Friday, March 02, 2007

No Zodiac for me, thank you.

I won't be seeing that new movie, Zodiac. I made this decision the moment I heard it was in the hands of the guy who made Se7en, one movie I wish with all my heart I had never, ever seen.

See, I have a very vivid imagination, which is good for my job, but it also means that some images just never, ever go away for me. Therefore, I have to be wary about what I may be putting in my memory bank.

For example, when I was young, I caught part of a movie on TV about gangsters called, I kid you not, The Purple Gang. Even more surprisingly, given that "purple" certainly doesn't sound tough, this was a real gang of bootleggers in Detroit. (I found an explanation for the purple on Wikipedia: that purple is the color of rotten meat. To which I add, "Eeeeuuww.")

Anyway, in the film, there was a guy in the gang who was the most nerdy gangster you've ever seen. He wore wire-rim glasses. He became a police informant. The boss of the gang found out.

Next thing we see is Wire-Rim Guy lying in a large wooden grate, like a very cheap coffin, open at the top. The gang boss takes off the guy's glasses and says, "I'll send these to your mother." Next shot is one of those small cement mixers moving toward the crate and starting to pour.

I mean, that's all we see, but we know what's going on and AY YI YI!!! I was horrified and as I said, it made me uneasy near cement trucks for years. And I can tell you now, many, many years later, that scene from The Purple Gang is more vivid in my mind than anything I watched on TV last night.

Which is why I won't be seeing any movie ever made by the guy behind Se7en, and I don't care if it's considered by wiser minds than mine to be the greatest movie of the year.

3 comments:

Leah Braemel said...

Strange how shows, or books, can influence you like that. For me it was reading Arthur Hailey's Hotel when I was about 10. In that story he has the cable on an elevator break and then the emergency brakes fail so it plunges down 13 stories. For years after that I used to take the stairs if I had the choice, and even to this day, forty years later, I still hesitate when I step on an elevator.

Leah Braemel said...

LOL, just read that post - that should read: 'thirty' years later. Let's not make me older than I am!

That'll teach me to proofread before I hit 'Publish.'

Anonymous said...

The "cement coffin" scene was one of the coolest movie scenes. My idea of a good home double feature would be "The Purple Gang" and "Thunder Road". The guy who got "cement coffined" was an inconceivably nerdy Jewish guy who kept the gang's books in his head. What a stereotype.

Another good home double feature would be "Summer of Sam" and "Bullet", the Mickey Rourke/Tupac Shakur star vehicle of that title. These are two films which would leave you thinking that every guy in New York spend the weekend on heroin. I wonder where they would get that idea!