Excuse me if I am a little maudlin this week. Lots of things happening and most of them are about where I am in life. Have you ever sat down to reflect on your position and what went right or wrong?
I’m not a particularly deep person, although my family may disagree. If you know me at all, you know I’m apt to voice my thoughts no matter the results. Oh, I have my own thoughts that I rarely share with anyone but my bride. I can do that because I know, deep in my heart, that she will hold my thoughts as close as if they were her own.
Don’t give up on me yet, as I will make it clear on this retrospect. I was on my way back from the VA Clinic in San Jose, where I was examined for any evidence of too much sun. I’m happy to report that I was given a clean bill of health, although I am always nervous because I was a sun worshiper from a very early age. This was a time where I paid little attention to the warnings that were voiced by those that only had my best interest at heart.
As I was driving home, I was listening to a radio station discussing the greatest movies ever made. It was interesting only because of the first movie they named was “On the Waterfront,” starring Marlon Brando. When that movie came out, The Wasco Theater, in Wasco where I was born and raised, was still in business and showing popular movies, even if they were mostly black and white.
My family was on our way home from Bakersfield, where my dad bought the only new car we ever had. It was a 1956 Ford Fairlane. That was the coolest car. My dad was so full of good cheer that he asked if we wanted to go to the movies.
As chance would have it, “On the Waterfront” was the feature film. None of my family knew much about the movie, but it had been touted as one of the best movies of the year. It was such a wonderful night that all of us said, “Yeah!” Not so much because of the buildup of the movie, but because it wasn’t often we were all together. It just seemed like a magical evening. We were all together, which was a rare occasion. You take that as well as all of us riding in a brand new car, my mom and dad, my two brothers and I.
There was a little coffee shop right next to the theater named Beaners that sold hamburgers and soda pop mostly to the theater goers either coming or going. My dad took us all in there and I had a Vanilla Coke. I forget what all the others had, but it was probably something quick and calorie infused. My mom and dad went up the stairs to the balcony, where there were not so many noisy kids.
The movie was a little mature for a 10-year-old boy, but it was just so cool to be there with my family that I actually sat in my seat and did not have to be threatened by my pop. I can still remember the scene where Marlon Brando was talking to his brother in the back of the taxi. His brother had been using Brando’s skill as a boxer to entertain a weekly match, where he was paid for beating up the other guy. They were in the back seat of a taxi cab arguing. Brando was complaining about the way his skills were being wasted when his brother said something like, “You’re making money, aren’t you?” and Brando turned to him and said, “Yeah! But I could have been a contender!”
A movie critic later pointed out that it was not the words and not the line he said. It was the depth, not so much the line itself, or even the words. It’s the way Marlon Brando says them, with all the regret anyone has ever felt about not achieving something they dreamed about. It’s that very universality that makes the words so memorable. Who hasn’t felt like that? Sometimes it’s not necessary to be dramatic, disturbing, surprising or any of the other examples you say. Although the words are lacking, sometimes the simplest words carry the greatest emotional weight.
I must have watched that movie five or six times as I grew up and left home to become a soldier. When the cassettes came out, I watched it again. It was my favorite movie next to “Green Beret,” starring John Wayne, two movies that couldn’t be more different.
Then the greatest movie of my life came out and threw a shadow over both of those films, “Apocalypse Now.” I can still remember the feeling I had as I watched this movie in Fayettville, N.C. Martin Sheen was an army assassin being sent up river to assassinate Marlon Brando, who had raised his own army and was disturbing the establishment all the way up to the Department of Defense. You weren’t supposed to do that. As he was looking over the paperwork about his assignment, he flipped a page over and there was a photograph of my “A” Team. I actually jumped up out of my seat and yelled, “Hey! That’s my ‘A’ Team.”
That picture hangs in my hallway today. It is the most reproduced photograph to come out of the Vietnam War and was published in a magazine called “The Green Beret.” I still have that magazine in my safe. Brando was in one other movie that I felt a kinship with, “The Wild One.” This was a story about a motorcycle gang who captured Hollister and created a legend. Not because I wanted to be in a gang, but because Brando was just so good.
These movies have had an impact on me, probably because of their timing. Sometimes I wonder if “I could have been a contender.”
God Bless.
