The Two Towers
© James C. Hess
A few years ago, by way of a review of a film I had written and subsequently published, I was invited to attend a conference on literature and film.
Wait. A clarification: I was invited to attend a conference on literature and film--as a panel member.
You know about panel members when it comes to such efforts, don't you? By and large they are well-meaning, well-intended persons who allow their otherwise pathetic egos to get the better of them when such invitations are extended to them, and instead of doing the logical and reasonable thing--saying 'No, thank you. I have to deworm the cat that day'--they throw caution to the winds and, well, don't quite understand what happened, what went wrong, as they sit there, high on the dais, stained with rotten fruits and veggies lobbed by persons in the audience, who don't take kindly to remarks they made without thinking before engaging their mouth.
You know about these people, don't you? Of course you do. I'm one of them. I'm the guy who got gobsmacked center-faced by a egg-salad sandwich (well on its way to rancidness) while sitting there, on the aforementioned would-be throne, because I said something someone in the front row--just yards from me--took great umbrage to.
Of course he should have taken offense to what I said. My remarks then and there were meant to be irritating and rude. The fact I failed to know this particular fellow was not only present but in the front row was my own fault. (Thank god for small miracles: He could have been waiting for me on a grassy knoll, with a high-powered rifle at the ready.)
And what exactly was it that got me hit with picnic bits? If memory serves me (I think I still have a chunk of mayo and boiled egg lodged in my brain stem) it was about how the Hollywood Machine had run out of ideas and had taken to adapting literary works not original but pulp that had been gleaned from far superior works, such as "Beowulf", "Sir Gawin and The Green Knight", and "Eric the Red", among others.
It was about this time that the aforementioned person, sitting in the front row, began to turn a disturbing shade of red and took to gripping down the edges of the folding chair he was seated on. I saw all of this out of the corner of my eye but plowed onward, taking the Hollywood Machine to task for spending great amounts of monies on screenplays really not worth lining a bird cage with or slipping under the dog's water dish.
