Mood:
loudSorry for the short hiatus in Groviness. I was in a 10-hour-a-day training class all last week, which pretty much sapped all thoughts of blogging. Now I'm trained, and ready to resume my aimless ramblings.
On one of those morning news shows last week, there was a short piece on how drive-in movie theaters are starting to make a comeback. I think this is probably because, like bell-bottom pants, people who never experienced them the first time around think they're a great idea. Drive-in movies are actually pretty uncomfortable. We had one nearby, in the middle of nowhere, that somehow survived the mass die-offs of the '60s and '70s. My parents liked it because they charged by the carload, not by the head. On Saturday evenings in the summer, they would round up all visible kids, along with whatever cousins happened to be visiting, cram 8 - 12 youths into the station wagon (using a toilet plunger if necessary), and head over to the drive-in.
The drive-in had one ancient cartoon, about a Japanese beetle, and one ancient movie, a speckly faded print of The Great Escape, which they showed for probably about 15 summers in a row. I liked the beetle cartoon, but The Great Escape didn't have much to recommend it to the five-year-old girl demographic. Seating went by seniority, so I was usually relegated to the "way back" (the open trunk area behind the back seat). There I would try to make out what was happening through the bottom of the fogged-up windshield and the tinny, crackling speaker hooked to the driver's side of the car. (About once a summer, my dad forgot about the speaker and drove off with it still tethered to the window ledge).
Imprisoned as I was in the way back, there were times when I felt a twinge of sympathy with Steve McQueen. Especially when he was penned up in the metal solitary confinement box, bouncing the ball against the wall. I spent a lot of time stuffing clumps of dog fluff in my pockets and wishing I could tunnel to freedom through the tailgate.
No, drive-ins aren't the most comfortable way to enjoy a movie. The root beer is lukewarm and watery by the time you get it back to the car, someone in the audience is always honking their horn by mistake, kids wander freely around the parking area tossing Good 'n' Plentys into open sunroofs, and it's hard to see the whole screen if you're not in the front seat. The main selling point of drive-ins is that they're different than your regular movie-going experience...because hey! You're in a car! Nowadays, people spend so much time in cars that it isn't that novel anymore. I think they ought to provide theaters with wading pools for people wearing flippers, masks, and inflatable rubber horsey rings. Now that would be a different film-going experience. Or how about "brush-in" cinemas with sinks, so people can brush, floss, and gargle while watching the movie?
Speaking of old cartoons and nostalgia, the hats that the actors are wearing for Public Enemies:
remind me a little (just a little) of the gangster boss from those old Bugs Bunny cartoons. The one who has a sidekick named Mugsy and says "Shut up shuttin' up" in a nasally voice:
Hat crowns were taller in the 1930s, for whatever reason (no air conditioning? good place to stash the loot?). When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in the '80s, it caused a brief resurgence in fedora-wearing. Indiana Jones was a cool, fun, dashing character who appealed to the non-suit-wearers. (Gene Hackman's porkpie hat in The French Connection didn't attract quite the same degree of attention, because Gene was The Man). Indiana's fedora was designed to be iconic, and it became the character's trademark. It was a hat that said "desert adventure", not "business meeting". For fans looking to acquire some of their hero's flair, the Indiana Jones hat could be worn on the street unobtrusively (unlike, say, a light saber or a suit of armor. Or a bullwhip.)
Raiders also coincided with a 1930s revival, when there was a renewed interest in Humphrey Bogart-style cool and movies like The Maltese Falcon. But don't go confusing the two. Here is an actual quote from a fedora chat forum debate concerning the Maltese Falcon hat vs. the Indiana Jones hat:
Not to be argumentative, but I don't see any similarity in the two hats other than they are both felt. Indiana Jones - 5 3/4 crown, center dent with high tight pinches ending in a razor sharp crease at the front, 16 ligne ribbon, 2 3/4 raw brim with an almost never done dimensional cut to 2 1/2 on the sides VS 5 3/4 crown, deep diamond crease with no head "bump", approx 2 3/8 brim, conventional meeting of the pinches at front...I just don't agree with your statement.
Got that? Good. I don't want to hear any of you getting your fedoras mixed up again.
I don't know if Public Enemies on its own will seize movie audiences enough to cause a new hat-wearing frenzy, but in combination with the upcoming new Indiana Jones movie, it just might spark a renewed interest in haberdashery. Fedoras look very fetching, and flatter just about everybody. Someday, an entire generation of kids will rebel against the stodgy old backward baseball hats of their grandfathers, and take up the fedora. In fact, maybe stovepipe hats will come back into fashion, or those velvety porkpie things that Henrys IV - VII used to wear.
Okay. Time for me to shut up shuttin' up now. I need to go rewatch The Great Escape, so I can start planning methods of mass escape from our next training class.
