I think I am an intellectual then.

For example, there is now a children’s cartoon on the Cartoon Network called “The Grim Adventures of Bill and Mandy” in which two children challenge Death to a limbo (the dance) contest when he comes to claim the soul of their dead hamster. I can’t imagine that my son will ever be able to watch “The Seventh Seal” without being reminded of that cartoon show.

It’s just like a generation of American’s cannot listen to “Ride of the Valkyries” without hearing Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Rabbit, kill the Rabbit!”

Amen. The retrospectives with a full acknowldegment of faults and virtues can start later, but at the time of death there is usually family involved, and for a journalist or reviewer to forget that is unpardonable. It’s one of the reaons I won’t watch or listen to Garrison Keillor anymore -the cheers he led for his audience upon the new of Reagan’s death.

When Carter dies, I’m not writing anything about him for 6 months.

Anyway, I think I’ve asked before but does anyone remember the Clark Theater? It was only a few block from the stop & I think a block or two from the Civic Center. It did double bills they changed every day. The downstairs smelled of heavy strawberry cover up smells and it took a pretty tough or stupid woman to sit down there. (Actually, even in the woman’s balcony a someewhat unfortunate incident: a sailor wandered into the next seat during Barbarella – but then Jane Fonda’s faults do not extend to how she looked in that and one could hardly blame the guy, though he was pretty annoying. Anyway, it was 50 cents on cheap nights and 1.25 on expensive ones; even in those days that was cheap; especially since it ran 24 hours and watching someone adjust their bags for a night’s sleep with a background of Bergman, etc. had a certain charm that I haven’t forgotten. I was there 68-69; I heard the Clark was closed down soon after.

That was about 40 years ago when I was an undergraduate at the U of C. It was run by the Doc Films group, that showed a lot of very weird, perhaps even excessively weird, movies on campus. No matter, unless you wanted to get on the IC and go downtown, which was quite a schlep, although we did do that occasionally, it was the only place in Hyde Park to see a movie.

I think that, except for real hard-core film buffs, Bergman is not much watched anymore. I don’t think any of my 3 children, who are in their early 20s, have seen any of his films.

Time marches on. One generation’s monument is another generation’s “I never heard of him.” Bergman now seems like a period piece, perhaps, like Bach and Melville he will be rediscovered, but I kind of doubt it.