Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in The Park

A woman sees a man sitting on a park bench from the window of her posh apartment across the street.  She peers through the curtains in the dining room while her guests prepare for the fine cuisine that her servants have cooked.  She’s distracted throughout dinner, staring off into nothing, making excuses to get up to see the young man on the bench.  It rains but the man remains sitting there. The woman becomes agitated.  “That man out there, he’ll be soaked,” she says to her guests.

When they leave, she goes out with an umbrella, introduces herself and invites him to stay with her.  She feeds him a fine dinner and a pineapple cake she made herself, plays music for him and offers him up her tub for a bath. The man plays mute the entire time so she runs her fucking mouth – it’s Sandy Dennis with some weird accent that sounds like one of those stars, Tina Turner, Madonna, who’re enamored by the foreign and effect some bizarre rendition of European accent. The movie is in Vancouver and though I’ve never been there I don’t think they talk like this.

Eventually Sandy Dennis takes the boy prisoner and invites a prostitute to have sex with him.  She kills the prostitute and tries to soothe him, telling him that everything’s okay even though the windows and doors are bolted and he can’t get out.  Tears stream down his face while the credits roll and she strokes his face, kissing him and whatnot in an extreme close up.

I loved this movie soooooo much when I was a kid!  It haunted me something awful.  I found it bizarre and transporting.  It’s not on Netflix so I had to watch it on youtube in segments which is straight up wack!  I wondered why it wasn’t on Netflix so I looked for reviews – it’s a Robert Altman film – I loved 3 Women by the way.  Robert Altman’s good right?  Well, everyone hated the film, called it psychosexual nonsense blah blah blah – what killjoys!  I give the movie 10 stars because Sandy Dennis is a weirdo and I liked the Vancouver scene because you don’t get to see it much in movies and I like that she took somebody prisoner in her posh apartment.  Roger Ebert can kiss my butt with his bad review.

A Late 19th Century Street Walker Pirate

 

Okay look I need $50,000.  My teeth are rotten.  I’m being dramatic — they’re not ALL rotten, but I do have teeth issues from a childhood illness.  I’m lucky since my teeth have always looked okay, and I don’t have halitosis.  Ironically, when your teeth are really fucked up you take good care of them, flossing and brushing constantly — I should probably say, that after you find out how fucked up they are, you scramble to ‘make it right.’  But as I say, mine aren’t like this because of neglect, they’re like this because of the achalasia that I had as a child, the disease that I was given because that’s the way life is — fuck!  Okay so achalasia is when your esophagus closes up, and it’s a rare disease.  This is a great.  I have this distinction.  I won’t get into details because I might have to take out that self-pity violin.  But couldn’t the hell I have been some other rare GREAT thing, like a rare talent or genius????  (I discussed this in another post.)  When you spend a third of your life in dental surgery, it puts more focus on your teeth.  I tell the dentist ‘Why don’t you just yank ’em all out — give me fake ones?  I’m sick of this shit.”  The dentist says, “Oh but you take such good care of your gums.”  You see too, I thought if I had them yanked out, my boyfriend would favor that — ya know ‘ot ay mean?  Wink wink.  For now I just fancy myself as a 19th century street whore, or a pirate.  Arrgh!  You see back in the day if you had weak teeth and no money, while you were essentially fucked, you just kept on hooking, kept on pirating.

Send donations to repair Auntie Grandma Sandee’s rotten ass teeth to:

The Land of Make Believe

New York City, New York

P.S. I’m off to the dentist on the morrow!  Wish me luck mateys!