My favorite part of our wedding was driving away in Chris’s Jeep Wrangler with cans shouting and rattling like tambourines along the road in celebration of leaving. We have a snapshot of the moment. The passenger side door is open and my white icing dress is piled up around me in the passenger seat. Chris is leaning from the driver’s side close to me; our faces are lit with smiles and certainty. The picture of us in front of the altar reciting our vows is beautiful but we look so unfamiliar, so unlike ourselves.
The photo of Chris in the driver’s seat and I in the passenger seat captures our truest commitment to each other.
When we were in high school, Chris would come every morning to pick me up for school in a light blue 1971 Volkswagen Bug with a broken muffler. You could hear him coming long before he pulled into the driveway. I was never embarrassed by the clatter coming for me; it always seemed he just couldn’t contain himself. It was like fireworks going off every time he came to my house. On winter mornings, he kept a blanket in the car because the heat didn’t work. We could see our breath all the way to school. On hot days, we put the windows down and puttered along with the breeze hitting my tanned legs thanks in no small part to those 1980’s mini-skirts. And in the quiet spaces of the car, through all the seasons of life, always, The Smiths were playing on cassette tape and Morrissey sang his elusive lyrics and radio unfriendly songs like “Girlfriend in a Coma” and “Some Girls Are Bigger than Others” and “Hairdresser on Fire.”
At nights and on weekends, Chris worked at the movie theater inside the mall. Some nights, I would meet him there with my friends. When he would get off work, I would leave with him, and he would drive me home in a rush to beat my Cinderella curfew. Sometimes the theater manager would ask him to drop off film reels at the post office on his way home. I guess once a movie had its run at the theater, the reels were sent back and new releases were delivered. We would drive the late night streets, and I never wanted to go home. That blue VW bug was so filled with only us; we were so alone with each other in that old beat up car. My own kids will never know that kind of privacy because of their phones which bring their friends into all their private spaces and places. In Chris’s car, we talked, we listened to music, we kissed, we looked at the stars, we held each other, and talked some more. The windows were always fogged up from either the cold or our pent up teenage desire.
I fell in love driving in cars with him and watching movies at the theater waiting for him to get off work. I’d get in for free and head into the darkened theater while he emptied trash cans and swept the floors of infinite popcorn kernels. When a movie let out, he had to clean up the leftover drinks, empty candy boxes and tubs of popcorn. Most days, cleaning under the seats, he would find money, mostly coins but sometimes bills. Even today, when we sit in a theater and the lights go down, someone is pulling napkins from a pocket or rustling for something and we hear a coin hit the concrete floor with a lovely clink. He gives me a knowing look, and we hope a broke 16 year-old usher looks carefully for the treasure to be found under movie theater seats. I love this history between us and that we know the old stories of each other’s lives.
So after all those years of spending time in the movie theaters and dreaming of the stars in California, to finally step into the harsh reality of modern day Hollywood is a bit of a shock. There is not much of the old Hollywood glamour left in today’s Hollywood. The number of homeless encampments and amount of human suffering surrounding some of the iconic spots of Hollywood is something you can’t ignore.
In the past, in the midst of painful American moments, Hollywood earned its reputation and its billions by creating an alternate reality and allowing us to collectively escape the hard times together. It made movies and told stories that took us away from the pain of today. Bill Maher said recently on his HBO show REAL TIME, that Hollywood needs to get back to its old filmmaking days. He stated that this year’s Oscar nominees are so depressing they should be sponsored by “Razor blades, Kleenex, and Rope.” Many of today’s Hollywood films are reflecting today’s Hollywood streets.
(The first time we visited Hollywood as a family in 2015.)
In the spirit of the new and old Hollywood, we uncomfortably pushed past the realities of sidewalks filled with mental illness and approached the famous Grauman’s Chinese theater with awe the first time we visited. Driving past the sidewalks of signatures, handprints and footprints again this time feels like opening a memory book of first dates at the movies, late nights on the couch, cheap afternoon matinees, collected ticket stubs and remnants of conversation.
Seeing these iconic stars, makes me realize I can actually trace my love of the movies even further back from falling in love with a theater usher. When I was young and sweetly free in the summer months from school, my working, single mother would drop us off at the movies and my sister and I would spend hours watching children’s movies like Swiss Family Robinson, The Rescuers, and Herbie Rides Again. The theater was a freestanding circular, windowless white building in the parking lot of the mall, ugly in that 1970s architectural way of Eastern European brutal pall. Seeing Grauman’s Chinese theater up close with its beautiful construction surviving from the 1920s or seeing photos of old theaters from the 1950s and 1960s with glamourous box office lighting created by exposed bulbs and vintage fonts on the marquee, I feel deprived of a beautiful childhood. Still, the Summer Movie Extravaganza of my elementary school years was an amazing childcare option for latchkey kids like us. Inside a darkened theater in the care of storytellers was better than being home alone wondering what to do if someone came knocking on the door.
Those days at the movies were perfectly spent with my sister full of anticipation waiting for the lights to go down. This is still one of my favorite feelings and places, settling into a velvety soft movie seat, lifting my sticky shoes from the soda sweetened concrete, buttered popcorn on my tongue giving last glances to my sister before the darkness lights up the screen.
To visit Hollywood, even in the midst of a pandemic and immense human suffering, it feels like a holy pilgrimage of sorts, in pursuit of some glamourous religion. I press my hands into the cemented prints and touch an idol. I walk around with my head bowed to the sidewalk squares looking for names and shout praises when I find someone. “Look! Look over here.” A call and response ensues with each of us contributing. “Here’s Steven Spielberg, here’s Marilyn Monroe, here’s Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz!!
Certainly throughout American movie history, there have been years of escaping to the movies and years of wanting to escape the movies themselves. Movies can reflect our current reality or create a reality beyond what we can imagine for better or for worse. I abandoned movies only once briefly when I watched The Shining and understood the power of horror to linger long after the movie ended. I dreamed in blood and knew that evil could find its way to my house, to my bedroom. Poltergeist added to my fears. Thunderstorms now sent me hurtling into my sister’s bed lest a murderous tree burst through my window to drag me off. I didn’t think I would ever be able to shake the dread that comes with night.
Then circa 1983, I was at a sleepover and The Exorcist and The Omen were the VCR picks for the night. I knew I was doomed if I watched, so I spent most of the night with my back turned to the television and buried in blankets. I tried to look away, to conjure Disney on the screen, friendly talking animals, adventurous escapades, happy endings, subtle cruelty by witches and stepmoms not unseen forces of possession and evil. With my back turned resolutely away from the television, to my shock and dismay, I could see the movie reflected in the glass panes of the fireplace doors. I kept sneaking glances at the dulled movie screen on the fireplace, maybe hoping if I didn’t see it in full horror glory, it wouldn’t scare me. But it did. Walking through Hollywood today, seems eerily similar.
I don’t watch those kinds of movies anymore; they disturb the peace too much in my mind and in my rooms. They alter the darkness, the spaces around me that pulse and lurk after watching scary movies. Needless to say, I didn’t look for Stephen King’s hands or Freddy Kruger’s blades on the Hollywood sidewalks.
I couldn’t watch Disneyesque movies for the rest of my life though, and I was still a few years away from the delight of 80s teen movies. During these in between years of growing up and into the world of complicated reality, I watched Kramer vs Kramer and The Champ. The sadness in these dramatic movies lingered just like the shadows of scary movies. But I could still sleep easy on the edges of melancholy. I certainly didn’t understand the women’s lib context of Kramer vs. Kramer, but I understood that no one was getting everything they wanted in that movie and happy endings are really compromises. And people change not because they are possessed by demons but because they want something different.
At the time, I was one of the only kids in my class with parents who were divorced, so here was something that might explain my life to me since my friends could not. Even at a young age, I knew this was a better use of story than ax-wielding fathers, ghostly hotel guests and cascades of blood. This was something I could relate to, not escape from. And while I may not have had a boxing champ for a father, I knew something of eternal optimism of idealizing the bruised family you have no choice but to root for and to love with all the dimpled smiles you can muster. I will take the ache of The Champ’s last scene, the desperate sobs of Ricky Schroeder and sweet tug to wake his father, over angelic Carol Anne communicating with ghosts through her television. And if growing up is anything, it’s figuring out what you like. Movies help you do that.
I am careful not to go too far behind the curtain in our most recent visit to Hollywood for fear of dispelling the magic of the movies. If I think too much about sets and costumes, behind-the-scenes peeks and the houses of movie stars, or the multitudes of humans suffering on its streets, the Hollywood machine reveals itself and the dream world of the movies is a puff of smoke blown to the wind like a magician’s trick.
But maybe Bill Maher is wrong. Maybe the depressing 2021 Oscar selections are just the right picks this year to reflect the painful reality in America today. Perhaps pandemic Hollywood is working as a reality check, as an agent for change, instead of playing its most frequent role as a vehicle for escapism, illusions, or dreams.
Looking at the empty and boarded up theaters all along Hollywood Boulevard and its surrounding streets, it’s not clear yet if Hollywood can survive acting as the nation’s conscience. It may need to get back to its glory days of providing the great escape as fast as it can to fill those seats again.
All those visions you conjured up in my while I read this brought color back into my muddled brain. I remember Chris' VW, and I love your life together. Keep writing, please, it brings so much joy. Love, Tree
Wow... this spoke to me in so many ways. The white movie theater behind the mall... I’m wondering if it was the old white theater behind pembroke mall as I literally grew up watching movies every Sat with my Mom who just passed away last week.(rescuers was and is my all time fav Disney) The memories you spoke of ran an eerily parallel line to my life... from getting spooked (the excorcist 😭)to having parents that divorced at such an already trying teenager time in my life. I write through tears as you really spoke to my heart in a beautiful relatable way ... so thank you from my soul .... I’m so happy I subscribed for the year and look forward to each read and adventure to come ❤️