Published in 2008 by
Academy Chicago Publishers
363 West Erie Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
© 2008 John Manderino
Printed in the U.S.A.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Manderino, John.
Crying at movies : a memoir / John Manderino.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-89733-580-5 (pbk.)
1. Manderino, John. 2. Authors, American--20th century—Biography. 3. Motion pictures—Psychological aspects. I. Title.
PS3563.A46387Z46 2008
813’.54—dc22
[B]
2008037434
To Marie
CONTENTS
Death of the Dinosaurs
Sands of Iwo Jima
Rio Bravo
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
West Side Story
The Birds
Singin’ in the Rain
It’s a Wonderful Life
Zorba the Greek
King of Kings
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
Hamlet
Elvira Madigan
The Graduate
La Dolce Vita
Easy Rider
The Spirit of the Beehive
Wuthering Heights
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen
The Exorcist
High Noon
Gone with the Wind
Taxi Driver
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Jason and the Argonauts
Going Native
Miracle in the Rain
Raging Bull
Coming Home
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Gandhi
Apocalypse Now
Field of Dreams
A Streetcar Named Desire
Testament of Love
Fargo
Brief Encounter
DEATH OF THE DINOSAURS
I remember, Aunt Sarah took me and my cousin Gene. I was six. Gene was eight and knew all about dinosaurs. He had little rubber ones in his room and knew their long names, their attitudes and eating habits. And while I sat there in my thick red seat, gazing at the blank screen, he whispered in my ear that no one knew why the dinosaurs all died out but this movie would explain what happened.
The lights lowered.
Dinosaurs, huge and steamy and sluggish, roamed among palm trees and giant ferns. Gene leaned his head near mine. “That’s a brontosaurus,” he whispered. And: “That’s a tyrannosaur.” And: “That’s not a bird, that’s a pterodactyl.”
Meanwhile, a man’s deep smooth voice was telling us how contented the dinosaurs were, what a good life they had. Most of them were plant eaters. Some, it’s true, ate other dinosaurs, but that was all right. Peaceful music played on.
Then the music darkened.
Something bad was going to happen.
Then it happened.
Volcanoes blew their lids, the music exploding, and thick boiling lava came oozing down, spreading everywhere, picking up speed, moving swifter than the dinosaurs could flee, some sinking into it, bellowing, others galloping through the smoke and falling flakes, their bodies on fire, howling like huge dogs. And the volcanoes caused earthquakes, opening long jagged cracks in the ground, one of them running right between a dinosaur’s feet, and he spread his legs while the crack grew wider until he couldn’t stretch any further and fell in, roaring with horror.
I couldn’t take this. I was crying. I wanted out. Aunt Sarah took me into the lobby.
It was quiet out there, clean red carpeting everywhere. I sat on a padded bench while she went to the glass concession stand and returned with a box of popcorn to settle my nerves.
But I was so shaky I dropped the box, popcorn tumbling out on the beautiful clean carpet. I got down on my hands and knees and began quickly picking up kernels and putting them back in the box, an usher coming in a red coat and tie, swinging a big-headed flashlight.
He stood over me. I waited on my hands and knees, head hung, hoping whatever he was going to do he would do it quickly. He spoke to Aunt Sarah, who was sitting there smoking a cigarette. “Nice boy,” he said.
“My sister’s kid.”
He bent down to me, hands on his knees. “Would you like another box of popcorn, fella?”
I looked up at him. He had thick dark hair in his nose. “No, thank you.” I didn’t want any popcorn. I just wanted to go home.
The usher patted me on the head, good dog, and went away.
I sat next to Aunt Sarah and chewed linty popcorn while she smoked another Lucky Strike and told me not to worry, it was only a movie, and anyway it all happened millions of years ago.
I could still faintly hear the dinosaurs bellowing away in there. They were so huge and pitiful. It seemed hard to believe that God would allow such a horrible thing to actually happen. But there it was, on film.
I wondered what else He would allow to happen.
THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA
“That’s real footage,” Uncle Doug points out.
It’s a grainy, faraway shot of a Marine hosing down a hillside with a flame-thrower.
I say to him, “Huh.”
Then it’s back to John Wayne and his men, who seem far more real than the real footage. John Wayne is Sergeant Stryker, his men the men of Company Able, on an island with palm trees, white beaches, and “a whole lot of little lemon-colored fellas,” as Stryker puts it.
Japs, he means.
I’m in my pajamas sitting cross-legged on a throw rug, my younger brother Mike upstairs in bed, Uncle Doug behind me in his sofa chair, in my parents’ basement where he lives.
Uncle Doug resembles Sergeant Stryker. He’s my mom’s brother so he’s not Italian and he looks like a combination of John Wayne, President Kennedy and the Marlboro Man.
“That’s called a B.A.R., what that guy is using right there,” he says.
I know he’s waiting for me to ask him, so I do: “What’s that stand for?”
“Browning automatic rifle.”
“Huh.”
Uncle Doug knows a lot about the war, having been in it. So was my dad, but Uncle Doug was a machine gunner on Okinawa. My dad was a cook on an island off Alaska— we have pictures of him, smiling, wearing the same white apron he wears at the butcher shop, not wearing a helmet, not needing one.
“Uncle Doug?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Did you kill any Japs over there?”
He tells me that isn’t something you should talk about. “But I’ll tell you this,” he says. “I know for sure I got at least eighteen of those sons-a-bitches—possibly more, but eighteen for certain. But like I said, it’s not something you should talk about.”
“Eighteen, Uncle Doug?”
“At least.”
My dad killed pigs and chickens.
“Those boats are called A.L.C.’s,” Uncle Doug informs me.
“A.L.C.?”
“Amphibious landing craft.”
“Huh.”
Stryker and his men hit the beach but get pinned down. This wisecracking Brooklyn Dodger fan they call Rigs gets shot. He tells Stryker, “Looks like … I’ll get a good … night’s sleep … tonight, Sarge,” and dies.
Then a commercial for Bill Moran, your friendly Dodge dealer. “C’mon down!” he shouts, spreading his arms.
Rigs is dead and this clown is selling cars.
I sit there wishing to God I was on Iwo Jima with a B.A.R., racing in a zigzag, blazing away, screaming, Die, you lemon-colored sons-a-bit
ches, die, die!
“Absolutely worst cars ever built,” Uncle Doug is telling me.
He drives a Plymouth Fury. It’s parked out front, a work helmet in the back window. When he’s not between jobs he’s an ironworker, in a helmet and tool belt, strolling sky-high girders, a Pall Mall in the corner of his mouth.
My dad wears an apron and waits on customers. He doesn’t even smoke.
“That’s a good old standard M-1 rifle he’s got right there,” Uncle Doug points out when the movie is back, Stryker shooting a Jap who shot the happy-go-lucky guy from Tennessee they called Farmer.
“Huh.”
I’m not that sorry about Farmer. He was kind of an idiot.
Stryker and his men fight their way to Mount Suribachi, where they rest for a minute, Stryker pulling out his cigarettes, saying he feels pretty good. And just then, just as he’s saying how good he feels, he gets a bullet in the back from a sniper.
Someone machine-guns a nearby palm tree and a Jap falls out of it. Then they turn to Stryker. “Is he … ?” one of the men says. And the one bending over the body says, “Yeah.”
“Those bastards,” Uncle Doug says quietly.
I can’t speak.
Then that famous shot of those five Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
“That’s real footage.”
I manage to say, “Huh,” tears running freely down my face now.
Then one of the men growls out, “All right, let’s get back in the war.” And they trudge off.
The End, music up:
From the halls of Montezu-uma
To the shores of Tripoli …
Uncle Doug tells me to turn it off and I do, but I don’t want to leave. I want to talk. I want to tell him how I feel about the United States Marine Corps, whose motto is Semper Fidelis, meaning Always Faithful, and how faithful I will be to the Marines, always, and how I hope to God when I’m old enough to enlist there’s a war going on, hopefully with those little lemon-colored bastards again.
But he tells me, “Lights out, soldier.”
I go upstairs. I walk quietly past my parents’ bedroom, my dad snoring away in there.
He has to get up at 5:30 in the morning, while it’s still dark out. And he doesn’t get home again until dark. And he does that six days a week, for us—my mom and me and my brother and three sisters—and I know he’s the best father in the world. I know that. I do.
But still: while all those guys were dying on Iwo Jima— guys like Rigs, like Stryker—he was up in Alaska, in an apron, making spaghetti and meatballs.
RIO BRAVO
There was this very clean, very quiet kid my age, Jerome Fitzgerald, who lived at the other end of the block with just his mom. One rainy Saturday afternoon he rang our front doorbell. My mother answered it and came for me. “It’s that kid—what’s his name? Jerome?”
“Who?”
“From down the block.”
“What’s he want?” I said, going to see.
He was standing on the porch in a yellow raincoat and hood, under an umbrella. He spoke as if reciting: “My mother was wondering if you would like to come with me to see a movie at the Dolton Theater. Not with her,” he added. “She’ll just drive.”
Out on the street a car was parked along the curb, its motor running, a large woman behind the wheel.
“Right now, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“What movie?”
“Thunderball.”
“James Bond?”
He nodded.
I stood there considering.
“Is she paying?” I asked.
He nodded.
“What about candy?”
He nodded.
I told him that sounded fine. I went and got my raincoat.
On the way there, I sat with Jerome in the back seat, his mother explaining as she drove along, “You looked to me like the sort of fellow who might enjoy seeing a good movie now and then—Jerome’s the same way, the very same—and I thought to myself, ‘Now isn’t it silly—isn’t it selfish—to be taking only one of these boys to the movies, just because he happens to be my son?’”
I looked at Jerome.
He shrugged.
As it turned out, the movie was quite excellent, and during it I had two bags of popcorn, a box of Good ‘n’ Plenty, a large Coke, and a Slo-Poke which I was still working on as we afterwards got into her car waiting out front.
“Well? How was it? How was it?”
I told her it was good.
“Jerome? Your verdict?”
He told her he thought it was good, too.
“Great minds think alike,” she said, and laughed, pulling away from the curb.
On the way home she talked about how wonderfully this had worked out and said we should do this every time a new movie came to the theater, on its very first Saturday matinee. “What do you think, John? Does that sound to you like a pretty good idea?”
I told her, “Sure.”
“Jerome? What about you? John is up for it. Do you think that sounds like a pretty good idea? Pretty good plan?”
“I guess,” he said, looking out his window.
She laughed. “Great minds think alike!”
Turning down our street she asked me if I would like to stop over for some fudge brownies she’d made especially.
I didn’t want any. For one thing, I was so full I wasn’t sure I could finish my Slo-Poke. And anyway I didn’t want to go to Jerome’s house. He was so quiet and she never shut up. “No, thank you,” I said. “I’m supposed to be doing something.”
“Oh?” she said.
“I’m building a doll house for my little sister Nancy.”
“How sweet.”
She drove on past their house and dropped me off at mine. I thanked her and said goodbye to Jerome and got out of the car and forgot about them.
But two Saturday afternoons later Jerome rang the front doorbell again, his mother in the car, the motor running.
So all that fall and winter I went to every new movie at the Dolton Theater, free of charge, riding in the backseat with Jerome while his mom talked on and on, usually about him, about some “mischief” he’d been up to lately, some prank he had pulled. You could tell she was trying to show me what a fun-loving person he was, what a fun friend he would make, but usually the mischievous prank he pulled seemed a lot more weird than fun-loving, like the time he dumped all the silverware into the fish tank.
“You boys are all alike,” she cheerfully complained. “You’re all a bunch of little rascals.”
Jerome and I meanwhile sat there looking out our separate windows.
And after every movie, turning down our block, she would invite me over for brownies, or tollhouse cookies, or strawberry ice cream. And I would tell her my uncle Billy from Texas was visiting, or I had to help my brother with his homework, or get my mother some All-Bran for her constipation.
Between movies I never hung out with Jerome, or even saw him since we went to different grade schools, but every two or three weeks we went through the same routine, no matter what movie was showing. Sometimes it was something good, cowboys or cops or commandos, but I also remember seeing things like Pillow Talk, with Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
The best one I ever saw with Jerome, by far, also turned out to be the last one we saw together: Rio Bravo.
John Wayne was Sheriff John T. Chance, with a great-looking hat. Dean Martin was Dude, trying hard to stay off the bottle and be useful against the bad guys. Ricky Nelson was Colorado but really just Ricky Nelson in cowboy clothes. Walter Brennan was good old Stumpy, limping around and complaining in a high cranky voice. And Angie Dickinson, as Feathers, had this way of standing with her hands at her hips looking sideways at John Wayne, who she liked a lot.
After several setbacks they finally beat the bad guys, thanks in large part to Stumpy of all people. And it looked like Dude was going to lick his drinking problem after all. Ricky Nel
son would be cheerfully moving on now. And John Wayne and Angie Dickinson were definitely going to be together, maybe get married, who knows? And as The End appeared on the screen, Dean Martin sang in his laid back way, “While the rolling Rio Bravo rolls along.”
I felt great.
Leaving the theater with Jerome I just kept shaking my head: “That Stumpy. Who’d a thought? Y’know?”
Jerome shook his head. “Not me.”
I liked Jerome. Jerome was all right, I decided. True, he didn’t play any sports, and his clothes were far too neat and clean, and he wore a wristwatch, and probably had hobbies, and his name was Jerome …
When his mother asked me how was the movie I told her, “It was really good, Mrs. Fitzgerald.” And when she asked Jerome he told her it was excellent.
“Well,” she said, “listen to you two.”
I knew what was coming next.
“Sounds to me like you fellas might enjoy a little chinwag together, compare notes. Maybe over a nice bowl of tapioca. How does that sound?”
I was in such a good mood from the movie I told her that sounded fine.
She went quiet for a moment, driving along. Then she said, “Hear that, Jerome? We’re having company.”
“Ma?” he said.
“Yes, dear?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Of course you can talk to me. What kind of—”
“In private?”
“Well, hon, that’s a little difficult right now.”
He laid the side of his head against the window.
“Jerome’s a little nervous,” she explained to me. “But he’ll relax. Won’t you, dear. Just give him a chance.” She was looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Everyone deserves a chance. Don’t you think?”
So I went to their house and ate tapioca from a red glass bowl at their kitchen table, sitting across from Jerome, his mom leaving us alone so we could talk to each other and become friends.
I told him the tapioca was good, the best I’d ever had, which was true. I told him my mom’s was always gummy.
He said if I wanted seconds he was sorry but there wasn’t any more.
I told him that was okay. I told him I was pretty full.
He nodded. He said I’d eaten an awful lot in the last couple of hours.
I gave a laugh, agreeing.
Crying at Movies Page 1