Free Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay Page B

Harriet had joined in – between Robert Shaw and Dreyfuss about who has more scars, which Dreyfuss wins by baring his hairy chest and saying, Here! Mary Jane what’s-her-name. She broke my heart!
    “Mary Ellen Moffit,” supplied Kenny.
    Jack said, “They had a lot of trouble with the shark. It actually got loose and headed out to sea. And there they were, chasing their million-dollar shark.” He gave himself up to a great, mirthful belly laugh.
    Kenny, who looked as if he had found the promised land, also leaned forward with both elbows on the table, and said, “What’s
The Deer Hunter
about?”
    “Blood and guts,” said his mom, rolling her eyes.
    “Ten to one she hasn’t seen it,” he said, cocking an eye at Kenny.
    “I don’t have to.” And Lew, listening in the next room, began to worry. He heard her say, “It’s one of those big, violent, overripe movies all about men and meaning. No jokes. Nothing simple. Just pumped-up, self-important, very expensive nonsense. And there would be scenes that I wouldn’t be able to get out of my mind – ever. Depressing.”
    Kenny said, “‘Expensive and depressing. I hate those words. I like the word
peppy
. And I like the word
cheap
. Peppy and cheap.’” He was quoting from
Soapdish
, and Jack’s mouth moved in a half-smile.
    Harriet said, “I’m not alone either. Pauline Kael agrees with me about
The Deer Hunter.”
    “Pauline Kael.”
He swung his big head in derision. “Wretched woman.”
    These were fighting words. Lew almost headed to the basement. Kenny sat in shock. Dinah said, “We’d better hold hands again.” She took Jane’s hand and Kenny’s, causing them to giggle. But Harriet wasn’t paying attention.
    “What you have to appreciate about Pauline Kael,” Harriet said, “is that she knows movies from beginning to end, from the silents through the talkies, the Second World War, the Cold War, Vietnam, and since. Not just Hollywood but everywhere else. She’s smart, no-nonsense, incredibly well read, with a remarkable visual memory and a great writing style. You could learn a lot from her.”
    “All right.”
    “She has no time for bullshit.” Harriet paused, then went for the jugular. “Especially poetic bullshit.”
    “Aye-aye, captain.”
    He looked amused by her, the sort of man who says, I love it when you get angry. The sort of man who begins life as the sort of brother who takes his sister below the elbow and gets her to hit herself over and over again. Why are you hitting yourself? he laughs, until tears spurt from her eyes. And then he relents.
    “I haven’t read her in years. You’re probably right.”
    From his study Lew heard Dinah lead the conversation into safer waters –
All About Eve
, a movie everyone could agree on-and he felt grateful. She was saying, “When Anne Baxter makes a pass at Gary Merrill? And he says, ‘Don’t worry, just write it off as an incomplete forward pass.’ What a fabulous script. And what about
Damage
by Louis Malle? That’s a movie I’ve watched four times. Tell me why.”
    Now Jack gave her his fall, smart, easygoing attention. “That last scene,” he said, “with her photograph covering the wall?” Dinah nodded, remembering Jeremy Irons in dusty exile with Juliette Binoche’s face projected on his wall. “Every so often you meet someone like that,” he said. “Something happens to
them
and they can’t swallow it.” He put his hand around his throat. “They veer away, they go along the side of their lives from then on.”
    “Yes.” Dinah nodded again, taken by his point, and wondering if he was thinking about his father.
    Harriet saw the two of them share a look and a smile, and the very real pleasure of agreeing about a movie. But she couldn’t even remember the last scene. “You’re such romantics,” she said with genuine surprise.
    “And you’re not?” laughed Dinah.
    “Well, I don’t take movies
literally.”
And she actually thought this was true. She had