Happy and sappy

Let’s start off this year’s last column with a trivia question: Who wrote the novel The Durian Tree, and what movie was it made into?

No, you won’t have to turn to Page 27 and turn the paper upside down to find the answer, because I’m going to tell you here and now, betting that there won’t be one in 100,000 of you who’d know it, anyway.

The writer was a fellow – a "bloke," as they say in Australia where this guy came from – named Michael Keon. Does that sound familiar? If you’re anywhere over 40 years old, it should – he was the dad and namesake of the Michael Keon we know, the Marcos-era sports czar and Marcos nephew, son of presidential sister Elizabeth Marcos, who married Michael Sr. The book, published in 1960 in New York by Simon and Schuster, deals with an ill-fated (aren’t they all?) love story set against the communist insurgency in Malaya.

And the movie was The Seventh Dawn, produced in 1964, starring William Holden, Capucine, and Susannah York. Those who never got to see the movie (I did, as a boy, in Pasig’s Leleng Theater, famous for foreign movies and local vermin) might still remember the deliciously mushy theme song, sung by the Lettermen and the occasion for many a prolonged and usually non-consensual clutch on the high-school dance floor. (If your memory’s been dimmed by one too many beers, it starts with "I’ll remember, when I feel lonely, the way you kissed me in the rain…")

I think I know why they decided to change the title of the movie version. They probably had the theme song all written out, and all was well and dreamy until they got to the stirring climax: "… And I’ll find you, I’ll be just a dream behind you, for my love will lead me to, the durian tree, and you!" At that point, I’m sure, a studio executive screamed "Hold it, hold it right there! ‘The durian tree’ just stinks!" and ran an impromptu contest for the best four-syllable phrase to fit the slot. They must’ve run through options like "the tethered whale," "the babbling fool," "the cow balloon," "my aching back," and "the fifteenth dawn" before settling on "the seventh dawn" as a euphonically reasonable compromise.

I’m not sure how I got on this track this week, but it must be the impulse – nay, the imperative – to feel good one way or another at the end of a long and torturous year, and on the eve of what’s shaping up to be an even more trying one. And nothing can be more comforting sometimes than the easy certainty of the past, which – no matter how awful it actually was – we can now all be happy and even sappy about because it’s over.

And nothing, again, can bring the past back in a sudden swirl of memories better than music – especially the music of the movies, for the full sensory-overload experience. Isn’t it amazing how we can remember where we saw particular movies, and whom with? That’s actually what movie themes evoke – bittersweet romance in the background, popcorn (and, maybe, also bittersweet romance) in the foreground.

I was too young for any kind of real romancing in the Sixties, which was probably why I went to the movies a lot, in search of a functional substitute. I lavished my affections on Julie Andrews, seeing The Sound of Music half a dozen times and memorizing the score, until I discovered Rosanna Podesta and began seeing her face (and, uhm, parts beyond) on every ceiling.

I’ll confess that I didn’t see Breakfast at Tiffany’s when it first came out in 1961, unless my mom found a way to sneak a seven-year-old boy into what had to have been an adults-only movie. But even if she did, it would have been a complete waste of her money and my time, because it would be years before I could appreciate – at least in theory – what a "call girl" meant.

But Breakfast at Tiffany’s is exactly the kind of movie most people remember not so much for its plot (social climber Hepburn meets wannabe-writer George Peppard) but for its theme song, the now-classic and eminently singable Moon River. (There’s a great mystery at the heart of this Henry Mancini-Johnny Mercer confection – which ironically almost didn’t make it. The producer wanted the song out, but Hepburn supposedly said "Over my dead body!", and that was that. The mystery, of course, has to do with what "my huckleberry friend" really means; the theories go anywhere from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to Arthurian lore, which has knight-errants receiving favors of huckleberry garlands from their ladies. I don’t think the truth matters a whit to karaoke fiends, except the likes of fellow wordsmith Charlson Ong.)

The Sixties were the golden age of screen romance and romantic comedy, helped along by memorable themes and soundtracks. Not counting musicals, which are created just for that purpose, what else did that glorious decade bring?

In 1962, Blake Edwards – who had just directed Breakfast at Tiffany’s the year before, and digressing atypically into heavy drama – matched one alcoholic (Jack Lemmon) with another (Lee Remick) in Days of Wine and Roses, described by a blurb as "one of the least pleasant movies you will ever watch," something you’d never have guessed from the theme song, again by Mancini.

In 1963, Audrey Hepburn (again) poked Cary Grant’s dimpled chin and asked him "How do you shave in there?" You probably didn’t see the movie, but know the song of the same title: Charade.

The year 1964 brought a slew of blockbusters – Goldfinger and Fail-Safe, among others – but no great romances or love themes, something more than made up for by the following year, which brought us The Shadow of Your Smile from The Sandpiper, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; Michel Legrand’s I Will Wait for You from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve, and, OK, technically a musical; and Lara’s Theme (better known to KTV-philes as Somewhere My Love) from the magnificent Dr. Zhivago, which incidentally was voted to contain the "Most Romantic Movie Moment of All Time" (see below).

With 1966 came a movie whose theme song ranks among my own all-time favorites: The Sand Pebbles, where gunboat-soldier Steve McQueen meets missionary-teacher Candice Bergen (who was, believe it or not, only 19 when the movie was shot in Taiwan). The song was And We Were Lovers, with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and music by Jerry Goldsmith. Also in 1966, a Ford Mustang sped across the screen and into movie history in A Man and a Woman, starring Anouk Aimee and Jean-Louis Trintignant, with music by Francis Lai.

How many of you remember the last scene from 1967’s Two for the Road, with Albert Finney and (yet again) Audrey Hepburn? Usually edited out of TV versions, the scene has Finney tenderly calling Hepburn "bitch" (to which she responds "bastard") before they drive off across the border into Italy and cinematic eternity.

In 1968, Steve McQueen played a millionaire-playboy-turned-bank robber paired with insurance investigator Faye Dunaway in the original The Thomas Crown Affair (remade in 1999 with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo). While true cineastes might argue over which version is the better one, most of us will just as gladly sing the movie’s theme song, keeping track of all the circles in Michel Legrand’s Windmills of Your Mind.

The year 1969 was another year of blockbusters and movie classics – Easy Rider, Z, the original The Italian Job, The Wild Bunch, not to mention Woodstock and its documentary film version. Musically, it left us with The April Fools, starring Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve, and the Burt Bacharach song of the same title.

By 1970 I was 16, in college and in love. I went out on my first movie date to see Ryan’s Daughter in a Cubao moviehouse. That film, Google tells me, was supposed to have one heck of a musical score from Maurice Jarre (who also did Dr. Zhivago) – but, dang it, I can’t seem to remember a thing from the movie. I wonder why.

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According to a 2002 survey by the American video-rental chain Blockbuster, and as reported by the Orlando Florida Guide, the most romantic movie moments of all time came from:

• Dr. Zhivago (33 percent), when Omar Sharif and Julie Christie are at the frozen country estate and he writes her a poem;

• Out of Africa (25 percent), when Robert Redford washes Meryl Streep’s hair by the river;

• Ghost (21 percent), when Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore are molding clay;

• An Affair to Remember (12 percent), when Cary Grant walks into Deborah Kerr’s bedroom and sees the painting she bought that he had painted; and

• Casablanca (9 percent), when Humphrey Bogart tells Ingrid Bergman she has to get on the plane and says, "I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now ... Here’s looking at you, kid."

I can understand that part about writing hot poems in the dead of winter – but washing hair? Molding Clay? What else are we dumb guys missing out on?

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My high-school classmate Carmina Parce, who visited Bohol with two other batchmates sometime recently, wrote in to make a small correction to what I wrote last week about the "bridge to nowhere" in Loboc, Bohol. Carms says that the locals prefer to call that bridge "the bridge of folly," and that it was built during President Estrada’s, not Marcos’, time. (Come to think of it, it did look pretty new.) So let’s give discredit where it’s due. Thanks, Carms!

And on a happy note, let me report that our kidney-transplant patient, Dionisio Ulep, left the hospital last Dec. 26 – which also happened to be his 43rd birthday. You and I might have gotten that digicam or that iPod or that DVD player for Christmas, but Dionisio was glad to just have a kidney and his life back – to be able to pass water and to sweat again, for the first time in three years, thanks to his donor-daughter Mariel and to you, generous friends. He wept when he received a token Christmas gift from us, something he would have looked at with dread just a few months ago – an inexpensive wristwatch. Again, if you can still help with his post-operative care, please make a direct deposit to the savings account of Florita Ulep, BPI Baclaran, account no. 0375-1338-22.

Here’s a picture of Dionisio and his wife Risa just before they left the hospital: That’s love in real life for you. A Happy New Year to all!

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Send e-mail to Butch Dalisay at penmanila@yahoo.com.