(To listen to this week's edition of The Moviegoer, just click the player above.)
Dear San Francisco: It's not you, it's me.
And I know what you're thinking, I do. I've moved to L.A. after five years in San Francisco -- how can that be seen as anything but a betrayal? San Francisco, you had press screenings and you had press tours; you had quiet cafes to write in. But, San Francisco, let's be honest: while you've lured me and others with your promises -- I'm a big city but a cool city! People here ride bikes! There's a thriving artistic community here! -- for the past couple years you've been seen more and more with software engineers and stockbrokers, trying to still seem scruffy and casual while adorning yourself in luxury condo developments and rising rents. And I'd been thinking about trying L.A. for years -- because let's be honest, San Francisco, if New York is the brain of showbiz and L.A. is the heart, then you are, at best, the pancreas: Important but not essential, relevant but not imperative. And after my on-air Film Critic work was budget-cut from CBS-5 in January (apparently, one of the first times in years I've been ahead of the trend), I figured what the hell, and moved to L.A. down at the start of April.
Oh, I'll be back to visit, San Francisco -- for many reasons, and often -- but, for now, I'm settling in L.A.. And on the Thursday of my first real week as a resident here, I looked around my new apartment and realized I felt as lonely as a Kucinich supporter at a Monster Truck rally. So, I did what I often do when I'm feeling lonely (which, intriguingly, may be part of why I feel lonely so often, but we'll examine that another day): I went to the movies. The New Beverly Cinema's close-ish to my new place, and they were screening a series of films programmed by director Joe Dante of Gremlins and The Howling. The bill that night was Mondo Cane -- a mock-shock-doc from the '60s far more notorious than it is actually good, which I skipped -- and, as the late show, the film that caught my eye, which was Zulu.
Zulu's a very old-school action-epic; as Dante noted in his introduction, "You know the movies they don't make 'em like anymore? This is one of them." Inspired by the real-life 1879 battle at Rorke's Drift, where a handful of British troops held off over 4,000 Zulu warriors, Zulu's a rousing adventure story directed by Cy Enfield, featuring a host of great British character actors with gigantic sideburns and stiff upper lips. The men of the outpost are doomed, most probably -- outnumbered, outgunned, far from home -- but they aren't going to give up. I went in part because Zulu's one of my dad's favorite films; I remember watching it with him on public TV when I was growing up, and his love for its mix of fact and fiction, but I'd never seen it on the big screen. The officer in charge of the outpost is Lieutenant Chard, played by Stanley Baker; next in the chain of command is Lieutenant Bromhead, played by Michael Caine, in one of his earliest roles. But all the soldiers get nice moments, including one my dad would quote any chance he could: As the massed Zulu warriors chant, Baker goes to Private Owen (Ivor Emmanuel), earlier pointed out as leader of the men's choir, and asks Owen if he thinks they can do any better. Owen -- exhausted but still standing, bloody but unbowed -- tilts his head and listens before giving his take: "Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that's for sure." And then Owen leads the surviving soldiers in "Men of Harlech," a good, old-fashioned die-with-honor number, a few voices raised in defiance against a multitude.
And, San Francisco, I guess that was part of what I went to Zulu for; now and then, a little fake courage is the kind of booster shot you need to get the real stuff going when you're in a new big scary city. And also, as I said, it was one of my dad's favorite films; he and my mom loved great stories, and that led me to the movies, and the movies led to a career, and that led to you, San Francisco, and now it's led to Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is weird and huge and maddening and sprawling and absolutely alien to me... but sitting in the dark during my first grimly terrified week, watching Zulu, enjoying all the contradictions of movie going -- awake in the dark, at home among strangers, alone in the crowd, enjoying a patently false true story -- I almost, almost, felt at home.