30 Years Ago in Venice

from Call Someplace Paradise and/or Ghost Town: A Venice California Life

JULY 1980

In class we were shown A Touch of Evil. I know it's a classic and all, but this movie belongs on "Saturday Night Live"'s Baaaad Cinema. Charlton Heston as a Mexican is a laugh and a half. Orson Welles is unbelievably gross and depressing. The only good part is the location, mainly Windward Avenue back when the architecture was uniform, with arcades and carved cherubim up one side of the street and down the other. In A Touch of Evil it's meant to be a Mexican border town. It would be really interesting to see this and Roller Boogie back-to-back. Made forty-some years apart, one in color and the other black and white, with extremely different subject matter and mood and every other variable - and both with scenes filmed from an almost identical point of view geographically.

I hate to admit it but I like Roller Boogie a lot. The whole roller-disco scene is positive and healthy and I envy the kids who are part of it. When I was a teenager, sports meant sweaty drab gymnasiums; exercise meant pickup games in the neighborhood or smelly, noisy indoor swimming pools. A few years after I was one, being a teenager meant (to a large extent) wearing army surplus and sitting on your ass listening to the stereo and smoking pot. Now, here's a generation of kids who know how to actually enjoy life. What could be wrong with that? Everything in Roller Boogie sets a positive example: physical fitness; sticking up for truth in the face of corruption; taking action for a good cause; joyous celebration of life. The male lead is adorable, particularly his solo balletic number on skates to a Supertramp song. What an era this is, when men are allowed to be colorful and beautiful and graceful.

While skating at the disco area I encountered Swami X and we talked an hour or so about Venice history, making it in the movies, etc. In private conversation, not "doing Swami", he's still obviously smart and well-read, but without the cockiness and wicked provocativeness that belong to the character. As a private person, he certainly doesn't claim to have all the answers. Swami X says that Francis Coppola's brother and mother live in Venice, and that Coming Home is stolen from Ron Kovic's book Born on the Fourth of July. I told him I wrote an article for the Beachhead that called him the "only authentic guru in LA." His own guru is a bona fide Hindu Swami, a little fellow who says the funniest things.