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…