Prison and Film

I apologize to my kind reader (hey Cecil!) for my absence in the last month. I’m afraid for the entire month of March I was in prison.

I was given a speeding ticket for traveling at 46 mph in a 45 zone. A minor infraction to be sure but I happened to be driving a stolen police car at the time.

Even the most incompetent of cops tend to recognize a situation is afoot when a bald man wearing purple lipstick and a bathrobe is behind the wheel of one of their vehicles.

I did not resist arrest. I, in fact, gave a moan of pleasure when I was cuffed and asked the officer to cuff me tighter.

I was put on trial later that evening (the judicial system moves very fast in a fictional tale) and sentenced to a month in the Robert Blake State Penitentiary.

The old adage about surviving in prison is to pick out a fellow prisoner and beat the shit of him on your first day. I tackled a 3 foot Australian man to the floor and pummeled him with my best blows.

After he finished kicking my ass I was helped to my cell by two large black men who placed me on my cot and laid down on either side of me. I suppose I fell asleep at this point and had a marvelous dream about Oreos.

Well I’m out of the slammer now and back to work. I sit here on my hemorrhoid doughnut slurping pizza puree watching an old movie, which brings me to this particular rant.

I love old movies. I really do, the storytelling is far superior to that of modern cinema. The ambiance is better, the dialogue is rapid fire and there is no Pauly Shore.

However I am very creeped out by a certain aspect of these classics. When I watch a film from the thirties or forties I have a voice in the back of my mind nagging me with the comment, “Wow, all these people are dead now.”

I find it somewhat off putting to watch the work of a dead person. I don’t know why but it only bugs me in these old films, not in modern ones where an actor had died.

Fuck Heath Ledger.

However it really creeps me out.

The worst is when there’s a baby on screen. If I watch a classic silent film from 1917 or thereabouts and they show a baby in a scene, I have to stop myself from puking. “Wow, that baby is dead.”

I can’t reconcile the fact I’m watching a dead baby. King Solomon or not, no matter how you slice it a dead baby is not enjoyable.

On the contrary, when I watch an old movie say from 1928 and they show a VERY OLD person on screen I feel the complete opposite.

I feel a rush of joy and wonder.

It warms the cockles of my heart to see someone who was born before the civil war getting a chance to be forever preserved on celluloid.

That is why I will only watch old movies now set at geriatric facilities.

There are only about two of them, and I have not seen them, nor do I know if they exist; but those are the only ones I watch now.


I can’t think of a witty way to end this piece so let me just reiterate, Fuck Heath Ledger.