Flicker (56 page)

The movies Sharkey showed were bad enough to hurt; but his audience hurt more. It worried me. Its laughter had bitterness in it and often cruelty. Sitting among them was like being in a mob that had gathered in the street to throw stones at cripples. I put off facing up to that fact in any very decisive way until the day Sharkey called me up with big news. He'd found a nearly complete version of one of the old Jungle Girl serials.
Nylana and the Cobra Cult.
“Got everything except episodes ten and thirteen. And get this! There are outtakes! Somebody at Republic saved them. Nylana falling out of her leopard skin. Hey, wow!” He was exuberant. And he had a bright idea. “How's about you get on the blower to old Franny Lipsky and ask her to come out for the big opening? You know where she's holed up, don't you?”

“Sharkey, why would she want to do anything like that?”

“She'd do it for you, sure she would. For old times' sake. Hey, tell you what. How about we help her out with the plane fare?”

“We?”

“Well, you'd like to see the old gal again, wouldn't you?”

“Sharkey, this is a really bum idea.
Nylana
is junk. Even Franny knew that. There's just no good reason to put it back on the screen.”

“Come on, Jonny! People'll love it. And with the real Kay Allison right there in person as guest of honor—what a gas! Believe me, she's gonna be right up there with the biggies. Buster Crabbe and Charlie Middleton. A classic.”

“A trash classic, you mean.”

“What else?”

“So you want her to come flying out to your fleapit of a theater so she can watch her boobs bouncing while the audience gives her the big razz. Don't you see how cruel that is?”

He seemed genuinely shocked by the suggestion, even hurt. “Oh, you got it all wrong, amigo. She's a gem. The audience'll love her. She'd get a kick out of it, betcha anything. It's all in good fun.”

He wheedled and pleaded, but I wasn't budging. Nothing doing, I insisted, finally hanging up on him. I wouldn't even tell him that I owned episodes ten and thirteen of
Nylana and the Cobra Cult,
part of Franny's going-away present to me. Sharkey ran the serial anyway without Franny's participation. And sure enough: within the next year, after he circulated the film, the Jungle Girl was making it big on the grind-house circuit.

I decided I had to have a long, searching talk with Sharkey, but it wasn't easy to pin him down. While he'd shaped up enormously since taking over The Classic, he was still a breezy, boozy guy who liked to affect a strung-out style even when he was reasonably lucid. I might have taken him as the clown he made himself out to be and brushed him off, but something Clare had told me shortly before she left stuck in my mind. “Don't let Sharkey fool you,” she had said. “He may act like a boob. That's because he is a boob. But
that's
because he
believes
in being a boob. Boobiness is a cause with him. He doesn't talk it, he lives it, he thrives on it. Bad taste, sleaze, tackiness. Sharkey is part of something that's been lurking out there along the fringes, and not just among film freaks. Have you seen the comic books the kids are reading? I don't know what to call it, but it's pathological. If it ever gets out of control, God help us all. Of
course, if you could ever get Sharkey to talk about it, he'd say he was just having fun. Fun! Beware of people who come bearing fun. Fun is the virus.”

Eventually, I did get a shot at an at least semiserious conversation with Sharkey. It came about a week before I was scheduled to take charge of the Castle retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Sharkey insisted on giving me a send-off party. Though I gave him no reason to believe I agreed with him, he insisted on seeing
my
success as
our
success, his and mine, something we shared as workers in a common cause. It wasn't much of a party, just a group of us getting together over pastrami and beer and surreptitious joints at Moishe's after the last show. The guests included the usual small band of old Classic regulars, along with some of the kids who helped Sharkey keep the theater perking along—about as many of us as could squeeze into a few booths at the back of the deli.

We spent an hour or two goofing off and kidding around, but that evening's movie had provided me with just the right talking point, so I wasn't going to let the opportunity slip away. It was an absolute atrocity called
Plan Nine from Outer Space.
The movie happened to be Bela Lugosi's last bow; somewhere in the middle of the filming, he had died. That might have lent the picture some barely minimal historical interest for those who cared about whatever became of Bela. But that wasn't why Sharkey was showing it. He was billing it as “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” a claim that wasn't likely to be challenged in our lifetime. The production values were actually below those of home movies, the story a mindless improvisation. It was filmmaking at the imbecile level. But it played regularly at The Classic about a half-dozen times a year, always to uproarious full houses.

“Seriously
now, Sharkey,” I began, using the word gingerly, “why are you showing this horror?”

“Because why not?” Sharkey answered, as I might have expected. He inhabited a world where “why not” had long ago replaced “why” as life's great question.

“Because, for one thing,” I went on, “it's so damn painful to watch.”

“Only if you fight it, pal. See, you're fighting it. Don't fight it.”

“I'm not fighting it, Sharkey. I'm just seeing it for what it is. It's garbage. I'd have to fight
not
to see that.”

“Yeah, but it's fun. Come on, Jonny, what's wrong with having a little fun?”

I decided not to quote Clare at that point. Mentioning her name
was the fastest way to turn Sharkey off. “But don't you see? Mocking—that's all these dopey kids out there in the audience care about. They come to mock. They come to give everything the horse laugh. Stuff like this makes movies ridiculous.”

“So what are movies? Sacred or something? Hey, man, this is
your
audience here. These are Maxie Castle's people. Don't knock ‘em.”

I was waiting for that, because maybe this was what worried me most about Sharkey and his audience. The Classic was at that point one of about a dozen little art and repertory film houses around the country where Max Castle's movies—the whole, uncut originals as Zip Lipsky had preserved them—were playing regularly, gaining a new, youthful following. That was one reason I'd kept up my friendship with Sharkey. In some measure, he'd helped me revive Castle's work and that was adding feathers to my professional hat. I owed him for the favor. Even so, after their first few screenings at The Classic, I found I couldn't come around again when Castle's films were being shown. I was afraid to find out what these movies might mean to an audience that was every bit as eager to watch Captain Marvel kick the Scorpion in the pants.

“Look, Sharkey, Castle isn't junk. That's the whole point. That's why I care about him. I'm trying to show what he's got to offer. Good stuff. Craft. Imagination. Originality.
Plan Nine, Reefer Madness,
all this crud you're showing—it's really awful. There's nothing there. It's just bad, and you know it. With Castle, I'm working in the other direction. I'm trying to pull him out of the garbage can because he doesn't belong there.
Plan Nine
does. In fact, by now it should be landfill. Buried. Out of sight. Gone forever.”

By this hour of the evening, Sharkey was just about ready to melt into the cloud of unknowing. But I could tell he was mulling over my protest. His answer, when it came, was a surprise; it sounded like the product of thought. “Lemme give you the inside word here, pal.
Bad is okay.
That's the theory we're working from. Bad is
better
than okay.
Bad is best.
Because bad opens up a space, you understand? It gives things a chance to grow. Listen, it's like in Charlie Chaplin.”

“What d'you mean?”

“See, there's the little tramp, right? And there's the big cop. And the cop keeps all the time knocking on the little tramp's ears. Because what right has the little tramp got even to be alive? He's scum, right? So keep him in the gutter, right? You know who the cop is?
Quality
is the cop. The censor. The worst censor. Worse than the sex censor,
the politics censor. Quality is the killer. Know why? Cuz it's got Shakespeare Power, and Einstein Power, and Rembrandt Power. That's heavy, man. I mean, after old Will Shakespeare said it all, who's got the nerve to open up his stupid mouth even? So, see, first thing is—you gotta knock off quality. Otherwise, the little tramp never gets his chance. So which side are you on, brother? Which side are you on? The cop or the tramp?”

For Sharkey, this was an astonishingly well-connected answer. It amounted to an aesthetic theory, a vindication of crap culture. I felt almost ashamed to question what he was saying after he'd gone to the trouble of putting so many words together in a speechlike order. But I didn't like what I was hearing, not one little bit. Damned if I didn't feel called upon to defend Taste, Reason, and Civilization. Right there in the back booth of Moishe's Kosher Deli.

“But where do you draw the line, Sharkey?” I asked. “If bad is okay because bad is fun, what're we saying? Anything goes? That worries me. These kids …” And there they were, these kids, maybe a half dozen of them crowding around us in our booth like little savages watching this strange thing that was happening—somebody taking something seriously. “They don't know there's quality in the first place. They just want to wallow in the garbage can. They like it in there, can't you see? You show them the World's Worst Movie, it's a big giggle. But did they ever see the World's Best Movie? If we throw out the quality, what happens to civilization?”

The words were no sooner out of my mouth than it came down on me like the bucket of paint that Olsen might rig up to dump on Johnson: a sense of infinite silliness. Here was old Sharkey sinking rapidly under the waves, gazing at me with eyes that seemed to be peering up through three feet of water. And draped around him on all sides were these half-stoned kids giving me a collective subchimpanzee stare. Why was I talking to these people about civilization? They were the barbarians at the gate. Clare was right. Thump them hard, heap them with scorn, kick them out the door. And no apologies. Because there was no little tramp to feel sorry for; there was Charlie Chaplin
playing
the tramp, a rare piece of artistic make-believe, quality all the way through. But Sharkey was trying to stay in touch, he was really trying. He gave his quarter-inch joint a deep, wheezy suck, passed it over his shoulder to the fifteen-year-old behind him, and nodded gravely. “Heavy, man. That's a heavy question.” Then, grinning, “Looks like we're gonna have to call in Charlton Heston to
guard the fort. Hey, how about that, boys and girls? A Charlton Heston Festival.”

And all the boys and girls shouted, “Yeah!”

That night got a lot of things together for me. I realized I wasn't really arguing with Sharkey; I was arguing with myself. I could see so clearly that I should have signed off on The Classic and its trash-loving audience a long time ago. So why hadn't I?

There was one reason I kept coming back to. It had to do with another kind of attraction that was taking up more and more space at Sharkey's picture show. Ever since the
Venetian Magenta
affair, and in spite of everything Clare could do to fight free of the association, The Classic had become the chief West Coast outlet for underground films. Chipsey Goldenstone was willing to spend lavishly to keep that connection alive and well advertised in the public eye year-round, and not just for the length of a two-week festival once a year. Now that Clare was off the scene, Chipsey was nicely positioned to get his way. All the more easily when he became Sharkey's principal means of support, the one deep pocket where Sharkey could look for help when the bills came due. From that point on, whatever Chipsey put on film, Sharkey was sure to show. Maldoror Productions, as Chipsey was then styling himself, were just as awful as ever—mindless, tasteless, nauseatingly prurient—but no more so than the cinematic solid waste Sharkey was importing from the New York underground. In fact, compared to most of what passed for highly touted avant-garde film in those days, Chipsey's work sometimes looked almost well made. He could at least afford decent equipment and fresh film stock.

I inherited all of Clare's reservations about the New American Cinema, but not her capacity for dogged resistance. I could plainly see how overblown these excruciatingly amateurish efforts were. Still, I came to see them all, and to see them again and again. I came to see the bikers' orgy and the gang-bang rape. I came to see six hours of an obscure New York poet sleeping (though, having gotten the idea, I left less than halfway through, leaving only the potheads to finish the course). I came to see the funny fat transvestite eat the puppy dog's turd. I came for the barely visible eight-millimeter eyesores shot by coked-up necrophiliacs on their fire escapes and by seventeen-year-old sadomasochists in their basements. I came for the items Sharkey frankly and lovingly billed as “an evening of dog vomit and sewer gas.”

Why? Just keeping up with the latest, I told myself. Part of my professional responsibility. But that was transparently a lie. Because the “latest” had so rapidly grown tiresomely old and was going precisely nowhere. Always the same repertory of smirking perversions and mind-blown improvisation. So why did I sit there for all those hours at The Classic, letting the banality of
The Chelsea Girls
and the mucky fantasies of
Pink Flamingos
wash over me? Fortunately, it wasn't because I'd lost the will to shake myself free and return to the world of judgment and difficult choice; I was attracted, not addicted. But attracted by what? When I finally forced myself to face that question, I realized I was
savoring
the sleaze, letting it cast its spell over me, the seductive sloth that comes of letting the mind mellow out and just having “fun.” In another sense, then, I
was
keeping up with the latest. I was watching all the standards crumble before my eyes, all the limits vanish, flirting with the experience of surrender that belongs to the defining terror of my time, the era when human beings confabulate with their own annihilation. So why not, why not, why not?