Invisible Larceny

I hurt my back in gym but not really.  A kid threw a volleyball at me and in a moment of insanity, I tried to recover the ball.  I landed on my back with a thud, I felt fine but I enjoyed the brief sympathy of others.  The gym teacher told me to go to the nurse which I did, just to get away from the gym teacher, gym class and all of my fellow students.  After a cursory examination, the nurse immediately assumed I needed to go home, so she could get back to her crossword puzzle, to which I agreed but I didn’t want to go home.  I had some money in my pocket so I went to the movies.  This is the early spring of 1988 and I bought a ticket to see D.O.A., a remake of the classic film noir.  I liked the film and still do, despite some bad acting and terrible reviews.  I was excited to see it because it was directed by the husband and wife team that made Max Headroom.  I was a fan of that made for cable tv show and I think they may have directed an early video for the Art of Noise, as well.

After that film, I decided to see another but I wanted to eat something sweet and I didn't have enough money for both.  Like most crimes, it was a matter of convenience more than conscience, I would see another film without paying.  This would be easy as the theater was mostly empty.  This was the old middletown theater, where the Target now resides.  I had seen every major movie of my childhood here.  I had even seen the “real live” submarine Lotus Esprit, from the Spy Who Loved Me at its local premiere.

There was a new Matthew Broderick film, his first major role since Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Plus, it had Christopher Walken from the Dogs of War, a dark parable about mercenaries I had seen on cable tv.  I was excited but Biloxi Blues didn’t start for another 15 minutes so I went into see Police Academy 6 which was as awful as you can imagine.  I remember one guy kept laughing at all the bad jokes.  I looked around in disbelief and wanted to heckle him but he had probably paid for his ticket, so I thought better of it.  His laughter reminded me of the DeNiro character from the Cape Fear remake, which wouldn’t be made for a few more years.  

I didn’t have a watch but after suffering through a few more minutes of bad jokes and annoying laughter, I left and skulked over to Biloxi Blues which had already started.  I liked Biloxi even though it had more of a sober tone than the other two movies.  I think this was one of the first films that made me appreciate drama rather than action-comedy-horror.  I had seen Catch 22 by the same director which had a similar absurd view of authority, much like MASH (the tv show, I don’t think I saw the movie until years later.)

I remember feeling rather stealthy, like a cut rate James Bond, sneaking from theater to theater un-detected.  I saw one more movie after that, Switching Channels,  a remake of The Front Page (again not a film I saw until years later).  I can’t remember what time but I know it was dark and quite late when I left.  The strangest thing when I arrived home was that no one noticed my absence.  Neither my parents nor my sister noticed that I was not home, that I had not been at home.  I remember being angry because I had been “injured” and sent home from school.  I could have had a concussion!  I could have been dead but the world was oblivious to me & my petty larcenies.  I realized there was a downside to being invisible, no one saw you but no one cared.