Some of us never outgrow college. I saw a lot of movies in college that I’d walk a mile out of my way to avoid seeing again.
For some of us, being pretentious starts in high school. Here are three high-school boys in the 1960s (I’m one of them) trying to decide what movie to go to. The other two are Flopsy and Mopsy.
Mopsy and I want to see The Viscount, an unmemorable spy thriller starring Kerwin Matthews. It had the advantage of playing in a theater only a few blocks away. Flopsy doesn’t want to see The Viscount. His elder brother, Dropsy, is a sophomore in college and has taught Flopsy to aspire to higher things.
“What’s wrong with The Viscount?” Mopsy asks.
“The Viscount is only a movie,” Flopsy pontificates. “Whereas Wild Strawberries, for instance, is a film!”
“Huh?” says I. “When did you see Wild Strawberries?”
Homina-homina. “Well, no, I haven’t seen it!” It turns out his brother told him it was a great Film. He might have seen it. But Flopsy got his share of raspberries over his assertion. I mean, for all we knew, The Viscount might’ve been King Lear on steroids (it wasn’t). I did see Wild Strawberries a few years later, when I was in college. For all its mediocrity, The Viscount was better. At least it didn’t put anyone to sleep.
Oy, the stuff I saw in college! Imagine still wanting to see art films, at my age. All those Ingmar Bergman movies–where do I hide?
And a note just handed me by the computer: Warning! Warning! Your anti-virus is down!
Bergman’s revenge…
Your machinery is out to get you this week. Meanwhile, my printer is refusing to stay plugged in to the power strip.
I keep thinking about an old Groucho Marx movie where the hero is accused of embezzling from the bank he works for. Toward the end, Groucho insists that all the calculator tapes prove the man is guilty, and to illustrate what he’s saying, he punches in numbers on the calculator while declaiming, “It’s as obvious as two (punch) plus two (punch punch) equals four (punches equals)” — and the tape prints out “5.” Groucho leaps in the air into the arms of I-forget-whom and yells, “The machines are winning!” or something like that. The hero is, of course, exonerated. And I can’t remember anything else about the movie except that “2+2” scene.
I’d like to see that movie, if you can tell me its name.
I honestly don’t remember anything about it except that one scene, and the fact that it wasn’t a Marx Brothers movie, but just Groucho as one of the characters. I wish I could remember more.
Society has become a real life version of the Emperor’s New Clothes, with all sort of people claiming to appreciate thing that are fashionable, even if they really don’t hold them in high esteem.