I was reading David Gilmour’s The Film Club last week, it’s a memoir of a three year period he spent where he allowed his troubled teenage son to drop out of high school without worrying about getting a job, all he had to do was watch three movies a week that his father chose. The book itself is about how the two bonded over those three years while his son began to build a life for himself. It’s a bittersweet and poignant book about teaching your child what you think is important to having a good life and then letting them go.
Not having any children, the one part that resonated with me was when Gilmour showed his son Giant and went into excited detail about a pivotal scene in the film where Rock Hudson and his cronies are trying to pressure James Dean into selling off a parcel of land he has just inherited from Hudson’s sister. Dean refuses and then makes this dismissive curving swipe gesture to them. Gilmour’s description and obvious love for this scene brought back a ton of happy memories from college.
I was a bit of an outcast back in the eighties, being an old movie buff. I had some friends who shared a liking for them as well. One friend in particular was a James Dean fanatic, and felt it was his mission in life to turn on as many people as he could to the greatness of the late actor. He succeeded quite well in our little group, most became as fanatical as he was. I unfortunately, as always, did not, preferring Humphrey Bogart to James Dean (though to be honest I was a bit of an outsider even within the group as they were predominantly theater majors and I was in broadcasting). But it was hard not to get caught up in Paul’s excitement and I was as initially captivated by Dean’s inner tortured on screen personae as the rest. When he showed us Giant, we all really got into the aforementioned scene. Then Paul started using Dean’s swiping gesture as a greeting, which we all quickly picked up and it became our secret sign, only used to greet others in the group.
As all things happen when you get caught up in an outgoing person’s interest, when they are no longer around giving it constant reinforcement, your own interest in it fades, after college we all drifted apart and my interest in Dean drifted with it back to Bogie (I had a similar experience ten years ago with a friend who was a Pro-Wrestling fanatic). But the memory remains and every now and then I will make the gesture to myself and smile in nostalgia.
