short fat guy online

    Twitter reminds me that today is Mel Brooks’s 95^th birthday as well as the fiftieth anniversary of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. What do these two have in common?

Image borrowed from the 2003 Blogathon

I don’t think I was really aware of the movie at first.  In the metro Detroit area, Star Wars (long before it had a number and subtitle attached) opened in only one theater, the Americana, and this was a thirty or forty minute drive.  But after a few weeks we were starting to realize what a big cultural event this movie was — even a minister my dad knew was recommending the movie, as an allegory of good and evil.

My dad, mom, my friend John, and I headed out on our long drive.  We were kind of late and we’d heard how the movie was selling out; and we were afraid the whole endeavor might be a lost cause from the outset.  My friend John, next to me in the back seat, sat quietly and with his head bowed.  I thought he might be asleep, but when he looked up he announced we would be able to get in.  I realized he’d been praying, but instead of teasing him (since my family is not outwardly religious) I found comfort in his surety.

There was a huge line when we arrived.  We waited anyway, and every few minutes an usher would step out of the lobby and call out a new announcement.  “Front three rows only.”  “Limited seating.”  “Isolated seating.”  “Sold out.”  My dad managed to get tickets but we had no idea how we might sit together.  Inside the theater was very crowded and it looked like almost every seat was taken.  I followed my dad around, and I have to admit I was rather angry with him when he found a seat and didn’t offer it to me.  I mean, I’m the child, right?  Parents are supposed to make sacrifices for me?  Admittedly I was fourteen at the time.  I should’ve been more grown up about it, but I have to admit I felt quite lost and abandoned.

I walked up and down the aisles with a growing feeling of powerlessness as I inquired about an empty seat and found it was spoken for.  At last, about midway up and on the extreme left, there was an open spot on the aisle; a white-haired woman told me the man who’d been sitting there had gotten up, presumably to go to the concession stand.  She didn’t know where he was and didn’t know when he might come back.  I sat down hesitantly, rationalizing I’d at least stay here until he kicked me out.  And the woman didn’t seem to care. 

In my memory the lights darkened very soon after this and the movie started.  Maybe that guy found some place else to sit, maybe he didn’t recognize his seat now that someone else was in it; but I managed to stay there for the rest of the showing.   I remember all of that, but I barely remember the movie itself.  It swirled around me in a flurry of images and sound.  I was completely bowled over by it, from the opening shot to the fanfare at the end.  My dad’s review was that they sure shoot poorly in the future.  And I was very jealous of John afterward since he’d talked an usher into selling a “May the Force Be With You” badge to him for $5.

The movie opened wide a month later, and on a Wednesday that might’ve been the hottest day of the year I went out to see Star Wars for the third time, at our local theater in Southgate, lining up in the blazing sun.  I never did score an official badge but made my own button out of a photo of R2-D2 (from Time magazine’s cover story).  A kid behind me said the photo looked like me, “short and squat”, which seemed all the more rude having come out of nowhere.  My mom felt bad for us and showed up with some cans of Vernor’s ginger ale and a Baggie of ice cubes.  Feeling self-conscious, I was about to decline but then realized I should at least offer the stuff to the other kids waiting with me.  The rude kid made a point to be nice to me after that.

It was obvious the movie was the big event of the season, and my friends and I competed to see who could see it the most.  I saw it six times that summer, which hardly beat any national records but was still enough to win our own informal contest.  I have to admit those last couple viewings were a chore, since I was there for the challenge, not the enjoyment of the movie.  But that hasn’t kept me from watching the movie dozens of more times through the years.