This is a remake of a movie that my friend Bruce Bursten made in, oh, 1970 or maybe 1969, ok? He was at Nicolet; I was holding down the wierdass Jew bastard post at Homestead High School.
Bruce's movie was called "Saponified Grease", and as Bruce was a science whizkid (soon to become a major organometallicist), it concerned the saponification reaction, whereby fat is transformed into soap, juxtaposed with greasy Pauchuco music as interpered by Frank Zappa. This might or might not be accomplished through hydrolysis. I'm a clerk, not a chemist or an ethnomusicologist, so I'm sure that I don't know.
Bruce shot his film in Super-8. I've reproduced his sound track as faithfully as my shattered meomory allows. I starred in "Saponified Grease" as "guy in a bathtub eating Crisco out of a can with a spoon." It was one of my first film acting gigs.
Bruce has subsequently gone on to become a world-class chemist and educator. I have to confess that, over last Christmas, when he tracked me down to tell me that he had just been appointed Dean of Liberal Studies at a prestigious Midwestern college, I felt a pang of jealousy. Like, of course, now I'm a glamorous clerk in a law office in Oakland. But back then, I didn't have that going for me, and I'm afraid that Bruce's success kind of rankled. So I had to examine that, and out of that introspection came this film; a remake of Bruce's cinematic classic.
I've taken some artistic license with Bruce's original vision. This time, the transformation goes from grease to grief, as, let's face it, we've all lived through enough now that we know regret on a level that our teenaged selves hadn't yet encountered. Saponification combined with grief of course calls up the Nazi death camps, so I had to roll with that.
Anyway, this turned out to be something of an in-joke Valentine to my old friend. I'm glad of your success, Bruce, and it was great remembering all our old times together.
xxBB
No comments:
Post a Comment