Lou Reed and Suzanne Vega: Talk a walk on the wild side remix
“What is your deal with eyes?,” she softly cooed. My answer was simple: The
Tower Theater and the power of two.
In reality, it was an unassuming
place. Right at home off the ‘drag’. She was little more than simple dollar
theater just off the UT campus that carried that dilapidated ‘heroin chic’ so
familiar to the denizens of the capital city: a glory of ragamuffin ramshackle. Now don’t get me wrong, artifacts were
everywhere that it wasn’t always that way.
Like the Hollywood she
represented, she had once been adorned with lush gilded trappings befitting the
epic. Inside she had once been a place
for the common man. Shining bright
bronze trim bordered well polished dark wooden edges. On the floor, plush carpeting once embraced
the guest’s feet. The concession stand
presented confectionary delights to tempt eyes of the passerby behind spotless
panes of clear glass. A sensory overload
to prepare the senses for the larger-than-life visual feast that would soon be
partaken.
Time passed and with the
appearance of more personal entertainment, the community provided by movies
became less central to its audience. The
glory of the palace had begun to dim. The
Tower Theater fought nobly against
this. On the side of her art deco
exterior was a mural depicting some of Hollywood’s most memorable scenes;
stills from Citizen Kane, North by Northwest, Giant, and The Graduate
were captured in a high black and white replicating kodalith while Superfly made a central and vibrant
Technicolor appearance.
Such stands however, were merely an
attempt to slow the decaying audience. A
cursory examination of the exterior mural revealed that times had been tight
for the kingdom. On the mural, the paint
was washed out and chipped. Inside, the
brass had long since oxidized; the carpet was worn and faded. The clear glass at an understaffed concession
stand had long since been replaced by a hazy and unkempt Plexiglas. If one dared to enter the theater for a film,
once seated they found themselves surrounded by the magic.
True, the screen of at Hogg Auditorium might be bigger, and the
seats at the Union Theater and the
theater at Dobie Mall might have been
newer. But the birds occasionally flying
in front of the screen at Hogg or the
tiny screens at the Union and Dobie broke and didn’t capture the
majesty of the experience. If you wanted
to be engulfed by truth delivered at twenty-four frames a second, you went to The Tower Theater.
At this cinema, the immersion
into the state of disbelief was palatable.
When, the lights began to fade the viewer, seated in the well worn seats
was taken to another world. If you went with a group of friends, the laugher,
amazement, and power of a shared viewing was increased exponentially. If one took a date, either the balcony or the
seclusion found in hidden corners provided a sanctum for the creation of a
smaller world within the larger. If you
found yourself alone, she understood—she and her two.
One might logically ask how a
well-worn theater could provide such an environment. The realists, with a colder vision, might
offer something about the fact that it was a communally shared event would be
responsible. That one is a bit too dry. The sentimentalists among us meanwhile, might
have us believe that the memories from hundreds of stories played in the past
reached out to touch you in the present if only to remind you that you were
never truly alone. Nice, a bit dramatic
and emotional, but I guess it’s richer than the realists. As for me, well, I’m an observer. Maybe that’s how I came to see the two.
It was my first night in the
theater. I had gone in one of those
comfortable large groups that allowed you the safety of those you knew while
you became more familiar with new faces.
Mystic Pizza was the movie. It starred a young Vincent D’Onofrio. Although he would become famous later for his
stammering style of speech in C.S.I., he played in this one an uncommon
commoner. It was her idea. The one with laughing eyes half hidden by
cascading brown ringlets of hair. Perhaps
to find something clever to talk about I looked around the theater, and that it
when I saw them.
Astride the screen, were two large
art deco columns. Perched comfortably at
the top of each were two angels. Though
the outspread wings made them look like so many other ornamental angels, one
point about them was outstanding. The
sculpted eyes had no pupils. This
enabled the diminutive guardians to scan the audience and through the grace of
some deus ex machina was able to touch the members of
the audience. Sight unseen, they comforted,
nurtured, and protected all in the audience.
Though they held a special softness for those who might see a movie
alone. The two would act as the community
that accepted that the viewer, no matter how alone, would be accepted into.
So what happened to the
theater? After a break, I returned to
the school to find that the cinema had been replaced by a record store. Though they had kept the mural on the
exterior, things were different. Upon
entry, I found out why. The angels had
been removed from the back wall. Must
have gotten in the way of commerce, those pesky angels. in the
second floor of merchandise that replaced where the balcony had once been. A few years later, the record store was replaced by a book store. In a retrograde technological march, the visual word became the audible, and the audible became the written. Indeed the angel with the brown ringlets she…
well she still softly coos. And thanks
to the angels of the cinema I will always hear her.
