Read Online Flicker by Theodore Roszak - Free Book Online

slobs. If
they
like it, it’s got to be ’important.’ So they wrap it up in miles of theory.”
    I wanted to ask more, but Clare was growing impatient. She had
Twentieth Century
ready to go on the projector and insisted we get down to some “real movie making.” So we did. But I had the clear impression she was rushing us along to other things, trying hard to dismiss
Feast of the Undead.
Why, I wondered. And what to make of her strange indecisiveness about Max Castle?
“Maybe
the man had something… .”
Maybe
had no place in her critical vocabulary. Usually she made fanatically final judgments, trusting her first impression all the way.
    One more thing I couldn’t easily shake off. All the while we sat together laughing our way through Howard Hawks’s hard-boiled little farce, I kept remembering how reluctant Clare had been to take her eyes off that vile vampire flick, how she’d shrugged me aside to return to it with such concentration. What had she seen in that sadly tattered sample of Castle’s work that I had missed?
    A day or so later, wondering how much more I might be able to see of
Feast of the Undead,
I approached Clare asking where she’d stashed the reel. She shot me a disapproving look. “I told you it was scrap. I disposed of it.”
    â€œYou threw it out?” I’d never known her to do that. She’d once told me that no film, whatever its quality or condition, should be destroyed. Movies, in her view, were scarce and fragile cultural documents; they ought to be preserved down to the last withering frame. I started to ask, “Weren’t there any parts that might be …” but she cut me off.
    â€œForget it. I don’t serve slop like that in this house.”
    That shut me up. But it left me more curious than ever. The next time I heard the name “Castle,” I’d be sure to pay attention.

3 THE MAGIC LANTERN
    The education I received from Clare was generous in its proportions and passionately imparted, but it didn’t come free of charge. As I soon discovered, I was expected to work it off. A modest tuition to begin with but it soon grew. When Clare asked the first time if I would mind sweeping out The Classic one Saturday morning, I assumed she was asking a special favor and eagerly complied. God knows, the theater needed it. I would have guessed it hadn’t been swept for months. But from that time forward, sweeping up became my regular Saturday chore. A few weeks later and I found myself scrubbing down and repainting the theater’s closet-sized unisex toilet; soon after that, I was running errands of all descriptions.
    Before long, I was asking myself how a tiny, hole-in-the-wall operation like The Classic could possibly require so much work. What with repairing, replacing, purchasing, cleaning, polishing, picking up and delivering, my unpaid labor was soon snowballing into a full-time job, most of it menial drudgery. Each morning at breakfast, as strictly as a general marshaling her army of one, Clare would tick off the chores I was expected to discharge that day. Order more coffee for the espresso machine, buy more toilet paper, replace the burnt-out light bulbs, fix the broken seats, tack down the carpet in the lobby, chase to the printers, the distributors, the post office, the bank. There came a point when I began to wonder if our love affair was really a way for Clare to make up for years of neglect to her capital investment with the benefit of cheap labor. So I complained, if feebly, reminding her that I did after all have classes to attend and assignments to do.
    She dismissed the protest, insisting that my real education was happening at The Classic and included the slave labor I was performing. She never apologized for what she asked of me, never so much as said please. It was all work she’d done herself in the past to keep The Classic going. She simply ordered it done, and done