On the treadmill today, in between watching helicopters bounce and planes take off, I saw 45 minutes of a black and white film without sound. I get points for recognizing a young Peter Finch and even younger Anne Bancroft, but the plot remains a mystery.
Let’s revisit our earliest conversations, you and I. We talked about stories, and what makes us care about them. My vote went to characters, and I bring that to the table now.
The next screen had captions, but all it showed were Oscar preparations; interviews from the bleachers, celebrity sightings, etc. More compelling were the black and white reaction shots, close up on expressive faces of brilliant actors, now dead, showing a range of identifiable emotions. I was hypnotized until it was over. Hopefully there was a happy ending.
Debbie Reynolds and Dick Powell were next, but not for long. It was time to go to weights. Before I left, two pretty girls took the next two treadmills, speaking fast and fluent pretty-ese, flickering between topics. I tried to imagine them slowing to the pace of the film, finishing each thought and reaction before moving on to the next. A large, red and purple jet took off a few hundred feet in front of their eyes, they didn’t even pause. I don’t think they noticed.
Maybe this is why I don’t watch television, except on the treadmill. Maybe I’m a sucker for narrative, for a type of expression that has no place at today’s pace. Maybe there’s a metaphor in what happened, or I’m just too old not to be bored. Never mind. I’m going online to find out what I saw.
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