1. Christy was busy this morning and asked me to take her pickup to Silver Valley Tire Center to be serviced and for work on the brakes. The truck was over at Paul and Carol's, so Debbie gave me a lift. I got the keys from Paul, filled up the truck with gas, and dropped it off at the shop. Frank Seatz, current owner Jeremy's father, was the original owner of Silver Valley Tire. Until we moved to the house I live in now, in 1962, our family and Frank's family lived uptown on East Portland, so Frank was a neighbor. I hadn't seen him, let alone shake hands with him, since back then -- sixty years ago. Today, he was helping out in the shop and I enjoyed our brief conversation, hand shake, and having memories of living on East Portland come back to me.
2. Originally today, Debbie had an idea for making dinner, but later in the afternoon, out of the blue, she said, "Let's get food from Humdinger". Before going to the drive-in, I picked up a few items at Yoke's. I ordered our burgers plain so that we could dress them at home with our pickles, fresh tomatoes, and other condiments. (I really like doing this!)
The other thing I like about ordering at Humdinger is that their basic burger, in comparison to the much larger burgers available at bars and restaurants, is small. In my dotage, I've come enjoy small hamburgers the most. The burgers at the Elks, by the way, are also just right. So, it was a private eccentric pleasure of mine to bring home the burgers, put ketchup, mustard, tomato, dill pickle, and bread and butter pickles on my sandwich, slowly eat it and feel satisfied, not sluggish, the way I often feel when I eat one of those thicker, larger burgers at other places. I often find the bigger, more creative burgers very tasty, but always come away thinking I would have been fine with just half of it. I'm happy they are available, happy that people enjoy them, and happy that Humdinger offers the smaller, simpler hamburger I enjoy the most.
3. The Criterion Channel is a terrific movie channel for me to subscribe to. I can always count on the collections they offer to include dark, urban movies, challenging movies, the kind of movie I enjoy a lot and that isn't always available on Netflix or Amazon Prime.
I can't remember exactly how it happened a week or so ago that I came across Elaine May's dark and under appreciated 1976 movie, Mikey and Nicky. I watched an interview about the movie with Joyce Van Patten and Julian Schlossberg and decided I would be sure to watch it once the World Series was over.
The movie features John Cassavetes as Nicky and Peter Falk as Mikey. They are low level mobsters in Philadelphia. Nicky finds out a contract has been put on his life and he turns to his friend, since childhood, Mikey, to help him out.
Over the course of about twelve hours, most of it at night, Nicky and Mikey, for the most part, are together, holed up in a hotel room, riding city buses, drinking in a dive bar (or two?), visiting a cemetery, going to Nicky's mistress's apartment, among other things. They tell stories, They philosophize. They argue. They fight. They trigger old resentments in each other. They feel long held affection.
The story becomes dominated by one huge complication that I won't reveal. I'd hate to spoil this for anyone who might watch the movie and doesn't know about that huge complication.
It's a unique mobster movie, focused on two low level mobsters and features none of the glamor or romanticism of other Mafia stories -- like, say, The Godfather.
Instead, the story becomes a way for writer and director Elaine May and for Cassavetes and Falk to explore male friendship, aggression, misogyny, violence, frustration, vulnerability, loyalty, resentment, and any number of other complexities in what the movie presents as the male experience.
The movie is episodic. It moves between searing scenes of cruelty and violence, unexpected scenes of humor and absurdity, and unsettling scenes of panic and desperation.
This wasn't an independently made film, but it sure has the look of one -- its darkness, spontaneous outbursts of violence and comedy, aggression, and existential probings reminded me of John Cassavetes' independent movies of the 1970s, but Elaine May made this movie for Paramount and it was a headache for the studio.
I'm not an expert on movies released in the 1970s, but, to me, it's fascinating so many challenging movies came out during this time -- I'm thinking, for starters, of Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, A Woman Under the Influence, Taxi Driver, The Conversation, and many more films made by filmmakers who saw movies as a way go explore the darker regions of human experience, who were not trying to thrill audiences, make them feel good, or entertain them.
At the same time, thrilling blockbuster movies that transformed popular cinema also came out in the 1970s with the release of Jaws and Star Wars, in particular.
The blockbusters didn't wipe out the making of small, serious, sometimes quirky movies, but many of those movies had to be made independent of major studio support.
I'll be forever grateful that I lived in Spokane, home of the Magic Lantern, and then in Eugene, home of Cinema 7 and The Bijou where I could watch independent (and international) movies and off the beaten track documentaries. Now I'm grateful that subscribing to the Criterion Channel is like having an independent art movie house right here in the Vizio room.
PS The supporting cast in Mikey and Nicky was awesome, especially Ned Beatty, Carol Grace, Joyce Van Patten, Rose Arrick, and one of my all-time favorite character actors, the incomparable, ubiquitous M. Emmet Walsh.
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