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Exxxtasy Show, July 16-18, Chicago
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CINEMA SEEN - "I Will Play No More...Forever!" By William Margold We stood on our asphalt battleground shivering as the cold hazy early morning air mercilessly cut through our young bodies---but because we knew that it would eventually grow warm because we were living in Southern California---we were covered with only t-shirts and well worn jeans, or for those who dared to bare their knees, modest short pants. It was a Saturday in the late fall of 1953, and we, with names like Butch, Gilbert, Randy and Tom, were about to choose sides for a game of war that would be waged on the expansive playing area of McKinley Grammar School on Santa Monica Blvd. near 26th Street. The teams of third and fourth graders consisted primarily of little boys, but each side had to choose at least one girl to play "nurse"---and our resident "tomboys" were a chubby freckled redhead named Gloria and a leathery mean-spirited blonde named Betty. Our weapons consisted of whatever we could beg, borrow or even steal, but mainly were sticks that could be pointed with menacing accuracy--- matched by our ability to make sounds approximating gunshots and explosions. Now while the preceding reflections may appear to you as odd material for my Cinema Seen page, you will notice that the artwork here is from THE WAR---Ken Burns’ demanding, disturbing and yet perversely dazzling documentary series that aired recently on PBS, and which I strongly suggest should be a DVD set that belongs in your collection...after it sears your mind. And although I fashioned a very special form of war game on those Saturday mornings in the Fifties, wherein if a kid was unfortunate enough to get killed, he couldn’t simply "count to ten" and then play again, but instead he had to take his stick and go home, my humble homage to the painful permanence of death and dying is monumentally dwarfed by what Master Burns has wrought. In fact, after enduring the 15 hours of Burns’ compelling coordination of soul shattering images, besides virtually crying myself out of tears, I swore to never, ever again play war games, even though every time I drive by McKinley Grammar School, I can see myself scampering recklessly across the roof of its main building on my way to attack the enemy from way behind its own lines. By the way, that tactic, while being quite dangerous because I could have easily slipped and fallen to a fate that, if not resulting in real-crashing- down-to-the-ground-death, would have most certainly been at least crippling, never failed to catch my bunkered-in opposition off-guard, and invariably, with a frontal attack by my team being parlayed perfectly, would produce quite a high enemy body count, if not complete victory. And victory would be celebrated by passing around the vanquished teams’ nurse, which of course, suggests much more to the reason that our games were played. But remember that we were a motley group of eight, nine and ten year olds, and we weren’t really ready to deal with the opposite sex except in manners (or lack of same) that were much more rough and tumble...rather than soft and snuggle. In the early Fifties, the ocean air cloaked City of Santa Monica, California could still be considered "small town, America"---and "small towns" are the 1940’s backbone that Burns constructs his Second World War series around, as he deftly crafts the memories of those who lived, labored, loved and lost family members in towns called Waterbury, Connecticut; Mobile, Alabama; Sacramento, California; and Luverne, Minnesota---into the brutal realization of just how high the price of freedom really was. Indeed it was a price paid for with the blood of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of American boys who were never given a chance to grow any further than their first step into a battlefield in Europe or onto a beachhead in The Pacific. And finally...Ken Burns’ masterwork has produced a prodigious payment in form of the tears---many of mine were expended during the sequences wherein a elegant lady named Sascha Weinzheimer, now 74, achingly etched images of her agonies while she was imprisoned (at 8) when the Japanese took over the Philippines---from the eyes of the grateful generations who have been and are now warmed by the torch of freedom that was never extinguished because of those who fought for what they believed in...without having the option to "count to ten." end NOTE: Originally published in LA Xpress, December 27, 2007, issue. |