LETTERS FROM HOME: THE SECRET OF WHAT CAN BECOME OF KISSES

Feb. 15, 1996

Dear Leslie,

The announcement of the Academy Award nominations is always a time of grumbling and faint hopes in these parts. Grumbling because few of the nominees have appeared on our movie screens. And faint hopes that the publicity surrounding the Oscar nominations might give these movies another chance.

Our 10 movie screens show films that fall into three general categories: blockbuster, made for teens, and made for tots. "Dead man Walking"? Forget it. Same goes for "Mighty Aphrodite," "Leaving Las Vegas" and "Nixon." I doubt "The Postman" rings even once here, even if it wins an Oscar.

DC and I saw that wonderful movie in Chicago, at a movie house that showed only non-blockbusters. She thinks we should open a little movie house that shows good foreign films and the American films that don't come here.

Let's assume the companies that own the local cinemas are right and they can't find an audience for small films like "Smoke" and "The Brothers McMullen," neither of which is to be found even at my video store. Certainly, our little movie house would lose money.

But I think of the Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, refurbished in gold gilt by David Packard at the cost of millions with little hope of making any of it back. And I remember the happy crowds who paid $5 for a double feature of "Thin Man" movies or bought a pass for a week-long series of John Ford or William Wyler films. The popcorn was fresh, the butter as real as the organ music pumping from the stage between movies.

Watching movies with these people was a community experience, one not available from your video store.

I also think of "Cinema Paradiso" and the packed post-World War II movie house that was the center of the small Italian town's life, where young boys and girls held hands and watched the wild American West come alive. Charlie Chaplin made the audience weep from laughing, and monsters of the imagination sent shivers through the aisles.

And though the priest made the projectionist cut them out of every film, everyone knew where the kisses were supposed to go.

David Packard has a Ph.D. in medieval literature, is much smarter than I am and recognizes that movies have become OUR literature, consumed by the masses in the same way Shakespeare's plays were. They are the most widely disseminated statements about our culture.

Have you read the Warren Commission report? Seen "JFK"? Which version of events do you think is more firmly embedded in the American consciousness?

When the list of unseen worthy films appears I feel illiterate and behind the times. Film is the outlet the American consciousness is plugged into, the dream we have en masse. I want to dream with the rest of the world.

"Cinema Paradiso" made me understand how important movies are to us. How they are entertainments but also reveries that define both our nightmares and our best aspirations.

A small quiver creeps up my neck as the movie's final images play in my head once again, a secret shared only by those who know what can become of kisses.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.