Twenty Minutes To Spare (Epic Prologue) You have read the title and you immediately ask yourself, "Now what does that mean?" Well I will let you know at the end of this story. You may also be wondering what that blue thing above is about, keep reading and you will soon find out.
I love movies, I love going to the movies. I adored both when I was younger. I looked forward each week to Saturday Night at the Movies on NBC. The opening features a theater marquee, with chasing flashing lights and a female voice announcing the movie. How I Spent My Summer Vacation starring Robert Wagner, is one that I remember seeing.
There was the two night presentation of The Great Escape, Steve McQueen and many other movie stars were in that one. An ironic title since I could not see the second night because we had to leave town for my Grandmother's Funeral, which was something I wished to escape from. Movies were my escape from tough times. Across a field, later an apartment complex, next to our house, was a shopping center with a large screen theater, a General Cinema theater. My brother Rod and I would walk there on a Saturday to see Natalie Wood in The Great Race or the latest James Bond Movie, or a second movie with Natalie Wood, Penelope I think it was. I will admit, I had an an adolescent crush on her. Rod and I also caught a bus from our home to downtown Norfolk's elegant Rosna theater, where we saw 2001 A Space Odyssey. I loved it, Rod was bored by it. I went to see it again by myself and a third time with my Dad, all in the same week I think.
On occasion, I went with Dad to his place of work on the Norfolk Naval Station, where I could see movies at the base theater for twenty five cents. One time I met my friend Mark, and we walked to the nearest bus station. From there we rode down Hampton Boulevard, got off on Colley Avenue, and walked to the Memrose Theater to see The Graduate. I think I was a bit young for that movie at the time. My parents sure thought so after seeing it a couple nights later with friends. The Memrose was also the place where families would stand in a very long line on a Saturday afternoon to buy tickets to see the latest Disney movie, ‘The Absent Minded Professor or The Sword in the Stone. I stood in line with Rod many times.
My favorite movies were the Epics, the big budget blockbusters, some of them were musicals. These were the movies that were the best seen on the big screen, like Ben Hur or Camelot. The Sound of Music was a huge hit back then. It played at the Riverside Theater for over a year. One of my favorites, a very long movie with an intermission, was a classic world war one movie, The Blue Max. A terrific story about the cost of ambition over the love of country and of a good woman as it turned out, for the “hero” as played by George Peppard. A great film, the worse thing about it the night I saw it first, was my dad, not knowing when it would end, sat in the parking lot during a tremendous rain storm waiting for me and my brother to exit the theater. He waited a long time, and was not too happy about it.
I admired that film, still do to this day, along with Where Eagles Dare, a Clint Eastwood movie and the Guns of Navarone with Gregory Peck. Both of those movies were adapted from novels written by Alistar MacLean. I read all of his books that I could get my hands on. The same for books by Dick Francis, Andre Norton, Robert A. Heinlein. The last two authors were great science fiction writers. It was and still is all about the story for me, the battle of good guys versus evil , conflict, danger, love, romance, travel, adventure. A very bad thing happens, or a very bad man does a very bad thing, and the hero comes in to save the day. Maybe the hero is James Bond who kills the bad guy, keeps the bomb in Fort Knox from going off with 007 seconds to spare, protects the world, saves the girl. Maybe it is the scientist who warns about the earthquake, the big one, no one listens and he has to come to the rescue in the end, like Paul Newman, the heroic whistle blowing architect in the Towering Inferno There were heros and heroines in other disaster movies including the Poseidon Adventure, and Titanic. These were, still are, great stories where good triumphs over great evil, love over hate, courage over fear. The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, I have read them over and over and of course seen all the movies. The same for all the Harry Potter books.
My junior year, or was it sophomore year ? My high school English teacher, who looked and sounded like Goldie Hawn with black hair, took all her students on a field trip to see Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, controversial nude scene and all. That movie was a tear jerker for the young ladies, not so much for the boys, not all of them anyway.
Google Image
I can remember going into the theater near our house, sitting down in front of the softly lit blue screen, waiting for the house lights to go down. I would nibble popcorn, eat Jordan Almonds, wait and watch for that General Cinema blue projector opening graphic, and escape from my troubles, from my anxieties, for a couple of hours. I might be watching Jerry Lewis making me laugh while he destroys a grocery store, or Julie Andrews amazing me with all the things she can pull out of a carpet bag, or Lulu singing a song to her teacher.
New Year’s in January 1971, Love Story, months after its release, was still a huge hit. I had a girlfriend named Anne, whom I really liked a lot. I liked her so much, I told her I loved her. She laughed at me. I still kept seeing her, just not as often as I did before she laughed. I decided to take her to see the movie. She didn’t care for it much. Can’t win ‘em all. A few days later, I asked another girl out on a date, named Janis, who worked in the same mall that I did. Janis was a sweet, pretty girl with bright blond hair, huge blue eyes, and a mouth full of braces. The last didn’t bother me a bit, but I think they made her self-conscious and shy. I asked her out to a movie, and she said, "Are you sure you want to go out with me?" I said yes, she said, Great!
“I want to see Love Story!”
Okay, so three days after seeing it for the first time, I got to see it again. Kind of. The theater was sold out except for one seat in the very front row. Janis said that it is okay by me. So she sat in the seat, and I sat on the floor with my head resting next to her left leg. She cried. I fell asleep. The next day, I had a stiff neck and a stiff back. I never asked Janis out again, even after a good night kiss. Now that is because I met Diane just a few days later. I think that is what happened. My life and my story started to change after meeting Diane, actually, after seeing her for the first time.
(I wrote about that encounter here.)
Diane and I had one of our first dates at the movies. I can’t remember the theater, but I do remember that the movie was Wuthering Heights, starring Timothy Dalton, who later became James Bond, who also starred in one of my favorite movies, The Rocketeer. Diane cried during the movie Wuthering Heights, not The Rocketeer. I took her to a drive-in to see a double feature of Mash and Patton. Her parents were separating at the time, about to divorce, and things were rough at home. We watched the first movie together, and I held her in my arms while she slept through the second one. We saw Anne of a Thousand Days in the Mary Washington College Auditorium. It was a hoot hearing hundreds of girls boo King Henry for mistreating his queen. Diane came up to Washington DC to visit me, and we walked a few miles north on Wisconsin Avenue to Chevy Chase to see a sold-out showing of What’s Up Doc with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal. That was a lot of fun, but I thought the tickets cost too much. That’s DC for you, then and now, I bet.
Stories, on film, on paper, on the Internet, they are wonderful things. Not only do they offer us an escape, but they provide food for thought, help us find meaning in life, and .....and now we come to the end of the written part of my Random Thoughts for today. We now come to the explanation of Twenty Minutes to Spare. That is the amount of time it will take to watch a video posted here. It is an introduction, a preview, of something very good, a book about stories and why they are so important to our lives. It will take twenty minutes (17 actually) to listen to, with more acts to follow. If you want to listen, or not, it is up to you. I hope you will, you may get something good from it. Just below on this page, you will see a very famous site. Click the play button, and the “show,” so to speak, will start.
That’s all, Folks! For now. Stay tuned.
Derrick
This book that goes with this video is great, I have bought multiple copies of it to give to friends, a pastor, and my kids and grandkids. It is available from Amazon, just click the image.
