So, here are a couple of fun experiences I had this past (couple of months).
First of all, I actually got to meet somebody who has my dream job. I got to meet Andrea Kalas for thirty minutes at Paramount. She was very cordial and had a lot of helpful, encouraging advice. After all, one of her first major projects. I'm forever indebted to Tom, who spurred the Bessie Love post from last month, for putting me in touch with her.
Secondly, I've had a few production gigs, some of which actually paid, but all of them were good experiences. I've had some shitty, shitty PA jobs before, so I ought to know. There are some in the future, unpaid for the most part, but it makes school bearable.
Right now, I am on Spring Break, and last night I went to see Ran at the Stanford Theater with my dad and my brother. Now, I'm one of those people who needs to see a Kurosawa movie in the theater, and not only because that's the only way to see them. I'm have a bad case of that very modern disease, the ADD, and it makes watching anything on DVD a bit difficult. With nobody to watch you (and judge you), you find yourself folding laundry, checking your email or rushing back and forth from the kitchen to microwave a burrito while the movie plays. If the movie has subtitled, its even more of a problem; half the plot goes missing, characters become indistinguishable, you get the drift. So I always welcome to opportunity to see anything in the theater that I know isn't going to completely captivate me.
(That's not to say that Ran isn't a captivating, powerful film. It is. It's a strong story (you know, King Lear) and beautifully told. The lush greens and brilliant reds really make you appreciate the look of projected film. I'd never seen Ran before, and I'm glad that this was my introduction to it.)
The Stanford Theater and me go way back. I saw my first silent movie, Safety Last, there when I was seven (that's a story for another day). I saw many of my favorites there for the first time: Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, the silent Ben Hur, These Three, The Man Who Laughs. In high school I went all the time, sometimes with a friend but usually alone; I liked to do things by myself at the time anyway.
Flash forward five or six years to now, and I am very much a changed man. I strongly dislike going to movies alone. I haven't gone to see a conventional movie on my own since 2007 (Aranofsky's The Fountain - which I liked). This past month, however, I've had a bit of regression to my past life as a chubby, virginal, be-acned seventeen-year-old in the form of screenings at the Silent Theater down on Santa Monica and Melrose in Hollywood. I was most excited to find out that they were screening a Tod Browning silent from 1926, The Mystic with Aileen Pringle, because, as it just so happens, me and The Mystic go way back.
Flashback to 1996. I'm 11, I'm in sixth grade, and I'm going through a phase where I want to be a fashion designer. After haunting every fashion section of the local library for at least a week, I come away with an awareness of the artist Erte, and his amazing body of work that spanned over fifty years. I was enthralled by his extravagance, his use of detail, his willingness to show bare breasts and, most notably, his time spent in the mid-1920's as a couturier-in-residence at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He designed sets and costumes for the likes of Marion Davies, Carmel Myers (his favorite), Norma Shearer and the exquisite above-mentioned Miss Pringle. Among the illustrations in the two books of his that the Palo Alto Library System holds are both costume sketches and tantalizing set stills from The Mystic. I remember staring at those photos and wondering if I would ever actually see the movie itself. It seems so long ago and so far away.
Well, I got my chance. I want to actually write a review, but that can be done another time. The issue at hand is regressing back to high school. I say this only because I went alone and wished that I hadn't. I made a sheepish attempt to invite a couple of people at the last minute. I didn't expect any sort of big crowd to show up, but when I got there, there was a line out the door. I was worried that I wouldn't get in. Nobody resembled the crowd I expected. Almost everyone in attendance was young, slim, clearly well adjusted and not at all crotchety. They all had dates.
At first I felt encroached-upon. All I wanted to do was slink into a quiet screening of some obscure movie, have my box of candy all to myself, and then slink back out. It was exactly the kind of experience I could have at the Stanford way back then, with the cavernous auditorium barely an eighth full. For some inexplicable reason I felt angry at everyone there. Then I caught myself; I was being stupid. I should have rejoyced, as I do now, that so many people had an interest in this movie. I should have been happy for The Mystic that I almost had to fight my in to see it.
Then there was the fact that I was alone. I felt so weird and naked there, being one of the few people with no date, no entourage. I look back on the situation and I realize that, generally, I don't often expect my friends to have any interest in these events. This is silly, of course. Case in point, I met up with some friends right after (a last minute thing) and they said "Oh, that sounds like so much fun. You should have told us." I don't doubt that I have cool friends, but I forget that we have as much in common as we do.
My resolution for April: Do a better job of inviting people to stuff.
