RIP

Jim and I finally relented and rented "I Am Legend" to watch with D (after the girl went to bed).  What can I say?  It was what I thought it would be, well done, well acted, so freakin' heavy-handed as to be distracting, and depressing as hell.  So, yeah, I couldn't really care less (except of course when Legend had to kill his dog).  My son liked it, but he was clearly fixated less on narrative and more on things like how few actors were employed, how strong and animal-like zombies could be, and how realistic the computer-generated streets of abandoned Manhattan seemed.  Where was Charlton Heston when I needed him?  Man, I longed for Charlie in "The Omega Man" (because, let's face it, "...Legend" is the remake, right?).  I wondered what music Charlie Heston would have substituted for the Bob Marley tune that Legend plays.  As a kid, about D's age, I was riveted and scared shitless by "Omega Man."  Without voice-over or flashbacks, you knew exactly what "Omega Man" was all about.  And I knew, heathen child that I was, that Charlie was Jesus Christ in the end, arms outstretched in the fountain, having sacrificed himself for the good of mankind.  I remember thinking, 'Wow, he looks like those pictures of Jesus I've seen in other movies. Wow, I wonder if anyone else sees that!'  What a coincidence...what a discovery for a kid!

     I went to my little indie video store.  They always highlight a couple shelves of the movies of recently deceased stars, actors, film makers and such.  I searched.  "Where's Charlton?"  I demanded.

They laughed.

"Seriously," I said to the serious filmheads behind the counter.  ""Omega Man," "Planet of the Apes," "Soylent Green," tell me you didn't see those?  Tell me those movies didn't make the biggest fucking impression of your young lives?"  I could tell they were reaching back into the recesses of their memories, then,

"Yeah.  Wow."  Silence.  "We'll see what we can do.  Next time you're here..."

Politics aside, Heston was a class act.  I watched him in black and white and color.  He really was to this nine year- old, Moses, Jesus, cowboy, soldier, Mount Rushmore, object of one of my intense, early, man-crushes, and the last person on Earth.

Eco-lecturers would do well to show "Soylent Green" to elementary school kids.  Those images of the last teaspoon of the last strawberry...Edward G. Robinson looking at movies of vanished fields of green...Charlton Heston discovering that Soylent green is---(I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen the movie).

C.H....R.I.P.  --K