Appetizers are delicious. Cocktails are overflowing. Conversation
and laughter fill the room. Martinis are spilling. The party’s a great success.
Everyone’s having a good time. Then you think what else could take this party
to the next level?
Why, home movies, of course!!!
In my generation, I’m not talking about YouTube or Periscope.
I’m not talking about DVDs. I’m not even talking about VCRs. I’m talking about
those little reel films that you fed into a small movie projector that sat on a
table top and projected onto a white screen or a wall. The kind of projector you
ran the film through very carefully. The kind of projector that needed constant
supervision when the film got caught and ripped as it went through the machine.
Before the fun could even begin, it meant finding the
emptiest wall in the house on which to project the movies, since we didn’t own
a projection screen. In our house, all walls were covered floor to ceiling with
framed, family photographs. Some were professionally taken in studios, including
high school, graduation pictures, athletics, and weddings.
Painstaking preparation was required to take the frames off
the wall first, and then find some room in the house to store them safely during
the screenings of these cinematic masterpieces. When the house was brimming
with guests, it was quite a challenging task to find a room or a surface safe
from the madding crowd and especially the boisterous, undisciplined and unsupervised
children.
If you came over to the house, were a family member,
significant other, friend or neighbor, you were about to be subjected to something
you would never forget. And possibly have recurring nightmares about for the
rest of your life. Impending marriages hung in the balance. Fiancees and in-laws
still had a chance to run for their lives.
To make matters worse, I was frequently the headlining star
in these movies or co-starring along with my brother. I was an unpaid and
uncredited actor. I had no agent and no representation. I appeared as an
infant, a toddler or a teenager. No one made sure that child labor laws weren’t
being violated.
Various steps and life stages were captured: first bite,
first words, first steps, first haircut, first bicycle ride without training
wheels, playing piano, singing solos, school assemblies, athletics, graduation
ceremonies, summer vacations in Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket surfing ten foot
waves, doing cartwheels and handstands on the beach.
Like a version of the modern selfie, no event went
uncaptured. All was documented for posterity. These movies were a chronicle of
times past, like watching a documentary. Seeing Manhattan and Yankee Stadium
from the early 1970’s, Yankee icons like Reggie Jackson, Bucky Dent, Willie Randolph,
Ron Guidry, Catfish Hunter, and Thurmon Munson, just to name a few, all captured
on black and white film.
Culture and fashion were also chronicled. Seeing younger
versions of family members sporting side burns, mullets, bufonts, beehives,
thin ties, wide ties, loud ties, plaids, stripes, velour, polyester, bell
bottoms, permanent waves, mustaches and beards, homemade clothes made of
oranges, browns and yellows. Seeing the spitting image of my cousins in
versions of their parents from twenty years earlier. Seeing furniture and décor
long ago replaced to keep up with interior decorating trends, ghastly orange-colored
carpets and big print wallpaper popular in the 1960’s, walls that existed
before they were knocked down during later house expansions.
Technology was much simpler in the 1960’s and 1970’s. What
you saw when you looked through the camera viewfinder wasn’t exactly the same
as what the camera captured. Akin to a horror movie, the actors frequently had
decapitated heads; partial bodies from the neck down. There was also no audio
in order to identify the owners of the partial bodies. When there were talking
heads, all you could see were fast moving lips and gesticulating hands, and no
context for what was being said. Sometimes the lighting made it impossible to
see anything or the fast motion action made it difficult to see and produced
motion sickness on the part of the viewer.
Worst of all, there was no money back or refund after being
forced to sit through these torture-inducing movies.
Luckily, the movies existed if only to keep moments frozen
in time, especially to capture those who are no longer with us.
Next According to Lisa
post is scheduled 3/11/2016.
