May the Floss Be With You

by mrbrown@mrbrown.com

(Feel free to distribute for non-profit and non-commercial purposes but keep my byline, email address and URL intact please. Thanks)

My wife and I are movie buffs. By that I don't mean that we go out of our way to watch artistic films where the hero speaks in a foreign tongue and you need subtitles to understand him. No, we are not huge Van Damme fans. We don't even attend film festivals. But we do watch a lot of regular movies.

I have to admit it. I am a closet Seagal fan. I know that guy can't act, has a lot of bogus martial arts credentials (he probably only has a brown belt in making sushi), fake rough-neighbourhood childhood and is getting fat, but I still think he is the coolest action hero of them all. Those fancy-schmancy Shaolin-meets-Karate-meets-Streetfighter moves, them beady eyes, the ponytail, the Oriental robes, OK, maybe not the Oriental robes, but the man is cold steel with a double chin.

That is the reason I dragged Ginny to watch the movie "Critical Decision" (or "Executive Decision", I guess they thought we Asians might think it was some chick flick about bitchy management types). Kurt Russell and Steven Seagal in the same movie, wow. She was reluctant but quite lovingly submissive (because I had already bought the tickets and was bawling in the shopping mall). So off we went to see Seagal get killed within the first fifteen minutes of the show.

Yep, The Seague got creamed in the first fifteen minutes of the show (lost his head, I think. Think about it, the first movie where Seagal uses his head, and he dies) and it was left to Kurt and a couple of unknown guys to stop the bad guys. It was not a bad show, really. Ginny loved it and the suspense was pretty intense. But my main man, whose name and face were as large as Russell's in the movie poster (and in real life), died.

It was devastating. I was in mourning for a full ten minutes. The Seague doesn't die! He always gets his men! I should have known that this movie was bogus in that it only had two words, "Critical Decision". The Seague always did well in his three-word movies like, "Out for Justice", "Marked for Death", "Under One Roof" and "Hard to Kill". What happened to his Royal Hard-to-Killness? Of course you can point out that the successful "Under Seige" is a two-word movie but it is really three -- "Under Siege One" and "Under Seige Two". So I stand by my deductions.

THE FLOSS, USE THE FLOSS, LUKE

The other kind of movie that really gets me going is science fiction. Ever since I saw "Star Wars" in 1976, when I was a wee kid, I have been hooked. My mom regretted the day she brought me to see it. She probably thought it was some healthy documentary on astronomy or something.

I was one of the earliest suckers for movie merchandise, I think. Oh, the many days I spent hounding my mom to get me that cool lightsaber toy (which was really a big torchlight with a long coloured tube attached), and the many hours of fun I got turning R2D2's head just to make those clicking sounds, and making my Luke Skywalker action figure extend his lightsaber out of the hole in his fist, phallic-like, those are great memories.

I am proud to say that Ginny is now a sci-fi fan because of me. She now critiques sci-fi movies for the plot, acting, action, special effects and how many aliens died in a gruesome way within the first half-hour. Oh, we still fight over watching lovey-dovey, artsy, girly, wussy shows like "The Soong Sisters", "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice", which I always fight tooth-and-nail to avoid watching, but end up enjoying secretly (but don't tell her). But I have a partner for sci-fi and she is my wife. I also get a real kick out of spending forty-five minutes arguing with her over how come the Director's Cut of "Bladerunner" is better, after the movie is over.

They tell me that once you have kids, it is impossible to watch movies anymore. Friend Patricia says that her daughter, Megan, would know if mom and dad were going for a movie (children pick up the Mom and Dad Movie-Going Brain Waves from the air) and insist coming along. Apparently, Megan likes to buy and eat popcorn and potato chips at the movies. It's like a picnic for her, says Pat. If she likes the movie, fine. If not, she will want to go home after five minutes. End of picnic.

I took that advice very seriously and am now in the process of cramming as many movies as I can before any kids come. I thoroughly enjoy the whole cinema experience, even when there were no such things as Cineplexes.

CINEMAS OF OLD (AIRCON)

In the old days, it was a big deal if you had airconditioning. Some shops today like old Beauty Salons and Barbers still have signs promoting their airconditioning. "Betty Beauty Salon-Aircon", "Ah Huat Barber-Aircon", "Fatt Ting Fashion-Aircon".

Cinemas were no different. Cheapo movie posters would shout "Aircon!" like it was a major draw. "Seats with cushions!" and "No Cockroaches!" were other big draws that set a cinema above the rest of the common horde.

And the posters were hung everywhere, tatty pieces of paper pasted on wood boards and wrapped in plastic to keep out the rain. These were hung at coffee shops and on street poles. They had a real aggressive marketing department in those days. The grandest adverts were to be found at the Guillemard Circus, near the National Stadium. They had huge Billboards there that showed the various offerings available at the cinemas and if you missed your exit, you could make another trip around the Circus and get to see the huge paintings of current movies.

These billboards were more than a source of movie advertising, they were the height of modern art. This is because these huge posters looked like they were painted by people who painted walls for a living. If you looked close enough and had a good imagination (or was on serious medication), the paintings did look more like Clark Gable and less like your third aunt with a mustache after a steamroller had gone over her face. Especially with the aid of sophisticated visual aids like the name of the actor painted underneath his picture.

Despite all this lack of sophistication and bad art, movie-going then was still a very exciting thing for kids like myself.

My aunt once brought me to watch "King Kong" at some dinghy open-air cinema that we had to fight through grass and forest to get to. I would not have minded the jungle trek and even the lack of aircon or even the fact that the seats were long wooden benches. It's just that the whole show was in Cantonese. I kid you not. It was eerie to see King Kong's girlfriend scream in Cantonese.

"Mm hou sek ngo!" ("Please don't eat me!")

"Ee dee geok yan hou dai, ah!" ("These are huge footprints, man!")

"Aiyeeeeeeeee!" ("Aiyeeeeeeeee!")

It made for a very surreal experience.

Come think of it, the above dialogue sounds like the kind of fake Chinese used by American-Chinese actors who don't speak a word of Chinese but have to act as evil Asian megalomaniacs or downtrodden Asian immigrants (there was no token Asian sidekick yet). It didn't matter if the American-Chinese actors were acting as Chinese, Thai or Japanese, as long as the verbal exchange sounded like an Asian language. Cantonese seems to be a popular choice, even if the guy is telling his Viet Cong counterpart that "I have a pebble in my shoe!" ("Ngo yao yat lup sek tao hai ngo hai yap bin!") in bad Cantonese. As long as it is done fiercely, the audience is supposed to think he said, "We is gonna kill damn Yankee soldier very much!"

To a Western audience, this would have been fine, but to real Cantonese speakers, the whole thing was hilarious, even if it was a tragic scene where the American soldier gets tortured by the evil Viet Cong using stale glutinous rice.

MY FAVOURITE CINEMA

My favourite cinema was one near my house called Zenith. It was aircon and had stall and circle seats, and for you young punks who do not know what that means, stall seats were the $2.50 ones that were situated on the first floor and where the masses sat, and circle seats were the $3.50 balcony ones on the second or third floor where the rich and royalty sat. If you are really old, you would remember the movie prices to be $1.50 and below, with free seating.

It was a real luxury to get circle seats. You got a great view of the screen and if you chose the frontmost row, you could put your feet up on the ledge. It also meant that your family would have to forgo buying next week's groceries because one buck was a lot of moolah in those days. But it was worth it. People who bought circle seats were generally a better class of people. By that I mean they did not throw their melon seeds at the screen when they didn't like something the bad guy said, like the some of the stall seat folk did. No, circle seat folk merely threw their Jelly Tots at the screen. Such were the cultured circle folk.

My favourite Zenith Theatre was a movie theatre ahead of its time though. Whilst everyone had stall seats on the first floor and circle seats on the second (or third), Zenith had both on the same level. So rows A to Z were stall and rows AA to GG were circle. If you were smart, you bought the last row of the stalls and it was as good as sitting in the circle. If you had ass luck, you bought the first row of the circle seats and may as well be sitting in the stalls.

This is somewhat like the present-day cineplexes where all the seats are stall seats and on the same floor, but you pay circle seat prices no matter where you sit. Even that ridiculously near first row, six feet from the screen, where realistically, only people with no spinal column can watch a movie from. Same price.

The big difference, I think, between the old cinemas and the new cineplexes, is in the area of food. You could eat anything you wanted in the old days. You could bring your own melon seeds, peanuts, sour prunes, potato chips and homemade claypot rice if you wanted to and no one would care. If you were a timber tycoon, you could even buy the stuff (except the claypot rice) from the Indian man selling the "kacang putih" (assorted nuts) and sweets at the cinema itself (albeit at developed country prices, that is one thing that hasn't changed).

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN

So movie-going for us kids was as much about junk food as it was about watching the sensitive portrayal of Godzilla stepping on the screaming gentry. It seems that movies were the only time our parents would disregard all the usual health doctrines (eat your veggies, drink lots of water and always wear clean underwear) and let us gorge ourselves silly on our junk food of choice.

These days, however, most cineplexes don't let you bring your own stuff in because, according to the signs, "Eating outside food will disturb the other patrons of our cineplex". But buying _their_ expensive popcorn and _their_ expensive soft drinks is okay and will not disturb the other patrons. Modern cinemas sell only quiet foods. Yeah right.

I must say that I do not miss the "keropok"-eating movie-goer though. "Keropok", for you international readers, is a flat and generally round prawn cracker that is deep fried to heart-stopping perfection. Eating it will probably shorten your life by 5 years but the monosodium glutamate (msg) and recycled oil in that snack really tastes good. Eating it is also a noisy affair, there is no known scientific way of eating "keropok" quietly. So most cinema patrons who used to eat it in the cinemas of old were normally stoned to death by other irate patrons. Of course I am just kidding. In reality, we threw our melon seeds at the Stupid Putz.

Those old days were great for movie snacking. We are now reduced to sneaking our hamburgers and fries into the cinema in our backpacks. It can get really messy but desperate times require desperate measures. I still haven't figured out how to sneak claypot rice in though.

We also used to buy tickets from the grouchy old ladies marking our seats with thick pencils that were never sharpened since World War 2, on a paper layout of the theatre. Now we buy them from grouchy old ladies operating computers that are better than the one you have in your home. I miss the days when we could choose our seats and avoid sitting next to the toilet. Now we are at the mercy of mouse-wielding ticket vendors with a bad attitude. And a computer picks our seats via a sophisticated computing algorithm called Random Allocation of Seats That Even Your Pet Cockroach Would Not Choose. This is called progress.

And who can forget the ushers who showed us our seats with their powerful China-made Flying Panda (TM) brand torches? Now we give them our life-savings to go there and sort of stumble into our seats.

THE SAPPY TAIWAN LOVE STORY ERA

Ginny had it good as a kid. She did not have to pay for her movies. Her dad knew this projectionist in a old cinema and she got to see many movies for free. She saw most of the films from the Sappy Taiwan Love Story Era for free. This is the Era where Sappy Taiwan Love Stories were very popular (that was helpful). They were also very predictable. You could spot the plot from your house ten miles away. My dog could predict the plot, if I had a dog. Guy meets girl, guy gets girl, guy loses girl because of some obstacle, guy gets dog (no, I'm kidding), guy gets TB, guy gets girl back, and they sing the love song specially written for the show.

For years, as a result of these films, Ginny thought that it was perfectly all right for cousins to fall in love, sing love songs to each other, and marry. This was a frequent scenario in the Sappy Taiwan Love Story Era films. The protagonists were often cousins.

You would think that this was a major obstacle to their love, being blood-related and all, but it was usually something more taboo, like the dad of the girl not liking the boyfriend's bell bottoms or long hair or bell bottoms made of long hair. Either that or one of them contracts a life-threatening disease.

Illness was a frequent plot device. The most common ailments at the time, according to these movies, were heart attacks and tuberculosis. Other diseases were not invented yet.

You could also predict who would be in it. Most times, it would have Taiwan screen legends Lin Hsing Hsia (who still looks good at forty today) and Lin Fong Chiao (who is now Jackie Chan's wife), and Taiwan's only available male lead then, Chin Han. He was the only leading man at the time. He was in every movie that required a romantic male lead. Seems like the rest of the Taiwan men were either too ugly or too busy getting their hair permed. Chin Han was the last bastion of eternal youth, playing the college lover way past the legal age for playing a college lover. But fans overlooked small details like that.

I personally watched many of these same films on TV at 3pm in the afternoon, after coming home from Lower Primary School, when Channel 8 started broadcasting then. I watched these same movies on a black-and-white TV that had a screen the size of a ladies' wallet, only smaller, housed in a wooden casing the size of an Austin Mini Cooper. TVs in those days were made entirely of wood, even the screen, with sliding wooden doors that covered the screen when you were not watching anything (like the during the other 23 hours of the day). I think the destruction of the Rainforests of the World can be traced to these behemoth TVs.

As I said, I watched these Taiwan films dutifully, everyday. This was before streaming at Primary Three was introduced, you understand. And the films were repeated ad nauseum, a tradition that still proudly continued today, except without the letter "(r)" for "repeat" to warn you that it is a rerun. You would probably catch these films today on TV as part of a "Chin Han Classic Film Special", with 3 hours of TV ads in between, sponsored by some Sanitary Napkin Company.

THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF BAD TV

Speaking of TV, TV has been a major force in shaping our love for movies. By that I mean the programming here sucks so much that even today, we are forced to go to the movies for entertainment. I believe Singapore has the highest number of cineplexes per capita. For such a tiny country, we have a heck of a lot of cineplexes. This is despite the proliferation of nuclear-powered home theatre systems, that give Singaporeans the ability to recreate the cinema sound experience in their tiny living rooms on their tiny TV screens, and to share their bad karaoke singing with their neighbours.

Socially, Singaporeans have only two answers to the question, "What shall we do tonight?", and they are:

1. Let's see a movie

2. Let's have dinner and then see a movie

This is what prompted huge cinema chains like Golden Village (GV) of Australia to come here and set up 59-hall cineplexes in far-flung housing estates you never knew had humans, like Yishun (which was called Nee Soon before the Government decided that street names with dialect roots were a threat to National Security). But Yishun 59 and the imaginatively-named Bishan 32 located in, to the surprise of everyone, Bishan estate, made money. So much money that most of the other local cinema chains, faced with new competition and the daunting task of upgrading their facilities, service and halls, promptly did the most logical business thing -- they asked Golden Village to run their theatres.

Seeing the success of GV (or "Guv", as they are affectionately called by hip locals who refer to the MRT as the "Mert"), other cinema chains in the region rushed in to set up shop, but with slightly less fantastic results (that is, their takings were slightly below that of the GDP of Canada). My take on this is that GV offered something the less successful chains did not -- edible popcorn. And in a paper bucket big enough to use for bathing water buffalo in.

GV also had a nifty stored-value smart card system that served the primary purpose of making the patron pay for their tickets way, way in advance so that he could buy this dorky plastic card with a signed passport picture of Jackie Chan on it that says "Special Agent-CIA" ("Let me in, I am Jackie Chan Loong Loong, Special Agent-CIA!" is what you would say to get into your theatre). I say "had" a stored-value smart card because GV later found out there were evil syndicates cloning their smart cards for nefarious, Free-World-threatening purposes, like selling them cheaper to patrons. I guess the card was not very smart after all.

Still I liked the many designs offered, especially the ones with that tasteful Wonderbra girl in a series of four, posing in a tasteful, feminine and educational way, or I may be mixing that up with MRT Transitlink cards. But that was a nice set. Of cards, I mean.

Given our exposure to movies, it is no wonder that Ginny and I are now the movie fanatics that we are. Of course we now know that there are more diseases out there than heart attacks and TB. And I would like to reassure my readers that we are not cousins or even remotely related.

We just happen to look like each other.

All fan mail and soft toys may be directed at mrbrown@mrbrown.com

Other writings may be found in the Website "BrownTown" at http://www.mrbrown.com