Film Review-Repost

This review is from a couple of years ago, but I felt like posting it again today.

A mid-60’s career move by Don Knotts meant Barney Fife had to leave behind his beloved Mayberry.

One of Knotts’ first post-Andy starring movie role, however, found him right back in small town America. This time, it’s Rachel, Kansas that provides the setting for Knotts’ role as aspiring newspaperman Luther Heggs in the Alan Rafkin directed 1966 comedy, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

Knotts plays Heggs with the same combination of earnestness, hubris, and vulnerability that made Barney Fife one of television’s most memorable characters. The film’s makers play up Knotts’ connection with the show by placing Griffith show regulars in supporting roles, including Hal Smith as Calver Weems and Hope Summers as Suzanna Blush.

The story is a perfect fit for Knotts. Heggs labors as a typesetter in the basement of the Rachel newspaper, but longs to take his place upstairs as a full-fledged reporter. Unfortunately, the paper’s owner and editor George Beckett and its one reporter are convinced Luther doesn’t have what it takes to make it in the news business.

Heggs’ chance at success comes when Beckett asks him to spend the night in the local haunted house on the anniversary of the murder-suicide that took place there 20 years before and return with a sensational story.

Heggs accepts the challenge. Once inside the house he witnesses multiple spooky doings. Back at the newspaper office, he pours out the story that becomes front page news the next day.

The owner of the house, who is planning its demolition, sues the paper and Heggs for libeling his family’s name. The ensuing court case threatens to expose Heggs as a liar, but instead ends with his vindication.

Watching the film now, more than forty years after its initial release, provides viewers a glimpse back to another America, one not devoured by cynicism or splintered by intractable social problems. However it was intended at the time, the film stands four decades later as a light-hearted, witty paean to American small town life, to a time when such a life was possible.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken manages all this with nothing but a strong story and a set of talented actors, never resorting to special effects pyrotechnics, shocking violence, or graphic sexual imagery to keep its audience entertained. Though adults and children alike could easily enjoy it, the film avoids the sentimentality and didacticism of much of the recent odious crop of  “family films.”

Films that stand the test of time are those that touch on recurring human issues. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken manages exactly that. The story of Heggs’ ascent from downtrodden plebe to celebrated hero speaks to the perpetual human struggle to improve our lots.

Some films, like this one, also take on layers of meaning as they age, as the culture around them  changes. They capture their moment like a photograph.  Looking back at it we see only a dim impression of how things might have been, simple half-real apparitions that come back from the past like a specter, a spirit…a ghost.

Falling into the Season

The following is the text from a recent column published in Small Town Living magazine.

It’s October, and while I don’t want to say fall is my favorite, it is definitely in my top twentyfive percent of all seasons. In fall, the trees put on their party clothes, but the wind gets wistful.  The seemingly interminable habit the boys on our street pick up every summer of throwing a football back and forth while swearing, a game I call the “Catch and Cuss,” finally reaches an end.  Delicious qualities such as these are, no doubt, what inspired poet John Donne to declare that “in heaven it is always autumn.”

But it’s not just teenagers whose lives autumn changes. The people in my hometown seemed to have gotten the bug for change this fall. Returning home not long ago, I had a chance to witness a recently founded tradition there: the Labor Day Weekend Rummage Sale. This is more than a yard sale. It is rummage sale as ritual, as community building, as communicable disease.  From a drive around town that morning, it was clear nearly everybody had gone into business.  People who the week before had been helpless couch potatoes, bored housewives, restless students, had become overnight retailers, instant entrepreneurs. Just add junk.

For this one magical weekend, everyone ceases to see their neighbors as the people whose penchant for Rottweilers and rotting pick-up truck chassis is lowering their property values and begins to see them for what they really are: a chance to unload the fondue set that has been rusting in the attic since that time Uncle Larry tried to use it as a foot bath.

The result of such a massive effort at derummaging is, of course, no actual reduction in the gross amount of junk. Instead, this routine is a clever plan to allow the average person to sell things with no sense of loss. Anything a guy wants back, he knows he can find for sale next Labor Day in the garage of whoever just bought it from him. Any day, I expect to see a story in the paper about a fellow who in a mere four years has managed to sell and re-acquire every single item he has ever owned.

As the seasons outside were changing, and the people back home were switching junk, our twoyear-old daughter came into the kitchen one morning to make an announcement.  “Grrr,” she said, one hand tensed into a claw. “I am the big bad wolf.”

This was a revelation. Granted, the birth of a child is a big event, full of action and emotion.  Things become a blur. Still, I’m pretty sure if anyone had uttered the phrase, “Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Abbott, you have a brand-new big bad wolf,” I would have remembered.  I paused in the middle of making a sandwich.  “Do you know what Daddy does to big bad wolves?” I said.

My daughter, a look of confusion on her face, said, “What?”

“He chases them down,” I said, giving chase.

“He grabs them up,” I said, lifting her in the air.  “He turns them upside-down.” I flipped her over.

“He bops their heads on the couch.” Here I lowered her until the top of her head touched the cushions of the couch.

“Then, he throws them out the window!” (Note: this last bit was only pantomime. I maintain a strict policy against throwing toddlers through windows, or any large structure made of glass, really.)

Laughing so hard she could barely speak, she managed to say: “That was…NOT FUNNY…  Daddy.”

She immediately wanted to do the not funny thing again.

So we did.

We would be doing that same not funny thing still, had the responsibilities of life not dragged me away. I was reluctant to go because, unlike this little one, I am old enough to know such moments will not always pass between us. When spring comes again, I will be forty, still young by many measures, but old enough to know life only holds only so many glorious seasons.  I picked my daughter up from the couch and said, “OK, go play. Daddy has to get ready for work.”

I watched her waddle off, the tail of the trusted blanket she holds flapping behind her. As she went, I was reminded how brief a season this is.  And how grateful I am to be here when it is fall in our small town, when it is fall on earth, as it is in heaven.