auditorium was beautiful. We would have given our eye teeth to have that kind of facility. Or maybe not. There was something charming and rustic about having to make due in the old auditorium. There were so many weird secret nooks and crannies. It felt like a real "theater" somehow. So I didn't envy the kids in the new building at all.

Among the changes in the new facility is that the seats have numbers and the tickets actually were reserved. Our seats didn't have numbers at all. But we did have a balcony. I asked for a seat in the very back. During the intermission, I stood against the railing by the light booth and looked out over the parents and students and everyone else in the audience, standing and moving in the aisles.

At that moment I had a flashback to how I used to feel way back when, about my place in the world, about the town I lived in, and about the world as a whole. I was so idealistic back then, and I knew it. I wanted to be connected to everyone, and feel and experience love in a universal way with humanity. I knew it was a grandiose notion, but somehow I had the notion that I should capitalize on my youthful idealism to soak in as much of that as possible.

That kind of attitude made me feel so alive. Back then I wanted to talk to as many people as possible, and experience as much of life as possible in the outside world, like an ambassador of hope and love. It's an attitude that carried me forth all around the globe and late me make friends everywhere I went. All of that kind of feeling of connection kept getting reflected back to me.

As I looked down the rows at the people in the auditorium, it occurred to me that I have not felt that way in a long time. Instead I have been going through the world with such isolation. I have not wanted to connect to people. I have not trusted that. I have been able to see only the blindness and desolation of the people in my town, and in the world. I have felt on a solitary mission.

I miss feeling that connection. Perhaps it is the way the world has been spinning so rapidly lately, but for a moment, I had a glimmer of a window back to my old self, that one who wanted to connect and project love, and experience it back from others.

After the production I walked back out through the lobby and saw the same girl with the purple and gold letter jacket. I thought of a girl I knew from long ago, my date for the junior prom. She hated this place and the people here. She left behind Fort Collins right after high school and never looked back. She went off and married a naval officer, and had a couple kids. The world have to end for her to show up on Facebook. Maybe she had it right after all.

I am so sick and tired of this war. When do we get America back?

Now, Voyager (1942)

THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find
---Whitman Seen tonight on TCM. One of those mega-classics that had escaped me up until now. A very good movie to watch for those who've spent time in the LB. "Are you the same woman who just a few months ago had not a single interest in the world?" (I want to learn to talk like Claude Rains---"like honey poured on gravel," as Richard Chamberlain once said.)

The Matrix (1999)

My creative writing teacher in college said the best advice he ever got about writing was from a well-known published author who told him, "follow the rabbits that cross your path."

But those rabbits can be scary at times. Reminds me of the signature scene from one of the most significant movies of recent vintage, one worth revisting. Pills can be overrated in reality, of course, but the metaphor is interesting.

Also I think I like the Portuguese subtitles in that clip.

Como un zunido na sua cabeça...

Shall We Dance? (1937)

And speaking of Fred Astaire...

Well, actually I could entitle this post On Ginger, because I intend to use it to talk about Ginger Rogers, who is probably my all-time favorite movie actress.

When I start to write about Rogers, one of the first things that pops into my head is that an old feminist quip from the 1960s/1970s that went, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels."

What a crock! There are so many things wrong with this statement on so many levels, it makes me angry to think about it.

First off, as a statement of fact, it is flat-out false. Rogers did not do everything Astaire did. That would be nearly impossible. Among the reasons is the difference between the male and female bodies and how they move while dancing. Even my super-feminist ex-wife, who introduced me to dancing lessons twenty years ago, would have admitted that in a second. Moreover, Astaire is not just any male dancer but arguably the most uniquely talented of all time. His signature moves, of swinging his legs pendulum-like while the rest of body undergoes seemingly independent motion, is something that Gene Kelly wouldn't even be able to pull off with the same grace. And Kelly was really, really good, of course.

The quip actually refers to the fact that in traditional ballroom dance, the man is the lead. The lead (the man) steps forward with his left foot on the first beat, while the woman steps back on her right foot. It's just convention. Anyone can dance anyway they want to, and either partner can lead if they want, but well, somehow people often like it the traditional way, no matter how much others may not like it.

But Astaire and Rogers rarely danced like that. Most of their dancing screen time together is spent dancing side-by-side, facing camera. Also Rogers wore heels on screen only when the plot called for her character to be wearing heels. She often wears flats in many of the complicated numbers (and roller skates).

Rogers never tried to do most of the things Astaire did on screen. She did her own thing. Yeah, her own thing, with moves that Astaire never could have pulled off. How terribly patriarchal and retrograde!

And what was her thing? If Astaire's signature was his pendulum legs, then Rogers true genius was in her twirl.  Better than any other dancer in the history of Hollywood, Rogers was the master of circular motion, the adaptation of the pirouette into fluid motion on a sound state, often moving back and forth to Astaire like a yo-yo, but of her own free will, not his. The twirl is not something that a male dancer could pull off in the same way. Kelly could do it with power, but it is Rogers to capture something that seems to be lost on current audiences: feminine grace. I love how she seems to know exactly where her dress is, and how to make it slow at the end of the swirl and reverse direction right in time with the music.

One of the reasons that Shall We Dance? is probably my favorite pairing of the two great dancers is that specifically because it calls attention to Rogers' twirl. Actually in the movie, Astaire calls it her "tweeeeest" (as in twist). He character at that point is pretending to be a Russian dancer, but of course Rogers has already learned that he is faking the accent. When I saw that scene I smiled, because I'd already developed my theory of Rogers' twirl, and I knew immediately that this was something recognized by people at the time, although it seems lost to today's audiences.

Rogers' ability to somewhat cynically dismiss Astaire's corny humor, all the while falling for him, is what makes a lot of their movies have spark and life. Shall We Dance? is almost a primer in in the ins-and-outs of misunderstandings that crop up in a love affair, and the necessity for the man to be persistent and patient in pursuing his True Love. These are lessons of classical romance that were once the common wisdom of our society but which were rarely told to my generation.

Rogers always gets me when he starts to sing to. By no means could she match, say, Garland, in terms of vocal solo performance, but like in her dancing, Rogers' great skill was in how she used her voice and her body in character. She has an unmatched ability in my book to seamlessly go from talking/walking to singing/dancing as if there were no line between them. If (post)modern audiences lack a full appreciation for Rogers, I think it because they don't like her characters, who are very traditional in how they interact with men on screen.

I love the scene with her walking the dog, and the little story that is told in complete silence, moving the story along without a word of dialogue. My favorite musical number in this movie is when Rogers launches into her nasal drone, "The odds were a hundred to one against me..."

Bonus video: Rogers at age 92, doing the salsa.

High Society (1956)

And speaking of Cole Porter songs...

While waiting to see my next live theatre performance, I've decided to write about a few classic movies I've seen lately and which I really enjoyed.

I got re-see part of High Society a few months back on TCM.  It's one of those movies that if it comes on, I'm going to wind up watching part of it, guaranteed. It's among my all-time secret favorite movies. I say "secret" because one is not really supposed to like this movie all that much.

Yes, I know it's a remake of The Philadelphia Story (1940), and although I like that earlier film, it's actually not anywhere near the top of my list as far as comedies from that era. I think Grant and Hepburn did better work together, and Jimmy Stewart is underused, all in all. But I know my opinion is in the minority here.

As for the 1956 movie. C'mon, it stars Grace Kelly. You really need more to appreciate it? But I shouldn't talk: I was late in really becoming a huge fan of hers---I had learn to appreciate the early generation of actresses first (somewhat like how I purposely waited to appreciate the genius and significance of Monroe).

But mostly my appreciation stems from that fact that I just love the musical numbers in the remake, written by Cole Porter specifically for the film. I think that was a stroke of genius. They turned me into a Bing Crosby fan.

Yes, this movie would near the top of my list if anyone asked me for a movie sure to make them smile.

But to be sure, in case you haven't seen it yet, and in case the opinion of others counts to you about the movies you watch, then best to watch and appreciate this one by yourself the first time through.

Me the Acting Coach

My experience hanging out at Second Space in Fresno was fun for so many reasons. As I mentioned, I felt like I was almost part of the company there after going to three shows on successive nights.

I sat in exactly the same seat, off the corner by one of the exit doors, away from the rest of the crowd (I'm claustrophobic that way).

Among the ways I got involved was an acting coach for my friend Rick. It's not that I know much about stage acting, but for his particular role, I turned out to be a really good source of knowledge. His character, Sgt. Reed, is supposed to have been an actor back in New York, before he got shot down and interred in the German prison camp. His fellow prisoners are always having him do impressions of famous actors from that era, something that Rick can actually do well. His Bogart was spot on, and his Jimmy Stewart was uncanny. But I told him his Gary Cooper sort of sucked.

He said he wasn't surprised, as he hadn't really seen any Gary Cooper movies. As I happen to a huge Gary Cooper fan, I spent some time with him after every performance, giving him pointers on what to do.

He's supposed to do a Cooper as a cowboy in a gunfight. I told him to stand with stiff wooden legs, and to rock gently back and forth somewhat awkwardly. I taught him how to talk like Cooper, low and out of the corners of his mouth, and to fix his eyes open and wide like Cooper does.  I told him that when he draws and shoots, he should immediately transition from stiff and wooden to a quick crouch with deadly aim.

Rick is a great study and super smart. He picked all this up quite easily. I was amazed at how well he improved over the course of three nights. By the time that matinee arrived, he had it down almost completely.

But something was still bothering me about it. While I was driving back up to Oregon, it hit me. At one point, before he draws his imaginary gun, he is supposed to turn and pretend to spit. I realized that he was turning his head way to wildly to the side.

From Eugene, I wrote him an email. "Cooper would NEVER do that," I wrote him. "Turning your head way to the side to spit like that would get a person killed in a gunfight. Cooper would never take his eyes off the guy in front of him."

I told him to just jerk his head quickly to the side, and to pretend to spit out of the corner of his mouth, but while keeping his eyes fixed on the same point ahead of him.

He said he'd take my advice. He's really eager to improve as an actor. I figured it would work especially well for the Sunday matinee crowds, which skew towards the oldest demographic---people who probably saw plenty of Gary Cooper movies back in the day.

I know he'll do fantastic, or as the old song goes, super duper!

A Calm Day of Driving and Reflection

The landscape of Eastern Washington looks amazing open after having on the West Coast for a couple weeks. A good day to reflect and think as the highway rolls by. Seven years ago today I left New York City as a resident for the last time. Can't help but wonder what the next seven years will bring.

Must be Robin Goodfellow

Today I ventured into downtown Portland for business, which turned out to be a highly successful trip. Afterward, I was in such a good mood I wandered around the city a little and decided to drop by to see an old friend who works at Powell's Books as a cashier. His name is Nick Z.

His primary vocation is a playwright, as it happens. Four yeas ago, the last time I was in Oregon before this recent trip, I went down to Salem to see a production of one of his shows at our mutual alma mater, where he was an artist in residence.

At Powell's, I saw him at the checkout counter and snuck up beside him, hanging on the stair rail a few feet away. Finally he saw me, grinning like Puck. That got a big smile and laugh out of him. 

He couldn't take a break from his work right then, so our conversation lasted only a few minutes. I told him I was only in town for the day, before heading back to Colorado for now. But I promised I'd be back soon and have drinks with him and his lovely wife.

In our abbreviated conversation he told me something funny that resonated with my new direction in life.

He said that he had been working on a new play over the last week, and that one of the characters was named Matthew. He said that whenever he typed that name into Microsoft Word, the program tried to automatically convert the name into my email address.

I don't know how I could possibly be in a better mood than I am right now, but that really put the cherry on top of it all.

See you soon, Nick! First round is on me.

Cowgirl Heaven @ the Wildish Theater

seen in: Springfield, Oregon, two nights ago.

So yes, I'm really in Oregon (again, for the second time on this trip). I spent the last three nights in a motel in Eugene across from campus.  I had come back up to Oregon for the second time on this trip after getting a call from a guy in Portland who works for an educational publishing company, about possibly doing some contract work for them. It's exactly the kind of thing I was looking to do. I took three days to drive up from Fresno, and camped in view of Mt. Shasta on the way. It was a much better trip than the one through Nevada a couple weeks before.

It was weird being back in Oregon again, of course, but the difference this time compared to just last month felt like heaven compared to hell. Like night and day.

Eugene surprised me. Frankly I'd come to think that I wasn't capable of living in Oregon, that there was no place that appealed to me. Whenever I told people I was going there, and might relocate there, they would say, "Oh, Portland is nice, I hear." I would tell them that I don't like Portland much. It makes me feel lonely and isolated. I prefer smaller towns and cities, but none in the Portland area made me feel comfortable at all. I drove through a couple of them, but I am giving a wide berth to one of them for now, out of respect for a good friend.

But Eugene, well, that's a place I decided I could actually live. When I was here a couple weeks ago, I had stopped in Eugene and found myself checking my email at a Starbucks at the corner of Broadway and Pearl. How ironic, I thought. Where have I heard of that intersection before?

I'd only spent one night in Eugene, in 1993 during a road trip. It didn't much appeal to me then. But things change. I felt almost instantly at home there, even if it is still for now second best in my heart to another college town I won't mention. I loved walking around the city and the campus, even though at times I felt the sympathetic pain of a good friend's bad memory from that place. I tried to think of happier things, like playing go. After a day it worked, and I was even able to finish the first chapter of my manuscript in my motel room. This morning I didn't want to leave and drive north on I-5. But work calls---gotta make a living.

Of course one of the first things I did was put into motion my plan to start attending community theater again. I picked up a copy of the weekly newspaper and scouted for some possibilities. Fortunately I hit the jackpot. On Saturday night there was a one-time encore performance of Cowgirl Heaven, a little musical I'd never heard of. It was playing across the river in Springfield. It's about five women who work the rodeo circuit in the 1920's, a time when it was almost unheard of for women to perform stunt work. It had about ten interesting musical numbers, following their lives and careers, starting in Pendleton and going all around the country, even to New York.

The Wildish Theater is very nice, with plenty of comfortable seats. As I like to, I sat by myself in one of the upper rows, higher even that the crew running the lights along the side.

As I was watching the performance, I couldn't help think of how, on Saturday night, if I were out seeing a movie by myself, I would leave the theater after the credits had rolled (as I ALWAYS do---it's part of the movie, after all) but would feel tremendously lonely going back to my room.

But in the Wildish, I felt connected to everyone in audience. It was a truly shared experience with everyone there, and everyone on stage. I can't believe it took me this long to rediscover this. The best fifteen bucks I ever spent.

Rick kept insisting in Fresno that I find an audition for a show and try out. I told him that for now I just wanted to be an audience member and a blogger about theater, but after a couple days, I relented and told him I'd give it a go, if and when an opportunity came up.

Crest Theatre, Fresno

Traveling the country I've seen so many old movie houses in old downtowns that just fill my heart with joy to see them. It has occurred to me that perhaps the main reason I went to see so many movies for so long is simply because I liked going into theaters.

One thing that amazes me is how resilient old movie houses are. They may change form, and serve completely different purposes, but as architecture, they are amazingly stable. I've seen re-incarnated in almost every form, but with the marquee and the exterior barely altered. There is just something so compelling about them. I've learned that unless the movie theater is completely demolished, it is possible to renovate into anything. I'm aware of a few old theaters that have indeed been torn down and it is always sad to me. In particular case, the theater site has simply become a parking lot.

The Crest Theater here in Fresno has undergone a fairly common renovation as a live music venue. That's my friend Rick walking in front. We were walking around downtown Fresno when I saw the Crest and said "I have to take a picture of that!" Since he's now an actor, I figured he wouldn't mind being caught in this candid shot I took from across the street. My camera card is filled with photographs of old theaters like this, often taken while I'm sitting at a stoplight at a small town, desperately trying to get the shot before the light changed. Maybe I'll dig some more out like this.

Goodbye to a Decade of Pain

In Fresno, I was able to spend a lot of time catching up with my old friend and hearing the story of how he came to wind up on stage. It wasn't his first choice. He had tried to break into movies, like many foIk, and had found it impossible. "Real actors don't need cameras pointed at them," I told him. I told him that I admired his determination, but there is no way in the world I would ever want to try to break into the film industry. It just doesn't appeal to me at all. Of course this is quite ironic, given how much I wrote about movies over the last couple years (over 200,000 words, the last time I estimated). But to me it was never about trying to become part of the movie industry. It was something far deeper and more important in my life. If I could summarize, I would say this: in 2004 I left New York City and separated from my wife. For the next two years, I was pretty much depressed and broken, for reasons that I could not even understand at the time, but which have become clear to me in great detail. I wound up living much of that time in a friend's basement apartment, but also being completely cut off from her. It was very strange. During that time I grew to become extremely angry at the world, for my situation, and for what I saw as the absurdity that the entire world had become. In June 2006, I became so disgusted at the television, and all the things people were saying on the news channels, that I thought I couldn't watch tv or read the news anymore. At that moment, for some reason, I flipped the channel over to Turner Classic Movies and pretty much left it on there for the next two years straight without changing channels. My job let me work at home and I would leave the television on, playing a whole day of old movies one after another. In college I had taken a film class, during my last semester at Willamette, but I hadn't really taken it seriously as a study of contemporary art. Watching TCM not only gave me the film education i never had, but it also taught me what I saw as the real history of the 20th Century. It was like being immersed in a time machine. After a while I began to feel as if I were living in 1948. I began to understand how much America had changed, especially the rules about how men and women interact. It was a tremendous change in me, to see contemporary culture in that light. I could see how much destruction had been wrought by these changes. Before I started my viewing, I could hardly watch any old black and white movie from the 1930s. After two years I could easily watch three 1930s movies in a row. I learned about actors, actresses, directors, producers ,etc., I never knew about it. I came to see the library of classic Hollywood movies as an enormous treasure bequeathed to us. I even fell in love with Ginger Rogers (I blew a kiss to a picture of her in a storefront last night on my way to see a community theater production). It was great fortification. It changed me. It gave me a sense of honor I never had, and what it means to be a man. I realized how I had been so wrong in so many things in my life. It made me feel sorry for our culture today, and all the destroyed lives and discarded wisdom. It was nearly impossible for me to see new movies in theaters during that time. "It's like surfacing in a water and taking a giant gulp of sewage on the surface," I once said. Yet even then I knew that there was a reason why the Classical world was destroyed. "The Classical world had enormous structure," I said. "But it was also a prison." That's why there are so many movies where people wind up having to go to jail at the end, because the Classical rules dictated such.On the other hand, Postmodernity (contemporary movie) supposedly had no rules but it was a sewer. Just when I thought my life would go on forever like that, in June 2008, a whole raft of things about my life suddenly changed. First off, the company I was working for went bust, so I lost my job. Also my friend from whom I was renting the apartment moved out of the upstairs, and I had no desire to stay there any longer. Also a close friend, with whom I had been trying to write a screenplay and had been working with nearly every day for two years, was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia. Also my ex-wife, with whom I had been friends since our divorce, suddenly cut off all contact with me (I learned last week from Rick that she got remarried not long after that. I'm happy for her and am at peace with all that. I was happy to leave our marriage). In any case, I was suddenly in a new place in life. I decided that I would travel for a while. Without TCM, there were no more classic movies. Instead I decided to start to go see movies in theaters again. Like all things I do, it became an obsession, one that carried me over the next two years as I travelled around the country in my car, and over to Europe. It was tremendous fun while I was doing it, even as it was very lonely. I went to nearly every movie all by myself. Writing about them here on my blog helped me sustain myself, and feel as if I were connecting to other people while doing it. But it couldn't last. It took it's toll on me, to be exposed to so much of the culture of Postmodernity so deeply. It was like drinking poison and trying to synthesize it in my body. After a while, it caught up to me. All the time I was travelling I was also battling tremendous demons. I was chasing ghosts of monsters all over the country and the world. Many of the places I went to were because I was trying to track down the remnants of certain historical individuals, most of them long dead, whom I had come to see as the architects of the disaster that had overtaken our country and the world. At one point my quest saw me in a quiet graveyard in suburban Connecticut, throwing a symbolic folding shovel down on the grave of someone who died in 1972 and screaming at the air. I was battling huge monsters---world-size ones. Only my leukemia-stricken friend knew the whole story of what I was doing. I felt all alone, as if it were up to me to save the world, and restore something that had been lost. I thought that there was no one else in the world who could help me, because I alone knew the identities of the monsters. It was me against the world. Finally in 2010 I couldn't take it anymore and various reasons suffered an emotional collapse and withdraw. I couldn't go on battling these monsters by myself. I couldn't see movies anymore. Last fall I made one last stab at compiling the notes of the things I had learned, so I could the story of what I had learned to others. I was fairly successful at this. Then in November my grandfather passed away. Somehow it released a whole flood of emotions that had been pent up. The last ten months have been among the most emotionally chaotic in my life, trying to synthesize all the emotions I have experiences over the last few years, and trying to get past the struggle with the monsters I mentioned. But the good part is that now, ten years after the giant tragedy that changed all our lives, I have come to feel free of so much of the monsters that are still imprisoning the rest of the country. I see the tributes and memorials on Facebook and on television and I know how trapped so many people are. I had to go on and try to slay the largest dragons that mankind that ever produced, but somehow i feel free. But it can't stop here. As my Thor, my leukemia-stricken friend who has now fully recovered, told me. "You HAVE to write this up. You HAVE to find a way to express this through art. You have a duty..." He wasn't saying anything I didn't already know. He was just repeating my words and thoughts back to me. For much of this year, I have been struggling with how to find a way forward. I was at a loss. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. But somehow over the last two weeks, I have felt the dawning of a new day, a new way forward. This is what I'll be writing about here I guess. Two nights ago in my motel room I finished the first chapter of a manuscript I've known I had to write for a long time. Artistic expression is the only way forward for me. It's the only thing that keeps the pain at bay. It's the only thing that feels like healing. So here I go.

Stalag 17 @ Second Space aka My Great Revelation about My Life and the Direction for Me

Seen in Fresno, on Sept. 1,2,3

If there was one thing about Fresno that really changed my life, it was the discovery, or rather rediscovery of something that has been missing from life, which is live theater.

One of the reasons I went there was to see my friend make his stage debut in a local theater production there of Stalag 17, the play that the movie was based on. He had never been on stage before in life. The production had debuted in mid August. I was only planning to see the Thursday show but I wound up going on Friday and Saturday night as well.

Rick played Sgt. Reed, the big-mouthed American prisoner whose indiscretion winds up causing all sorts of problems and driving the plot. I told Rick that it was quite ironic, given certain things in my life recently. It's funny how theater works that way, and directly connect with you.

After three nights I was practically an understudy. Everyone in the cast knew me. The cast even liked hanging out on the hood of my classic BMW behind the theater (everybody loves my car).

Frankly it's the reason I'm blogging again. Years ago I was in theater, and when I was there, I found it to be my family, the refuge for me against the crushing isolation and loneliness of the rest of the world. All through high school I was in productions, but for some reason, in college, I thought I was supposed to do other things, so I was only in one production in college and have never been on stage since then.

Rick was adamant that I give it a try again, and I promised him that I would, not because I have some great yen for people to clap for me, but for many other reasons, the primary one being that I know this is where I am supposed to find my family again, in whatever form. Somehow I've known this, but have resisted it. But now I know I am ready for it again. Heck, maybe I'll do it in Fresno.

I am planning to write a lot about this, right here on my blog. If you followed me in the past and read any of my posts, know that all of a sudden I have a lot to say about a lot of things, and want to share them. Also, I realize that some people have commented on my posts but I did not do a very good job of replying. I wasn't in a position emotionally to respond I think, for various reasons, while I was working through certain emotions. But now I feel free again and for starters I've gone back and made few replies to comments people have made. If you have made any, you might double check if you are in the mood to do so.

Fresno loves me!

I never expected to feel so welcome and alive in this place, but after a week's stay here, I feel like a new man. Most of it due to my hosts, Carolyn W. and my good friend Rick, whom I hadn't seen in years. It was an awesome reunion, so much so that I even feel like blogging again, even though I haven't seen any movies lately. I think I want to blog about other things now, and I'm starting off by saying how much I love Fresno back.

Mars Needs Moms

seen at: Cinema Saver 6, this evening.

It had been at least a months since I was at the Cinema Saver, but I recognized Danae, the young woman with glasses who worked the ticket concession, and who chatted with me after I saw

Megamind

a couple months ago. We both liked that movie, and I had enjoyed discussing it with her.

This I reminded her of that when I saw her, and then confessed that today I was going in a different direction, towards the movie that was supposedly the latest "worst movie ever." Or at least I'd heard that it got bad reviews. Danae, however, said she hadn't seen it yet, but it was getting good reactions from the audiences coming out of it.

What an interesting film this was! I found myself towards the end drifting into thoughts regarding the various definitions of feminism. When a movie inspires such philosophic discussions, it can't be all bad.

Danae was gone from the lobby by the time I came out, but the next time I see her, I'll say that Mars Needs Moms was an extremely lucid commentary on the contemporary American family paradigm, perhaps uncomfortably so.

Why is it so lucid? Because it very boldy portrays the shadow scenario that we all know to which we are moving: the world post-men. It is a Martian place in which all the men are enfeebled. All the males in this movie are highly debilitated in some way. Among the humans, one is boy child searching for his lost mother, another is a grown man stuck in permanent adolescent at a computer screen, and the third and last is an absent dad (appearing only briefly in two scenes) making a lame-sounding stereotypical excuse for missing a flight. The Martian men are confined below the surface as a miseducated primitive beast-type, "as dumb as rocks," in the words of one of the human men.

All necessary functions of this world are taken over by the women, since women along possess the raw intelligence to run things. Men simply aren't capable of such worldly competence anymore, except for their sole remaining skill of playing video games and/or hacking computer networks.

Yet the movie is kind to the weaker sex (us males) in suggesting that we are capable of more, if only given the chance. It also suggests that women have been enslaved. This last part is the one that probably really pissed off the wrong people. The head villainness looks a bit like a shriveled Hillary Clinton in certain angles.

And we can't have that, can we? NO STRONG AND POWERFUL WOMAN MUST NEVER BE MOCKED LIKE THAT---EVER!!!!!!

If the central struggle of this story had been anything else than "boy-man quest to save his mother" (soooooooo boooring....) I would have liked it better.

United Artists Twin Peaks Mall

What I saw here: Where the Wild Things Are, October 2009.

As of today I'm shifting the focus of my blog from being primarily film-centric to being both film- and theater-centric, with an emphasis on the latter. In some ways, I've felt that seeing all these movies was simply an excuse to go into as many different movie theaters as possible.

In that spirit, I'm kicking off the new year with a post about what I think is the oldest existing movie theater along the Front Range north of Denver. The theater itself a multiplex of the Regal chain, and is inside the ancient but still operating Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont.

I was there over a year ago after returning to Colorado from being away for year. It was one of the first places I visited as part of an ongoing project of visiting all the movie theaters in this area. Until last year, I'd never been inside, even though I'd driven by it countless times on the route between Fort Collins and Boulder. It was always a pleasant sight to see back in the old days, because it meant you were almost at the turnoff onto the highway.

At the time the theater lobby and the coridors down to the auditoriums were festooned with all the promos for the upcoming Alice in Wonderland movie. It was almost like going into a cave, passing under the hanging banners. It was quite a tickling experience.

Yesterday I stopped to take this photograph while I was at a coffee shop on the other side of the street. I wasn't quite in the mood for a movie, but I crossed the street and the parking lot, and entered by the south end of the mall.

The place is nearly deserted, but I've come to learn to love such types of aging shopping centers as I've traveled around the country in recent years. The fact that the cinema is still operating inside is a good sign for the future.

Still there was a poignancy about seeing such a structure nearly vacant. I walked over the ancient tiles in the floor of the mall, in patterns of green, blue, and gold, and wondered about the decades of folk who had walked on it. Now most of the stores inside are empty. Yet there is life. People hang out there, even in a nearly empty food court, as if it's a town square. I chatted with the young woman at the ear piercing pagoda. She told me that the holidays had been fairly good.

There's a small cluster of still-operating mall-type businesses on the south end, including a few chain clothing stores. There's even a stage theater company there (link)---quite a surprise.

Happy 2011!

Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder. 11:52 p.m. New Year's Eve.

The forecast was for five below. I came wrapped in my subzero gear and used my trekking poles to reach the star. It was a vigorous climb. I took this photo next to a tree, then walked out to enjoy the view. I couldn't believe that no one else was there.

Only a few minutes before midnight a group of jolly college kids piled out of a car on the road below. I could hear their voices and they stumbled up the mountain in the snow, their feet slipping. I knew they'd never get where I was, without poles. They stopped at the lowest metal pole of the star, and huddled around it drinking champagne. Most of them didn't see me standing on the slope above them.

A few minutes after midnight, I started to descend. I slipped in my boots and slid about fifty feet in perfect powder down to a tree (the where I took this picture) which gently stopped me, just on the level where the kids were huddled.

They were blown away by the spectacle of me gliding right into their midst. They dubbed me an "extreme skier" and invited me to share their champagne. I made a traverse to them and drank right out of the bottle with them, toasting the new year with them.