"EXHIBITIONIST AT THE PICTURE SHOW"-PART TWO

EXHIBITIONIST AT THE PICTURE SHOW (part two)

Years passed before I had my second run-in with “Tommy.” My Dad had taken me to a comic book convention in downtown Chicago. I was just getting into “X-Men” and I was searching for older issues including the classic issue #94. I strolled through the large auditorium taking in the multi-colored sights of the memorabilia and the musty smells of the patrons, exhumed from their basements for the afternoon and I stopped for a minute to peruse some movie one-sheet posters. After going through many “Star Wars” posters from around the world, I was greeted with the surreal mirror image of a golden-haired man, wearing dark glasses, ear pieces and a cork stuffed into his mouth. So, this was “Tommy.” Underneath the photo read the tag line, “Your Senses Will Never Be The Same.” The image was so striking, I was transfixed, then a little unnerved. I placed the poster back and continued on through the room. I stopped at another table to look at old issues of “Starlog,” when underneath a pile was a book, The Story Of “Tommy.” Instinctively, I picked it up, paged through and was again greeted with and unnerved by surreal images that were worlds away from the fairly tale landscape of “Sgt. Pepper.” I quickly returned the book to the table and went back to the comics and wondered just what was Louise thinking when she passed along this message to me. I was to find out sooner than I had anticipated.

That winter, my parents joined the home video revolution by purchasing a VCR! A monumental evening if there ever was, I should say. And my Dad inaugurated the machine by renting three movies, “Flashdance,” “Blue Thunder” and “Tommy.” I’ll bet you could just imagine my shock when I saw that title in this stack. How would he have ever even known or thought to rent that movie? It was as if it willed itself into my life and that slight sense of paranoia stopped me from watching it right away. I certainly didn’t want this new VCR to go to waste so I spent that Friday night watching movies, delaying my official meeting with “Tommy” for as long as I could. Around 11:00 p.m., there was no more avoiding to be done and I took a deep breath as I placed “Tommy” into our new machine.

After the brief Columbia Pictures logo, and a shockingly brief title sequence, an ocean of ARP synthesizers filled the room married to an image of some man staring at a setting sun. And that ocean of sound and vision flowed into my room, wave after wave for nearly two hours and I just barely hung on. “Tommy” was based on the classic rock-opera by The Who and told the story of a little boy who retreats into an aural/visual/vocal silence after witnessing the traumatic murder of his father (thought to have been killed in the war) by his mother and her lover. After being subjected to one tortuous event after another, from cruel cousins (maybe my cousin took notes from this movie) and child-molesting uncles, to cure attempts varying from the mildly sinister to downright nightmarish, Tommy somehow becomes the pinball champion of the world, and gains wealth, fame and fortune. He eventually regains his senses, making him a modern day messiah. The purity of his words becomes tainted and commercialized which forces his subjects to turn on him, destroy his temple and murder his mother and step-father. Despite all of the tragedy, the film ends with Tommy climbing a mountain triumphantly and staring into the brightness of a rising sun, while valiantly singing, “Listening To You (See Me, Feel Me).”

 Part of it was fatigue from the lateness. Or maybe it was staring at a TV for almost six hours. But watching “Tommy” was an undeniably overwhelming experience. Even so, that weekend, I watched it three more times. Not because I liked it (I still wasn’t sure what I thought of it) but to just take it all in again.

I took it in alright. After that weekend, I couldn’t get it out of my head! “Tommy” became a part of my conscious and sub-conscious much like a dream that you’re unable to shake. This thing lived in me and I just had to get to the bottom of this. I went to my library at school and began with the obvious: I checked out the original album as well as the film’s soundtrack and began to compare the two. (I must say that I was slightly disappointed with the film soundtrack’s edited down versions of several selections, but I digress.) I then went to check out old film review guides which provided no real raves or pans. Finally, I did some deep digging through our microfiche collection of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. While I did discover fascinating material--like for instance, did you know that Ann-Margaret was actually nominated for Best Actress in 1975 for this movie? And that she injured herself on set during the infamous baked beans sequence? Or that Pete Townshend’s hair began falling out due to the stressful nature of the production? Or that one theater in New York had sold out, round the clock showings of it? And that even Stevie Wonder had been approached for the role of the Pinball Wizard?--there wasn’t anything I found that could pinpoint the heart and meaning of it all. So I rented it again. And again. And again. I would watch it between two and four times during each rental period, going deeper inside and emerging slightly more enthralled than the previous viewing. Before I knew it, I was so in love with this movie that discovering some set-in-stone meaning didn’t matter. I knew what it meant to me. It was almost a spiritual conversion. Like if you went to church all of your life, every Sunday and heard the same message over and over and finally, it sank in and you just…got it. That what it was like when “Tommy” showed it’s clarity to me. It just made sense and there was no way to explain it at all. It simply was and I realized just what Louise may have meant. I silently thanked her, wherever she was, for ever suggesting it to me. 
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