Synchronicity

When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a bat fly into his house while he was watching a Christopher Lee vampire movie on tv. His brother, wielding a broom and remembering the common wisdom about bats getting into people's hair, donned a football helmet and wrangled the thing outside.

Years later, I was watching, "Play It Again, Sam" for about the fifth time at the Harvard Square Theater. The film reached a scene in which Woody Allen's character, looking for love in a San Francisco art museum, attempts to chat up a beautiful woman who proceeds to give Woody an existentialist, depressing earful. (Woody: "What are you doing Saturday night?" Woman: "Committing suicide." Woody: "How about Friday?") During this particular viewing, just as Woody asked the woman what a certain Jackson Pollock painting meant to her, and she replied, "It restates the negativeness of the universe," the image on the screen dissolved. The film had melted in the projector!

Members of the audience were yelling for refunds, but I just laughed and left. I'm planning to see "Strait-Jacket" at the Brattle later this week, and I'm hoping for an appropriate sideshow.