Note: Links to previous chapters can be found at the end of this post.
EXT. PRISON YARD – DAY
The Screenwriter and the Corrections Officer are chatting about the list of prison movies Robert has promised to compile. Screenwriter and C.O. share a companionable relationship that is occasionally rattled by Cindy’s insatiable curiosity about her visitor’s private life.
“Okay Cindy, you ready?”
“Lay it on me.”
“My Ten Favorite Prison Movies.”
I’ve been hired to write a film, Within These Walls, for Lifetime Network about the prison pet program. Cindy has been my guide, babysitter, bodyguard, my eyes into this hellish world.
My job is to dig into these people’s lives, but it’s a one-way relationship. I have learned, through years of experience and several awkward stumbles, that I must withdraw a central portion of myself in order to be effective. The true me has to remain locked away, or it will be used in the power struggle that exists between author and subject.
And so yours truly, the Orthodox Jew, is gone. Robert, adoring husband to Karen and doting father to three children, is locked away.
It is a disorienting experience.
Casually, I deflect almost all personal questions, answering in the most evasive manner, hopefully without insulting Cindy.
Let’s take a look at several typical exchanges:
Cindy
“So, Robert, you married?”
Robert
“What do you think?”
Cindy
“I think you’re wearing a gold band.”
Robert
“Detective Cindy.”
Cindy
“How long you married?”
Robert
“C’mon…”
Cindy
“Maybe you’re really a homo?”
Robert
“No!”
Cindy aims her index finger at me, squeezes an invisible trigger.
Cindy
“Gotcha.”
I can’t help but chuckle. C.O. Cindy is smart and quick, and unlike so many women–the over-educated and over-bred–she understands the vast gulf that separates male and female nature.
CUT TO:
Cindy
“So, what’s Mrs. Robert do? Is she like pretty or some brainy bow-wow?”
I remain tight-lipped.
Cindy barks: “Woof-woof.”
My inner resolve collapses.
Robert
“She’s brainy and beautiful.”
Cindy nails me with a cool, level gaze. It’s the look she uses to intimidate “the skanks.”
And:
Cindy
“You a Jew?”
INTERTITLE: Oy-vey!
Robert
“Why do you ask?”
Cindy
“Y’know, Hollywood… Jews.”
I would so love to continue this conversation, explore Cindy’s mind-set, but:
Robert
“What do you think?”
Cindy
“I think, yeah.”
Robert
“And if I am Jewish?”
Cindy gives an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders.
DISSOLVE TO:
Cindy
“Robert, are you like this important screenplaywriter?”
Robert
“Cindy, you ever hear the story of the Polish actress?”
Cindy
“Uh, I have the feeling I’m about to.”
Robert
“She slept with the screenwriter.”
Cindy hesitates a second, then cracks up. It’s the oldest, dumbest joke in Hollywood, but it spreads through the entire prison like a virus. And before I know, an inmate repeats it to me.
After a while, Cindy gives up trying to know who I am. Sorta.
Instead of personal information, I substitute Hollywood gossip and legend.
Which does the job just fine. For everyone is fascinated by Hollywood. Even a tough little corrections officer like Cindy.
“Robert, do you know — ?”
She names a female star.
“I do.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’d absolutely kill to have your complexion.”
Cindy blushes.
And the thing is, it’s the absolute truth.
Okay, I’m hanging loose, giving Cindy my list of ten favorite prison movies. It’s a tactic really, a way of creating the illusion of intimacy without the emotional risks.
Not so simple because I like Cindy. Enormously. Guilt weighs heavily on my conscience for deploying such a cold blooded strategy.
“Understand Cindy, I’m mixing genres.”
“Genres?”
“Types of prison films. You’ve got prison dramas, prison action films, you’ve got prison comedies, prison musicals, escape films, riot films, prison war films, and that most durable of all genres: women in prison flicks.”
“Women in prison, coolness.”
“In no particular order, okay?”
“Go on, you’re such a fuss-pot.”
“Number One: The Big House, 1930, with Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, and the lovely Leila Hyams. The big daddy of all prison movies. This was probably the first big studio movie to make the genre respectable and profitable. Inmate falls in love with his cellmate’s sister, gets caught up in an escape plan sure to go bad. Drama ensues. It’s a bit slow for modern audiences, but it’s a keeper.
“Number Two: I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang, 1932, starring the great Paul Muni. This guy suffers for like ten-years in the most brutal southern prison you have ever seen. Unrelenting and grim. Hollywood used to do grim really well.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“Number Three: The Bird Man of Alcatraz, 1962 with Burt Lancaster. This is a movie you should show here. The prisoner, a cold blooded murderer, redeems his soul by taking care of birds.”
“Birds.”
“Tweet-tweet.”
Cindy shakes her head as if to say, some things are just too dumb to be believed.
“Number Four: The Great Escape, 1963, with Steve McQueen, a crackerjack World War II escape movie. McQueen has a great scene where he tries to jump barbed wire on a motorcycle.”
“I drive a Harley.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Want a ride?”
“Nope.”
“Pu-ssy.”
“Number Five: Cool Hand Luke, 1967 with the young and handsome Paul Newman. This film has the single greatest line of dialogue ever in a prison movie: ‘What we’ve got he-are, is a fa-ail-ure to commu-ni-cate.'”
Cindy’s face brightens:
“My Uncle Chris used to say that all the time, a few beers and he’d be like totally hammered, walking around saying it over and over again. I thought he made it up. It’s from a movie?”
“A great movie.”
Cindy heaves a sigh. I’m pretty sure I have just diminished her life by a small but significant degree.
“Number Six: Stalag 17, 1953, another great prison war movie, starring William Holden, directed by the great Billy Wilder. Beautiful structure. Machine gun dialogue. Dark humor. An exquisite machine.
“Number Seven: Papillon, 1973, Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman are prisoners on a Devil’s Island run by, get this, the French. Horrifying stuff happens. Things get so bad Dustin and McQueen eat cockroaches. This one’s got everything, starvation, escape, capture, torture, leper colonies. Hugely entertaining.”
“The French?”
“It’s in English, trust me, fun film.”
“You ever meet Dustin Hoffman?”
“Yup.”
“What’s he really like?”
“Really short.”
“You are sooo funny.”
“Number Eight: Oh this is a good one, Chained Heat, 1983.”
“Linda Blair. The broom stick scene. Jesus, we all know that one.”
“A true women in prison classic.”
Cindy smiles hugely. Finally, a film Cindy recognizes.
“Number Nine: Caged, 1950, the spiritual godmother of all sleazy women in prison flicks.”
“Listen to you, all like movie professor.”
“Guilty. A beautiful young bride is thrown into prison.”
“Oh, yeah, we got a lot of those, beautiful young brides.”
“And the C.O.’s I gotta tell you, are just sadistic beyond words. Sadistic and like totally lesbo.”
Cindy, all ironic. “Yeah, there’s a lot of that goin’ around.”
“They shave her head, take away her pet pussycat. Great performance by the underrated Eleanor Parker. Unbelievably dark and depressing. She gives birth in prison, her baby is taken away and put up for adoption. She turns into a hardened criminal.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Number Ten: I’ve saved the best for last. Drum roll please: Caged Heat, 1974, the very best women in prison movie evuh. Produced by the great Roger Corman, and directed by none other than Jonathan Demme. I think it was his first film. Probably made for about fifty thousand dollars. Which only goes to show that it’s not money that makes a good film but vision. Great sleazo film with all this socially conscious nonsense on top of the obligatory nudity. Riveting.”
Cindy just stares at me for a long moment.
“So, what else do you want to know, Mr. Screenplaywriter?”
“How come you’re a C.O?”
“For Chrissake, Robert, I’m a f*****g townie.”
“Ever think of doing something else?”
“I was thinking of being a glamorous movie star, but that s**t seemed kinda out of my reach, y’know? How’d you get to be a screenplaywriter?”
I owe Cindy this truth:
“Worked hard, never gave up, got lucky.”
“Your family rich, Robert?”
“Being with these women day in day out, how does it make you feel?”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
This is killing me. But I’m not going to give in to temptation and tell her that my father is an Orthodox Rabbi, that I’m from Brooklyn where my family lived a modest, middle class life; that a Hollywood career was a mad dream that, against all odds, I have managed to achieve.
“How does it affect you, this work?”
Cindy shrugs. “It’s work, a paycheck. No big deal.”
“Really.”
“Hey, you know, I ain’t all that different than these skanks.”
“How do you mean?”
“I have done time with loser trolls who I felt like killing. I just, y’know, didn’t.”
“There’s a big difference.Thinking is not doing.”
Cindy hooks her index finger into her mouth, yanks back her cheek. There’s a black space where a tooth should be.
“My last lover boy.”
“What’d you do?”
“Pow. Right back at him.”
Long silence.
“Hey, Robert, don’t look so f*****g sad. I’m home.”
Home. It’s what the inmates call prison.
C.O. Cindy and I make our way back to the dog training shed. Just as we reach the door I turn to her.
“Remember that book I told you about?”
“That Chinese thing?”
“The Art of War, yeah. Sun Tzu says something else, something that’s always stayed with me.”
“Go on, my friend.”
“He says that even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.”
Cindy ponders this a long moment.
“You think I’m like this fine sword, Robert?”
“I do, Cindy, I really do.”
Demurely, C.O. Cindy smiles.
Stay tuned for next week’s concluding chapter in which yours truly bids goodbye to the amiable Cindy and the 10,000 violent but surprisingly well behaved inmates.
To read Part I, please click here.
To read Part II, please click here.
To read Part III, please click here.
To read part IV, please click here.
To read Part V, please click here.
To order a copy of the film, Within These Walls, starring Ellen Burstyn and Laura Dern, please click here.
Copyright Robert J. Avrech