I had no other plan, but I was restless. So I decided to try one more time to find something, near my condo, as I was restless, but lazy, to attend. The only thing was a newly released Richard Gere movie in which he plays a homeless man.
I debated whether going off to see this movie would only increase my restlessness, and provoke my dysthymic mood into something more dark. And then I made a kind of "let's see how I feel when I walk over there" decision. I dressed and went over to the Sunset strip mall that houses the Sundance West Hollywood. The dispositive factor--Richard Gere was going to appear and speak about the movie.
Funny how ordinary and "famous" lives overlap in this town. Back in 1981, just after I moved to Los Angeles, I was at Venice Beach and Gere was making a movie. I can't remember if it was "Breathless" or "America Gigolo". I remember he was wearing these plaid like pants and he was good looking. And here we are, both a lot older, our paths crossing again, with me, as usual, in the crowd. Not complaining. So, I bought the ticket. I had an appetizer lettuce cup with tasty diced chicken and a glass of sparkling wine at Wokcano and people watched.
Inside the Sundance, I got my second drink to nurse through the movie, a large glass of Proseco (it's an entirely 21 plus theatre) and hoped I had not made a mistake in taking my restless self out.
I was fascinated from start to finish. And provoked to consider, yet again, my own disposition toward the homeless. In my life I have twice been involved with charities to assist men, and women, to transition back to lives off the street, for a combined period of about four years. And I have never found discourse on the subject to be particularly useful because it is a complicated problem that involves more than just a willingness to help, or money. And that's what this movie showed, one soul, and the attendant complications of addressing his homelessness.
We have no idea what this man's story is when we first see him sleeping in a bathtub in a crummy apartment that appears to have been abandoned, presumably, if you are to believe his story when he is discovered by the manager of the building trying to fix the place for the next tenants, by a friend of his named "Sheila". "Sheila" is invoked over and over until you are pretty sure that no such person exists and that he got into the apartment, which he does a second time, simply by ringing various doorbells from downstairs until someone reflexively buzzes him in. We get to know him in much the same way as we get to know homeless people we see all the time on certain corners. We learn his name in one encounter --this fictional character is named George. We feel the boredom of his life, moving from benches, to hospital waiting room where he is thrown out, despite the occasional kindness of a staffer. We see that he spends what money he begs on beer or hard alcohol. We see him following a girl who turns out to be his adult daughter, who, one begins to see has become hard toward him only after being unable to address whatever deep seated fracture in his soul that keeps him homeless. He is, as a character played with sad fervor by Ben Vereen, "reduced", but that reduction appears to have been a combination of circumstance (his wife died, he lost his job, his house, but what finally threw him over the edge to being a street person where someone else would have rebounded is never made clear just as they are not clear in real life) and self-sabotage.
He is an unnecessary prop in the buzz of New York life in the winter, sometimes very cold and sometimes not. He has no identification. One wonders why instead of asking his daughter for money or grubbing a beer at the bar at which she works, he doesn't seek information that will help him get identification. He is able to scavenge, but unable to produce. He wants relationship, but he does everything he can to discourage it.
The movie is unrelenting in its lack of answers, just like life is when we see people on La Cienega here in Los Angeles taking turns begging at the same small island in traffic. Is it that he just needs a break, or does he want to stay homeless? I should qualify--it is not entirely unrelenting for at the end, the daughter, Maggie, having rebuffed him, having protected herself against his apparently intractable condition, does relent, and chases after him. Will there be a happy ending? Will something change in his street, to shelter, to street life? I have to say I was left with the feeling, "probably not." But I was still glad she went after him at the end.
There was no proselytizing in this movie. I liked that. The problem is difficult. As Gere said in his live talk, it's really about the bigger existential picture, who are we in this life? What forces form us? What is being known? What is being anonymous and alone? We are, none of us, more than few steps away from the life of George, or the lives of the real people we see on the street. Doesn't help the problem? No. But it's good to be aware. Keeps you humble. And the glib answers. That's all that can be said for them, they are glib.
I knew a man once who lived next to a dumpster in an alley off Fairfax Avenue. He was a tall, good looking black man, with all sorts of ideas for gadgets and talked of creating his own business. He'd sell bottles of water along the street. I worked with a small transitional homeless residence through my Church. Robert became one of the residents in one of four single rooms with a common area of living room and kitchenette. The residence staff helped him get a regular job at a local eatery. He had the transition to "regular" life in his hand. But he didn't like to be with other men in a residence. He didn't like rules, like no drugs and no women. And so he went back to the dumpster. I haven't seen him in a long time. Sometimes it's like that.
I wasn't depressed after the movie, maybe because I appreciated its preach free style. And yet, it reminded me, you do what you can. You help where you can. That's all.
As to Richard Gere? During the movie I forgot that there was an actor on screen. After the movie, he was funny, articulate and sensitive. I love Hollywood.
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