WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:02.940 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:00:02.940 --> 00:00:04.300 align:middle line:90% I'm going to read two more. 00:00:04.300 --> 00:00:06.390 align:middle line:84% The first is a prose poem, and the last 00:00:06.390 --> 00:00:08.700 align:middle line:90% is, I consider my disco poem. 00:00:08.700 --> 00:00:11.140 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:11.140 --> 00:00:21.890 align:middle line:90% 00:00:21.890 --> 00:00:23.610 align:middle line:84% This one is called, the prose poem 00:00:23.610 --> 00:00:27.770 align:middle line:84% is called "The Lonedale Operator." 00:00:27.770 --> 00:00:30.540 align:middle line:84% "The first movie I ever saw was a Walt Disney cartoon, 00:00:30.540 --> 00:00:31.850 align:middle line:90% The Three Little Pigs. 00:00:31.850 --> 00:00:33.710 align:middle line:90% My grandmother took me to it. 00:00:33.710 --> 00:00:36.890 align:middle line:84% It was back in the days when you went downtown. 00:00:36.890 --> 00:00:40.310 align:middle line:84% There was a second feature with live actors called Bring 'Em 00:00:40.310 --> 00:00:45.800 align:middle line:84% Back Alive, a documentary about the animal tamer Frank Buck. 00:00:45.800 --> 00:00:49.070 align:middle line:84% In this film, you saw a python swallow a live pig. 00:00:49.070 --> 00:00:50.570 align:middle line:90% This wasn't scary. 00:00:50.570 --> 00:00:52.460 align:middle line:84% In fact, it seemed quite normal, a sort 00:00:52.460 --> 00:00:56.870 align:middle line:84% of thing you would see in a movie, reality. 00:00:56.870 --> 00:00:59.960 align:middle line:84% A little later we went downtown again to see a movie of Alice 00:00:59.960 --> 00:01:02.630 align:middle line:84% in Wonderland, also with live actors. 00:01:02.630 --> 00:01:04.700 align:middle line:84% This wasn't very surprising either. 00:01:04.700 --> 00:01:06.920 align:middle line:84% I think I knew something about the story. 00:01:06.920 --> 00:01:08.990 align:middle line:90% Maybe it had been read to me. 00:01:08.990 --> 00:01:11.390 align:middle line:84% That isn't why it wasn't surprising though. 00:01:11.390 --> 00:01:13.310 align:middle line:84% The reason was that these famous movie 00:01:13.310 --> 00:01:16.370 align:middle line:84% actors, like WC Fields and Gary Cooper, 00:01:16.370 --> 00:01:18.620 align:middle line:84% were playing different roles, and even 00:01:18.620 --> 00:01:20.100 align:middle line:84% though I didn't know who they were, 00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:23.603 align:middle line:84% they were obviously important for other kinds of acting. 00:01:23.603 --> 00:01:25.520 align:middle line:84% And so it didn't seem strange that they should 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:28.010 align:middle line:84% be acting in a special way like this, 00:01:28.010 --> 00:01:30.650 align:middle line:84% pretending to be characters that people knew-- already 00:01:30.650 --> 00:01:32.720 align:middle line:90% knew about from a book. 00:01:32.720 --> 00:01:35.900 align:middle line:84% In other words, I imagined infinite specialties for them 00:01:35.900 --> 00:01:38.210 align:middle line:84% just from having seen this one example, 00:01:38.210 --> 00:01:42.380 align:middle line:84% and I was right, too, though not about the film, which I liked. 00:01:42.380 --> 00:01:44.480 align:middle line:84% Years later, I saw it when I was grown up 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:46.070 align:middle line:90% and thought it was awful. 00:01:46.070 --> 00:01:48.530 align:middle line:84% How could I have been wrong the first time? 00:01:48.530 --> 00:01:52.940 align:middle line:84% I knew it wasn't inexperience because I wasn't experienced 00:01:52.940 --> 00:01:55.130 align:middle line:90% the first time I saw a movie. 00:01:55.130 --> 00:01:57.960 align:middle line:84% It was as though my taste had changed, though I had not, 00:01:57.960 --> 00:01:59.960 align:middle line:84% and I still can't help thinking that I was right 00:01:59.960 --> 00:02:02.150 align:middle line:84% the first time, when I was still relatively 00:02:02.150 --> 00:02:05.270 align:middle line:90% unencumbered by experience. 00:02:05.270 --> 00:02:07.250 align:middle line:84% I forget what were the next movies I saw, 00:02:07.250 --> 00:02:09.259 align:middle line:84% and we'll skip ahead to one I saw 00:02:09.259 --> 00:02:12.140 align:middle line:84% when I was grown up The Lonedale Operator, 00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:16.370 align:middle line:84% a silent short by DW Griffith made in 1911 and starring 00:02:16.370 --> 00:02:18.110 align:middle line:90% Blanche Sweet. 00:02:18.110 --> 00:02:19.970 align:middle line:84% Although I was in my 20s when I saw it 00:02:19.970 --> 00:02:22.850 align:middle line:84% at the Museum of Modern Art, it seems as remote in time 00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:25.490 align:middle line:84% as my first viewing of Alice in Wonderland. 00:02:25.490 --> 00:02:27.440 align:middle line:84% I can remember almost none of it, 00:02:27.440 --> 00:02:29.060 align:middle line:84% and the little I can remember may 00:02:29.060 --> 00:02:31.250 align:middle line:84% have been in another Griffith short 00:02:31.250 --> 00:02:35.390 align:middle line:84% The Lonely Villa, which may have been on the same program. 00:02:35.390 --> 00:02:39.020 align:middle line:84% It seems that Blanche Sweet was a heroic telephone operator, 00:02:39.020 --> 00:02:40.760 align:middle line:84% who managed to get through to the police 00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:42.260 align:middle line:84% and foil some gangsters, who were 00:02:42.260 --> 00:02:44.840 align:middle line:90% trying to rob a railroad depot. 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:47.180 align:middle line:84% Though I also see this living room-- small, 00:02:47.180 --> 00:02:49.790 align:middle line:84% though it was supposed to be in a large house-- 00:02:49.790 --> 00:02:52.190 align:middle line:84% with Mary Pickford running around, 00:02:52.190 --> 00:02:55.190 align:middle line:84% and this may have been a scene in The Lonely Villa. 00:02:55.190 --> 00:02:56.960 align:middle line:84% At that moment, the memories stop, 00:02:56.960 --> 00:02:59.870 align:middle line:90% and terror or tedium sets in. 00:02:59.870 --> 00:03:02.360 align:middle line:84% It's hard to tell which is which in this memory 00:03:02.360 --> 00:03:04.790 align:middle line:84% because the boredom of living in a lonely place, 00:03:04.790 --> 00:03:08.270 align:middle line:84% or having a lonely job, and even of being so far in the past 00:03:08.270 --> 00:03:10.550 align:middle line:84% and having to wear those funny uncomfortable clothes 00:03:10.550 --> 00:03:13.280 align:middle line:84% and hairstyles is terrifying, more so 00:03:13.280 --> 00:03:16.160 align:middle line:84% than the intentional scariness of the plot, the criminals, 00:03:16.160 --> 00:03:17.870 align:middle line:90% whoever they were. 00:03:17.870 --> 00:03:20.600 align:middle line:84% Imagine that innocence, Lillian Harvey, 00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:23.450 align:middle line:84% encounters romance, Billy Fritsch, 00:03:23.450 --> 00:03:27.110 align:middle line:84% in the home of experience, Albert Basserman. 00:03:27.110 --> 00:03:29.360 align:middle line:84% From there, it is only a step to terror, 00:03:29.360 --> 00:03:31.970 align:middle line:84% under the dripping boughs outside. 00:03:31.970 --> 00:03:35.720 align:middle line:84% Anything can change as fast as it wants to and in doing so, 00:03:35.720 --> 00:03:38.210 align:middle line:84% may pass through a more or less terrible phase, 00:03:38.210 --> 00:03:40.280 align:middle line:84% but the true terror is in the swiftness 00:03:40.280 --> 00:03:43.070 align:middle line:84% of changing, forward or backward, slipping always just 00:03:43.070 --> 00:03:44.700 align:middle line:90% beyond our control. 00:03:44.700 --> 00:03:46.850 align:middle line:84% The actors are like people on drugs, 00:03:46.850 --> 00:03:49.070 align:middle line:84% so they aren't doing anything unusual. 00:03:49.070 --> 00:03:52.500 align:middle line:84% As a matter of fact, they are performing brilliantly." 00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:53.000 align:middle line:90%