A series of musings on movies, memories, and storytelling.
by Cassie Hayes, Fiction Editor
Hands down the best thing about movies is that you can use them as an excuse to eat popcorn.
When I was a kid, me and my dad would have movie nights. Typically the billing consisted of Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, the Three Stooges, or old Universal horror pictures—Dracula, Frankenstein, and, my favorite, the Wolf Man. At first I cared little about the movies—I didn’t really get why they didn’t have any color, or why the actors talked so fast and stiffly—but I absolutely loved the way my dad made popcorn. At the time I thought he was some kind of master popcorn chef who knew this amazing secret ingredient that no one else knew to add. In reality, all he did was melt butter in the microwave and pour it into the popcorn bag. My job was to shake the bag using both hands, careful not to spill popcorn everywhere—though I don’t know why I had to be careful about making a mess when he didn’t. He never covered the bowl of butter with plastic wrap, so our microwave ended up looking like a warzone, much to my mother’s chagrin.
The Wolf Man is, I think, the first non-animated movie that truly captivated me. It was the first movie that made me care more about the story than the popcorn. I was amazed especially by Maleva, the gypsy woman who tries to help Larry Talbot after he is bitten by her son, a werewolf. I liked her mysteriousness, her sensitivity, her knowledge, and her dedication to her family.
And of course I was also captivated by the whole idea of werewolves, human beings transforming into out-of-control beasts.
I wasn’t scared at all by the movie. Maybe I’d already been desensitized somehow by television (I used to like the show Cops), other movies (Bambi?) and brow-beaten bible stories, but I didn’t hide my eyes or bury my face in my father’s shoulder when kind, mild-mannered Larry Talbot turned into a giant man-eating wolf. Not a bit. Instead, I couldn’t look away. How AWESOME, somebody becoming something else, something so different that his own father doesn’t recognize him!
But Maleva did recognize him.
The match cut is a transition in film editing in which one shot cuts to another shot that has graphic elements—a subject or action—matching the previous frame. It makes readers see parallels between two different subjects and also can represent a jump in time. For instance, in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey one of the monkeys throws a bone into the air. The bone tumbles against a blank sky, and then there’s a cut to a satellite tumbling in space. So the audience can follow that time has shifted forward and that there are parallels between the bone and the satellite—two of the few things easily followed in 2001.
I wonder who I would be match cut to if the options were Maleva and Larry Talbot. This is one of the many pointless question I wonder about. I also wonder about why I wonder about so many pointless questions.
Yet this isn’t a pointless. Somehow I think this question says something about my heritage, my vocation, my very essence.
Heavy stuff for a pretty cheesy 1940s Universal horror flick. Allow me to elaborate:
My mother’s side of the family is traditionally more stoic, more mysterious, more sensitive. There are bigger holes in the history of that side of my family—my grandfather’s “lost years” in between getting out of the Army in his twenties after WWII and marrying my grandmother when he was around forty, my grandmother’s tendency towards silence and pragmatism when asked about anything. How they come from swampy Caddo Lake in East Texas hidden among the weeping willows and curtains of gray moss. They remind me of Maleva.
My father’s side of the family is more passionate, hard, tough. I have heard stories about my great-grandfather—my father’s father’s father—his resilience and quick temper, how he raised his several brothers and sisters single-handedly during the Great Depression, how when he got mad he would very slowly and deliberately take off his glasses, fold them, put them in his pocket, and then commence to pummeling whoever was the poor soul that had made eye contact. I have seen threads of that temper in my grandfather and father and most certainly in me. Especially when I’m driving and somebody cuts me off.
That side of the family reminds me of the werewolf, Larry Talbot—the man suddenly turned beast.
Most likely I’m a bit of both, and since I’m really not that unique a human being, you could assume that if I’m a bit of both everybody is a bit of both, too.
You need both to tell a good story.
We at Arkana claim that our mission is to find stories that “work to discover and uncover the overlooked, the misunderstood, and the silent.” In the Wolf Man Maleva always recognizes Talbot, even when he’s a monstrous beast that even his own father doesn’t recognize. Stories, or at least the kind Arkana is after, wouldn’t work without both the dysfunctional monsters and the people able to still see the human in the beast.
A good storyteller combines the out-of-control nature of passion and feeling with the quiet wisdom of reflection.
And a good story listener supplies the popcorn.
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