Rear Window Time

            “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me,” is an old quote that has always annoyed me. Anyone who has ever survived a withering rebuke from a lover or been mercilessly trolled online to the point of suicide might prefer a sledgehammer to their kneecap instead. But this summer I shattered my ankle badly and have been perilously propped up in my Greenwich Village apartment like James Stewart in Rear Window, and I’ll take a discouraging word over a fracture any day.

            Actually, I’ve always been amused that in the Hitchcock film, James Stewart’s character is supposedly also a Village resident- his address is fictionally (125 W. 9^th Street), and ironically, only a block away from my own. The only difference is that Stewart was able to voyeuristically gaze out at a colorful courtyard inhabited by a myriad of oddball characters- even a murderer (Raymond Burr). I look out my window at an unforgiving brick wall, and trust me Thelma Ritter isn’t coming over daily to give me a rubdown and regale me with sardonic quips. Not to mention having the glamorous Grace Kelly pop in to occasionally plant a juicy kiss on my lips. In trying to navigate this hazardous apartment the only connection with my lips is the floor when I unceremoniously topple over and smash my face into it.

            Now God knows, I love my apartment- it’s filled with movies, and the thought of revisiting a lot of films in my collection does placate me. Unfortunately, the crackpot titles I really want to watch are so high up on bookshelves I could never get to them in this crippled state. And it couldn’t come at a worse time- the New York Film Festival is just starting up and I cruelly received an eMail with all the press screenings I now cannot attend. This may be the first NY Film Fest I have missed since I used to yearly hitchhike from Provincetown to New York in the 1970s for the cinematic event of the fall that meant so much to me.

            Typically, my dreams at night are surreal reenactments of scenes of breaking legs in movies. Especially, it seems, the scene at the end of The Devils, where Oliver Reed at Father Grandier has his legs crushed with a sledgehammer as he crawls to the cross he will be burned alive on. The other night I dreamed I was James Caan in Misery and Kathy Bates was hammering home the point that I wasn’t going anywhere. Now, why the hell can’t I dream I’m Bebe Daniels in 42^nd Street? Valiantly coming into Ruby Keeler’s dressing room on crutches and wearing a smart outfit, confessing, “Now go out there and be so swell that you’ll make me hate you…”

            At least I’m not Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable who breaks a bone at the slightest unexpected gust of wind.

I just want this to be over, and unfortunately, I only see ahead of me endless days of unsteady journeys across the kitchen and perilous crawls down the two flights of stairs in my apartment building. But as Thomas Hardy once said, “And yet to every bad there is a worse.” So, I refuse to complain. I often pull off my shelf that Laurel & Hardy short County Hospital and when I laughingly watch all the horrible things that happens to Oliver Hardy with his leg in a cast, I feel very, very lucky.

Just got a phone call telling me that Carol Lynley had just died. She skyrocketed to fame in 1959 playing the shy, knocked-up girlfriend of Brandon De Wilde in Blue Denim, a part she originated on stage. I always thought she was always terrific in movies, and never was given the opportunities other less talented actresses were. I remember meeting her at a Chiller Theatre convention in New Jersey and had her sign a lobby card for Blue Denim (most people were bugging her to sign collectibles of The Poseidon Adventure), and she seemed pleased that I was so enthusiastic over Blue Denim, a film she admitted to have been proud of. She was lovely in person and I was saddened to hear of her passing. I know what I’ll do- I’ll have a film festival in her honor. I’ll watch Blue Denim and Return To Peyton Place and Bunny Lake Is Missing! I hobbled with one leg into the living room only to realize in horror that all those titles were at least 6 feet high up on a shelf.

I will admit during the course of the day I keep thinking back to those old Warner Brothers cartoons where you see inside a leg and the bones actually knitting themselves.

Well, hurry the fuck up…