I Blame Dennis Hopper (5 page)

“We don't want to be with that noisy crowd anyway, do we, Peaches?” he said, which was his nickname for me. “We're going in style.”

At the time, my grandfather had an absolutely stunning 1959 Mercedes-Benz 220S convertible sports car. It was steel gray with gorgeous red leather interior and bright, shiny chrome bumpers. It haunts me, it was so perfect. I'm not much for cars, but I have never been in a car as beautiful as my memory of what that Mercedes looked and felt like, especially when Melvyn Douglas—the movie star—was at the wheel.

We climbed in, and I sat next to him in the front seat—a privilege I rarely had in my own family, so it felt very grown-up. He gave me a smile with that familiar twinkle in his eye, and we were off, flying eighty miles per hour toward the drive-in. No one wore seat belts in those days, and these were winding country roads. My grandfather liked to drive really fast, but he was a terrible driver. Later I figured out that I was riding with him less out of privilege and more by default—because other friends and relatives were simply too scared. Maybe that's why everyone had piled so quickly into my grandmother's “safe” Volvo station wagon and taken off before he had come out of the house.

My grandfather drove that Mercedes with utter exuberance and a complete lack of fear. I can't say the same for his passengers over the years, who in a typical outing would share many nervous glances and the slamming of imaginary brakes. We had our share of near misses during those summers in Vermont. We scared a lot of deer, and took out more than a few mailboxes on our way to get ice cream or pick something up in town. My grandfather would announce that he was on his way to pick up a prescription or to go to an antiques fair, but there were never any takers to accompany him. But for me, any excuse to climb into that Mercedes and sit next to him at the wheel … well, it was as close to heaven as you could want to be. We were always backing into things or over things. Magically, the car never seemed to dent, as if movie stars were somehow exempt from something as mundane as a fender bender. Eventually I just got used to the sound of squealing brakes or the horrified looks of passersby as they leaped out of the way, shouting, “Melvyn Douglas is on the loose again!”

The night of the drive-in, we raced down Route 5, making an extremely sharp and illegal left turn past the red light and turned at the large neon sign next to a dirt field that read
FAIRLEE DRIVE-IN.
It was dark by the time we got there, and we couldn't spot any cars that were familiar, so my grandfather started speeding through row after row as we got closer and closer to the screen. We finally spotted the Volvo up toward the front. He backed the car down the row to turn around but went right over a curb. Then he spun the car around in a cloud of dust, drove back over the same curb, and continued at the same speed toward the front. He didn't even acknowledge it was happening. It was fantastic. To this day I call that move “the Melvyn Douglas.” We pulled up next to the others and waved. Car, driver, and passenger intact. The story was forever told by anyone who was there that night to witness it.

What I first remember about the drive-in was looking out the window and seeing the movie being projected in the sky. The screen was surrounded by stars. The movie was
Romeo and Juliet
. What I remember most about
Romeo and Juliet
was the whispering sound of lovers. The wonderful echoed sound combined with the gigantic images that played against that starry Vermont sky. The sound seemed to come right from the sky, like voices from the heavens. It was the first time I saw kissing in a movie, and I spent the rest of the summer apparently trying to kiss my cousin, who was about five years older than I was. Nobody could understand why I had this sudden precociousness for kissing boys. Well, I saw it in
Romeo and Juliet
! Olivia Hussey as Juliet was never more beautiful and romantic and, well, kissable.

I also remember the end, when the lovers couldn't be together and they both killed themselves. The unfairness of their deaths stayed within me somehow. Doomed love would be something I would experience myself at another drive-in many years later. It was also the first time I saw nudity on screen, and although it was only a bare bottom, it was something the boys talked about a lot the next day. I realized I had seen something that I wasn't supposed to see. It forever linked in my mind the forbidden and adult nature of drive-ins. You didn't see
Bambi
or
Mary Poppins
at the drive-in. You saw naked people kissing, and then they ended up dead. Of course I also remember the score. The music haunted me, and whenever I hear it I am instantly brought back to that summer night sitting next to my grandfather in his Mercedes as we watched
Romeo and Juliet
. Our dangerous and memorable ride had brought us here, and now I was watching my first movie.

By the time I was going to the Middletown Drive-In, our local spot, with my friends and boyfriends in Connecticut, it was featuring only “Dusk Till Dawn” horror flicks. But before that, they had actually played some great movies. There my parents saw Andy Warhol's
Trash, Midnight Cowboy
, and
King of Hearts
—one of their favorites. During our hippie days, my mother would dress us in our pajamas, and we'd get to go to the Middletown Drive-In in the back of one of the hippies' trucks. It was a great way to watch films. You'd fall asleep during one film only to wake up to another—as if it were one long continuous movie. I remember seeing just an amazing array of movies and genres that way.
Serpico
and
Scarecrow; The Sugarland Express
with
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry; Freebie and the Bean
on a double bill with
Blazing Saddles
.
Nashville
paired with
M*A*S*H
, which was the
second
time I saw nudity. Nudity = drive-in. I woke up and my brothers were screaming and pointing at the screen. It was the first time I saw breasts in a movie. In
M*A*S*H,
Sally Kellerman was “Hot Lips” O'Houlihan, naked as a jaybird in the shower. Sally Kellerman, who I knew first because of her breasts, later became my friend after we met doing a staged reading of a Paul Mazursky play.

As I got older, and without my parents or brothers around, the nudity at the drive-in was usually happening in the front seat, unfortunately
while
I was trying to watch the movie. I was in the backseat with a girlfriend watching
Bang the Drum Slowly
, which was paired with
Report to the Commissioner
. A Michael Moriarty double bill, I guess.
Bang the Drum Slowly
was riveting. It had an actor I had never seen before named Robert De Niro, and in the film he's dying. My friend and I were watching the movie—perhaps the saddest ever made—and meanwhile her sister is in the front seat, oblivious. She's making out with her date, and getting pretty hot and heavy, and we're holding back tears in the back! Two completely different cinematic experiences. Finally we had to get out of the car so we wouldn't disturb them with our sniffles. We watched the rest of the movie on the hood of the car, careful
not
to turn around until the car stopped moving. Let me tell you, they missed one good movie. That De Niro fellow. He went places.

By the time I got to high school, the Middletown Drive-In was associated not only with sex but with all sorts of teenage misbehavior. Some of it was sort of innocent, like the tradition of sneaking in extra people in the trunk of the car.

The admission was only 99 cents, so the practice was more about getting away with something than it was about the money. But hey, we were poor, so I didn't mind nearly suffocating to save a buck. I became friends with an older girl named Molly. Molly's mom had this champagne-colored Pontiac Grand Prix. It was a massive car with a huge trunk, and if she only knew how we misused it. I can't tell you how it drove, because I rarely got to sit in it, but I can assure you, the trunk of a Pontiac Grand Prix can fit three small teenage girls.

A typical Friday night went like this: Molly would pick everyone up. There would be about seven or eight girls stuffed into the car. When we got close to the drive-in, Molly would pull over and decide who would have to get into the trunk. I usually volunteered, because I knew she would pick me anyway. I was younger and not in any way cool, so I had no clout to stand up and say “You know, just once I'd like to ride
in
the car like a passenger, not in the trunk like a corpse.” I was also not one of the upper-crust girls who had beautiful hair and clothing and would never dare do something as demeaning as get in a trunk and sneak into the drive-in to save 99 cents! Besides, it was date night, and they had to look their best because there were going to be boys there. That was the main reason anyone went to the drive-in.

I became known as a fearless trunker, which was far from the truth. The scary part of sneaking in through the trunk was not so much worrying about being caught. It was knowing that we were right over the fuel tank whenever we hit a bump. Rolled up in a ball inside the trunk, you could hear everyone in the car laughing and talking and you'd keep thinking about that fuel tank. The car would slow down at the drive-in entrance and Molly would yell, “We're here! Don't say anything!”

Yeah, as if it were easy to carry on a conversation from the trunk of a car!

You'd feel the bumpity-bump as the car drove in and then over to the farthest end of the drive-in before you were let out. Sometimes it was still dusk, and you'd have to wait for it to get dark before anyone would let you out. By that point, it was hard to breathe, and you were convinced they had left you inside as a joke—which did happen to me, a lot, and it's still not funny! What
is
funny is that in all the years we snuck in, no one ever asked to open the trunk of anyone's car.

Maybe they just accepted it as petty drive-in theft. Punks and stowaways. It was always a relief to see Molly's smiling face as she popped open the trunk and let me out. Maybe there'd be a small impression of the spare tire on my face, but that would fade as the night went on.

By the time I'd be released, the first movie would have started, but as I've said, folks didn't really go there for the cinematic experience; it was more an act of teenage lust.

Once outside the trunk, the girls would give each other a quick once-over. We would put even more makeup on our already made-up faces, apply more sticky lip gloss, and head to the burger stand to check out who was there. The burger stand was basically a screened-in outhouse that smelled of rancid grease. Inside, the fluorescent lighting made you look like one of the zombies that were often playing on the screen. You'd stand in line to get your French fries, the paper soaked with grease. You'd match it with an equally greasy burger and a watered-down Coke, and you had your perfect
un
happy meal. It was better to eat outside, because inside it was too hard not to notice the dead, greasy flies stuck in the flypaper catchers dangling from the ceiling—last changed probably in the 1950s. The Middletown Drive-In had the best fries I have ever eaten. I have searched and almost caught that memorable smell whenever I am near a carnival or state fair. That wonderful nostalgic smell and taste of youth. Top it off with a blue or purple snow cone and there you have it. Snapshot. I remember talking to a boy I liked and thinking it was going really well. I went to the bathroom, which was conveniently located inside, right next to where they fried everything. I looked in the mirror, and my entire mouth was circled bright blue. As if the clown Emmett Kelly had just eaten a Smurf and wiped it on his mouth. The boy was gone by the time I got it off my face. Another time, I was chatting up a boy about a movie when a fly got stuck in my lip gloss. He was getting it off my mouth and got a handful of pink-colored goop with the live, coated fly still attached. I had hoped that my expertise and knowledge about films would draw boys to me like flies at the drive-in. It never happened.

The Middletown Drive-In was a good place to smoke without getting caught, drink without getting caught, meet up with boys and make out in cars without getting caught. It was
not
a place to watch movies, yet I was there actually to watch the movies. Maybe I couldn't shake my earlier magical experiences of drive-in movies.

Even when the movies started to be geared more toward horror flicks. I still wanted to watch them. I'd say, “The movie is starting; let's go watch the movie,” and finally, pitifully, “Isn't anyone going to watch the movie?” But no one was interested. There was nothing worse than seeing a great scary movie, such as
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud
or
When a Stranger Calls
, and having no one to talk to about it. There were times I would find myself alone in a car absorbed in a movie, and realize it was dawn. I'd watched
five movies in a row
, and my friends were God-knows-where.

Once, I was in Molly's car watching a scary movie by myself, and it turned into a scary movie in real life. It was very late. At the drive-in, there were no clocks, just a string of movies, so you lost track of time. My guess is that it was probably somewhere between dusk and dawn.

I had just got through watching
Carrie
. It was gruesome. Great scary ending. And again there was a lot of nudity in it. Nudity = drive-in! I couldn't believe that my friends had missed this movie! Next up was
Alice, Sweet Alice
with a young Brooke Shields. Pretty good—I kept watching, thinking, Surely someone is going to show up soon. Eventually, the next movie started, and it was
Burnt Offerings
. The movie began innocently enough, not half as scary as
Carrie
. Lots of creepy zooms. A sinister chauffeur. And who is in the upstairs window? It was almost cheesy, so I kept watching. All of a sudden there was a scene with water. Now, I was always kind of afraid of the water. I never wanted to go swimming. I had one fear as a child. It was completely irrational, but I was terrified of someone holding me under the water and drowning me. I would not go swimming with my brothers, because I was so afraid. My mother would be trying to give me a bath and I would scream, “She's drowning me!” Maybe it was a past-life thing, I don't know, but that was my crazy fear. In
Burnt Offerings
there is a scene in which Oliver Reed becomes possessed by this demon living through the house. The demon feeds off the life force of all of the house's inhabitants. At one point in the movie, Oliver Reed starts holding his son under water, trying to drown him. That was my fear, and now I am seeing it in a movie. Bette Davis is screaming at him to stop, but Oliver Reed just keeps holding the kid under water, and he can't control himself. He's gone insane. He's trying to kill his son. The kid is splashing around fighting for his life.