You Ain’t From Around Here, Are Ya, Boy?

“So the illustrations,” I conclude at last, waking Burton up, “made Charlie Bucket’s life seem even sadder, because they were done in a style that was used almost exclusively to depict cheerful, happy people.”

“Exactly,” says Burton. “See Jane run.”

“Or Mormons in Heaven,” say I.

“I don’t think I’ve seen that one.”

“You haven’t seen the Mormons in Heaven movie? You gotta see the Mormons in Heaven movie. They show it at the temple.”

“The one here?”

“Yeah, in West L.A.”

“Can anyone go in there?” Burton asks. “It seems like it’s a kind of Dr. No, or something.”

“It is, but you just make an appointment with Elder James. At least when I went, it was Elder James.”

“Really? Is it like that movie, Lost Horizon? Do you enter a new world when you go in there?”

“Yes, you do. And that is the world we’re all living in, right now, for I have seen the truth and light, and they are One.”

“So they expect that of you — you go in one way, and you come out . . . Brother Zontar.”

“Brother who?”

“Zontar,” Burton repeats.

“Who’s Brother Zontar?”

“I don’t know. Or maybe you come out like the guys in The Omega Man.”

“Oh yeah!” I heston. “‘It’s getting dark! They’ll be out soon!’ I loved that fucking movie.”

“That is one of my favorite movies. Where else can you get Charlton Heston reciting lines from Woodstock? Fantastic. Sleeps with a black woman? Fantastic. Forced laughter? Fantastic. And that jump suit with the sailor cap? I mean . . . you can’t . . . it’s a near-perfect movie. Everything about it. Jump suits, the whole thing.”

“Did you see that piece-of-shit third Matrix movie? Anthony Zerbe’s in it. He’s on the Council of Zion. I think he plays Elder James.”

“Matthias!” we heston. “Matthias!”

 

“And now,” I announce, moments after we’ve recovered from our hestons, “I must force you to listen to a personal anecdote that, like the rest of the interview, has little to do with anything.”

“Good,” says Burton.

“Okay. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was the beginning of the best date — and one of the best days — of my life.”

“Really?” Burton feigns interest.

I feign humility. “You betcha. First love and everything. Saw it on a Thursday afternoon, with this girl, Catharina, and then we went back home and basically stayed in bed for three days. And that was the beginning of this surrealistically whirlwind romance that became my first real relationship. So I basically fell in love for the first time during the movie.”

“Really? Wow! Movies are . . . I remember when movies were very . . .” (I’m happy to discover that Burton and I share the habit of finishing sentences with things other than words.) “. . . I remember,” Burton continues, “how movies would . . . do movies still do that? I remember very specific things that . . . movies would . . . like my first date, seeing A Clockwork Orange.”

“Jesus!”

“And Deliverance.”

“Holy fuck! Both?”

“At a drive-in. Double feature.”

“Holy fucking shit!”

“Yeah. And my date got sick and was throwing up in the back seat throughout all of A Clockwork Orange.”

“What drive-in?”

“It was called the Victory Drive-in.”

“Off the 5?”

“No, that was the San-Val. This was . . . no, wait. It wasn’t the Victory, it was the Van Nuys. Yeah. That was amazing.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. That was a good double bill.”

“My God,” I heston, but just slightly. “So you were being all horny and shit . . . ”

“Yeah.”

“. . . and then ‘and now for this evening’s second rape scene’ . . .”

“Yeah. And I’ll never forget it. Watching A Clockwork Orangeand hearing the sound of somebody vomiting in the back seat.”

“Movies.”

“Movies.”