Window Kitties

Window kitties come and go. They are a big city phenomenon, mostly, but they probably exist in the burbs as well. Discovering suburban window kitties, however, is more problematical: it would involve cruising in a car or walking endless miles and peeking into windows as an unwelcome stranger. Cities allow us to peek into windows with impunity, and cats to peer out at us without censure.

One day these special cats are resting on a second floor window sill and following your progress down the street, the next they are somewhere else taking care of business: lunch, litterbox, or nap.

We usually don't know who they belong to, these window kitties. The owners are seldom seen with their paws on the sill next to their furry friends. They are behind the scenes, out working to support the litterbox, luncheon and nap.

There's something comforting about a window kitty looking out at you. It's through a window in winter and sometimes through a screen in the summer. It is someone who notices you walking down a New York side street when there is no one else around. Of course, they can't call for help if there's a problem, but window kitties have been known to meow a less-than-tentative hello toward faces they find familiar.

Not everyone likes them there, those window kitties, those finding them aloof and mysterious and impenetrable and their eyes piercing through to things that are too private. Many dogs have a goofy, friendly, street-level way of saying hello that's more immediate to a certain temperament.

Window Kitty One lived on a ground floor and vacillated between two bamboo decorated windows on West End Avenue. One could easily be at eye level with her when her eyes were open (usually not for long). But one day, the bamboo shutters covered with rice paper, were closed and Window Kitty One become invisible.

Window Kitty Two lived between Broadway and Amsterdam and you had to look up to her. Sometimes she'd mew hello through the screen because she was only by the window in the summertime. In the winter she probably had a warm spot somewhere inside.

Now Window Kitty Two is gone with her owner to some other place. Some other apartment. Some other city.

Subway Gum

Years and years ago, they sold gum on the subway platforms in New York City. I don't chew gum any more, but I do see the ghosts of the gum machines.

There were little, flat, square, glass-fronted machines attached to the steel beams that hold up the underground ceilngs at Times Square. You put in a penny and pushed or pulled a lever and out slid chewing gum.

One kind of gum -- Beeman's Pepsin Chewing Gum -- came wrapped in a little piece of translucent white paper. It was flat and a little powdery when you folded back the wrapping. It wasn't quite soft, but not as hard as the pink slabs of bubble gum that came wrapped in every pack of baseball cards sold up until the 1970s. YOu could tell the difference between the pink gum and the baseball card because the gum shattered when you bit it and the cards didn't.

The other kind of subway gum was Chiclets. Those came two to a little yellow box that you had to open before the pieces slid -- white, shiny and pepperminty -- onto your tongue. The cardboard had it's own particular dry, gray taste for the moments that it rested on your tongue before the gum dropped out. Chiclet shells crunched under your teeth then the same way they do now until your teeth mix the shell into the chewy part and all the sugar and mint gets used up.

Under the gum machines were little metal baskets to catch the paper wrappers and little yellow Chiclet boxes. Usually the paper actually ended up in the container.

But the chewed gum was dropped willy nilly, helter skelter all over the subway platform and trampled until it formed hard black blobs on the cement.

Someone in administration probably removed the gum machines because of the troubles scraping the dried gum off of the subway platforms. The thousands and thousands of pennies the gum earned must not have made up for the labor of cleaning.

Ironically, that's the only part of this tradition that's survived: The hard black blobs.

I'm sure they're not the black blobs of my childhood, those were cleaned up or paved over long ago. But they look the same and have the same uneven feeling under you feet when you walk over them that spoils for a moment the smoothness of the cement.

I miss those machines. That was all of the fun: You put in a penny and out came gum. Pennies don't generate that much joy these days. I do so miss those machines.

Tiger

Tiger mutters.

Tiger's not really his name because most cats in New York Chinatown don't have names. When we asked the wizened owner of the Mott Street pharmacy what the cat's name was he stared at us blankly for a moment then said, "Tiger." Tiger catches rats, so his name might as well be "Tiger" even if it's not.

"He catches lots of rats in the alley," the pharmacist says barely in English. Tiger is a lanky cat. His legs and body are too long and so is his nose. If you look down from above, his head seems almost as long as a puppy's, not flatish like most cats.

Tiger likes to sleep on an old, metal-frame restaurant chair that sits on the floor surrounded by lucky bamboo plants in front of the pharamacy counter, but he looks up when we walk in and meows a "hello" in proper 'cat.' After a stretch and a good chin scratch (chin held up agreeably for convenient scratch access), he will begin to mutter the day's business.

"Mwow. Mwow. Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp." he says. "Those tourists walk in here looking for Lord knows what and nearly step on me. Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp. Mowww. Who do they think they are anyway?"

We think that the Chinese don't feed their cats. They expect them to eat all the rodents they can catch. Mouse buffet or something. Tiger doesn't show the well-fed tummy of apartment cats.

"Mewp. Mmmowp. Mmmowp. And that little girl... . She bumped into me! Can you imagine? And giggling to her friends the whole time. Mooowwwwpppp!"

He's like an old vegetable stand attendant cursing to himself about those crazy "gwai lo" who don't really know what a water chestnut looks like before it's peeled.

Tiger rubs against my left leg and looks up expectantly.

"How's hunting? I ask him.

"Mewwwwwwwwwwwwwp. Moww. Mmmmmppp! I've eaten all the rats in the back already."

He has a long half-healed cut on his ear.

"The rat was bigger than him!" The pharmacist offers. "Real big! He's brave!"

Tiger washes his ear and rubs against my leg again.

"We've got to go," I say.

"MMmmmmowwwp. Grmmmowp. Mewwwwp."

One more well-placed chin scratch and Tiger jumps back onto his chair. He purrs in Chinese and mutters to himself about the tourists as he finds a proper spot on the worn plastic. In two blinks he is asleep. His tail hangs off one side of the chair, his too-long head and too-long neck dangle awkwardly off the other side of the chair as though the empty air was a pillow. He mutters in his sleep and dreams proudly about the vanquished rats.

Major Dundee "Restored?"

(April 2005: Film Forum, New York City)

Major Dundee is still lost somewhere on the border between Texas and Mexico. A stunning endeavor to rescue him was mounted by Columbia Pictures recently, but despite fine work work and high-minded idealism, Sam Peckinpah's early film still verges upon the inaccessible and incomprehensible.
One thing is clear, Major Dundee may -- even in a mangled state -- be one of the finest attempts at portraying war in all it's dirt drenched, emotionally maladroit, morally untenable, politically muddled and ethically impossible reality. Where Kubrick's Paths of Glory pinpoints the damned if you do, damned if you don't dilemma of the common soldier caught up in the ego-driven machinations of the highly placed perpetrators of World War I, what's left of Peckinpah's attempt to show something similar never quite focusses on enough tangibles to be either emotionally engaging or clearly provacative intellectually.

It is to the intellect, in fact, that this lengthened by 12 minutes version of Dundee seems to appeal the most. There are fine moments that start to take hold -- the Confederate soldier ordering a restrained, dignified black soldier to take off his boots -- but they never seem integrated into the sweep of the entire motion picture.

At this point in history, it becomes nearly impossible without major research and apologies to determine who or what's at fault. Sam Peckinpah's personal problems were well-known and as his drinking problems took hold, his grasp upon story and drama loosened. For my taste, his best films are Ride The High Country and The Wild Bunch: here the story is clear and everything hangs in its proper place along the tales told.

But it's hard to even determine to what Major Dundee aspired. There are three credited writers. If this were a comedy, having 9 writers would be more appropriate, even de rigeur. But on a drama, more than one writer spells trouble, especially when the writer listed in third place is the director himself. The echoes of ringing lines from "Ride The High Country" ("get the ball rolling" or Warren Oates refusing to bathe) attest to some desperation or lethargy in scripting.

The climax, however, has an unexpected emotional punch: not the battle itself, but rather the abrupt, inconclusive ending itelf. Having barely survived a vague sort of victory over the French, the tattered remains of Dundee's troops simply ride up a hill into Texas. There're no medals, no triumphant music, no romantic closeups of those "brave" few lucky enough to get away with their asses still attached. There's only a straight cut to the end title cast list. That's it. Chilling in the right sort of way, and a confirmation of an intention to show war in a dispassionate, raw way.

Brecht espoused a kind of intellectual distance between his plays and the audience. The "verfremdung" effect, he called it, the "alienation" effect. One was supposed to attend the theater, smoke, eat, chat, ponder while the play was going on. The better to absorb the political ideas that Brecht wanted you to learn.

It's hard to believe that Peckinpah set out to accomplish just that, but too much of the movie exists in the mind trying to fill in the missing parts: who was Dundee? what did he want? what was really going on inside of him? who were all these people anyway. Yes, they are all outcasts, misfits, criminals, but only the horse thief seemed to have any personality beyond stereotype.

Nonetheless, it's hard to not admire the attempt. At any time in Hollywood history, a production that has the balls to try something a little different is the clear exception to the rules. Even Heaven's Gate which is much more of a disaster than Major Dundee and undoubtedly has less at its heart and soul than Dundee does even in this purportedly restored, but still mangled version, needs to be given some credit for "chutzpah." But the proof of the pudding is that -- even at full length -- Heaven's Gate doesn't work and attests to spending money on sizzle (authentic 19th Century roller skates that no one in the audience can even see) instead of steak. Dundee has more meat on its bones, but the bones appear -- from the evidence at hand -- to be a bit rickety.

Theatre Epilogue Epilogue

It's only a week later, but as I walked home from the final Freeman Dyson lecture, The Amsterdam Theatre had changed again. Each letter of the name A M S T E R D A M was finished. They blinked on in turn, first A, then M until the whole name was spelled out. There are little frills of lights around the letters that blink, too. Beneath the marquee, little yellow bulbs run in a loop that disappears into the infinity of a correctly placed mirror inside the still unfinished lobby, each flickering yellow glow chasing the next around and around and around.

What new restoration wonder will come next?

Wednesday, March 5, 1997, New York City

A New Hope: A Movie Theatre Epilogue

In the wonderful novel "Time and Again," Jack Finney's hero "thinks" and "emotes" himself from the still unchanged Dakota Hotel into the Central Park of the 19th Century. It is a feat of time travel unmatched in the high tech realms of modern movie science fiction. It is a feat of time travel that we all do quietly in our souls late at night or when we are sure that no one else is looking. We find those memories in our hearts that are brought back by the sight of a knick knack in a store window, or the scent of mustard on a steamed hot dog, and we are transported instantly and totally to another time, another place and we live there fully until the barking car horns bring us back in time before we are run over. We blush and blink it off and hope that no one saw that "look" on our face when it happened and then keep walking uptown or down taking little tastes of the still warm dream while it lasts.

On Wednesday, February 19, I attended a lecture by Freeman Dyson the noted, revered, and wondrous mathematician cum physicist, at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street.

Afterwards, head full of the history of science, the pacifism of Tolstoy, and the vagaries of Napoleonic educational methods, I wandered West on 42nd Street.

It was after 8 and it was dark as I walked through the desolation of the blocks between Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

I drifted back to my childhood and college days and the afternoons and nights spent in the myriad dirty piss-smelling movie theatres that lined 42nd Street watching movies and movies and cowboys and more movies. The memories shimmered hazily in the empty lots and little stores that live inside the shells of the old 10 cent movie houses.

Then I crossed Seventh Avenue and it was there.

Someone had brought back The Amsterdam Theatre. We all know it was Disney and we all know that our Mayor gave it to them on a silver tray, but there it was, glowing out of the shuttered strip between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. It was clean and lit up and looked for all the world like you could hand them a quarter and walk in and see a movie. It looked like the marble halls and marble men's rooms would smell like opening night. That the screen would no longer be torn, that the cherubim would have their gold leaf smiles buffed up once again. I peeked in past the gates and the inside was still unfinished, but the boxoffices were there and the marble floor was fairly clean and the marquee itself had every light bulb back in place only waiting to blink in some mystical snake-chasing-its-tail sequence.

And the best part was that as I walked down into the subway, it didn't disappear. It's still there, and even though it won't be used for movies, it promises to re-open in June and I can't wait.

Monday, March 3, 1997, New York City

Something There Is That Doesn't Like A Movie Theatre

Unlike Prufrock and his coffee spoons, I measure my life in the demise of movie theatres.

When I first moved to New York's Upper West Side, there were eleven separate sand-alone movie houses.

There was one tiny one at 72nd Street that showed art films (and I've forgotten the name, Embassy 72, perhaps), the Loew's 84th Street (a movie palace in the Grand tradition replete with balcony), The New Yorker at 89th Street, The Symphony, The Thalia, two now nameless full size United Artist Theatres between 96th and 97th Street (former and badly faded movie palaces with work lights visible through the screen during the entire show), The Metro, a nameless theatre that showed mostly Mexican films with Cantinflas and others, the Edison (the oldest movie theatre in New York and actually built by Edison), and the Olympia.

The 72nd Street Theatre made way for a furniture store, the New Yorker was trashed for an apartment building, the two United Artists theatres became another housing complex, the site of the Mexican theatre sells discount hand towels, and The Edison has become a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Tom and D.W. Griffith would have been thrilled.

Of the rest, the gorgeous, gold-leafed, velvet curtained Loew's was torn down completely and rebuilt next door and now houses six shoebox theatres (the Loew's SexPlex as we in the know call it), these days The Symphony Space (nee The Symphony) shows films once a week, the Thalia passes into and out of private hands for several months at a time and has recently shown very fine African films before it went bust one mo' time, The Metro is twinnned, and so is the Olympia. So, if we count generously, there are now twelve movie theatres where once there were only eleven.

Clearly, clearly, clearly, it ain't the same.

I walk through the neighborhood seeing their ghostly marquees beckoning me. The upper West Side -- not Times Square -- was the heart of movie theatres and even of production in the 1920's and 30's. The tattered remains of the theatres call out to you if you look closely beneath the supermarket signs: the decorated arches that once soared over marquees, the wall-mounted hooks where the supports for the marquees were once attached are all still there. The huge inside spaces got divided up for groceries.

One foolish day Robert Frost visited me at my typewriter (when I still had a typewrite) and wrote this down for me.

Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre
, That sends a wrecking crew onto it,
And spills the marquee onto the street;
And makes the aisles into sidewalks.
The work of moviegoers is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have not left one seat without gum,
And they would spill coke on every cushion,
As they cheer the heroes on.
It is the wreckers I mean,
No one sees them come or hears plans made,
but at Summer Holiday Movie time,
we find them there.
I let my friend know across the park;
And on a day we met to watch the sweating crews
And see the heavy cranes smash in the walls.
We stand across the street as we watch
To see the rubble that once held in magic
And kept out distorting light and noise.
We have to use a spell to watch the destruction without tears.
"Stay as you were when our backs are turned!"
We wear out our minds with calling back the dreams.
Oh, just another kind of nostalgic game,
Over on our side of the street.
It comes to little more.
There where it is, the contractor doesn't need an antique theatre.
He is all progress and higher rents.
Our memories of lush adventures will barely survive
Enhanced by popcorn and thirsty throats.
My friend says, "Good theatres made good neighbors."
A scent of Spring is still in me, and I wonder If we could put a notion in builders' hearts.
Didn't good theatres make good neighbors?" I'd ask them.
"Weren't they a wondrous palace to lure us from lonely rooms?
Before I built a high rise, I'd ask to know
What hand-painted ceiling I was tearing down and throwing out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a movie theatre,
That wants it down."
I could say "greed" to the builders,
But it's not greed exactly, and I'd rather
They said it to themselves.
I see them there
A blueprint and sales prospectus grasped firmly
One in each hand like an old stone savage armed.
The builders move in darkness as it seems to me,
But not one of celluloid visions and the sounds of wonder.
My friend will not be consoled.
He is sad still to think the thought.
He asks again, "Didn't good theatre's make good neighbors?"

Monday, March 3, 1997 New York City (poem circa 1980, New York City)