Chicago
When I was a boy, movies set in Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin made me sad. I thought I couldn’t watch them. They were dark. Those places seemed very far away. I felt I might be stuck in one of them. The lights were dim. I wanted to turn up the lights, add some, cheer things up. The stories were grim.
Usually, they were about lovers and secrets. Often, they were about spying. He knew, but he wasn’t sure of her. She suspected he didn’t really love her, but only wanted to know what she knew. She’s protecting someone. No, not a lover, but a friend from the past who helped her when no one else would. But why didn’t she just explain? He would have understood. He’s a monster, you know. No, no, I can’t listen to this, that’s not the man I knew. You do love him. Only like a brother. I owe him so much. Think of it this way; even now he is giving me you, maybe the first real love of my life. She’s lying. He’s confused.
I’m confused. I never could grasp what all the fuss was about. WHY DIDN’T PEOPLE JUST TALK AND TELL THE TRUTH?!! Well, there would have been no movie. And why didn’t someone turn up the lights, for Heaven’s sake.
They wore hats. Both men and women. Hats with feathers, hats that slouched over one eye, and coats—especially in the rain. Sounds of rain, wheels in the rain, screeching around corners, and sirens. Those eerie sirens and that Ooh, AHH, Ooh, AHH, Ooh, AHH. I thought, I’m so glad our sirens aren’t that grating and scary. And ours came down brightly lit streets. But that was another thing . . . even in the daylight those cities were dark. All that dark old stone, those old buildings. Courtyards, and those inner lobbies or foyers just off those sooty streets. Someone would ring the bell, a squawky buzz was heard, the door pushed open and you were in a black hallway. Sometimes there was a glass-enclosed “lift.” It was always the lift, not the elevator. There was wrought iron and you could see the cables. Often a door person appeared, partially, from a doorway. A short old woman or a hunched middle aged man; sometimes with warts, wary, toothy, or toothless, dark. Of course, these movies were almost always in black and white, the better to film shadows and make stark effects and emphasize all that darkness.
I would swear these streets, buildings, and apartments were smelly, too; musty. Smell-o-scope would have revealed this old odor, a scent of history, oldness, dank tired Old World.
Maybe that was it. It wasn’t the New World. It wasn’t Hollywood, where even dark stories had a cleanliness, a neatness, and bright lights. Except, there were those films noir. Those angry tales of American corruption. They made me sad, too. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the problem was. If one particular person had only confessed, everything would have been all right. Adults were always in such trouble. I empathized too much. If she was lying, I wanted to warn him. If the lawyers were trying to railroad a guy, I squirmed and throbbed. I wanted to jump into the screen and save him. I wanted to be in the alley when they jumped the guy, and hiding in the closet when the bad guys were coming to get the girl. Oh, maybe the worst was when the good guy was going back to the bad woman. She was seducing him and he was buying it. She wanted to kiss him, and I knew, I just knew, she was going to stab him. NOOOO, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want anyone to know I was so involved.
So, what do I do? I become an actor.
I was scared. New York was big, bad, and noisy. I said it was exciting. It scared me. I entered small apartments and felt strangled. One apartment, in a new building, was on a corner and I realized too late that the builders had squeezed the hallways to make the rooms. I hurried through to get to my small rooms. They were in the back. I could see a bit of green foliage from the bedroom window, but little else. I had wanted to escape my small town, where the sky was big and grass and trees were everywhere; you could see out of every window other houses, people, streets, and clouds. So I ran to a giant city with no sky, squished corridors, tiny back rooms, and sat there itching to get out. I spent most of my time trotting around the city. The New World sirens were spooky enough.
But I was out, and I stayed out. How could I ever settle here? I couldn’t and I never did. I swam. I charged around. I would walk very fast downtown or across Central Park. One night, I did that and told my roommates (I had them for about a year, the first there) and they screamed that I was never to do that again. Do what?! Walk across the Park at midnight on a snowy night, when it was an icicled, powdery, never-ending moonscape. Never, never EVER do that again. O.K. I would flee my digs and speed generally in the direction of my agent’s office. I looked at shop windows. I seldom went in. I sweated. I arrived at the office and talked to Jane E. Brown Alderman. Janey. She was sweet and bright. She is. I’d bring lemon drops, apples. Then I’d go to an audition in the Village. Afterward, I’d phone her and say I was on my way back. I’d walk. The game was to touch no one. I chose the Garment District route because the racks of clothes scattered all over the place. Bodies flew between vans, cars, racks, and trucks—it was a demanding gamut. I ran it. I touched nothing, no person or thing at all. I sweated. I got back to the office. Janey said, ‘You didn’t walk.’ I did too. You didn’t. You took a cab. Part way. I did not, I walked the whole way from the second I hung up. . . You’d better sit down. No, I need another appointment or a job or. . . I drank every night just to stay down, to sleep. Medicine. Ha.
I did not see those foreign movies then. Not the same kind. I saw THE CRANES ARE FLYING, THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS (which sounded like a train engine sounding its whistle), THE APARTMENT, JULES ET JIM, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (I thought it was pretentious nonsense; some people still think so, but I learned the match stick game from it: well, from “Time Magazine” sometime later, actually. No one can beat me at it—but it is a trick). I wandered around. I was lost.
When I was a boy, Sundays made me sad. It was quiet. Radios played opera music, televisions showed Bishop Sheen or someone like that. I never liked the Comics section of the paper. People went to church, and I felt irreverent. I went, but not whole-heartedly. I went to please my devout stepmother. Or, I left the house and ambled about, letting her think I was in church. I was, on my own. Lately, I’ve been thinking it would be nice to make a movie in Vienna, Munich, or Prague. Warsaw or Berlin might be fun.