May 28, 2005

At the café with an old notebook, trying to remember "Dog Day Afternoon."

I've got my New York Times, my large latte -- yes, large, not venti, this is not Starbucks -- my pen and little notebook. No computer today. I'm traveling light. Just reading the Times and taking some notes, so I can blog the NYT when I get home. I'm waiting for them to toast my bagel, so I take this picture:

Café

Instead of reading the Times right away, I start reading that little magenta notebook, which begins with some pages of notes, written nearly illegibly in the dark while watching "Dog Day Afternoon" in a theater about ten years ago. I suppose I thought of writing an essay. I can see the nascent thread here. If only I'd had a blog, I'd have written this up into a nice post back then. Now, I can only imagine what the ideas were. Here are the notes, word for word, with the original lack of punctuation and capitalization:
I'm a catholic/watch your mouth we've got young girls here/black hostage released/head teller's anger = anti-cop/They're all my girls I'm going back in there/Girls I was interviewed on television/We're entertainment/(obscene call)/cameras media/"Make your vacation dreams a reality --> Plan to ask for a jet --/Sal --> suicide/after S calls wife hear bank tellers reading dear abby: "sexual repression"/obcene caller --> give to "sexual repression" women who do heavy breathing/A-C goes off (hot-sex --> sal afraid of airplane (repression theme)/[illegible] in "the back"/shot fired/women's legs/pizza/guy -- likes S/jumps up/"I'm a f'g star"/"Your body is the temple of the Lord"/(don't smoke)/Leon faints like Jesus/Leon can't call the police/in barbershop -- men's space -- Leon tells of being a man in a woman's body/is a little sepia picture of a woman against the mirror behind the cop/Leon in bride dress -- priest was "defrocked"/Sal upset to be referred to as homo. "that's going out on the TV"/"I can't control what goes out on television ... it's just a freak show."/Maria gives Sal a rosary just before he dies
Religion. Sex. Media. Too late to sort all that out.

Let's see what's in the news today.

UPDATE: I just reread that and noticed "Leon tells of being a man in a woman's body," which really is what it says in my ancient notes. If you're at all familiar with the movie, you know it should be "Leon tells of being a woman in a man's body." Sorry for the confusion!

ADDED: Closed up the line-breaks in the notes -- just fiddling with the aesthetics.

2 comments:

Ron said...

mmmm...that coffee's looking mighty tasty...


ah....coffee....

Oh, I'm sorry, was I supposed to say something?

Rick Lee said...

Yeah, that about sums up "Dog Day Afternoon". That makes me remember how exciting the Hollywood movie scene was in the 70s.

BTW, here's some really trivial trivia... I once met Chris Sarandon who played Leon. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for that role. He is a West Virginia native... we don't have that many famous actors come out of WV but the same year that he was nominated, Brad Dourif from WV was nominated also for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Billy in Cuckoo's Nest. Neither won, and they both went on to have long careers playing character roles that never quite lived up to their Academy-nominated debut roles.

Sarandon is most famous for giving his last name to his ex-wife Susan and playing Prince Humperdinck in "The Princess Bride". Dourif was the voice of "Chucky" and plays the "Doc" on HBO's Deadwood. When photographing Dourif for a magazine a couple of years ago, I found out that in college, he dated a good friend of mine. Boy was I surprised.