Movies

Movies were the other school my generation learned from. While schools had boring teachers spouting traditional dull talk from old dusty books, movies had action and sound and told stories that were easy to follow and if you didn't understand the first time, you could sit through the end and watch it again for the price of one ticket.
Movies were shown in these impressive churches with massive features and flashing lights on the marquee to announce the feature of the day and it's viewing time. 

 The interiors were gigantic rooms with chandlers lighting a stage covered in velvet curtains. The walls are mosaic tiles with cubbyholes for the most special to view. Rows of padded folding sets line the first floor with a balcony for the cheaper seats for the teenagers.

 And after paying your fare for the ticket to enter this dark world, you were supplied with all the candy and popcorn and sweet drinks a kid could consume.

 

Being a small kid in those days, this house of wonder was safe to occupy for an entire day in the care of the whoever wandered around in the dark. These places became my weekend babysitters.

 

 For the price of a few pennies, one could watch the a series of movies and news reels and occasional live performances of organ players or local disc jockeys. To the ones my age, this was the place to hang out on weekends getting thrilled, horrified, educated, and mostly entertained while staying away from our parents.

 The newsreels that informed my parents of what was happening in the war outside of radio broadcast was updated to the Korean War and natural disasters presented in larger than life black and white flickering images. Booming voices through an array of speakers told us the American dream in the most agreeable political manner. These were the same impressions that our young minds were being fed while pledging alliance to the flag and christian prayers at ball games.

 Television was also taking over our mush minds at the time, so the movies quickly adapted making heroes of the western gun totting handsome guys who rode horses around the same rock, only fired one shot knocking the gun out of the bad guy's hand and riding off into the sunset.

 Apart from the ritual of good over bad, the dark house brought us monsters. Strange being from unknown places we could not pronounce. There was never any gore but there was enough fright to make us squirm in our seats and hide our faces and squeal at Lon Chaney or Boris Karloff slowly pacing across the screen with the villagers never catching up to them with their torches ready to do great harm. We routed for the monsters. They were just cowboys without white hats.

 Then there were the usual box office favorites that were family fare. The first time I saw the Wizard of Oz was at a massive movie house and it was the first showing in color. The yellow brick road was....well, yellow. And movies, which make movies different from television, was on this wide screen reaching from wall to wall with the main action in the center to keep focus. And the sound was better than that small speaker on your television box.

 Of course not all stories were bizarre. Most of the early movies, at least the ones I saw, were telling religious stories. Our minds were being soaked with religious images and retelling Bible tales over and over again. Every famous movie star became a religious character at some time, but the stories emphasized the battles with hundreds of extras running across the sand and long filibusters of the importance of following the rightest Bible messages. To reinforce the Anglo-American ethic was the norm.

 Also the American way replayed the United States of America, who we pledged alliance to every school day, as the soul champion and winner of the last big war. With larger than life white movie stars, "we" stormed the beaches and wiped out the enemy firing unending rounds of ammunition and with unceasing courage that my uncles never described. This was the only film I saw with my father. It had every movie star who was a movie star at the time in it. The credits lasted almost as long as the movie. what did I learn? That "my" country was the biggest and bravest bad ass even thought the Nazis had the coolest uniforms since the Romans. This was the cold war era and we had to have confidence in something.

 

Comics and cartoon filled the screen between features while the projector guy changed the reels, with fanciful characters made from strange animals that could talk in funny accents and never seemed to get injured. These creatures carried over to television and even formed a fan club and seemed remarkably simple and easy to follow, until "Fantasia" animated the classical music I had been learning from the local symphony. Flowers, and dancing hippos and even the devil himself made an appearance ending in another religious context.

Travel logs and movies of foreign lands were popular also, given a glimpse into other cultures and reenforcing the stereotypes we were taught. No one disputed that Chinese rode rickshaws, Indians (eastern) made snakes come out of baskets and (western) lost to the cowboys, the French were always singing and drinking, the English were our ancestors, and the Arabs rode on flying carpets.

Then movies became more expansive and artistic realism started to take over. "Lawrence of Arabia" was the first w-i-d-e film I remember with slow panning shots of the desert and camels in long parades through the sand. Even thought the history of the war in the middle east was not discussed in the classroom and even though the movie was extremely long and even though the editing was mixed, we sat through the whole thing. What else was there to do on a Sunday afternoon?

Then movies stated to connect to my physic.  One of the first movies I went back to see again and again was "West Side Story". The story was Romeo and Juliet but the colors were intense, the dancing and action fast pace, and the music overwhelming (even though Natalie Wood did not sing her part, I didn't mind). About this time in life, boys my age were being herded into teams and clubs and other social gatherings, but I wanted to be part of a gang. I started rolling up my long sleeve shirts, wearing chain bracelets, and trying to be "cool". 

At about the same time, during one of those matinee monster movie marathons, some one decided to slip in this artsy film between "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Black Lagoon".  Since movie ratings hadn't been invented yet, it was presented as an "Art" film. Badly spoken broken English soundtrack and confusing plot, but a pubescent teen full of testosterone did not mind. Though nothing was reveled through the gelled lens, it was implied and that is all I needed.

 By now films were really becoming artsy. The more controversial the reviews were the more I wanted to partake of the experience. Popcorn and goobers were not the draw anymore. Thrashing, writhing  bodies of young men and younger women to a soundtrack of rock and roll music made every film relevant.

 After every presentation, my friends and I would gather at the local coffee house and discuss the meaning of these experiments in film. Some would notice the camera angles while others viewed the significance of the film in it's message in political events. No matter the conclusion of the evaluations, we all agreed we liked seeing semi-nude people running around on screen.

 So when a film like "Candy" came out, with it's all-star list, except for the lead, taken from a book that was hidden away in the library stacks or purchased in one of those blue movie outlets, with a wonderful rock sound track by the Byrds and Steppenwolf, art films had become the norm.

Then it all changed.

 I seemed to migrate more to rock documentaries and musical adaptations but after a few they too became over done. "Woodstock" probably made the most impact and money at the box office and today has the most merchandising. The first rock movies, like "Hard Days Night" and "Tommy" were supported with large programs that were purchased in the theater and followed by record sales.

 Of course there was still comedy. A great escape for a couple of hours, especially if viewed through mind altering substances. Even "Star Wars" and "2001" became comedic under the influence.

 Movies started breaking down barriers. Like the travelogs, movies started presenting sites and sounds of places and people we would never see except in a dark room. And seeing Tina Turner shake her thing larger than life, it was probably good for a boy my age to be sited in a dark room.
Music that would have been overlooked in the vinyl store broke new ground through the movies.

 Other issues of the day began to emerge. Movies started to get more aggressive and forceful in their messages. "Midnight Cowboy" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" and the first lesbian kiss in "The Killing of Sister George" graced the silver screen with more thought provoking images than most theaters could tolerate, so the rating standards were created.

 By now, cowboys were replaced by space men and the small screen of television could not compare with the expansive effects of the movies. Our heroes of the series on TV had become sequels on the movie screen. Like the old Tom Mix movies, you watched a "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" movie knowing another one was in the works.

After a while, the price of movies rose to a point where I could see no point in attending a theater show. VHS or DVDs were on there way and the movie, yet smaller on the television, could be watched anytime and rewound and watched again. Still some movies became a special outing for romantic purposes and will be remembered that way.

 Someone recently asked me what was the last movie I saw. I paused and thought about the last movie seen inside a movie house. Sitting in the dark with a tub of greasy popcorn between your knees watching the light flicker on a gigantic screen getting the full emulsion of being drawn into a fantasy experience. Since I not seen a movie in a theater or on the small screen in some time I had to think. What would draw me into a room full of strangers to sit in an airplane seat and gawk for an hour at motion and sound sometimes overwhelming? Some actors I appreciate as I do some directors but when I see a movie release now-a-days, I check the trailer out on YouTube and decide I would not spend the money for I can anticipate the plot.

"Finding Neverland" I replied. The last movie I've seen.