A Very Inappropriate Movie Night
I love movies, always have, always will.
The drawback to that love was that movies’ portrayal of romance raised my level of expectation in life to a ridiculous level and ruined my concept of love…
...but that’s for another blog post (click here to read that post).
But that’s not what this is about, I just wanted to put it out there.
Although, I really do love movies.
My dad worked for a movie distribution company, responsible for booking new movies into the theaters. Actually, he started out as an accountant for that company and then, when they started showing movies on airplanes, he slowly changed his job and then did that full time.
I guess my father liked movies as well.
One of the perks of his job was that he often brought home featured films (16mm), which I would thread through our projector (I was the only one in the family that could do that) and show them on the living room wall.
That was in Old Bridge, New Jersey.
When we lived in Brooklyn my father would attach a sheet to the back of the brownstone and put on a movie for everyone in the neighborhood.
Also, showing first-run movies really enhanced our birthday parties when we were kids.
Fun fact: The 16mm projector I used to show movies, the one my father first brought home, said it, “fell off the truck.”
As a kid I thought, “How fortunate my father was there when that happened.”
(Idiot)
None of the movies my father brought home were blockbusters (although we did have the original Mel Brooks’ The Producers once) and others were not meant for kids’ parties. Some horror, some war, and movies geared more toward adults (no, not porn).
But R-Rated movies.
That leads me to this.
I am about to mention a movie that you’ve never heard of, even though it had some major (or soon-to-be major) stars.
James Whitmore, Tippi Hedren, and a young Bruno Kirby and Don Johnson.
The movie?
The Harrad Experiment (see, never heard of it, right?).
The movie is about an experimental college that promotes sexual freedom. That was something I did not know when I started to watch the movie…
...with my mother.
Besides sheets, brownstones, and living room walls, we also had a portable screen to show movies. If you were in grade school in the sixties, it was those screens that pulled down and stood in the front of the class. The surface was like white sandpaper.
With my mother on the couch and me behind the projector, I flipped the switch and the movie came to life.
There was nothing remarkable about the movie. That is, until everyone on screen was naked.
This was seventies’ sex in a mainstream movie so everyone in the pool was naked from the waist up.
And by people, I mean women.
Granted, by today’s standard, this scene would go by unnoticed.
But in 1973, in our home in Old Bridge in our rec room, watching a movie with my mother this was downright hardcore porn.
My mother, once she realized what was on screen, jumped up and stood in front of the projector so the movie would not appear on the screen.
By doing that my mother thought she was shielding me from the debauchery on screen. However, I’m sure she did not know how projectors worked.
There is a small knob on the side of the projector that, when turned, caused the debauchery to be transferred from the screen and focused squarely on my mother’s back.
For the next few minutes I watched the movie as my mother stood there bravely protecting me, until she realized what I was doing and made me turn the movie off and told me to never watch it again.
I can’t truly say whether or not I watched the movie my mother forbade me to watch (okay, yes I watched it later).
That memory came back with something my son Alexander did several years ago.
We were in Delaware for a Father’s Day baseball tournament when my son Alexander played on his little league travel team. We arrived on the Saturday before and stayed at a local motel. After dinner I looked everywhere for Alexander but could not find him.
This was before cell phones, so my search for him was on foot, but eventually it was to no avail.
Later that night, when Alexander returned to the hotel room, I asked him where he had been all this time.
“Oh,” he said, “we were just in Greg’s room watching a movie.”
Let me give you some back story.
In ‘04 Trey Parker and Matt Stone (South Park) made a movie called Team America: World Police, which was basically a porn movie with puppets.
Well, marionettes actually.
Before this Father’s Day tournament I specifically told Alexander (who expressed an interest in watching this movie) that I did not want him to watch this movie.
So what movie did they watch in Greg’s room that night?
You guessed it, Team America: World Police.
Well, at least he didn’t watch it on his mother’s back.
