BONJOUR TRISTESSE
Last week, on a flight home from Paris, I got really sad. Maybe good sad though. Maybe healthy sad. The flight offered no Wi-Fi so I looked through the available films on board. I thought it was a great chance to catch up and become au current cinematically. To set the stage I want to back up a little.
FYI I speak not a word of French. Paris is a beautiful city but somehow it tends to make me feel like a boob. A heathen. Yep, trailer trash. But, I’m proud to say, not for long. I rise above that negative self loathing and remind myself that I’m almost a big deal in some left bank circles, that the French love at least one of my movies and if I really wanted to I could learn the language. You’re never to old to fall in love, do good work or learn French. I have spoken.
So, I thought, get over yourself Paulie. You’re in Paris for two days. Don’t waste a moment on such foolishness.
And I didn’t. I had a couple of great business meetings, a run along the river that was storybook and Tracey and I read from Gratitude and Trust at the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookstore. It was every bit as exciting as she said it would be. Thrilling to read in the same room where Joyce once read. James … not DeWitt.
I had several delicious meals with Glenn, Tracey and some of their tres chic Parisian friends who were welcoming, interesting and fun.
I left early in the morning after three hours sleep. On the first leg of my flights home I decided to watch a movie. Spoiler alert. In recovery we’re cautioned not to get to Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. HALT
AFI’s list of classics easily beat out the ‘now playing’ list. I chose one of my favorite films of all time. To Kill a Mockingbird. I cried for two hours and ten minutes.
I don’t remember a film, especially a film I’ve seen several times, having this kind of an effect on me. From the opening credits and Kim Stanley’s voice over as Scout, the adult daughter of Harper Lee’s protagonist, I was a wreck. Atticus Finch, the southern lawyer who fought to save an innocent black man from a racist jury is my favorite literary hero. Ever.
Why the flood of tears? I think there are several reasons. First of all I saw the film when it was released in early 1962. I was 21 and had lost my father eight years before. I’d already begun to lose parts of his memory. I could remember his voice but I still don’t remember ever being held by him. Had no memory of meaningful advice and direction offered to little Paul. And I think hearing Pecks strong but gentle wisdom, spoken so lovingly to his children, echoed through a hole in my life. In my heart, chest, wherever that missing love would fit. It seems it’s never too late to properly grieve a loss.
And there was the brief flash of who I’d been at twenty-one. Everything ahead of me, life was an empty canvas. Perhaps at some level I also mourned the fact that I have a little less time left. Of course. An ignored fact bubbles to the surface and suddenly there’s an opportunity to process the repressed emotion. It’s never too late to own your feelings.
Whew. The heart and mind whip up some interesting concoctions when those twenty-eight frames per second, black and white images carry so much weight. A tribute to our vulnerability, which I consider an asset, and to the brilliance of the filmmaker Robert Mulligan. Proof of Harper Lee’s genius and Horton Foote’s. He wrote the screenplay
The years that have passed since my first look at the film have been spectacular and I’m grateful for the good and the bad. Three years later I worked with Robert Duval, brilliant as Boo Radley in Mockingbird. I had a small part in The Chase. He heard me playing a little song I wrote about Robert Redford’s character in the film. He walked me over to the director, Arthur Penn, had me play it for him. My little ditty, a first effort at songwriting, is in the film.
I met Gregory Peck and his wife Veronique on a couple of occasions. A priceless memory for a movie buff from the Midwest. And I seemed to run into Brock Peters now and then on voice over dates or auditions. His performance as the unjustly convicted Tom Robinson is one of the most elegant, stunning portrayals of grace and strength in the face of ignorance and bigotry you’ll ever see.
Scout and Jim were beautifully played by actors now in their sixties. Both Mary Badham and Phillip Alford are alive and well. Successful and I hope happy. John Megna who played Dill died in the mid nineties of Aids. Did he suffer the same kind of outrageous prejudice that Tom Robinson did? It’s all the same. It’s all hate.
Maybe those damned calendar pages ripping off quicker than a movie montage of time passing is getting to me. I don’t feel old and don’t think much about dying. I’d like to have another twenty productive years. Then ten lazy ones after that. I’m healthy and I’ve never felt more … useful, I suppose. My life is blessed. I’m a righteously fortunate man.
But feelings are real and when they surface in a flood of tears as they did on American Airlines flight 44 out of Paris I pay attention. I give them the time and attention they deserve. And the realization that time’s trotting along makes me value the days more and more. I treasure the time I spend with people I love and the thrust of all this emotion leads me to familiar ground. The land of deep gratitude. And yes, the rocky roads I survived to get here were exactly the right path in the end, so I have learned to trust
Atticus told Jim and Scout that he’d learned early on one never kills a mockingbird. “They don’t eat your garden of spoil your corn. They live only to sing a lovely song.” I love that sentence. That sentiment. That’s a message that’ll take any songwriter on a quick trip to the sweetest part of his past and bring him back singing about Gratitude and Trust.
Paul Williams is a singer, songwriter, actor, recovery advocate and has been a fixture on the American cultural scene since the seventies. His book Gratitude and Trust is now available.