Memories from a dark movie theater
It was the late fall of my senior year of high school, and it was snowing – the kind of weather that would have kept me inside and off the roads except that we were teenagers and bad roads didn’t impress us.
My best friend and I and our boyfriends were on what was known as a double date, driving all the way to downtown Pittsburgh to see a movie. What was about to happen in that dark theater carved something into my soul – OK, into my hormones – that has always lurked there, and finally came full circle this week.
The movie was “A Star is Born,” the third iteration of the story of star rise and star decline. Yes, it had Barbra Streisand and her magnificent afro, but more to the point, it had Kris Kristofferson. Wowzer, I mean, what just hit me?
That lean body, the shirt open to there, the soft brown hair hanging to the side. And the blue eyes, good lord, the blue eyes. That man on the screen was something new, a beautiful bad boy sliding off that big screen and into the dark around me. As my good-boy boyfriend munched popcorn, I shifted my teenage gaze away to something exotic and dangerous. As the story unfolded and his rock-star character disintegrated into booze and drugs, I decided that his kisses tasted dangerous, like beer and cigarettes.
My soul was stuck to his like a refrigerator magnet. I longed to sit against him on the front seat of his truck. I would tell him all about my dog and my big goals in life.
Few movie stars or country singers hold that allure. Elvis, forgive me, but no. Not Johnny Cash or Garth Brooks. Not Tom Cruise or Bradley Cooper or Paul Newman. Maybe Brad Pitt a long time ago, and maybe Jackson Browne … and, of course, James Taylor.
Like James, Kris was a bad boy with a good soul. High school in Washington County, Pennsylvania, had its share of bad boys, but there was nothing inside of that bad, just long hair and bad grades. But the blue-eyed dude up on the movie screen was deep with sweet trouble and intelligence, and I alone could save him.
Even at 17, I knew that someone like the Kris Kristofferson in the movie would probably wreck my life, leaving me adrift and heartbroken. And yet my pining was strong.
It says a lot about us, that an on-screen presence of someone we don’t know can pull us in so. Our Kris had lots of children with three different women, perhaps a predictable pattern for a bad boy and a star. But when I read he’d been married to his third wife for 30 years, I felt somehow vindicated, and also a bit jealous.
As we all know, he died this week at age 88. I’ve been gorging myself on videos of his performances over the years. Obituaries spoke of his poetic songwriting and his performances with a gravelly voice and his “rudimentary” guitar skills. But who was even paying attention to that? What person could get past those lanky arms? Those blue eyes?
Lest I get pegged for being shallow, which I totally am, I’ll mention that Kris was by all accounts a kind and generous person – qualities that were more important than how he looked on stage and on camera. But there’s no getting past that first impression in that movie theater all those years ago.
I’m going to find that movie and watch it again, maybe alone and in the dark. Wowzer.