Last night we had a movie I was semi-able to pay attention to: "Devil and the Deep"(1932), starring Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Laughton. Laughton plays a submarine captain who suspects his wife of cheating on him with his subordinate officers, played by Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Once again we have to ask, how's that for a cast? Laughton, whose credit reads "Introducing England's Great Thespian"; Bankhead, whom we've never seen before, but whose life was the stuff of legend, and a young Grant and Cooper. Wow, indeed. Most of the movie follows the Laughton/Bankhead marriage axis. He's jealous of her even when it's baseless, and it's literally driving him mad. Laughton plays off his own looks, which became a trademark for some of his characters (he wasn't handsome), and which was typified by his role as Quasimodo. He really was one of the greatest actors who ever lived. Bankhead is excellent too, as the worn-out wife, who is not altogether innocent regarding their marriage woes, and who seems an undignified presence. The script could be better spelled out, but this is 1932, and so even though its pre-Code, the subtext is left ambiguous. You wonder why Bankhead is married to Laughton in the first place. She's not quite a bimbo, but not exactly wife material, either.
And hey! On top of all that, it's also a classic submarine movie. We haven't seen a sub film in a while. I didn't even know they had modern subs in 1932; I thought they weren't developed till the '40s. I won't tell you what happens in the sub, but all in all, this flick is a minor classic, with high production values for 1932, and a cast that's as good as it gets. As noted, Tallulah Bankhead was something of a Hollywood legend, not for the right reasons, but she was excellent in this movie. Among other vices, Wiki says she smoked 6 packs a day! How could you even do that? Let's figure it out: six packs equals 120 cigs per day. We'll estimate on the high side and say she stayed awake for 18 hours a day, every day, and only slept for 6, and if we divide 120 by 18, that's still over six cigarettes per hour, or one every nine minutes for every hour of every 18 hour day. How can anyone smoke that much? Or maybe it's a Wikipedia exaggeration. Well anyhow, watch her in this excellent movie. She and Charles Laughton will keep you riveted.
Well, folks, the hits just keep on coming, because now I've remembered more about the screening of "Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child". Are you ready? Lillian was at the movie with Chris. I hadn't remembered that before. It's interesting how a memory can begin with a single image, like "Lillian on Marshall's porch", which for me was "on the back burner" in terms of importance for many years. And that was because all I had was that mental "snapshot": just a flash of Lilly on his porch. I had nothing to connect it to, and so for, like, 15 years, I never tried to develop it. I just figured she had some connection to him, and Kim had said to me in the '90s, "Y'know that neighbor of yours? He's known for hitting on women up at CSUN." In hindsight, Kim was trying to tell me something (thanks, Kim!), and I figured Lilly must have some connection to him, but I couldn't understand what it was, and so I let it go. All I had in my memory was that "porch snapshot", but then earlier this year, it began to develop and branch out, and it became connected to other memories and the floodgates opened. The point is, that it all started with a "snapshot memory" of a single image, which for years I thought was of low or lesser importance, and yet it turned out to be one of the most significant memories of them all, because it led to an avalanche.
Which returns us to the present, and what I remembered yesterday, that Lillian was at the screening of "Nightmare 5". The entire memory, of what transpired at that movie as a whole, also began with a single memory impression. Years ago, I made a list of all the movies Lilly and I had ever seen in our (almost) ten year relationship (if you can call our relationship a relationship). I've already explained that, for me, movie memories were (and are) "triggers" that are useful to bring back memories of a particular movie date. At worst, I can remember the mood: were we happy? Or was there a bad vibe? And at best, I can get a mental playback of the event, as if I am watching a replay, and when that happens it also connects me emotionally; it feels as if the event happened yesterday. And that's what has happened with the screening of "Nightmare 5", which for years I'd thought was just a "Bad Vibe" movie. Now, with "Nightmare 5", I knew all along that I hadn't seen it with Lillian but with someone else. Lilly never liked horror movies. I also knew that something unusual had happened after the movie was over, and that several of The Friends had also been there. Well, long story short, as recent blogs have revealed, we now know that I went with Pat F. to the movie, at the UA Granada Hills Theater, and we know that Chris and Dave Birke were there, and we know that Pat confronted them (see recent blogs).
But we didn't know, until last night, that Lillian was there, as well. Wow. Talk about a major league shocker. Yes sirree. That was one of the things Pat first pointed out, because he wanted to alert me to what was happening. "You see Chris in front of us?" Me: "Yeah." Pat: "And do you see who he's with?" Me: "OMG."
The image that came back to actually trigger that memory, was of Chris standing in the aisle in his boots, as Pat confronted him, saying something along the lines of "why don't you tell your brother what you've been up to?" Pat had already put the screws on David Birke, who left the theater, but Chris was still there, and as noted in the last blog, he was getting defensive and then belligerent. And last night, that's when the image of Lillian popped up, because I could clearly see her standing there in the aisle, with Chris, and he made a remark about her jeans, that they were tight, or something about her rear end, and it was deliberately done to let me know that he and she were intimate.
And of course, I was standing there completely dumbfounded, because for an entire year I had thought she was only fooling around with Terry. And now, here was Chris, shoving his involvement in my face. But it was brought about by Pat, and I'm still working on the larger memory, because I'm wondering how he came to take me to that movie, how he knew that several of The Friends would be there (including Chris, Lillian, Dave Birke, and possibly Dave Small and David Meissl, and even possibly Terry). A big question for me right now, is "why were all those people at that particular movie?" I mean, I know we liked Freddy Krueger, but this was the fifth film in the franchise. It's not like there should've been any big rush to go see it, and especially not a whole bunch of friends at once, on opening night, and besides that Lillian didn't like horror movies. So I am wondering if there was another reason they were all there.
At any rate, Pat took me to the theater, because he wanted me to see what was going on, and a huge part of the memory that's just come back, is that he took me to "have a coffee" when the movie (and the argument with Chris and Lillian) was over, because he wanted to "explain a few things."
"This is stuff you need to hear", he told me, "even though you're not going to like it."
And folks, he told me things that turned my life upside down. I'm not going to repeat them at the moment. You can re-read the last blog for a few details. But you can be sure that I remember a lot of what Pat told me. And right now, tonight, I have asked the rhetorical question, "How come none of these people ever went to prison?"
If you are one of these people, how come you never went to prison, given what you did?
I ask that question because, after Pat told me these things, I later got beaten half to death in Terry's apartment. And this is before I was almost electrically shocked to death there, with a stun gun, on the night of September 1st, 1989. It turns out I got assaulted twice, on two separate nights, in that fucking apartment. The beating took place, by my current estimation, about ten days after the screening of "Nightmare 5", on or around August 21. I was left with a black eye, a concussion, a broken eye socket, and a hairline fracture of my skull. They were concerned I might have a broken nose, but I lucked out on that one. I also got kicked several times in the ribs, when I was down on Terry's floor. At one point, I managed to escape and made it out the door, but the person who was beating me up came and got me in the stucco corridor next to Terry's unit, and forced me back inside by grabbing my pants by the belt loop. Then he did other things. Ann later came (following Lillian and her Dad), and took me to Holy Cross hospital, after which I was transferred Somewhere Else.
Yes indeed, that actually happened. 100% for real. And it got covered up, which was lucky for the person(s) who did it (it was mostly one person, though others participated in other ways).
But yeah, this is how memory recovery works, at least for me, and the things I'm remembering, which have started out as small "snapshots" or "triggers", have grown into life altering recollections.
It's a good thing I am one tough son of a bitch.
Because I really should be dead about four times over.
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