The Beach Bum

I remember vividly watching a movie whose title I've forgotten at the Regal Cinema (when it was open) and one of the social failure characters announced he was going to get the money and fulfill his dream of going to Key West, at which the audience as one sat up and yelled at the screen in unison: "We don't want you here!" If we're going to be honest most movies made in Key West in whole or in part leave one feeling that way. The flicks always portray Key West as a magnet for scoundrels ad wastrels who only seem colorful in fiction; in real life these people are a pain in the ass.

Apparently there's a new effort being filmed in Key West and some people are all agog. IMDB says it's called The Beach Bum - oh joy!- wherein "a rebellious stoner named Moondog (Matthew McConaughey) lives life by his own rules." Further from IMDB: According to director Harmony Korine, some cinemas in los Angeles have agreed to show the movie while spreading curls of marijuana (smoke).

It's not really surprising one gets tired of seeing Key West in the movies. There have been some good ones though. 92 In The Shade if you can get ahold of that Peter Fonda classic from the novel. I liked CrissCross starring Goldie Hawn with some excellent scenes of older Key West. A friend of mine was an extra at the baseball field at Peary Court and she remembers the experience fondly. I didn't mind A Murder of Crows either with Cuba Gooding. Though not great it has  a nice chase scene on White Street and some boating shots as well. The plot is better than you expect. At least I seem to remember it that way and it's been a few years.

I don't know what to think about some movie about a beach bum in a town where only movie stars can afford to buy ( I exaggerate only slightly) and in which Jimmy the musician who never showed up to help out after Irma has a role. You can assume I don't think much of the premise for this movie. Apparently Buffett shot his scenes with "Moondog" in Miami. Buffett's connections to Key West are tenuous at best. Yes he got his start in Key West but the pursuit of fame and fortune have led him elsewhere, to more profitable places.

Key West as I like it: nooks and crannies and quiet streets and me and my dog. Not at all like the TV series Bloodline which I liked until they decided to end it abruptly and prematurely. The final season made little sense to me. 

Oh and some inconsiderate soul standing in the dead middle of the sidewalk. I wanted Rusty to pee on his shoe as we walked around his eminence. Rusty of course was too polite. Perhaps one day...probably about as soon as someone gets around to telling a real story about life in Key West.

Really. A beach bum living by his own rules. How likely is that? Not as sexy in real life as a movie star, eh?

The Regal

My wife suggested we go to the movies last weekend.She also mentioned there was a flick she wanted to see at the dreaded Regal Cinema in Searstown and I recoiled. I hadn't been to the six screen Regal in years, a place that lingered in my memory as a damp smelly place with gruesome employees and movies that never started even close to on time.

The movie was also a bit underwhelming sounding, a vehicle for three elderly actors who seemed like they should know better. Alan Arkin, Michael Cane and Morgan Freeman were starring in "Going In Style." I felt like our Saturday might not be going that way at all. But I'm a  good sport...so off we went in as much style as we could muster.

Well, traffic on Highway One was abysmally slow and chaotic for such a simple operation:one road one direction....follow the yellow line and put the phone down. But eventually we arrived and promptly found parking in the very small lot behind the theater. The box office was staffed and functioning, another surprise as in the old days they often ignored your feeble attempts to buy tickets. 

The theater lobby was clean and equipped for the youth of today, even those dressed in towels. We had a bit of fun buying beers which was Soviet in complexity as the computer only allows one sale per ID (mine was in the car) and you get a wristband with your purchase. The beers are kept locked up and after a few minutes my wife went back for her beer, her second on her identification and the clerk unlocked the safe where they keep the demon liquor. Apparently they take massive precautions as young people like to try to get beer for themselves at the theater...little criminals. Anyway she got a Blue Moon and I got a Stella Artois and off we went into a clean well kept theater screening room. The audience was well behaved and all was very pleasant. I was surprised, things have changed.

I would never have thought to recommend the Regal and even though it is nothing like the vast modern multiplexes on the mainland the current management is running a tight ship and that makes it worth considering once again as a place to go see movies. Which I consider to be great news.

And in the men's toilet  I saw a message that made me smile, a bonus: love is life. Whatever that means.

Life is actually quite good at the Regal these days. And the movie? It was okay, not memorable but it moved along at a  decent clip and I liked the ending. Can't ask fro better than that I suppose.

Sash Mill Cinema

I have been debating dropping my disc account at Netflix, because my wife has an Amazon Prime account so we get Amazon's free TV and movie service in addition to streaming Netflix. But I am having trouble dumping the compact disc delivery service as they have tons of stuff there and old movies are my pleasure at the moment. Afternoons when my wife is at work I exercise in front of the screen as I don't enjoy exercise and watching Bogart or Peck or Heston strutting about makes the medicine of weights and  stuff go down much more easily. I learned to enjoy old movies in my young adulthood in Santa Cruz California.

The Nickelodeon Theater was the mainstay of the University crowd when I lived there in the 80s and today the independent theater has grown to three outlets across Santa Cruz County. I was moved to reminisce about my young movie habits when I learned that "The Nick" has been sold to a southern California chain which promises to change nothing. 45 years of local ownership was a long run...And in those days the Nick as it was known had bought another little theater called the Sash Mill. I have hunted everywhere for a picture of the theater but I have none and neither does the Web apparently. I think the year of it's closure came well before the Internet so all I have left of the Sash Mill is memories. Nowadays it's a bunch of shops. Lots of University towns around the US had these repertory theaters changing films every couple of days, re-playing lots of them as we were barely learning about video tapes in those days which seemed miraculous but it took a while for Truffaut and Fellini to find their way into video stores. Besides we valued the full screen dark theater experience. It was at the Sash Mill I got my movie education and it was glorious.

The Sash Mill was as eclectic as its audience, though by the time I got there in 1982, enthralled by the silver screen, things had settled down a bit more than Marshall Motz remembers in the memoir titled The Cosmic Lady Was Right I had learned to enjoy movies at my English boarding school which had weekly showings of alternative movies (some slight nudity!) and black and white films too, but in Santa Cruz I got to see them all, as much as I wanted. My buddy Bill got me in for free often times, and sometimes as he ran the Sash Mill we would take beer and pizza and give ourselves late night shows watching films with just the two of us in the auditorium, or perhaps a couple of other friends. I got to see all the classics, Thin Man, Katherine Hepburn, Carey Grant, comedies, adventures, thrillers and film noire. It was an education.

Winters in Northern California I hated. And I still do, with lots of rain and temperatures down to the forties or worse. Lots of people thought I was crazy as they had emigrated from the Upper Mid West where winters meant snow and darkness for months on end. I found this picture of The Nick on a wet winter's night on the Web, and seeing the shiny slick sidewalk reminds me of those frigid nights taking refuge from the confines of my boat cabin where I lived by watching a  movie, or two.

Eventually Bill got me a job as a janitor and suddenly all the movie houses of Santa Cruz county were available to me for free. I had no TV on my boat, nor did I want it but now I could see anything anywhere anytime and I did. It was a great time, and i didn't limit myself to movies like Erendira, a gloomy Spanish film about loneliness and despair as only Garcia Marquez could write it. I cleaned the Nickelodeon which had four screening theaters, but my first love was the Sash Mill where the old movies went to be seen and enhjoyed by a younger generation.

I moved up in the world of theater janitoring and became a relief projectionist though I did not get into the union before running projectors became part time work thanks to automation. I found a segment of a book Aphrodite in Jeans which describes in some detail how to operate the old fashioned projector booths, a job I graduated to as relief projectionist at the independent Capitola Theater a few miles up the coast. I went through the same shenanigans switching projectors and so forth with the same satisfaction. Here's a picture of me in the mid 80's showing probably the Jewel of the Nile which came out in 1985 and which I saw half a hundred times:

I enjoyed the Capitola Theater where the booth was lined with steel to prevent the original nitrite films in the 1930s from burning down the theater when they frequently caught fire. The booth had a door onto the flat roof and in between 18 minute reel changes I could go out and stand on the roof and look at the fog descending on the chilly waters of the Pacific Ocean and I could hear the crash of the surf on the beach, even over the traffic and party sounds of the small seaside town. But it wasn't the Sash Mill where I learned about movies. and which I miss to this day as I exercise and watch my Netflix discs, for which I am grateful -but they aren't the same.