Rear Window
He had been discharged from hospital 10 days ago, a cycling accident, no other moving vehicles involved, an unexplained operator error which had resulted in a broken clavicle and twelve fractured ribs. He didn’t know he had as many as twelve ribs, or if there was a difference between broken and fractured, at the time there had been no distinction in the levels of pain between the two.
Now that the course of opiods was finished, it was a case of resting, doing the physiotherapy exercises - shoulder flexion, shoulder abduction, trying not to laugh for the ribs - and sitting staring out of the open window, a bit like the bloke in the film Rear Window, not that he’d ever seen it, not that his neighbour’s dog had been found dead. Yet. Who had played the lead role in the film? Michael Douglas, no, way before his time, his father maybe, Kirk Douglas?
A while back he’d been to an exhibition by Douglas Gordon - no relation - at the Royal Scottish Academy, if that’s the one at the foot of the Mound. The central exhibit was a video installation called 24 Hour Psycho in which the artist had slowed down Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) - which he hadn’t seen either - to two frames per second so that the film lasted 24 hours. He’d watched it for about 10 minutes, got bored and then left to go to the Dominion Cinema to see Night At The Museum (2006, dir. Sawn Levy) shown at the correct speed. Famously - or fame as it is narrowly defined within south Edinburgh - Gregory’s Girl (1980, dir. Bill Forsyth), a coming-of-age comedy set in Cumbernauld, had played at the Dominion for three years, 120 frames per day, take that Douglas Gordon.
Alan Partridge had been in Night At The Museum, playing a roman centurion, Veni, Vidi, Vici, Ah Ha! Not his best work, that had surely been when he played Stan Laurel in Stan & Ollie (2018, dir. Jim S. Baird) beside Jon C. Reilly as Oliver Hardy. From both of them, performances of a lifetime, a pitch perfect tribute to comic legends, “I’ll miss us when we’re gone”, “So will you.”
If he had a copy of Halliwell’s Film Guide, he could look up the name of the actor in Rear Window. Halliwell sounded like a pickle manufacturer, like Branston. Film actor Paul Newman had had a sideline in salad dressing, so it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that film critic Leslie Halliwell had made pickles, although perhaps not commercially? Pickles and salad dressing aside, both Newman and Katherine Ross should have been wearing helmets when they were messing about on the bike during Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, dir. George Roy Hill), raindrops falling on your head won’t hurt, but actually falling on your head will.
What would Hitchcock have done with Night At The Museum? Tippi Hedron working as a taxidermist in the natural history collection, the birds come to life at night, attack her for not being Grace Kelly. He’d once seen a short-lived band called the Hedrons, an all girl band, can you say “all girl” these days? They were, unlike, say, the Corrs, where the drummer is their brother … or cousin? Sounded like a forgotten Almodóvar film, Hermano … o Primo?, starring Penélope Cruz as a nymphomaniac filing clerk at the births, marriages, and deaths registry office in Córdoba. The usual.
He couldn’t remember if he’d seen O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000, dir. Joel Coen), he probably had, it was the one based on Homer’s Odyssey, which he’d read at school in Greek, sort of, with the help of a Penguin Classics translation. And a teacher, naturally. If he had seen the film, which by now, he was fairly sure he had, then George Clooney’s performance had been magnificent, but, at the same time, no better than his role as “himself” in the recent Nespresso advert. Having viewed it on dozens of occasions (for some reason it was frequently repeated three times in a row when it appeared on NOW TV) he found it as mystifying as Mulholland Drive (2001, dir. David Lynch). Clooney’s bewildering opening line of “I’ve lost a bed”, the flashback to his conversation with Julia Garner conducted in an obscure primitive language, Simone Ashley’s urgent plea to recycle. Nevertheless, he applauded the high production values and full marks to George for wearing a crash helmet in the closing scene as he zooms off on his Vespa into the sunset.
At least there was plenty time for reading while, outside, summer finally gave way to autumn. Last week he’d re-read a couple of Jonathan Coe’s books including Mr Wilder & Me, a gem of a novel about a young translator working with film director Billy Wilder, which had put him in mind of The Shop Around the Corner (1940, dir. Ernst Lubitsch). Lubitsch had certainly been referenced in Coe’s book, perhaps the film had too, he couldn’t recall, hopeless, it had only been a few days ago (maybe he had suffered concussion from the bike accident?) and although he wasn’t a huge fan of romcoms this truly was one of the best, a Christmas romcom too, perfectly cast with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. James Stewart, of course, that’s who was sitting at the Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock).
He glanced over at the clock. Still only 8:22am.