"Fishing"

My father and I never went fishing together.

Instead of dropping a line off a creaky pier or bobbling around a small two-man boat on a lake, we opted for the flickering glow of an air-conditioned theater. And though we saw many different film genres together, we were most devoted to the science-fiction stories that made their way to the screen. We were there when the aliens arrived in Wyoming in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. We bore the guilt of humans who had enslaved apes in CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. We were horrified to learn the main ingredient of SOYLENT GREEN. We scoffed when Vader announced his relationship to Luke Skywalker. These were the moments we bonded - These became engrafted in my cultural DNA.

These extraordinary experiences were not confined to the theater seats and popcorn boxes. Before cable television, the network programmers would air movies for viewers with more ‘refined’ sci-fi tastes on something called the ‘Late Show Movie’. On weekends, my father would allow me to stay up into the wee hours of the morning watching classics. We saw Rod Taylor in THE TIME MACHINE fight off those creepy Morlocks. When father-son communication failed between us on other matters, we could always retreat to the talk about the latest sci-fi monstrosity. We were more than fans, we were partners in these cinematic experiences.

During a brief period of unemployment, my father did not have the money to have the family’s small black and white television repaired. The set could receive picture, but no sound. When 2001:A SPACE ODYSSEY made it’s way to the broadcast, he read the lips of the actors to me. He told me every syllable, and even ‘performed’ the characters’ words in different voices. During the turning point of the film, I was struck by the irony of my father reading the lips of the astronauts in the movie when the ship’s computer, Hal, realizes (also by reading their lips) the humans are about to deactivate him. Art imitates life?

As a boy, my dad grew up watching nail-biting serial installments of westerns and Flash Gordon. Living ‘deaf’ (hard of hearing) in a hearing world, I suspect he identified with outer space beings that were displaced from their home planets. I imagine him at night, lying in his makeshift bed in the foster home, fantasizing about travelers from other galaxies and future civilizations here on earth. He introduced me to these ideas, and I tried to repay his tutelage by becoming an expert on the subject.

One of my proudest moments with him occurred the day after we viewed John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. As the credits rolled up the screen, he asked me what I thought. I told him that I liked it, but felt like the main character, Snake Plissken, was a caricature of the Dirty Hairy anti-hero persona. I rattled on some more observations that had made an impression on my 14 year-old mind as we headed for the car. The next day, he discovered that many of my statements matched the critique of the film in the Houston Post. My father told me he was impressed. I was invigorated by his words. The rest of the day I wondered what it must be like to be paid to watch movies and write about them. (A dream that was quickly derailed when I learned critics are obligated to viewing all movies, even ones that don’t appeal to them. I decided to stick with just watching the movies I like and leave the writing about them to others.)

It's been many years since my father passed away. Through that time I have managed to collect many of the films he and I viewed in my youth. Sometimes late at night (when everyone’s asleep) I will host my own ‘Late Show’ on the DVD player in the den of my house. And for an hour or so, it’s as if there is a tether tied back to the boy I was in those darkened theaters.

I have yet to take my 5 year-old son fishing (mainly because I don’t know how). But this month we plan to check out the summer’s latest sci-fi offering. This type of thing has developed into some kind of right of passage between us I guess. I look forward to the day he shares his revelations to me, but for now we'll sit in the coolness of the theater watching the sci-fi previews. And each time I pass the popcorn to him, I can see myself looking past me through to my father.