Sometimes an actor who is just starting out in his or her career will, for one reason or another, make a big impression on me. Sometimes they go on to great things; sometimes they don't. But even if--maybe especially if?--their careers end up describing a shallower trajectory, I always retain an interest in them, noting whenever they show up in a movie or TV show and wondering why the Fates awarded them their particular destiny.
I first noticed Corinne Bohrer when she co-starred on the 1984-85 sitcom E/R. If you've heard of the show, chances are it's because you read an article about George Clooney, noting the odd coincidence that he starred in the sitcom E/R years before hitting the big time on the drama ER. E/R ran for just one season, but I seem to recall it was a fairly decent show. (It doesn't appear to be online anywhere, so I can't really be sure, and about the only specific things I remember are 1) Lou Rawls sang the theme song, and 2) the obligatory catchphrase was spoken by the intake nurse, who, when people got too close to her desk, would yell at them to "Stay back of the white line!"). Certainly the show had a strong cast; the lead roles were played by Elliott Gould and Mary McDonnell, and Jason Alexander was a member of the supporting ensemble along with Clooney. But it was Bohrer, playing a pediatric nurse with a thing for Gould, who caught my fancy, with her big sunny smile and goofy charm. I thought she was adorable, and she became the main reason I tuned in to the show each week. When it was canceled, I thought for sure that goofy charm and her considerable screen presence would lead to her snagging a major role in another show.
Sure enough, she turned up a few years later as the star of a sitcom called Free Spirit. If you've heard of that show, chances are it's because you're a fan of Alyson Hannigan and you know that it was her first regular TV job. Hannigan played the middle child of a Saget-esque widower dad (seriously, check out the clip below--dude is totally Saget Lite) who hires Bohrer to look after his brood. Unbeknownst to him, she's a witch! But you know, the friendly, kooky kind. Throw in a hunky older brother and a precocious, bemulleted younger one, and you've got yourself the makings of a TV classic, right? Alas, Free Spirit could not even be called "fairly decent". It was dire, in that particularly '80s way. Mix together every sad, soul-killing sitcom cliché you can think of, throw in an extra handful of hideous hairdos and a retina-scorching fluorescent color scheme, and you've pretty much got the gist of it. Even the combined charm of Bohrer and Hannigan couldn't elevate it, and it was canceled midway through its first season.
There's no DVD set and there probably never will be, which actually bums me a little bit. I'd kind of like to revisit the show and see how it compares with the likes of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, as all three series center on magical women, their relationships with non-magical men, and the difficulties that arise as the women attempt to suppress their powers and negotiate life in the "straight", patriarchal world. From a feminist perspective, there's clearly a lot of rich ground to be tilled there. But anyway, that's another post. For now, let's take a look at a clip from the Halloween episode of Free Spirit. This is actually the second act, which I'm showing you because it also includes an appearance by erstwhile child actor and current Rilo Kiley frontwoman and critics' darling Jenny Lewis. (By the way, Jenny: nice job having the same bangs for 20 years.) I thought about explaining the set-up of the episode, but if you've ever watched a sitcom, I think you'll figure it out.
My, Corinne was certainly rocking those tails, was she not? *Ahem* Well, clearly Free Spirit was not the big break it might have been for her, and since then her career has been a string of guest spots, failed pilots, and commercials. In fact, by my estimate she currently appears in approximately 75% of all commercials on the air. There's nothing wrong with that, of course--she continues to make a living in her chosen profession, which is more than most of us can say. But every time she's onscreen, I can't help seeing the wasted potential. E/R demonstrated her comedic skills, and recurring roles as the mother of a terminally ill boy on Joan of Arcadia and as Veronica's alcoholic, absentee mom on Veronica Mars showed she could be equally memorable in dramatic parts. I'll continue to take notice whenever she appears on my TV screen--and I'll continue hoping some producer or casting director will finally give her a role that's worthy of her.
When I was growing up in the swamps of Jersey, WABC-TV in New York, a.k.a. Channel 7, provided a huge chunk of my movie education. In the days when TV news consisted of a half hour at dinnertime and a half hour at 11, and the rest of the time we had no fucking idea what was going on, Channel 7 used to have something called the 4:30 Movie. In between The Edge of Night (one of the few 30-minute soap operas) at four and the news at six each weekday, Channel 7 served up a movie, edited to fit into a 90-minute time slot along with plenty of commercials. Typically each week had a theme, like Godzilla week, Elvis week, Beach Party week, or--my personal fave--Planet of the Apes week. For some reason I could not get enough of those damn dirty apes. Anyway, for latchkey kids like my sister and me, a glass of Hawaiian Punch and the 4:30 Movie meant afterschool heaven. (If you remember it as well and are looking for a blast of nostalgia, or if you’re interested in learning more, there’s a site dedicated to it here.) The theme song to the 4:30 Movie was particularly awesome. Check it out… …and tell me that doesn’t get you TOTALLY FUCKING JAZZED to see a movie.
As I entered my teen years, I became less about movie-watching in the afternoons and more about movie-watching in the wee hours of the morning, particularly on weekends. Fortunately, Channel 7 also had the Late Movie.
The Late Movie seemed to have a fairly small library of films, since the same ones would show up time and again. There were a few that I developed a particular affection for and would watch every time they were on; eventually the rhythm and flow of their scenes became as familiar to me as the songs on a favorite album. I’ve come to think of them as my personal cult movies.
Note that I’m not talking about Cult Movies with a capital C-M, which is to say, movies that are well-known and widely regarded as such. There are certainly a number of films considered capital-C Cult that would appear on my list of favorite movies, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Warriors, Dazed and Confused, and Office Space, to give just a few disparate examples. But what makes personal cult movies personal is that while they’re movies that I love, and that I’ve seen so often they have permeated my being such that I still remember and think about them even though I might not have seen them for decades, they’re pretty much wholly unknown to your garden-variety movie-watcher. In other words, while I know that there are others out there who love these films too, I am, among the general populace, and for the intents and purposes of this post, a cult of one.
Whew. Okay, have I explained it to death yet? Anyway, this list was going to be a traditional Top Five, but I’m throwing in a bonus movie, because while I was conflicted about including it, I think everyone deserves to know about it. So here we go:
Top Five Six Personal Cult Movies
#6) Mazes and Monsters. Or, to give it its full title, Rona Jaffe’s Mazes and Monsters. Like we’re supposed to go, “Oh, Rona JAFFE’S Mazes and Monsters. I thought maybe it was Jane Austen’s Mazes and Monsters.” This is the one I debated about including, for two reasons: one, it was a made-for-TV movie. But then I realized that there’s another TV movie on the list that I have no intention of leaving off, so that can’t be a disqualifier. Two, it’s the only movie here that I love ironically, and if there’s one thing I don’t want this blog to be, it’s a dank pile of irony-sodden hipsterism. There’s more than enough of that on the internets as it is. The fact is, though, I do love this oh-so-’80s movie (1982, to be exact), from its hysterical premise--role-playing games are an express highway to psychosis for weak-minded youth!--which, believe it or not, was a serious discussion topic back in the day, to the presciently over-the-top lead performance of Tom Hanks, fresh from Bosom Buddies and essaying his first dramatic role. I swear, check out this scene: you can draw a direct line from this to Philadelphia.
Co-starring with Hanks was the apparently-abducted-by-aliens-in-the-mid-’80s Chris Makepeace, star of Meatballs and My Bodyguard, and also known as the poor man’s Robby Benson. Seriously, whatever happened to that dude? Anyway, what makes M & M such a treat is its deadly earnestness in dealing with a threat that is so clearly ridiculous. I can’t resist giving you another clip--it’s only 30 seconds and it neatly sums up the tenor and tone of the movie.
There's a handful of other clips on YouTube, all of which are highly entertaining, but the entire movie is impossible to come by. I am assuming that Tom Hanks has done his utmost to track down and destroy any copies that might exist.
#5) Almost Summer. When Bruno Kirby died a couple of years ago, his eulogists remembered him for a number of roles: as Billy Crystal’s sidekick in When Harry Met Sally… and City Slickers, as the Rat-Pack-loving limo driver in This Is Spinal Tap, as the young Clemenza in The Godfather Part II. When I heard he had passed, the first thing I thought of was this flick. It was released in 1978, and to give you an idea of the kind of star power that illuminated Hollywood in those days, its main draw was Didi Conn, just off her role as Frenchie in that year’s blockbuster, Grease (which I saw four times in the theater, a record that stands to this day). Kirby plays a high-school politico who, when his hot and brainy ex-girlfriend runs for student body president, decides to take a nebbishy outcast and transform him into a powerhouse opposition candidate. That sounds kind of serious, but it takes place in Southern California, so there’s also bikinis and whatnot. What I like about it is that while it’s essentially a teen comedy, it has some interesting things to say about political maneuvering and how candidacies are constructed. As such, it mines some of the same territory as (the far superior) Election, but it lacks the satirical and farcical elements of that film, and so offers a more straightforward take on the subject. Plus, there’s an awesome domino-toppling scene.
This would be a great flick to watch during the current election season, but it is, of course, unavailable. Well, there’s a guy on YouTube offering a free download if you subscribe to his channel, but since I'm both paranoid and a firm believer in the maxim of “You don’t get something for nothing”, I’m a little concerned that that nothing might turn out to be something--like malware, for instance. Anyway, there is this one clip, but be forewarned that the first four and a half minutes is the opening credits, in which nothing happens.
#4) The Last of Sheila. This one’s actually on DVD! Made in 1973, it boasts a cast of all-stars of the era, including James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, and James Mason. Written by the rather odd pairing of Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, it’s a fiendishly intricate mystery tale set against gorgeous French Riviera locales. Rich guy Coburn’s girlfriend (the Sheila of the title) is killed by a hit-and-run driver after leaving a party; one year later, he invites six friends who were there onto his yacht for a Mediterranean vacation. Turns out he knows that one of them was the driver who struck Sheila, and he’s created a sadistic game that will force the killer into the open. There are twists and turns galore, and the whole thing is smartly written, well-acted, and highly entertaining. It’s especially fun to watch multiple times, as you begin to notice the many clues, both obvious and subtle, strewn throughout the film. I highly recommend renting this for a rainy Sunday afternoon. There don’t seem to be any complete scenes on YouTube, but someone has put together a six-minute “trailer” that gives you the flavor of the film:
#3) A Little Romance. Sorry to get all girly on you guys, but...well, pardon me for a moment while I squee: *Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!*
OK, I feel better now. Anyway, this George Roy Hill-directed confection from 1979 is one of the most beguilingly romantic movies of all time, no less so for concerning the first innocent romance of two thirteen-year-olds. Diane Lane (making her first appearance on-screen, as well as her first-but-not-last appearance on this list) is an American schoolgirl in Paris, with a neglectful actress mom, a love of books, and an off-the-charts IQ. She meets her intellectual equal in French boy Thelonious Bernard, who uses his gifts to handicap racehorses, and they fall in love. They meet up with a never-hammier Laurence Olivier as an elegant old gentilhomme (or so ’twould appear)who fills their heads with tales of romance, including the Venetian legend that a kiss in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset will seal their love for eternity. When Lane learns she’s being shipped back to the US, the trio sets out to fulfill the legend before the young lovers are separated.
I can’t even put into words how much I love this film, but I can tell you it was the first movie I ever bought for my personal library. It can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, but trust me, don’t watch it that way--with its spectacular French and Italian locations, it needs to be seen on a bigger screen than your computer monitor. It’s out on DVD and available through Netflix, and is more than worth a rental if you count yourself a lover of romance.
Oh, before I give you the trailer, I have to make note of the performance of Ashby Semple as Lane’s best friend. Apparently this is the only acting job she ever had, and man does she knock it out of the park, in one of the most hilariously genuine portraits of teen awkwardness ever drawn on film.
#2) Cotton Candy. This TV movie from 1978 (apparently a good year for personal cult movies) was the…um, illustrious Ron Howard’s directorial debut. It stars Charles Martin Smith (a truly underrated actor, if you ask me) as a high school loser who forms a band (called Cotton Candy) with a bunch of other outcasts--a nerdy keyboardist, a surfer-dude guitarist, a Chicano bass player, and a *gasp* girl drummer--in order to take on the local blow-dried, tight-panted, satin-jacketed rock stars at the Battle of the Bands. It also stars Ron’s brother Clint, who makes everything he appears in better, as Smith’s best friend and the band’s manager.
Now, that this movie is pure cheese from start to finish is inarguable. However, keep in mind that there are many types of cheese, and this is no cellophane-wrapped, neon-orange “processed cheese food”. No, not at all. This is like a top-of-the-line, well-aged, perfectly balanced, creamy French brie. It is the king of cheesy movies, and all other cheesy movies must bow to it. Cotton Candy may be an awful band, but they’re awful in the same way that Styx or REO Speedwagon is awful, which is to say that they’re not inept, or abrasive, or boring--they just write tepid arena-rock songs (minus the arena) that make you cringe when you hear them, or when, inevitably, you find yourself singing them days later. (I didn’t say they weren’t catchy. And I must admit, the last song they play in the movie, which I think is called “Born Rich”, is actually pretty rockin’.) On the other hand, their nemesis band, Rapid Fire, is just plain awful. But they’ve got the looks, whereas Cotton Candy, not so much.
It’s true that I will like almost any movie that concerns musicians, particularly if it documents processes like forming a band, writing songs, recording, etc. (except Once--man was that an overrated flick). It’s equally true that I’m especially fond of movies from the 1970s, so Cotton Candy already has two points in its favor. But there’s something special about this movie that’s hard to pin down. It might be that it’s just so genuine, proudly wearing its cheesy soft-rock heart on its polyester sleeve. It might be that the actors never take the project less than seriously--Charles Martin Smith gives an almost painfully real performance as the longtime loser who’s finally found something that he loves and is good at, and Clint Howard will kill you worse than corbomite with how hard he's selling it. Or it might be that this is a movie about something that holds deep meaning for me--the redemptive and transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll music. Whatever the reason, despite--and at least partially because of--its cheesiness, Cotton Candy is a movie that I love with all my heart. I’ve got a tattered copy of it on VHS that I finally transferred to DVD, and I still watch it at least once a year, preferably in the wee hours of a Saturday night/Sunday morning, as of old. It’s not available commercially, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube--not my preferred method of movie-watching, as I mentioned, but if you can stand it, it’s totally worth it. In the meantime, here’s Casey Kasem with a 30-second rundown:
#1)Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. The movie that inspired this list, it was not a Channel 7 Late Movie selection. Rather, it appeared on Night Flight, a mishmash of music videos, weird shorts, concert films, and the like that ran late at night on the USA Network on Fridays and Saturdays in the 1980s. The way it worked, at least as I remember, was that a four-hour block would be shown twice on Friday, and then the same block would be shown twice on Saturday. This meant that when they showed L&G,tFS--which they did every few months--it would be shown four times in one weekend, and I would watch it all four times. Simply put, this movie changed my life. I went into it a metalhead burnout who thought you had to be touched by God--or perhaps Satan--to play rock music, and came out the other side a radicalized punk who understood that what you said--or even just the fact that you said it at all--was more important than how well you said it. I went into it a hopeless daydreamer and came out determined to make those dreams happen. I went into it with nothing and came out with everything.
If that all sounds a little hyperbolic...well, I was a teenager, so it came naturally. The plot of the film also concerns teenagers, specifically three young women--Corinne Burns (Diane Lane in her second film, following A Little Romance); her cousin Jessica (Laura Dern, also appearing in just her second credited role); and her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter, who sadly seems to have disappeared after this movie)--living dingy lives in a dingy Pennsylvania coal-mining town circa 1980. Trying to stave off the dinginess, they form a punk band called the Stains (and give themselves awesome punk names that sadly are never used after the opening scene: Third-Degree Burns, Dizzy Heights, and Dee Pleted, respectively). When UK punks the Looters come to town as the opening act for washed-up rockers the Metal Corpses, Corinne talks the road manager into putting the Stains on the tour, despite the fact that they’ve only had three rehearsals. The band’s subsequent rise and fall redefine the term “meteoric”.
I had never seen a movie like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains before--I had never even heard punk rock before--and I was totally electrified. There have been a few moments in my life, mostly music-related, where I swear I have actually felt my DNA being rewritten. The first time I saw the scene in which Corinne watches the Looters play was one of those moments. Even now it makes every fucking hair on my body stand on end. Watch this brilliantly shot and edited sequence, and watch the emotions that play across Lane’s face:
In case you weren’t sure who the band members were, that’s Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on drums and guitar, respectively, Paul Simonon of the Clash on bass, and an almost unrecognizably slim Ray Winstone as Billy, the singer. Also featuring reggae artist Barry Ford as the tour manager, Lawnboy, L&G, tFS did not lack for musical credibility.
The film was never given a theatrical release, nor was it released on video. In the decades after its appearances on Night Flight, the only way to see it was on pirated VHS, or at one of its exceedingly rare festival runs. I never managed to catch it, and so, over the years, the memory of it grew great in my mind. I started to wonder whether, if I was someday able to see it again, it would live up to that memory. Would it be as good as I thought it was back then? When I read a few months ago that the film was finally, finally going to be released on DVD, I immediately pre-ordered a copy from Amazon. And seriously, I never get excited enough about stuff to pre-order it, so you know this was a big deal. It was released last week, arrived on my doorstep a few days later, and I watched it late on Saturday night, just like the old days. Was it as good as I remembered? Well, I have to say that it was not.
It was better. While the young punk inside of me still thrills to the music, the story, and the grubby punk aesthetic, the seasoned movie-watcher I’ve now become realizes that this is just a great fucking movie, on so many levels. Acting-wise, Winstone displays a swaggering confidence in what I understand was his first leading role, and Christine Lahti makes the most of her limited screen time with a gritty performance as Corinne’s white-trash aunt. Dern and especially Kanter ground their characters in teenage realism, David Clennon has a memorable turn as the Looters’ agent, and Fee Waybill of the Tubes is nothing short of awesome as the lead singer of the Metal Corpses. (On this viewing I also noticed for the first time a couple of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances by Elizabeth [E.G.] Daily and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner, hilariously mustachioed.) But it’s Lane’s movie, and she is absolutely riveting in a role that is diametrically opposed to her character in A Little Romance. If you’re a young actor, watch those two movies back to back and consider it a master class.
Equally impressive, though, is the screenplay by Nancy Dowd, which is littered with killer dialogue and insightful moments. It’s remarkable to realize that L&G, tFS precedes riot grrrl and subsequent movements by a decade, since it so clearly prefigures riot grrrl’s raw sound, confrontational politics, and deliberately contradictory aesthetic (see kinderwhore). Don’t watch expecting a screed or manifesto, though; Dowd’s script is much more sophisticated than that. While it lobs satirical grenades at the media (nothing new there, but I swear, it’s almost like a satire of media satires), music industry greed (see previous parenthetical thought), and bloated ’70s rockers (the scenes with Fee Waybill skewer rock-star stereotypes just as effectively as This Is Spinal Tap in like, one-eighth the time), the screenplay takes equal aim at the Looters, with their presumed genuine radicalism, and at Corinne and the Stains themselves. I don’t want to throw a bunch of quotes at you, but consider this exchange between Corinne and Billy after the Stains have leap-frogged the Looters to take over the headlining spot on the tour, and the multiple levels the script is working on:
CORINNE
You’re sooooo jealous. I’m everything you always wanted to be.
BILLY
A cunt?
CORINNE
Exactly.
The infamously jarring tacked-on ending, filmed when the actors were obviously older, still jars, but it’s one of the few missteps in this nearly flawless film. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is obviously not for every taste, but now that it’s finally received a long-overdue video release, I feel certain that its cult is destined to grow. If you’re a fan of good acting, satire, swell trash, punk rock music, or all of the above, see it.
Here is a list of the Top Five Cultural Artifacts I Currently Think Are Awesome. Rather than listing them numerically, I'll be choosing one winner in each of five categories.
TV Show: Mad Men. Are you watching? If you're not, then stop. Stop not watching right now! With Battlestar Galactica on hiatus, MM is the best-written show on television. The casual misogyny and racism can be off-putting at first, but...well, a quote from Chandler Bing fits here: "OK, but you have to push past that, because it's about to get sooooo good." Seriously, we all know that in the early 1960s it was a white man's world, and MM wants nothing so much as to immerse you in that world, to envelop you in a gin-soaked haze of Lucky Strike smoke and Brylcreem fumes. And as I've watched, I've realized that the struggle of the female characters--strong, intelligent, ambitious women who today would be CEOs and Senators instead of secretaries and trophy wives--to carve a place for themselves in that world is, for me, the most engaging aspect of the show. Mad Men's backdrop is fascinating and its characters are richly rendered. The acting is top-notch, and the production design and art direction are nothing short of sublime. I actually look forward to Sunday nights now.
Music: Duffy. I'm sort of putting myself out there with this one, because lately Aimee Duffy's songs have started to turn up in the kind of places--cosmetics commercials, chick flick soundtracks--that could lead to her becoming the next KT Tunstall or Natasha Bedingfield, i.e. a ubiquitous, vaguely "girl power" (yech)-identified pop singer whom I want nothing to do with by virtue of her ubiquity and girl-poweriness. But I'll have you know that I jumped on the Duffy bandwagon early, essentially the moment I heard her brutally catchy single "Mercy". After listening to "Mercy" at least two or three times a day, every day, for a week, I plunked down my fifteen bucks for Rockferry, her debut album. (At least, it's her debut album as Duffy. Apparently she made a record before under her full name, but I don't know anything about it, nor do I want to. I suspect it might be on the order of Alanis Morissette's pre-Jagged Little Pill work.) She's been compared to Joss Stone and especially Amy Winehouse (and all three have been compared to Dusty Springfield simply because they're British lady soul singers), but of that trio I think Duffy's the standout. I like Stone okay (really dug her re-working of the White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl"), but something about her seems false, and I really don't care for Winehouse--her vocal affectations grate and her songs strike me as cynical pastiches. On the other hand, Duffy's tunes sound like lost classics: while I was initially disappointed that nothing else on the record has the uptempo intensity of "Mercy", I was quickly won over by soaring, string-drenched soul ballads like "Warwick Avenue" and "Stepping Stone". While I was listening to my mp3 player on random today (something I only recently started doing), the latter song came on after the Shirelles doing the glorious Goffin-King number "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?", and it didn't totally pale in comparison. That's pretty high praise from me.
Foodstuff: Julie's Organic Chocolate Ice Cream Bar Dipped in Dark Chocolate. One of the things I miss most about smoking pot is eating while stoned. Even if you've never smoked marijuana yourself, you probably know that one of its effects is a perceived intensification of sensations, including taste. Put another way, pot makes food taste better. Since it also increases focus, when you're stoned and you eat something, you are all about eating that thing. I guess it's fortunate that I don't smoke anymore, since I'm sure my metabolism could no longer handle digesting a whole pint of Cherry Garcia or an entire loaf of toasted raisin bread, both of which I have eaten while baked. Anyway, I picked up these ice cream bars one day when I was upset about something and felt like I deserved a treat (they're kind of spendy), and they are insanely good. They are so good that, even though I have not smoked pot in well over a decade, I feel like I'm stoned when I eat them because the chocolate flavor is so intense. Unfortunately for you non-Oregonians, Julie's is a local company and they pride themselves on making ice cream in "small batches", so you probably can't find it anywhere else.
Website: Stuff White People Like. Instructions: 1) Read. 2) Laugh hysterically. 3) Start to notice how many things actually apply to you. 4) Stop laughing and become concerned that you are too white. 5) Decide you don't care and go back to laughing hysterically.
Advertisement: Those commercials for Progressive starring "Flo". At first I, like any human with a functioning cerebrum, found these ads annoying. But the more I saw them, the more they grew on me. (Ah, the insidiousness of advertising. Don Draper would be proud.) The fact is, it's all about Flo. There's just something ineffably sexy about the way she says "tricked-out name tag." And underneath all that clown paint, she's pretty cute.
Sixty-eight years ago on this date, a dog fell in a hole. In France. The dog's name was Robot.
You guys know that I'm a cat person, but it's a good thing Robot's master wasn't, since a cat would likely have noticed the hole and gone around it. But Robot, probably galumphing along after a rabbit or something, tongue trailing like Isadora Duncan's scarf, did not notice the hole. He plunged straight down and couldn't get out again.
To rescue the pup, Robot's master and his three friends clambered down into the hole, which turned out to be a cave, and a rather large one at that. It also turned out that les quatre garçons were not the first humans to have visited the cave. Some seventeen millennia prior, a number of highly skilled Cro-Magnon artists had covered its walls and ceiling with thousands of paintings of animals, for reasons that are still being debated.
The reasons, while they'd be nice to know, aren't important ultimately. What's important is that the Lascaux cave paintings are among the first expressions of the human spirit through the medium of art. They're also breathtakingly beautiful.
Horsie!
I've been fascinated by cave paintings ever since I took a two-semester survey of art history during my first year of college. (That course, by the way, remains one of my favorite educational investments. I love the fact that I can identify a Modigliani on sight, or point out the differences between Gothic and Romanesque architecture, or discuss the significance of the archaic smile. I love even more the fact that those things have actually come up in recent conversations.) When C.* and I went to France in 1996, one of the things I most wanted to do was see some actual cave paintings. Lascaux itself has long been closed to the general public, after it was discovered that the build-up of carbon monoxide from the exhalations of thousands of visitors was causing the paintings to fade. (And apparently there's a now a serious threat from fungi--see here. I haven't had time to peruse that site yet, but I definitely plan to. If there's anything we can do, we need to do it.) A replica cave was built down the road from the actual site, and it's supposed to be quite popular, but...if it ain't the real thing, I'm just not interested.
Anyway, I learned of another site near Les Eyzies (and if you're not in a random-link-following mood, the Les Eyzies tourist office would like you to know that it "proposes you to discover its local gastronomy" and "its lodgings of quality in hotels, campings and lodgings") that is not nearly as spectacular as Lascaux, but does offer the chance to view some actual Paleolithic paintings and carvings.
Well, to make a long story short, manipulating the French rail system to get where we wanted to go and do what we wanted to do in the time we had allotted proved too daunting a task. We ended up in a town about 10 km away from Les Eyzies called Sarlat. It has a gorgeous medieval center and great food (Southwest France being the truffle capital of the world, everything had shaved truffles on it--yum), and we stayed in the home of une très gentille dame who spoke no English, which meant I actually got to use my French.
The market square in Sarlat. Seriously.
On our one full day there, we decided to head out to the Dordogne River, some 5 km south, where we'd heard we could rent a canoe. We'd planned to just walk there, but once we got out on the road we realized how extraordinarily hot it was, and decided to hitch a ride instead. I remember almost nothing about the guy who picked us up or his car, because he proceeded to drive at such breakneck speeds that I was unable to unglue my eyes from the road that I was certain we were all about to be splattered upon. I do remember asking, in a vague attempt to engage him in conversation and perhaps get him to slow down, "Alors, est-ce qu'il fait toujours aussi chaud qu'il fait aujourd'hui?" or, roughly, "So, is it always this fucking hot?" His reply, in toto: "Non." Fortunately it was a short ride.
We got to the river in one piece, and got our canoe. There were several other parties who set out at the same time, but as everyone set their own pace we all drifted further from one another, and soon C. and I had the river to ourselves. The water was placid, the scenery was beautiful, the sky was cloudless, and the sun was...hot. I mentioned before that it was really hot, right? Well, now that it was midday and we were out on the water with no shade of any kind, it was really really hot. We started to talk about going for a dip in the river. But as the town where we'd started out fell behind, sheer cliffs began to rise on either side of us, and there was no longer any riverbank where we might beach our canoe. Also, we hadn't had the foresight to bring our bathing suits.
Not us, nor the actual spot. But you get the idea.
Then we rounded a bend, and saw a tiny half-moon of sand and gravel at the base of the cliffs on our right. Up ahead, as behind us, the river curved out of sight. We'd found our spot. We beached the boat, and quickly stripped off our clothes and plunged in. Can you believe that, until that point, I'd never been skinny-dipping before? And the sun was so hot, and that water was soooo deliciously cold, that even though I must've swum in scores of different rivers in my life, not to mention various other bodies of water, I can still remember how that particular water felt against my skin.
At first we were laughing and splashing around, as you do when you're naked in a river. But soon, for reasons neither of us did or could articulate, we fell silent. In fact, it seemed as if the whole world fell silent, except for the soft murmur of the river.
I looked up at the cliffs surrounding us and noticed for the first time that they were pockmarked with small caves. Was it possible, I wondered, that those caves had been used by the Paleolithic humans who'd flourished here so many thousands of years ago? Would they even have been able to reach them? How different was the landscape then, with Europe still emerging from an ice age? It didn't really matter. But for our canoe and our clothes, discarded behind us on the tiny beach, there was nothing of the modern world about. And we, naked under the summer sun, were no different than those who might have laughed and splashed there millennia before. I began to feel a presence in that gorge, as though the benevolent spirits of the long-vanished Magdalenians who had called this land home were looking down upon us from those ancient cliffs. Some of them could conceivably have been my ancestors, but even if they weren't they were my human sisters and brothers, connected to me across time by the same desires and curiosities we all experience. I feel like we generally imagine Paleolithic life to have been harsh, but the abstract of that Britannica article I just linked to indicates that the Magadalenians "lived a semisettled life surrounded by abundant food" and had leisure time in which to create their art, so the calm benevolence of their spirits doesn't seem strange.
It was an incredibly powerful and very real sensation, and I knew that we were both feeling it. We didn't speak for several minutes. We were spellbound.
Finally, the sound of voices from around the bend broke the spell. A canoe came into sight, its occupants chattering loudly. We crouched down to hide our bodies and, after the boat had passed, realized we'd better be getting on so we didn't arrive at the end of the course late and miss our ride back to the starting point.
I'd still like to get back and see the cave paintings at some point. But if I had to miss them, it was worth it for the experience I had on the river that day.
*From time to time there are people I need to talk about on this blog, but either I don't want to mention their names, or I worry that they might not want me to mention their names. So I've decided to do the coy initial thing.
I just read Amy's post about the Story [She's] Never Written, which is funny 'cause just today I was thinking about one of the stories I've never written. It's so annoying to have these things in my head, trying to get out, for years, while I continue to lack the energy, ambition, and sense of self-worth to do anything about it.
Once I bought a fancy blank book with the intention of filling it with ideas for, notes on, and fragments of stories, novels, plays, songs, and such, thinking it might exorcise those literary demons from my brain. I figured that someday someone would find it and at least enjoy the flights of fancy such fragments might send their imagination on--like with this really cool book by Chris Van Allsburg I once saw, which features captioned illustrations from non-existent stories, allowing you to invent the contexts for yourself.
For instance, once I saw a notice about a contest to write a one-act play. I conceived a play called The Angel of the Sea of Reeds, which had the following dramatis personae:
SENOY, an angel SANSENOY, another angel SEMANGELOF, a third angel LILITH, a woman ADAM, a man YAHWEH, a god
And that's it. I never wrote a single line. But tell me that's not a kick-ass cast of characters. Tell me you don't want to read that play. Tell me you don't wonder mightily how it unfolds. Because I sure do. And if I found that list in a old handmade book buried on a high shelf somewhere, it would send a tingle down my spine, I'm certain of it.
I might also have included, say, one of the two pages of dialogue from my likely-never-to-be-finished screenplay entitled The Breton Summer. (Evocative title, no? I'm great with titles.) Or even just a line, like maybe this one:
She pauses and turns to the window. The late sunlight falls on her impossibly lovely face as the French countryside rolls by beyond the glass. Underneath, the insistent noise of the train on its tracks. Returning her gaze to the paper, she writes, more urgently now.
JULIE (V.O.) (CONT.)
We are going to contemplate the immense and lonely sea.
But I never put even those tiny scraps in the book. I never put anything in the book.
Once, about twenty years ago, I started a novel. I had a finished outline, and lots of research, and drafts of several chapters. It's the closest I've ever come to actually writing a book. It was a young adult (or, more accurately, intermediate) fantasy novel called Wren, Robin, Raven, and its theme was one of the more common in that genre, summed up by another writer as "child finds magical world and has to save it". Had I been aware at the time just how common that theme is, I probably would have quit before I even started. As it was, I told a friend the basics of the story, and she commented that it sounded a lot like Tolkien. I had never read Tolkien, and when I eventually did I realized that, in tone and execution, his works were wholly different from what I was trying to do, but I essentially gave up at that point.
My story did involve elves and dwarfs. I won't go into all the details, but the protagonist was Wren, a twelve-year-old girl who discovers a faerie world and, yes, must save it from an evil immortal, who is in the guise of a human girl named Raven. There was some cool stuff about Wren being descended from historical (or quasi-historical) figures like Guinevere and Jane Grey, while Raven's past guises included Morgan le Fay and Mary Tudor. Of course, Wren picked up some companions on her adventure, the most prominent of whom was Robin, Prince of the Elves. There was some very mild romantic attraction stuff between Wren and Robin (conveniently, although immortal, my elves looked and behaved much like twelve-year-old humans). There were two other elves in the party, Martin (another boy elf) and Sparrow (a girl elf). Martin had purple hair. I love that detail. As you may have gathered from the names, the folklore and mythology of birds were central to the story--for example, English folklore includes the couplets "The robin and the wren/Are God's cock and hen" and "The martin and the sparrow/Are God's bow and arrow".
There was also a husband-and-wife team of dwarfs named Dimplegrin and Bumblegnat, respectively. (Female dwarfs were distinguished from males chiefly by having slightly less facial hair.) Bumblegnat was actually the Chief Dwarf, an elected position which, in the democratic, egalitarian, and labor-oriented dwarf society, was similar to a shop steward. My dwarfs found the elves a bit haughty. Finally, there was an undine, whose name was unpronounceable by anyone but another undine (it sounded like rivulets of melted snow falling on a smooth rock in the spring sun), so Wren dubbed her Trinket (because she was tiny, even for an undine, and they are a tiny species). If you do the math, you will note that of the seven companions, four were female and three were male. So take that, J.R.R. Fucking Tolkien and your cocksucking all-male fellowship.
Oops, sorry, that was a burst of anger out of nowhere. Anyway, that's not even the story I was thinking about today. The story I was thinking about today began its life something like fifteen years ago. I wrote a lot back then, including a lot of letters to friends, even to friends I saw or spoke to frequently. It was something I did just for the enjoyment of writing and reading letters. Often I would include snippets of stories in the letters--just stuff off the top of my head, not anything I intended to expand upon, necessarily, but sometimes I would like the ideas enough to keep them floating around. Once I sent someone a card that had a picture on the front of a white mouse sitting in a paper airplane. Inside I wrote about a mouse named Annabelle who wanted more than anything to be able to fly. See, her best friend was a bat (this was inspired by a Warner Brothers' cartoon featuring Sniffles the mouse called "Brave Little Bat"), and Annabelle, who lived in a cage, longed to soar through the sky like her friend.
After I sent the card I continued to think about the story. I'd always wanted to write an animal fantasy--one of my very favorite books as a child was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and as I've mentioned here before, one of my favorite books as an adult is Watership Down. I figured, though, that mice had been done, so I decided to change the focus to the bat character. She was a little brown bat named Vesper. Annabelle stayed in as a supporting character, and there was a male bat named Icarus, who, as you might guess from his name, was destined to come to a bad end. I wanted the story to have some emotional heft to it, like Mrs. Frisby did. And bats are so cool, and there weren't any books about them. Well, there was Stellaluna, which is a great book, but it's a picture book. I figured I finally had something original. Of course, that didn't last. I can't tell you how upset I got when I first saw that book a few years back. I still think my story would have been better. But we'll never know, will we?
