My grandmother, L. Josephine Schilling, “Jo” to those who didn’t call her Mom or Grandma, passed away last week at age 89. What does this matter to anyone who reads a movie blog? Nothing, really, except to the writer of said blog, so maybe it will have a passing interest to you. For this kind lady introduced me to the movies, one of many wonderful things she gave me over the years. My father later whipped that love into the near-frenzy it became in later years, when, as a sullen teen, I would eventually distance myself cruelly from my Grandma. I wanted to see The Hunger more than Harvey, the De Palma Scarface over the Hawks version. No Grandmother worth her salt would sit and listen to so much cursing and endure such onscreen gore. And I wasn’t going to waste my precious teenage years with any more Capra films. I was better than that. Now I know I’m the worse for not spending the time with her.
This last week found the family in Saginaw to attend to her funeral. Our family is haunted by movies: my father and I spent our time with the usual banter, over Truffaut, over L’Atalante, and, inexplicably, debating the merits of Talladega Nights. Grandma had piles of John Wayne films, and I remember last year buying her Red River, and what a chore it was trying to find a version on VHS. I still remember being shocked to the core that my cousin asked for and received Queen of the Damned for Christmas one year, and I’m not concerned with its pagan message, either. One of my aunts has a very personal, obviously distant and fantastical relationship with Mel Gibson (though she’s cooled on him lately). Everyone on that side of the family is daffy for movies, and seeing them together isn’t as static as you might think. Arsenic and Old Lace was the nonpareil, however, and I can’t forget seeing it on a snowy night at the Temple, with fresh popcorn, creaky seats and the wheezing organ. The gales of laughter that came out of Grandma and my Aunt Mary were almost as hilarious as what unfolded on the torn screen. Grandma used to flip over Cary Grant and Arsenic, cackling for days afterwards and fancying herself one of the murderous biddies (that was her term). We would talk about that movie for days, us kids at times pretending to be the old man who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, charging up and down the stairs as he did (and shouting “Charge!” at the top of our lungs). Or Peter Lorre or Raymond Massey, the creepy serial-killing brother of Cary Grant’s Mortimer. And their house, right next to the cemetery! Why, it was just like Grandma’s house… without the dead people next door (though we could pretend).
Later, I would come to dismiss that movie as cloying and unwatchable and beneath me. If someone has a time machine to loan me, to go back and kick that pompous ass in the behind, I’d sure appreciate it.
In the afternoon following the service, pops and I drove around Saginaw, a town that has somehow managed to look worse in the fifteen years since I’ve wandered its streets. The Temple has been saved by some local multimillionaires, and it is a gorgeous thing, with new red-velvet seats, a restored organ, and the scent of mildew has been driven out. But not showing movies much anymore. Dad said it looked better than when he was a kid. But it’s among blocks of dying buildings: who goes to see movies in a ghost town? Ghosts?
The Green Acres Cinema is closed, and the Court Street Theater has one 7:00 showing of a two-buck feature, and the Quad, our mall theater, is also a second-run house. And worse: the mighty neon bunny, the logo of the Jack Rabbit Beans silo, is now dark. The rabbit used to greet us as we left the Temple for the warmth of my Grandma’s home.
I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this piece, other than to say that a movie isn’t just something to waste a couple of hours, but it can be as rewarding an experience as, well, the proverbial baseball game with the proverbial father and son (though I enjoyed that experience… with the same Grandma). Just do these simple things: listen to the laughter that surrounds you in a favorite film and remember the feeling of the hand you held in the dark. Take the time to see the movies you don’t want to see that make another person happy, especially if that person is your mother or father or grandparent.
Even if it’s Arsenic and Old Lace.
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