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Benji
and Rusty and the Carousel of Time |
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Some movies don’t need to be re-made. I recently saw a television
promotion about a new version of the family movie “Benji.”
I guess I’m a little biased, but I don’t see what was
wrong with the original. After all, I watched them film some of it
and met several of the stars. My grandmother’s dress shop played
in important role, my cousin doggy-sat the star, Higgins (a.k.a. Benji),
and my grandfather appeared in the film.
------ It was all great fun when Joe
Camp brought his production team to my mother’s hometown of
McKinney, Texas. He bought an old “mansion” on S. Tennessee
Street and allowed it to deteriorate for a period of months so that
it could serve as the haunted hideout for the kidnappers of the children
in the story. I was allowed to tour it when it was decorated with
cobwebs and old antiques during the filming. He paid my cousins and
many other children fifty cents each for live butterflies for one
of the scenes. My grandmother’s dress shop on Louisiana Street
was painted to become the façade for “Joe’s Café”
and also served as the downtown kennel where Higgins would escape
the Texas heat between scenes.
------ When the film came out, it was,
for my family, an instant classic. This was a few years before the
video craze, so rather than rent it at Blockbuster, we had to make
several trips to the theatre. And of course, I bought the soundtrack
album and literally wore it out, replaying each scene in my head as
I listened to the music.
------ I guess the thought of not being
able to see the movie whenever I wanted to was just a bit more than
I could handle. So I decided to follow in Joe Camp’s footsteps
and film my own version with my 8-millimeter camera. The stars were
the neighborhood kids, and of course, Rusty, my beloved cocker spaniel.
Rusty so loved his squeak toy; it was easy to get him to perform just
about any trick we needed by withholding it from him while squeaking
it.
------ Our version didn’t stray
from the original script at all. The real challenge was condensing
the ninety-minute version into the three and one-half minute reel
that my camera could produce. What great memories those are, and anyone
who loans me a Super-8 projector that works can have a private screening,
though the reel-to-reel soundtrack that had to be synced with each
performance is long gone.
------ As luck or fate would have it,
my first teaching job after receiving my degree was in McKinney, Texas
and I have taught and lived there ever since. My mother’s hometown
has become my children’s. The first house I ever owned was two
blocks from the haunted house, now a fully restored historic bed and
breakfast.
------ Little did I know while standing
on my grandparent’s town square, watching the excitement of
the filming of a major motion picture through the eyes of a child,
that I’d one day call it home. Little did I know then that in
my adulthood, the producers of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies would
come to that town and I too would appear in a motion picture shot
on the same location. All he did was walk down the sidewalk and cross
paths with the little dog, but when I see that movie today, my grandfather
is very much alive. Maybe one day I will come back to life as my grandchildren
see me waving from the crowd as the parade passes by in the opening
scene of “An American Story.”
------ The seasons change, the years
fly by and by, but the carousel of time rolls round and round. In
the timeless simplicity of life, only the faces change. ©
2004 The Trill House
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“And
the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game”
---- ------ ---- Joni Mitchell
- - - - - - - ----"The Circle
Game"
© 1966 Crazy Crow
Music |
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