A friend of mine who is a fellow screenwriter is writing a horror movie. Specifically, a teen "slasher" movie about a bunch of sassy-talking, shallow college students who go out to a secluded lakeside cabin to drink alcohol, say rude things to each other, and have sex, but instead end up getting killed in increasingly violent and disgusting ways. Apparently this type of movie is very "hot" right now. He already has a couple of pretty successful production companies showing interest in the project. The horror trend has been going pretty strong for a couple of years now and lately I've been wondering why.
Personally I hate horror movies, partly because they are completely contrived and formulaic and have no actual story or characters to speak of, but also because they are horrifying. To me there is plenty of horror right outside my window and the last thing I want to do with my hard-earned free time is pay $12-$14 of my hard-earned money to expose myself to two hours of gore and mayhem and sadism and violence. And as if that wasn't enough, you can play video games that allow you to pretend that you are the one who is dishing out the sadistic violent gory mayhem. A bunch of guys here at work spend most every evening playing on-line games in which they basically go around killing each other over and over again.
The weird thing is, some of these guys actually live in neighborhoods where drive by shootings and gang warfare are a reality. Not to mention that there's an actual war going on where every day people are being blown to bits by suicide bombers. Or a force five hurricane that almost completely wiped out one of America's oldest and most historic cities, leaving thousands of rotting corpses in its wake. Or the serial killers, child molesters and countless other psychopaths that parade across the seemingly endless succession of news shows on TV. Why do we need more horror movies?
The other day at work, I was passing by the conference room and I saw a group of people looking out the window. Naturally I went over to see what was up. Apparently, someone left a red tool case sitting on the street corner right outside our building. It had been sitting there for about two hours and finally security had called in the bomb squad. The streets were cordoned off and a group of brave men wearing protective vests was now approaching the suspicious case.
Where's the robot I wondered? Surely they're going to bust out the robot!
But no, instead they send one of the guys with the vests over to take a couple of x-rays of the tool case. Then he tied a string to the handle, looped it around the "walk" sign on the corner lamp post and brought the other end back to where his pals were waiting behind a large concrete pillar. One, two, three -- YOINK! They jerked the case up into the air. It flung open, revealing no bomb or even any tools inside, and hung there dangling from the lamp post. Those of us at the window were kind of disappointed. Not that we wanted a bomb to go off, but it did seem a little anti-climactic and totally low-tech. At least the streets would be cleared in time for us to get to lunch.
Maybe the world has gotten so horrifying that we need a jolt of blood-gutting mayhem now and then just to feel alive. The steady, familiar, day-to-day threat of being vaporized by the ubiquitous specter of "terrorism" has become downright comfortable. Last week, on the anniversary of September 11th, Los Angeles was issued a terrorist threat warning. On the 12th we all went to work as usual, nobody seemed particularly nervous or vigilant. Around noon I was talking to my cell phone company about upgrading to a better phone, when those annoying guys from security broke in over the intercom and announced a massive power shutdown. They were so loud I had to hang up the phone. They told us to stay in our offices and await further instruction.
I waited around for about twenty minutes but then I got really hungry so I went to the elevator lobby to see if the elevators were running. Apparently they keep one going in case of emergencies like low blood sugar. I went over to the food court where all the lights were off, but my pal at the sandwich place let me have a bowl of turkey chili. I sat and ate my chili near the window so I could read my book. It was kind of hard to read though, with the alarm beeping all the time and the intercom crackling with incomprehensible announcements about things like "emergency power" and "exits" and "evacuation." I wandered back to my building and found that it had apparently been evacuated. Fortunately the guard let me go upstairs to get my car keys so I could join the thousands of other idiots trying to navigate the hellish maze of L.A. traffic with the added benefit of no traffic lights.
I guess the bowl of turkey chili made me sleepy, because when I got home I took about a two hour nap. When I woke up the crisis was over so I made a sandwich and watched some TV. The next day everyone was talking about the big blackout and how they got home and how sore their legs were from walking down all those stairs (suckers!) By Wednesday it was pretty much forgotten. Just yesterday I was in someone's office when we heard several sharp, echoing POP-POP-POPs, that sounded an awful lot like artillery fire. We craned our necks to see where the sound had come from but couldn't tell. A few minutes later a blizzard of multicolored bits fluttered by the window. Apparently the sound we'd hear had been confetti cannons. Just another false alarm.
Maybe all these false alarms are getting on our nerves and we need to have something happen for catharsis sake. In that case, why not go see a really scary movie and scream your guts out when the killer pops out from behind the shower curtain.
At any rate I don't think it's a healthy sign when people need to be frightened out of their wits just to be entertained. But it's good for the movie industry -- horror movies are cheap and they rake in the cash. With any luck, my buddy's movie will be giving people recurring nightmares and influencing potential homicidal maniacs by next summer.
Way back in the day there was a series on PBS called the Ascent of Man, with Jacob Bronowski traveling all over the globe to present the history of the development of human intelligence. In the episode on the Greeks, Bronowski stood out on a sunny promontory overlooking the crystalline blue Mediterranean and theorized that one of the reasons that human thought evolved so brilliantly in that region was because of the wonderfully crisp clear skies and bright unfiltered light. Everything just seems clearer there, said Bronowski.
I often thought about that observation when I was hanging around Berkeley back in the late seventies. The air was crisp the sky was blue and the sun was bright. Everything just seemed clearer there. John and I awoke to just such a day the morning after our long ordeal. Beautiful, sunny and clear -- a perfect day to tour the Berkeley campus. In all the time I had spent there, I had never really seen most of the campus, so it was cool to actually take a guided tour. John loved it right from the start. Even though they didn't have a journalism major or a very big film department, the two subjects he is interested in, he still wanted to go there. We saw the major attractions, Library, Student Center, oldest building on campus, Nobel Laureate parking places and my favorite, the Campanille. I had always wanted to go up to the top but never did. We decided that after the tour we would go back and check out the Campanille.
At the end of the tour was a presentation on admissions. Boy was that a shocker. The out-of-state requirements are pretty tough. John would have to get all A's this year just to make the minimum GPA. And the tuition! Holy crap. He just wants to go here for a few years, he doesn't want to buy the place. Still, despite the seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, John still wanted to go to Berkeley. How can you blame him? It really is the best.
We grabbed some lunch at the Free Speech cafe and made a quick run down to a Goodwill store in town. John is a big Goodwill fan and has acquired many cool t-shirts there for under $2 each. We didn't see anything worth buying at the Berkeley store, however.
Next stop was the Campanille. We took the elevator to the top and looked across the bay. As sunny and bright as it was in Berkeley, San Francisco was cloaked in fog. We made plans to head across the bay for some quick sightseeing and to grab some dinner. But first a pit stop at the hotel for a much needed shower. In honor of Mitch Hedberg, I announced "I'm gonna go shave, too." Since I assumed that there must be someone else on the planet shaving as well.
Our first stop in San Francisco was the City Lights Bookstore founded by beat-poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and spiritual home to the beat generation and their metaphysical offspring. Since John basically grew up in a bookstore that is a bona-fide cultural desecndant of City Lights, I thought it would be good for him to see the original. I got him a copy of On the Road from the beat section on the second floor and treated myself to a collection of short stories by goofball genius T. Coraghessan Boyle. I snapped a photo of John standing under the sign that says "Jack Kerouac Alley" and we set out for out next landmark.
Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill stood out like a lighthouse in a sea of fog. We grabbed some pictures as the mist rolled past and we caught patches of city views between the clouds. John wanted to find a particular skateboard store called Huf SF, so we were asking people if they'd heard of it. We met a young woman from Canada, she didn't know Huf SF, but she told us about a place back in Berkeley called 510 that sold skateboard gear. She took our picture with the Bay Bridge behind us, standing in the exact same place I'd stood with my friend Ray Sharp when we first came out here 27 years ago.
We stopped off at Lombard Street for a photo op on the way down to the Marina. I wanted to take John to a place I'd found on the internet that seemed like it would be really cool -- it's called the Wave Organ and it's basically an Aeolian Harp for waves. It consists of a series of pipes that run from the water's edge up to this funky all-stone listening theater built on the end of a jetty in the SF Bay. When the water washes up against the pipes, its supposed to make these cool subtle musical sounds that echo off the pipes and the stone. Plus, given its location, it has some of the coolest views of the city imaginable. It seemed like the type of thing you could only find in San Francisco. As it turns out, the musical sounds are a lot more subtle than I expected and all we really heard was some gurgling like a broken toilet and a bunch of fog horns from ships somewhere out in the bay. I could tell John was less than thrilled. Besides, it was so fogged in we couldn't see the Golden Gate Bridge or Alcatraz or pretty much anything. And it was cold, too. And windy. And wet.
After a well-earned dinner, we headed over to the Embarcadero to visit one of John's hallowed shrines. Apparently some of the most important events in the history of skateboarding transpired on the metal railings and concrete steps and embankments of Pier 7. These days, however, the city has tried to curtail such exploits by affixing metal strips to any surfaces that might offer an opportunity for skateborders to "grind" or "ollie" or "split their skulls open" or any of the other activities they consider most holy. Nevertheless, the enterprising youths have chisled away several of these obstacles and continued to ply their art in this their sacred ritual space. I took some cool nighttime shots of John worshipping at his Mecca and we headed back to the hotel. It was nearly eleven and I was once again completely wiped out.
Before we hit the road the next day, we decided to stop and check out that skateboard place we'd heard about, which turned out to be just a few blocks from our hotel. John picked up a cool Tsunami relief t-shirt but couldn't find any shoes in his size. There are only certain shoes that will qualify, known as Nike SB Dunks. But, John wears a size 12 and they are hard to come by. Right next door was the Berkeley Hat Company where I picked up a cool straw pork-pie and a stingy-brim felt fedora. We had breakfast at Ann's Soup Kitchen where John had another excellent french toast meal -- even better than the Silver Spoon back in West Hollywood.
After breakfast we hit the road. John had called some friends to find out where the Huf SF store was located and with some clever mapwork we actually found it. John walked in wearing a Florida Gators T-shirt he'd picked up for 2 bucks at a Goodwill back in Connecticut. One of the guys who worked at Huf offered to trade him any shirt in the store for the Gators shirt. John agreed and picked out a cool T with the poster design from the movie Vertigo on it. While he was in back changing shirts, I asked the Huf dude if he'd ever heard fo the Wave Organ. He had and said it was one of the coolest places in the city, if you go there on the right day. I felt totally vindicated. John was extremely psyched to have scored such a cool shirt.
We left SF on a high note. We took the Great Highway to Route 1 south and drove along the coast to Santa Cruz. We took a quick detour to check out the UC campus there, but neither of us was much impressed. As John put it, "I'm not feeling this." A pit stop at Taco Bell revived our spirits and we drove on towards Big Sur. By this point the cumulative effect of many hours behind the wheel was beginning to burn me out. Winding roads, slow moving RV's and a couple of traffic jams began to get the better of me. But as we neared Big Sur the sheer drama of the landscape brought me back to life: Steep cliffs tumbling into rocky coves. Green hills haloed with ocean mist. Hazy shafts of sunlight slicing through towering redwood groves.
After we checked in at The Fernwood Resort we took a short hike through the redwoods along the banks of the Big Sur river. It was already getting dark and we had to cut short our adventure to order some pizza before the motel restaurant closed for the night. After dinner, John kicked my ass in a game of chess while several other guests watched. You know it wasn't that long ago that I had to let him win. Finally, physically and mentally exhuasted, I flopped into bed. John stayed up to write postcards.
The Fernwood Resort consists of a motel, campgrounds, cabins, general store, tavern, espresso bar and restaurant and is apparently the hotspot in Big Sur. Although if you blink going by it on route 1, you'll miss it. One thing I will say is they do a damn fine breakfast. I had the smoked salmon breakfast burrito, which was probably the best smoked salmon breakfast burrito I've ever had. John had yet another excellent order of french toast, making him three for three for the trip.
Before the long drive back to L.A., we stopped at a small park that features one of the most awesome views on the California Coastline. A short trail from the parking lot leads out to the cliffs overlooking the ocean, where you are treated to a spectacular view of an eighty-foot waterfall that spills from the top of the cliffs right down onto the beach. It's almost too cool to believe. The falls are set back in a small cove with jagged rock formations on either side of a crescent of sand. The water is a gorgeous blue-green and the fir tress seem like they are about to leap from the cliffs. On the morning we were there the whole scene was framed with a light fog that gave everything an air of unreality. The place is called McWay Falls and it really is a gem.
We got back on the road for another winding stretch along the coast. We made one quick stop near San Simeon to check out some elephant seals that had hauled their fat blubbery carcasses onto the beach to soak up some sun on their way up to Canada. After that it wasn't too far to route 101 and the final leg of our trip. By now I was pretty much a zombie having racked up about 24 hours of driving out of the past 4 days with nothing but the L.A. freeways to look forward to. We rolled into town about 8 p.m. and plopped down in front of the TV to zone out for a while before drifting off to dreamland.
The next day I drove John to USC where he began a month-long summer program. He had enrolled in a film class and would spend the next month watching movies and writing papers about them. Once we had him registered, photographed and moved in to his dorm room it was time for me to go. I was really excited for him -- hell I wish I could spend a month studying film at USC. I took his picture in front of the dorm just to prove to his parents that I had really gotten him there and then we said goodbye. It had been quite an adventure we'd just shared but he was about to embark on an even bigger one and he was eager to get started. I drove home and promptly fell asleep for about four hours.
How great to be young and experiencing all of these things for the first time. Moving away from home and meeting new friends and starting out on the path that will take you through the rest of your life. It's got to be one of the most exciting times of your life. I still remember how it felt at that age, like I was running toward the edge of a cliff and when I got there I would jump off and fly away. I don't really get that feeling so much any more. But spending these past few days with John reminded me of all of those hopes and dreams from such a long time ago. I had wanted to impress John by showing him what I could of this part of the world. As it turns out, John is the one who showed me a world I have been overlooking for too long. Because everything is new if you look at it with open eyes and an open mind. And I am still running to the edge of that cliff. I'm just not running quite as fast as I used to.
