Get Reel

Last week I went to the cheap movie house to see a French film. The projector broke so the theatre manager announced that those attending could get their money back, or attend the Muppet movie that had just started in the other theatre. I opted for the Muppets, because the puppeteer, Peter Linz, who has been my son’s friend since high school, created the new character, “Walter”.

The surprisingly entertaining plot involved a human actor and the puppet, “Walter” who were brothers. At the end of the movie, the man brother remained a human being, and the puppet (manipulated by Peter Linz) came out of the closet and realized he was a Muppet. The audience could have clued him in at the beginning of the movie, but it was a sweet illusion.

Several years ago, when I was in New York, my son and I visited Peter at the television studio and watched the show. The puppeteers were dressed in black, stood in a hole in the floor and stuck their hands up as they worked the puppets. The director shouted orders at their hands such as, “ Twitter, show more emotion!”  He forgot that there were people standing in that hole, and the puppet illusion became his reality.

Movies give us pleasure, but some people never see the man behind the puppet, or actors as real people. Consequently, illusion sometimes knocks heads with reality.

In the movies: A speeding car goes 100mph around mountain curves. In real life, people find out that cars don’t fly.

In the movies: A man gets shot, jumps on a galloping horse, saves a drowning calf, carries his woman’s laundry basket into the house---all before she puts a bandage on his wound. In real life, a paper cut really hurts!

In the movies: Alien creatures invade a home and are beaten back by a child who can blow fire out of his nose. In real life, the IRS will perform an audit, because flaming nostrils are not a legitimate deduction.

Imagination and “Let’s pretend” are what makes life fun. Movies make us laugh and cry. Movies can make us think or escape thoughts for a short while, but movies aren’t close to real---unless you are Woody Allen.

In The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie idol jumps off the screen and into real life. Allen’s brilliance causes illusion and reality to collide. However, I promise, if you take it upon yourself, to jump from your theatre seat into an actual movie, you will tear the screen, and find a lawyer waiting for you on the other side. That is why movies are called “flights of fancy”---not flights of bodies.

Esther Blumenfeld (swinging on a star)