I blew myself out of the water last Sunday. It was late afternoon that I learned the Oscars were on that night. I hardly go to movies anymore. I’ll watch tons on streaming services, but, the last flick in a theater I saw was more than two years ago — the Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.” The movie before that? It was “Meg 2: — The Trench.” No. It wasn’t a documentary on Meg Ryan’s breast enhancement procedure. It was about the uber-shark, the megalodon. My daughter and I love really awful movies about giant, civilization-gulping creatures.
I am a child of the cinema. Pretty much, they helped save my early life, and, like salt to popcorn, were a key ingredient in forming my creative life. I grew up on double and triple features, along with cartoons, newsreels, previews of coming attractions and fresh, hot popcorn not cooked with mystery WD-40 but actual, dairy-product, churned cream. When I was a boy, Newhall’s American Theater was sanctuary. The constructors of that 1941 cinema house had cleverly built an airshaft connecting the big popcorn maker at the concession stand directly into the air conditioning ducts and into the auditorium. A few minutes before intermission, an usher would throw a switch, sending a warm breeze of fresh, hot popcorn aroma into the theater. I remember buying a bag of popcorn for a dime. Today? A large tub is a car payment.
I went to see Pat Boone in “State Fair” — get this. Eight. Days. In. A. Row. To my joy and annoyance, I can still sing half the songs from the musical. “State Fair” wasn’t exactly “On the Waterfront.” But, summers were hot and theaters were so wonderfully air conditioned.
I miss the high holy cathedral of the single cinema, with its stand-alone huge cardboard movie displays in the foyer and the so-hopeful promise of stories, reminding that life can be funny, romantic and courageous. I smile, tickled at recalling my father’s story of being a little boy and walking 3 miles into town to see “Frankenstein.” He and his brother ran all the way home afterward. Why? They had to walk home through spooky woods at night, under a full moon.
For years, I held a dream job of being an entertainment editor for this, The Mighty Signal. I was PAID to go to movies, rate and recommend them. Or not. Much of my life? Hardly a week went by without seeing at least one film, sometimes, three or four. Now? I wonder if I’ll outlive the movie theater.
I just published my latest novel and was interviewed. One question threw me. The reporter asked that “if” (I corrected — “when”) my book became a film, who did I envision as the actors? That was an easy question with my first novel. As years dragged by, the leading man and lady, supporting cast and villains — they kept changing. Actors grew older. But, as generations passed, I always found a fresh batch of box office stars to replace the old.
I haven’t watched an Academy Award ceremony this century. Last Sunday? I didn’t even know it was on. I couldn’t tell you a single nomination in any category, including Best Picture. I can’t name 10 films from the past decade and I used to manage a movie star and worked in the industry for years. Yes. Ticket prices have climbed from a quarter when I was a kid to sometimes $20 today. Concessions? You need a bank loan. Something as simple as popcorn now tastes like cardboard and I’m just waiting for the day when California outlaws salt. Besides all the crippling costs and a good chance your film is crappy, I just don’t relate to stars or films anymore.
Since 1933’s original “King Kong” (caught it on TV), I’ve seen every action/adventure format ever put to script, so, there’s no surprises. But, so many of today’s films are laced with just an insufferable, preachy aftertaste, delivered by hypocritical, Just Stop Oil spoiled-brat, woke, thespians. Granted. Even the lowest-expectations film comes with some kind of message. They always have. Crime Doesn’t Pay. Love Wins Out. Work Hard & Succeed. It wasn’t as if even a few seemingly squeaky clean actors going back a century-plus didn’t live their private lives in cesspools of excess and perversion. My own generation’s cinema had serious cultural problems, like how minorities were depicted, for one. Even as a kid, I wondered, especially in Westerns, how come the hero was always a bachelor AND a stone-cold mass murderer? But, cinema made progress. I still carry a tickled-pink smile from seeing “Lilies of the Field” with Sidney Poitier in 1963.
When it comes to movies, tastes are different. Then, some have no taste. I can name names.
But, for me, many things are missing from today’s motion pictures. Part of it is this figure-eight loop. A word we never use anymore is — “wicked.” The American culture has become wicked, vulgar, even. The figure eight is the entertainment industry keeps feeding the public more porn. Hooked, the public demands more porn. Families drag underage children to slurp on Sour Skittles while bodies moan and writhe in the most imaginative of procreational attempts.
Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I don’t see much heroism in today’s cinema. I see actors posing as heroes, writers using the word, “hero,” in the screenplays. But I don’t see the classical depiction. I see victimhood.
It’s not to say there aren’t great flicks anymore (“Meg, 2”). If only as a dad, I pray it changes. I pray we find that simple, straight path of creating that great, ongoing American tradition of love, sacrifice, duty, honor, fun, escape and popcorn not cooked with synthetic motor oil.
“Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” is on sale at JohnBoston-Books.com. (It should be a movie.) So are other fine books, including his two-part “SCV Monsters” series. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.