Kazoo

October is crazy! I'm giving a reading in Birmingham and a talk in Savannah. Hmm, that doesn't sound so crazy. Well, there's also a wedding to attend. My point is that Dr. Theresa and I - in the wake of a similarly foreshortened McNeil's Movie Korner Film Festival - may not be able to cram as many movies as usual into our Halloween film festival, that month-long, yearly event that I always tell you about even though (because?) you don't care. We've already watched four Halloween movies in a kind of panic: AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE, the slasher movie (sort of) APRIL FOOL'S DAY, and the Francis Ford Coppola horror movie that came out just a couple of years ago (!) TWIXT. "Did you say TWIX?" Dr. Theresa asked. "Yes, it's based on the candy bar," I cleverly replied. Oh gee what fun we have. The closing theme of APRIL FOOL'S DAY features a lengthy kazoo solo! And then the closing theme of TWIXT goes like this: "Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu! Nosferatu!" That's the chorus. TWIXT was recommended by Bill Boyle. While we watched it we ate sausage and peppers, which is a Bill Boyle specialty. But that was a coincidence! Nor was it an intentional tribute to Coppola, though I got part of the recipe from watching Clemenza in THE GODFATHER. It just happens to be one of the few dishes I make with confidence. It was our anniversary, as you know (?), and I cooked. I remarked how Brando-like the bearing of Val Kilmer was, and Dr. Theresa remarked with justification that he has been like that ever since he made THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU with Brando. At one point in TWIXT, Kilmer just starts doing a straight-up Marlon Brando impersonation (as he also did in MOREAU). Then he does James Mason! (That scene [above], in which Val Kilmer - playing a frustrated novelist - keeps retyping variations on the same sentence, bore a distinct resemblance to a pivotal scene in the ADVENTURE TIME episode "Root Beer Guy.") Val Kilmer walks down a lonely woodland path at night. "It looks like CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE," said Dr. Theresa. And it did! A minute later something reminded me of PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, and I said so, and Dr. Theresa said, "I was just thinking that but I didn't say it." It was our anniversary and we were thinking the same thoughts. Awww! We're adorable.