My Film Debut 2

I can’t believe what a fat head I am. That’s what I look like on the big screen. A fat head. But I guess that’s better than being dead, or worse yet, deader. So it’s just a matter of accepting the truth about myself and embracing fat headedness in all its fat headed glory.

But it wasn’t really all that bad.

Nobody laughed at me. Not even when I tried to bite my way through a locked gate. Nobody screamed, “This is an abomination! Death to Biff!” and tried to stab me, blow me up, or otherwise make me inanimate.

And then there was my daughter, Cassie. She was brilliant. She made the audience laugh. She made them cry. She made them experience out-of-body states of being. I think they spared my life because of her.

It started in the hall of Tilley Hall. The experimental short movies in the Fourth Annual Tidal Wave Film Festival were being shown at the scene of some of my most grueling college experiences, the lecture theater with the most uncomfortable chairs in the world, reason for missing so many early morning classes (along with sex, drugs, booze, rock n roll, and general confusion about where I was supposed to be, at what time, and the exact location of where the hell ‘where’ was. It was a different world back then.). But that was OK. It was the film debut for Mitchell and Mitchell. Me and my daughter.

It started in the hall. Waiting for the 7 o’clock movie to end. Cassie and I arrived unfashionably early. I’m not really an actor. I’m a writer. I like to get there early and watch other people arrive. Observe them. Make mental notes. Unfortunately, I invariably forget those mental notes. Maybe I’m just unfashionable. Friends started to arrive. Jeffx and his lovely wife, Hope. And their compelling Bohemian beauty of a daughter, Amanda. Margaret from my old high school was there. She was wearing her graduation hat. Then FeltTop Phil arrived holding a pool cue along with Beth, who was taking bets. We all talked nervously. Someone mentioned that the 7 o’clock movie was running late. We all made mental notes and continued to talk nervously.

Others arrived. People we didn’t know. They all looked artsy and Bohemian. Not as Bohemian as Mandy though. They all talked nervously. Made mental notes of the lateness of the 7 o’clock movie. Someone in authority, a man dressed in nothing but a Tidal Wave Film Festival T-shirt told us to line up in the hall to the left. This made complete sense to the people facing north, but caused much confusion for the people facing south, there being no hall to their left capable of holding more than half a dozen people. So everybody crowded into the small hall so as not to let the people facing south look like complete idiots.

About this time, Joe Blades showed up and cut into the line. Joe’s a poet. He was displaying poetic behavior. Maybe a little too much though. Someone set him on fire. Hey, what the hell, we were waiting to see experimental films.

Denise DeMoura, the director and producer of the movie Cassie and I were in, wafted by like a brisk brief breeze, nodded hello and went to the end of the line, about five feet from the front of the line, which was getting a bit crowded since Joe had been set on fire. Then Fossil showed up. That was it. The pin that punctured the pickle. People started seeping into the walls.

People with confused eyes were starting to arrive for the 11:45 show. The doors to the theater flew open over an hour late. Thousands of overly serious people in gray suits swarmed out of the theater. They had gone in dressed in flowers and paisley, watched four documentaries in a row and come out looking documented. Give me experimental any day. I like my hula-hula shirts.

About a thousand of us cramped into the little hall formed our own little tidal wave and washed over the floors and flowed into the theater. The memories of those gawdawful seats sprayed over my brain and butt like large caliber slugs from the past. They called to me. “Biff. Oh Biff. We want to stop the flow of blood in your butt…just like we did a hundred years ago. Come to us, Biff.”

Being in that theater seemed to have triggered more than just memories.

I sat between Cassie and Amanda, the two most beautiful and Bohemian in the theater. Nervous chatter bounced off the walls of the room, collided with wiring and fan sounds from the ceiling. The man with only a T-shirt on said something about sponsors and introduced the directors, all of whom turned left instead of right and left the building before they could say anything about their movies. The lights went out. Everyone shut up. The movies started.

All I could think about was how fat-headed I am and how my the blood still hasn’t started flowing in my butt after all these years away from Tilley Hall.

The rest I’ll save for another time.