So, I've not been very successful at posting every day. But the folks at Nablopomo (post-modern Nablo? ...nah.) have helpfully supplied me and other procrastinators/office droolers with a daily writing prompt.
Yesterday (yes, I am still behind, but I have no farking clue what day it is anyway) the question asked to discuss a film you've never seen, and why.
I've never seen The Wall. Yes, that Wall.
Do I need to? A complete analysis exists, after all.
Why haven't I seen it? Here's a list:
1. I didn't really like or care about Pink Floyd until 2005, when I finally bought Dark Side of the Moon.
2. Then, I couldn't get enough of playing Dark Side of the Moon, so I didn't think at all about buying The Wall.
3. Or watching it.
4. I was a seventh grader when The Wall came out. My favorite movies that year were E.T. and Grease 2.
5. As a seventh grader, I saw the video on MTV. It made me anxious, but worse than the anxiety that took hold of me when mean old John Houseman hollered from the small stage in his classroom as my parents watched The Paper Chase.
6. In video, those mushy-faced schoolchildren pointlessly marching and sliding on a factory conveyer belt and falling into a vat of who-knows-what, the mean old schoolmaster with his mortarboard shouting about pudding, all played under the overall menace of "Another Brick in the Wall" ... no, thank you, I'll just return to re-enacting the "Cool Rider" scene from Grease 2.
7. I did sort of like the end of "Another Brick in the Wall," however, when the suddenly not-mushfaced schoolchildren tear down the Wall, trash the school and apparently hurl the schoolmaster into a fire. But the uprising was only the main schoolboy's daydream. Damn.
8. In seventh grade I daydreamed about becoming a fashion designer. My happiest memory from that entire school year was drawing my fashions free-hand during Social Studies, discovering that I could do it without the aid of Fashion Plates.
9. I'm 99% certain that, eight years and hundreds of miles and dozens of prospective careers later, I had to be at Marquette University Theatre to work on or be in a show during the weekend The Wall played at the Varsity Theatre.
10. Thanks to theatre, I also missed the Peter Murphy concert at the Varsity Theatre, at which I understand ol' smiley Pete played for a full twenty minutes.
11. I'm pretty sure I was running the sound board for Our Town during that concert.
12. We got so adept at our cues during the OT run that we called them before stage manager Stephanie (the real stage manager, not the character Stage Manager) could call them.
13. "I think maybe the moon's getting nearer and nearer and there'll be a biiiiiiiiiiiig 'SPLOSION."
14. I know Our Town by heart. Ayup. Raght smaht fahm.
15. In Our Town, Thornton Wilder's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially in the narration of the Stage Manager, who, near the end of the play, guides Emily into a talking graveyard.
16. In The Wall, Roger Water's thoughts on mortality and immortality are delivered essentially through the hallucinations of self-punishing character Pink, who, near the end of the film, is sentenced in a hallucinated trial by a giant talking butthole.
17. I realized today as I unwillingly thought about Lindsay Lohan's sentencing for violation of her probation, that I don't really like a lot of world the way it is right now.
18. But I'd better appreciate the here and now because someday there'll be a future in which I will long for here and now.
19. That came out kind of grim. Not unlike what I think The Wall is like.
20. Wait. Thornton Wilder said all of this much better in Our Town:
Emily: Do any human beings realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?
Stage Manager: No -- Saints and poets maybe -- they do some.
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