It’s that time of year again, when I walk to the film closet and blow off the dust of twelve months. I’m working my way through my Kubrick collection, typically watching a title in one night, sometimes two (I like to dichotomize the rise and fall of Barry Lyndon). But where to begin? Full Metal Jacket, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining… These are not fluffy movies, but caustic, unapologetic, and violent. I have a habit of falling asleep on the couch while chaos echoes in the background: war torn Vietnam, big guns, bawdy jokes, an hour runtime of push ups and verbal abuse with a murder and suicide to show for it; a teenage delinquent with a jockstrap worn over his trousers, one false eyelash, singing in the rain as he casually rapes those who open their door to him, bashing in a cat lady’s skull with a giant, modern-art penis; Mr. Torrance, who is the caretaker, has always been the caretaker, a father and writer who is tired of his family, his cloying wife, his unbearable sobriety, a man who opens his soul to the whispers of ghosts that seem to ease his suffering, offer escape from familial strife. Perhaps they need a good talking to, if you don’t mind my saying so. Mr. Torrance doesn’t mind. Delbert Grady plants a seed and that’s that. It’s off to the psychopath races! Jack takes the drink and he takes the suggestion. The booze hits him like the best blowjob the world has to offer, sets him right, and the spell is complete. He is swayed by the words of wisdom issued by Lloyd, the bartender: Women… can’t live with them, can’t live without them. How original! But the over-employed maxim is enough for Mr. Torrance, who endeavors to “correct” his family. Naturally, he decides to chop up his wife and son with an axe.
If these scenes influence my dreams, I hardly ever recall them. I wake, a Blu-ray menu showering me in a 4K tidal wave of blood bursting from an open elevator. I wake, neck bent at an odd angle and sore, a man straddling an atomic bomb like a rodeo horse as it falls from the sky to ignite the world below. I wake, Tom Cruise offering the secret password: fidelio, he says, and is given clearance. I wake to Tom Cruise wearing a gold and ivory mask, a black cloak. I wake to Tom Cruise performing his own stunts: his silent, careful stroll through a lavish mansion observing an orgy in every room. Fidelio, as it turns out, is the old password, wrongfully acquired by his friend, the piano player. The jig is up! Tom Cruise is asked to remove his mask, and he reluctantly obeys. He is asked to remove his clothes, which gives him considerable pause, which gave me considerable pause the first time I saw the movie (are we going to see Tom Cruise’s cock?). I wake to Tom Cruise’s handsome face, worried, perplexed, scared. In a room crowded by several dozen masked men and women, his is the only face uncovered. Somehow, more than all those naked bodies, all that raucous, public fucking, Tom’s sole exposed face in a sea of masked guises seems as vulnerable as it comes. I wake to a jarring, haunting piano score and 100 masked strangers watching me blink away my sleep. I feel vulnerable, exposed. But it’s just me in the room, my four cats paralytic and purring by the lingering embers of a log that burned bright an hour and half back when Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman got high in their underwear. Such a sexy scene. Such a sexy couple. And as I yawn, half asleep, I remember when they divorced, how Kidman said that she can finally wear heels again, a reference to Tom’s limited height.
I spoke too soon. Sometimes those Kubrick flicks do have sway over my dreams. One time, for example, directly after I finished my Kubrick collection multi-night marathon, I fell asleep on the couch towards the end of Home Alone. I dreamed of paint cans falling from the sky, their deadly pendulum swing on a red carpet staircase, of a teenage delinquent breaking and entering and singing in the rain as he casually sidesteps the paint cans, hops the Micro Machines and Christmas ornaments littering the floor, squashes the tarantula with his big, black army boots and finds Kevin McCalister, the eight-year-old home defender, beating him soundly until the moment Beethoven blares from older brother Buzz’s speakers. And then it’s all over. The eight-year-old wins in the end. The teenage delinquent falls violently ill, crumpled over, gasping for breath, dry heaving to his favorite symphonies, the result of cruel, experimental methods of conditioning. This perfect blend of Home Alone and A Clockwork Orange is the exact sort of perversion that dreams seem to conjure the moment your eyelids shut, weighed down by false eyelashes (or only one), well spent from your night out of ultra violence and visits to the Korova Milk Bar, from months of training in the Marine Corps with an abusive drill sergeant breathing insults and bad breath down your neck, from late night visits to secret-password fuck fests with ritual weirdness, flashy mansions and masquerade anonymity –until they ask you to remove your mask, remove your clothes. Fidelio is the old password.
Maskless, bald faced, they have revealed my bald faced lies, and at the peak of my stress a crazed man delirious with boredom and familial weariness, aching sobriety, hefts his axe and charges at me with that Jack Nicholson brand of crazy that cannot be acting, must be real –but wait– it is all a dream. I wake to my older brother, Buzz, shouting at me. Kevin! What did you do to my room!?
Hold on… My name’s not Kevin.
But then I really wake. The credits roll and tell me it’s all just a film. I was only dreaming. A Christmas-esque John Williams score bathes the dark room in good cheer and the embers have the faintest glow, still radiating warmth for my comatose cats who curl like cinnamon buns in the weak, amber light. I blink away my daze, my cinema fever, and realize that there is no mask to remove, no man with an axe, no false eyelash, just eye crust from my catnap as I lie curled like a cinnamon bun on the couch, booze breath radiating from my sour mouth. There is no man with an axe vying for my spilled guts. There is no nuclear explosion… not yet. It is just me, my cats, my cheap bourbon coating the bottom of my glass and lazy fruit flies kissing the rim. There is no chaos echoing around me. All is well, a happy ending, albeit a little bit lonely. There is only me on this Friday night. The credits end and now it is a silent, holy night. You could hear a Micro Machine drop to the floor. There is only me. I am home alone.