There were no movie restrictions in my house. My parents did not censor me, so in elementary and middle school, I taped Full Metal Jacket and Goodfellas and Taxi Driver and The Doors and Platoon. My best friend Marlon, who my father called Brando, wasn't allowed to watch R-rated movies. His father didn't believe I had seen Full Metal Jacket, so he quizzed me.
"All right, so what do the soldiers chant in the barracks?"
I smiled, chewing over the snap-crackle of my Rice Krispies.
"You mean before the sergeant gets his head blown off?"
"Yeah."
"But not before they leave Parris Island?"
"Uh huh."
I looked at Marlon, then back at his father. I finished chewing and stood up; my spoon in one hand, my crotch in the other.
" This is my rifle, this is my gun! One is for fighting, one is for fun!"
We laughed: his father at my response and me at Marlon's face as I recited the lines, knowing that he knew all the words, too, but couldn't let on that he'd seen Full Metal Jacket at my house.
I had my basic movie groups: Mob, War, Rockumentary. A film pyramid. A steady diet of explosions and curses and stage dives and full frontal nudity, with a sprinkling of comedies at the apex that I viewed sparingly. This was my foundation. Where I set my life.
I did not read. Books were set decorations, mere objects on a shelf, no more or less important than my mother's ceramic Christmas village on the mantel or my father's collection of antique beer cans in the basement. I did not spend afternoons tucked away in the public library nor did I read Chekhov in between bites of meatloaf at the dinner table. I did not keep journals or take notes or write stories. Reading and writing did not interest me because these activities seemed to require a great deal of thought and silence. I had more than enough of that. I preferred a retreat into the ready-made world of image and sound.
When I came home from school, I didn't have to think. The television screen brightened, the MGM lion roared or Paramount donned its crown of stars, opening music faded in, and I hit Record. Soon I was in another world, an atmosphere dominated by Sylvester Stallone's accumulating sweat and Robert De Niro's cool laugh and Joe Pesci's boiling temper. They all used words like my father. Though I was particularly tuned to their curses, their racial and sexual slurs, I replayed words like "ain't" and "brotha" and almost any I-N-G word where the actor dropped the final G: "kickin', walkin', talkin'". I collected these words like another kid might collect coins or stamps, then repeated them in my own voice, into my tape recorder.
Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Is this thing on?
I taped The Karate Kid. I taped Top Gun. I taped Stand by Me. I taped Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, Field of Dreams. Lesser known titles: Over the Top, an early Stallone masterpiece in which his character, Lincoln Hawk, must compete in arm-wrestling matches in order to regain custody of his son. Armed and Dangerous, a comedy about two wanna-be cops who can't cut it, so they end up as armored car drivers in a plot full of cocaine and corruption and a tractor trailer full of rocket fuel (not to mention Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" as John Candy wobbles through traffic on a motorcycle). Willow, starring Val Kilmer as a renegade swordsmen hired by dwarfs to battle an evil sorceress who threatens to kill a baby, and that baby is destined to lead the eventual coup that will topple the sorceress and her wicked empire. A rare fantasy in my filmography. I preferred true stories, or at least ones that seemed real.
*
Recently, I found a tape. The label reads: Creative Project, Mr. Martin, Period 2. Mr. Martin was my fourth grade teacher. For our final project, we had the choice of an oral presentation or a "creative experience." I dreaded creative projects because they often involved poster boards and glue sticks and doilies. I was a horrible painter. I couldn't seem to transpose the images in my mind onto paper.
"I'd like to see some of you choose the creative experience," Mr. Martin said from his desk, glancing over his glasses. A broad-shouldered man in a tight flannel shirt, with bushy white hair and a beard. When he leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand, he looked like the cover of my mother's Kenny Rogers holiday CD, The Gambler Does Christmas!
"Perhaps you'd like to make a movie or produce a radio program? Think about it."
So I brought my tape recorder over to Marlon's house. He lived in a stone house set deep in the woods off a busy main road. Ivy reached up from the foundation, stretched along the stone, and gripped the green gutters. I coasted down his long dirt driveway on my bike, listening to the traffic fade behind me. When I reached his patio, I couldn't hear a single car, only giant oak leaves brushing above me.
The interior had a thick smell ("incense," Marlon explained) and there were all kinds of weird paintings and sculptures hanging on the walls, none of which looked like the Norman Rockwell collector plates that decorated my house. Marlon's mother came rushing out of her "studio" and greeted us with hugs and loud kisses. When she heard about my creative project, she gasped.
"Oh, I love it! Love it! How phenomenal this experience will be for you. And what will your radio show be about?"
She often used words like "phenomenal" and "extraordinary," words my mother never said. When they stood opposite each other in the school parking lot or in each other's driveway, it was as if they appeared on a split-screen: the same actress portraying two very different characters.
"Mom, shut up, all right? He doesn't know yet."
She slapped Marlon's shoulder. Hard. They laughed.
"Well, if you boys need help, I once did some theater in—"
"Thanks, Mom!" Marlon said, pulling me down the stairs into the basement and slamming the door behind us.
A massive cement cave. Pipes dripped above our heads, bags and bags of cans and bottles, brand-new power tools on the workbench beside rusty hand drills and wooden clamps. The over-stuffed clothes dryer looked as if it had puked jeans and dress shirts all over the cement floor. We'd pee in a bucket, set fire to small objects and, as we got older, puke in the slop sink. We didn't talk much in Marlon's basement. Instead we blasted classic rock, sometimes sitting in his father's old MG Midget, pretending we were outrunning the law.
When I told my mother about my creative project, she bought me a new recorder. She came home from work one day and placed it on my bed. It was a black rectangle with a plastic handle and buttons like piano keys. The kind Magnum, P.I. might use to interrogate hardened suspects: Start talking, Bozo.
I still marvel at our ability to create something from nothing. That was my project, and I had no clue what it was about when I asked Marlon to help. We never questioned each other. Tape something? Come on over.
"I got it," Marlon said. "I got it! I'll be this psycho Vietnam Vet who flips out during an interview." I thought about the time Marlon had asked my father if he had ever played any sports in school, and my father had told him, "No dice, Brando. My blood pressure was too high. And then I got drafted." Marlon's eyes widened. "You mean you went straight to the pros?"
I laughed at Marlon's suggestion for my project. "That's perfect! We just read something about war last week."
We didn't have a script. I just hit Record and started asking Marlon—Bud Montgomery—questions about what it was like rotating back to "The World." He told me Charlie was out to get him and explained how he got some shrapnel in his ass when he sat on a land mine. I asked him if he had any thoughts about how the war was portrayed in the media.
"Let me tell you something, Geraldo, the government screwed me! They screwed me!" Marlon waved a staple gun as he spoke. He clenched one of his father's burnt cigarette filters in his teeth. I held the recorder up to his mouth.
"Yes, Bud. Yes, I know. I know this must be painful for you. But take us back to that time, that time in your life when you were so innocent. One might say you had the whole world in the palm of your hand."
"Sounds great, boys!"
"Jesus Christ, Mom! We're fucking recording here!"
"Watch it, M
arlon. Just watch your language, okay? Anthony, do you need anything?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Ziello." It seemed okay for Marlon to curse and demand things from his mother, but I always felt weird. I couldn't imagine speaking to my mother that way. Marlon and his mother often yelled and swore, then soon after they were laughing and kissing, all while I sat on the couch wondering if I should call for help.
Mrs. Ziello exhaled sharply. "Call me Joanne, please, huh?"
When I heard the door close, I rewound the tape and repeated my question to Bud.
Our interview continued for another ten minutes, full of slang and jargon and coded messages we picked up from movies and classic rock. We had no idea who this Charlie dude was, just that he was out to get Bud and was usually up in a tree or down in a hole. Bud got progressively angrier until he reached into one of the black garbage bags, smashed a Perrier bottle against the floor, and held the broken neck up to Geraldo's cheek.
Technical difficulties. Please stand by.
Geraldo got back on the air and apologized to the audience.
"Bud is calm now, ladies and gentlemen. Isn't that right, Bud?"
"Yes. Yes. I'm calm. My apologies everyone. Friggin' Charlie. Shrapnel."
The interview ended peacefully, Bud and Geraldo making plans to grab a cold one after the show. Joanne came downstairs with grilled cheese sandwiches.
"What's all this glass? What broke?"
"Relax, Mom. Okay? Just props."
13
CHRISTMAS MORNING, 1991. I was nine years old. My father, my brother and I were on the couch watching Goodfellas. The smell of my mother's pancakes drifted from the kitchen, down the hallway, over piles of crumpled wrapping paper, and into the living room. I wore my stiff new baseball mitt, pounding oil into the palm, as Ray Liotta repeatedly bashed his gun into a young man's face. My father laughed.
"Broad daylight, too. Jesus," he said, sucking on a candy cane, the cellophane wrapper crinkling in his hand.
"Great scene," Don said. He leaned forward and added another new CD to the stacks in front of him: Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Doors.
Ray Liotta walked back to his wife's house, where she'd been standing in the doorway, watching him pistol whip her disrespectful neighbor. He placed the bloody gun in her hands and asked her if she was okay, but she didn't answer and he didn't wait for a reply; his eyes were still locked on the man across the street.
I mouthed her interior monologue while tightening a leather knot on my glove.
"You guys want bacon?" my mother yelled over the gunshots. We looked at each other as if silently electing a spokesman for the group.
"I don't care," my father said to me.
"I do," Don said, not loud enough for my mother to hear.
"Well?" she yelled.
"We all do, Mom!" I said.
I heard the bacon pop and sizzle in the frying pan. My father turned up the volume. Often when we watched movies, before a particularly funny or violent scene, my father would say, "Hey, Ant, watch this." I'd turn toward the TV and not look away until Stallone knocked out Mr. T or Clint Eastwood loomed tall on the screen and asked if I felt lucky. I wanted a name like Sylvester or Clint. Most guys named Anthony were chunky minor characters, guys that pushed papers while Bruce Willis fought terrorists, or else they were the snitches that got whacked by Joe Pesci.
Sometimes my father received mail that was intended for my brother. They had the same name, even middle names, and sometimes when my mother called their name from across the house, a single "Huh?" rang out in stereo. Sometimes my father opened packages and said, "Hey, I didn't order any of this Red Hot Chili Pepper crap." He'd toss the box in a basket beside the couch, full of credit card offers and sweepstakes notices all addressed to my brother.
Sometimes I asked my mother about my name. She said she had wanted to name me Jake. On the brown paper bag covers of my text books, I would write Jake D'Aries in tiny letters, look at it for a while, and then cross it out. Even now, I sometimes say the name in my head. If I had been a girl, she once told me, my father would have named me Tina Marie.
"Can you imagine?" she said, shaking her head. "He wondered what you'd look like if you were a girl, but I think that's as far as it went."
My father always liked the name Anthony but I wonder if my mother, or anyone else, ever knew that. My father's interests and desires often remained a mystery to all of us, until one day he'd say, "I always liked that," and we'd discover his new-found fondness for Native American jewelry or Melissa Etheridge.
"Why'd you have to give me the same name?" Don once asked my mother.
"Dad always wanted that," my mother answered.
"Fucking annoying. Anytime I try to sign up for anything or do whatever, they think I'm Dad."
I thought it would be cool to have the same name as my father, to be a junior. I could look at him to see who I'd become and he could look at me to remember who he once was. In the summer, my brother stretched out on a lawn chair, his hair dyed ice-pop blue; my father slid out from beneath his Chevy, hands caked with grease. They glanced at each other. I don't think they believed what they saw.
"I think Goodfellas is De Niro's best," my father said.
"No way," Don said, "Taxi Driver."
"You think?"
"Definitely."
"Raging Bull," I said.
"Pancakes are done!"
"You think so, bud?" my father asked me.
"Without a doubt."
"Yeah, he's a mean bastard in that one," my father said.
"And he wasn't in Taxi Driver?" Don said. "Come on."
Big Italian men in white tank tops, suspenders and no shirts, stood around in tight groups. Loud body language punctuated hushed words. A secret code, a football team in a huddle. My father often called me over to his spot on the couch and whispered cryptic messages for me to whisper into my brother's ear. But by the time I would get over to my brother, his whisper had disappeared and I would just laugh in Don's ear.
"It's getting cold, guys!"
One scene that always cracked us up was at Ray Liotta's wedding. All of the wise guys were dressed in fine suits, hair slicked back. The camera panned the reception hall, showing dozens of conversations around the table: I took care of that thing. You talk to that guy? Forget about tonight, forget about it. In the middle of these conversations, Joe Pesci's mother stared out at the dance floor, speaking to no one: Why don't you get a nice girl like your friend. He's married, he's settling down now, and you're still bouncing around from girl to girl.
My father always laughed.
"Who's she talking to?" he said. This white-haired woman reminded me of my father's mother, who spent much of Christmas Eve fiddling with her hearing aid, gazing at her four loud sons laughing in the kitchen.
"That's Scorsese's mother in real life," my father said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Yeah, he gives her small parts in his movies sometimes."
Finally, my mother came into the living room, glanced first at the tower of CDs in front of my brother, then at the television. "Come on, guys, it's ready." She waited in front of the large bay window, the sill lined with her ceramic Santa Claus collection. The tinsel she put on the tree sparkled like long drops of frozen rain; the red and green bubbler lights boiled in their plastic tubes. Snow muffled the tires of passing cars. The wind swirled in tiny cold tornadoes on the front lawn and in the driveway. Some of the neighborhood kids were already outside, pulling shiny new sleds up the block, their mothers standing on porches and sipping steaming cups of hot chocolate.
Joe Pesci's head popped like a party favor, misting the air with blood. The three of us let out a half groan, half cheer.
"Jesus," my mother said, "why are they playing this on Christmas?"
I picked up mixed signals from my mother: one minute she paced the house, muttering to herself about us watching the same movies, the next she would tell us what time Casino was on HBO. In the kitchen, she often complaine
d about my father's TV-marathons, but that Christmas she bought him a wide-screen television. "It's what he likes to do."
My father pointed at the VCR. "It's a tape."
She sighed. "Pancakes are ready."
My father looked at me and grinned. "So bring it over."
"What?"
"Bring it ova' here."
"Don't ova' cook it," I said, leaning back in my chair like De Niro. " You ova' cook it, it's no good. Defeats its own purpose."
"I never know what the hell you guys are talking about."
My brother joined in. "It's like a piece of charcoal, bring, it ova' here!'
We laughed as my father paused the movie and headed into the kitchen.
"Raging Bull, Mom," I said, picking a piece of crispy bacon from her plate.
*
If it wasn't the TV, it was the radio. My father quizzed us on song lyrics, turning up the music in the middle of my mother's sentences— wait, wait, hang on, Kathy— looking at me and my brother. An impromptu Name That Tune. He turned up the song with a grin on his face, as if he were the one who picked each song the DJ played. Most of the songs had been written twenty, thirty years before I was born—Beatles, Rolling Stones, Otis Redding. My brother, seven years older than I was, hijacked my father's record collection when he was twelve; he had a slight advantage. But even at eight or nine years old, I nailed "Love Me Do" after a few blasts of the harmonica, or listened to the melancholy trumpet give away "Try a Little Tenderness." My father gently sang, oh, she may be weary... as my mother's unfinished thought hung in the air like a struck piano key.
The Language of Men Page 9
