Photo: Kim Murphy / LA TimesLike the main character in the
Twilight Zone episode this post title refers to, I sometimes think wistfully of my time in a small town. If you come from a small town, you live for the day when you can brag about your hometown to the Big City Folks. Make them spit out their sip of Drambuie with a tale that rocks their concrete jungle to its brittle, cementy core. For me, that day has come. While I consider myself a native of Portland, a good bulk of my childhood (and all my high school years) took place in
Silverton, Ore., where the nation's first openly transgender mayor was recently elected.
Yes, the picture you see is of Stu Rasmussen (aka Carla Fung), who will take the reins of a town where "rapid development" is a bad word, but "breasts on a 60-year-old man" is old hats. Since Stu's victory, Silverton has received unprecedented media attention, stretching from
Portland to
Los Angeles. You might be asking how a man like Stu could be elected mayor in a small, conservative town. I would then remind you that Stu was Silverton's mayor nearly 20 years ago, except back then he wore jeans and flannel shirts, covering up what minimal cleavage he had. Stu's ascent to womanhood began slowly, occasionally adding red high heels to go with those jeans, or suddenly showing off his exquisitely painted red fingernails. So when Stu decided to add "the twins" (as he calls them) to his resume, it was met with nary a shrug to those who know the man. If you think his story sounds like a character from a Tim Burton (Amazing Larry, maybe?) or John Waters movie, you're not alone. Or maybe only a
skilled monologuist could do true justice to Stu's tale.
The last time Silverton caught the nation's eye was in 1923, when
Bobbie the Wonder Dog became America's favorite four-legged hero. Have you seen the Bruce Willis-Billy Bob Thornton movie
Bandits? Much of the filming took place in Silverton, yet Hollywood has never again come calling. And so it has come that the national spotlight is again cast on sleepy Silverton, and as is our small town humble nature, we can only reply with "please, we serve no froie gras here, go on your merry way and let us live our lives in peace. Just because we elected to mayor a man who prefers to wear cocktail dresses that best show off his ample cleavage, does not make us any different from nearby Stayton or Mt. Angel."
Stu will make a good mayor, and I say that as someone who knew him before the breasts and makeup. I know him as the proprietor of as fine a small town movie house you could ask for. Like his father before him, Stu has run The Palace Theater in Silverton. It was once boasted to have the state's largest screen (a claim that was never independently verified), but what cannot be argued is that The Palace was always clean, with many perfectly functional seats, and the best snow cones in town. I have Stu to thank for many of my favorite theatrical experiences. It was at The Palace where I once proclaimed
Under Siege to be my favorite movie of 1992, where I laughed my way through
Groundhog Day, watched a friend of mine wipe tears from her face at the end of
Mrs. Doubtfire and had a riot of a time taking in
Event Horizon in a very loud audience.
But the movie-going moment I most have to thank Stu for is the midnight showing of
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Yes, it's a terrible movie that's rightly reviled, but there was a moment in time when it seemed the whole world couldn't wait to see it, and people were waiting in line for months to get a ticket. I was resigned to the fact that I would need to make a late-night trek to Salem or Portland and wait in line for a ticket, when one day I drove past The Palace and saw the Star Wars title listed on the large marquee. "Episode 1, in Silverton?" It was true, Stu had secured the movie for opening weekend, at a theater where first-run movies usually took 2-3 weeks to arrive. Better yet, a midnight showing was planned, complete with a costume contest.
I'll never forget the collectible tickets Stu had printed up for the opening: thick blue card stock with sparkly ink (I still have my ticket buried away somewhere). The midnight showing ended up a sellout, and of course Stu was dressed up as Princess Padme. He even had the courtesy to include the trailers for the original three Star Wars before the main feature. And as I trudged out of the theater slightly in a daze over what I had just seen, I couldn't shake the smile off my face from how perfectly the evening played out. Thank you Stu, and good luck as mayor (again).
Photo: Kim Murphy / LA Times
But the movie-going moment I most have to thank Stu for is the midnight showing of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Yes, it's a terrible movie that's rightly reviled, but there was a moment in time when it seemed the whole world couldn't wait to see it, and people were waiting in line for months to get a ticket. I was resigned to the fact that I would need to make a late-night trek to Salem or Portland and wait in line for a ticket, when one day I drove past The Palace and saw the Star Wars title listed on the large marquee. "Episode 1, in Silverton?" It was true, Stu had secured the movie for opening weekend, at a theater where first-run movies usually took 2-3 weeks to arrive. Better yet, a midnight showing was planned, complete with a costume contest.
After reading the time on the clock, Jill glances down at her own timepiece.
And this only brings her more frustration.
It seems hard to miss now, but up until this viewing I had never noticed that Leone was showing us how Jill was still on New Orleans time. Before telling us she traveled from New Orleans, it's apparent she traveled a great distance, because her timepiece is over two hours off. It would have been easy to establish her origin with a throwaway line of dialog, but with this visual we see Jill's confusion and frustration through her eyes. "Where am I? And what the hell am I doing here? How will I ever get back to New Orleans?"
The plot never really comes to life after that opening scene, especially since the worst that can happen is the KGB getting to buy some weapons from Joe Don Baker. But the opening sniper sequence gives us the one element that will hold everything together: the chemistry between Bond and Kara (Maryam d'Abo). Unlike many of the perfunctory 007 relationships, these two seem to really share something, and dammit if they don't look good together. Kara is a good complement to Bond, as we see early on she's a capable sniper and later proves to be a nearly-competent pilot.
The pair figure in to the movie's two best moments: a flawless Aston Martin gadget escape turned cello sled ride, and a still amazing airborn fight on a barely-tethered opium cargo. The latter leads to the movie's best line ("he got the boot!"), and one of the franchise's best-executed stunts, with Bond and Kara escaping the doomed cargo plane in a Jeep on some sort of parachute sled. They make it look easy, but I've always loved Dalton's fearless look when he pulls the parachute and jumps back in the Jeep ("I know a great restaurant in Karachi!").
These charms may not be appear to be in the caliber of Bond's more popular fare, but there's something about the overall film that's kept me coming back. It may be due to the fact that it was made in 1987, and as such its DNA contains elements of 80s action movies (random happenings in Afghanistan, exploding cargo planes, Joe Don Baker, etc.). It's also hard to deny that this is the last of the old school 007 movies -- the last of Fleming's original material, and also the last one to be scored by John Barry. The score and accompanying songs are excellent, with Barry adding some late-80s sensibilities to the traditional 007 score, and a-Ha turning in a surprisingly memorable title song (Barry himself remixed the song for the movie, adding in the snappy strings intro).
Let's not have a repeat of "One for Martin, two for Martin!"