The Way We Were

Sixty mentioned that he recently saw the "Search for One Eyed Jimmy." I have written about this before at Trooper York.

This was an independent film made in Red Hook in 1994. That was right before gentrification turned Red Hook into a hipsters paradise. Red Hook used to be a pretty tough place. The projects were a horror show in the 1980's because of crack. You might remember the story of the principal of the grammar school who was murdered trying to protect one of his students caught in a crossfire. The only safe streets were the ones controlled by the Mob where they had a social club. Or the street where my friend Greg had a sandwich shop. The shop and Greg are in the movie. He later opened a jewelry store on Court St. His son stole the store when he had a stroke and moved the operation to Staten Island where its a big deal with radio commercials all the time.

Anyway they used some of the neighborhood characters as the basis for the characters in the movie. Just more exaggerated if that is possible. For example Disco Bean is based on John who owns Sal's pizza and never got over his disco years. The General is based on a homeless guy we used to call Rockefeller who was an ex navy guy who would preach that all of our problems were because of the rich people like Rockefeller who were shooting rays into our head to control us. Head is based on a couple of mooks from the neighborhood who had that nickname.

When I was growing up in the 1960's Red Hook still had a big Italian presence. Most of the small houses and small business were owned by the wops. Then they started to move. Many of the old time joints closed as the moolies took over. Then this guy opened up a Fairway Supermarket and it started to turn. Hipsters started moving in. Soon enough Movie Stars got condos. That dipshit Michael Shannon for one. If any of the old characters were around they would have them arrested. Now there  are million dollar condos where Disco Bean used to dance on cardboard.

The movie was really calling to mind an environment that existed twenty years before in the 1970/s. Still as a slice of life it is pretty funny.

I am glad you enjoyed it Sixty.

If you are looking for a Movie this weekend....check out "Chuck"

I really enjoyed this flick. It is the live story of one of my favorite characters Chuck Wepner. The Bayonne Bleeder. Man he hated to be called that.

Chuck was the model for the movie "Rocky." He fought Ali back in  the day. I ran into him once in a disco in Manhattan in the 1970's. I was a punk kid and he was big shit at the time. Later I also ran across him at Jimmy Glenn's bar in Midtown which was a big boxing hangout.

Anyway this movie brought it all back. Boxing. The seventies The shit we used to do back then, The clothes. The cars. The discos. Going to the close circuit fights at the movie house on the Deuce. Man, Memories.

All of that is gone now. Dead as Murphy's dick. Now it is all hipsters and political correctness.

But check out how it used to be. Back in the Day.

"Back To The Future films will never seem dated."

"BACK TO THE FUTURE IS NOW ALL BACK AND NO FUTURE" ... (excerpt)

What strikes me about this trilogy now, during the final week of the final year of the saga's Hill Valley narrative, is the way the individual movies, unlike their characters and town, have improbably escaped the ravages of time.

Once we got about twenty years out from the first film, their 1985 scenes became "period," too, like the 1955 scenes. I showed the trilogy to my son and daughter not too long ago, and they laughed as hard at Marty's once-hip ski vest and feathered hair as audiences during my era laughed at the 1950s signifiers. My daughter, who is a lot older than my son and is studying film history and sociology in college now, was intrigued to see how a trilogy conceived and filmed in the '80s viewed life in the '50s, and what it said about 1980s life without meaning to.

The sense of cultural superiority seemed more palpable to me when I watched the series with my kids than when I watched it during its original run, or when I revisited it in the '90s as a college film student. I was 16 when the original "Future" came out. The eighties were my adolescent decade. Few teenagers have the self-awareness and humility to recognize that the time they live in is not, in fact, the most technologically and culturally advanced time that the human race will ever experience, and that snickering at the past (as depicted in movies or history texts) makes the laughing person seem clueless and arrogant; I was no exception. I'm humbler about that sort of thing now because I'm in my forties and seen a few decades turn over. When I watch the "Future" films today, I am not just watching the films, I am watching myself—or I should say, I am thinking about who I was when the films came out, and cringing a little bit at how much I thought I knew, and how much I didn't know that I didn't know. When I was in high school, I laughed during the diner scene (along with everyone else in the theater) because Marty ordered a Pepsi Free and the counterman thought he was demanding a Pepsi for free. Now I laugh because the Pepsi Free name was discontinued in 1987, two years after the first "Future" came out. The joke is not about the obliviousness of the '50s adult, it's about the arrogance of the '80s teenager.

Back in the day....when things were different.