How I “Rhett” Your Mother
An open letter to my one week old daughter about the movies that united her parents.
My wife and I became parents this week so I figure what better time than right now to reveal to our daughter, Luella, the story of how her folks met. Now for those of you already playing at home, yes, Luella was named after Louella Parsons the famed film writer of the legendary Hearst papers who could make or break careers with a single film critique. No pressure for your future endeavours my dear daughter, but you have been named after quite possibly the most powerful woman in Hollywood at one time, only perhaps to be outdone by her nemesis Hedder Hopper. The chances you will cross paths with a Hedder in your own lifetime may be slim but heed this warning! We removed the ‘o’, firstly to make your name look a tad more feminine on paper but also for fear that relatives such as your granddad would most likely kick-start the nickname game with boyish offerings like Louie or Louis. It should come as no surprise that this has unfortunately already begun unbeknownst to you, and what’s worse is that once a nickname has been applied it quite often sticks.
Now Luella, rest assured that your mum and dad couldn’t care less if films aren’t your thing, if you happen to loathe the cinema then that’s your prerogative. But if however you do happen to enjoy the flicks, even casually, well then you’ve come to the right place. Before we go into the tangible specifics like the cupboards full of DVDs, the posters on the wall or the random objects littering each room like light sabers, film cans, Groucho dolls and coffee mugs donning wise looking guys with names like Humphrey and Clark, there’s a more important reason to indulge in the wonderful world of cinema and I’m going to document it all right here, complete with locations, in the story of how I ‘Rhett’ your mother.
It may be best to cross check the exact year with your mother but if I were a betting man I’d say the year was 2007. Your mother was working at the Gold Class faction of a cinema chain named Village deep in Melbourne’s west, Sunshine Plaza if ever you want to visit? While you’re there you can pick up a Looney Tunes themed sun visor for your car, a ceramic wizard with or without a dragon and an unauthorised Tupac t-shirt. Don’t forget to dine at to the extraordinarily popular buffet Food Star for lunch when you arrive, just shoo away that cat stalking its way across the salad bar. In the food court area of the same shopping complex at the same time, Dad was working for a now defunct company called EzyDvd selling a possibly defunct movie watching format called DVDs, depending on how soon you learn to read. Now your mother had apparently seen your Dad before they had officially met when she and your nanna would come in and purchase DVDs, in particular those with the pink spines that you can still find illuminating the cupboard, but I guess Dad was too focused on making sales to pay attention to your mother at the time. Although Dad was perfectly content to surround himself with the many films available to buy and enjoyed having the monopoly of knowing what new releases were available as they arrived in boxes for Dad’s eyes first, the evil regional and state managers were constantly frightening poor Dad with threats of meeting sales targets, regardless of how hard he worked. The big meanies also never forgave Dad for the stores abundance of financially redundant, customer friendly concert DVDs from smiling commercial artists that were becoming more dated by the hour. Even though Dad assured the evil overlords that it was the previous store manager (with his arrogant and profound affinity with his lord and saviour Jesus Chris) who had ordered the shitload of crap music DVDs.
One day after Dad had become well acquainted with his role as store manager, he was advised to hire a new employee. Resumes received from DVD-selling hopefuls were always fantastic reading material, it occupied Dad and the other employees on their breaks as they found the resumes were often more entertaining than a newspaper. Favourable inclusions to certain curriculum vitae received were ‘I like drawing and colouring in’ and in one instance a Dislikes section that included movies! Needless to say a resume received from one Laura VanDyk stood alone as a shining beacon, the ultimate manual on how to land a job sight unseen. Stretching head and shoulders above the rest, (and providing Laura didn’t have two heads) the employment she sought would automatically be granted. Of course for the sake of formalities, an interview would still need to be conducted. Although Dad didn’t do much of the talking since the regional manager was an expert at such engagements, Dad cordially shook Laura’s hand as she was informed that the job was hers. Laura proved to be a successful candidate as she had experience working with films at the cinema next-door, a job that kept Laura working until 2am each evening thus posing a risk to her life each time she hurried to her car amidst the dangerous criminals, the insane, the drug addled and other characters that ticked all of the above boxes. Dad happily welcomed her on board ensuring that her work hours would be in board daylight. After the interview the regional manager pointed out to Dad an observation that Dad had already noticed but felt it too chauvinistic to actually mention out loud and that was ‘she was hot!’
With Laura’s first shift due to commence soon after, Dad made sure that he completed every bit of outstanding work himself to help Laura ease into her role, this was a duty Dad would practically perform before each one of Laura’s shifts until the company went into receivership over a year later. Dad never made his quiet crush which had certainly developed known (well perhaps Uncle Burke, his best friend and room-mate at the time may have had an inkling). Never once considering that Laura and he would ever become romantically involved, Dad quit his job and took off.
I guess Dad just wanted to do something significantly big before he reached his ominous thirties so he travelled around the world with your Uncles Burke, Tyson and Jansen who were all equally as petrified as to what the future had in store. When the trip got under-way Dads facebook photos got a few likes and occasionally his friends at home would send messages to see how the four of us were getting along but over time only one person was consistently still writing to your Dad and that was Laura. Dad wrote to her about his adventures and Laura kept him well informed on all the in-store gossip like how the current manager was running the store into the ground. Furthermore, when Dad returned he was more than welcome to take his old job back! They would even give him a contract so that next time he wanted to take a holiday, rather than quit he could take some sort of foreign entitlement known as ‘annual leave’. Gradually the evil managers learned to appreciate Dads spectacular retail skills, for your vindicated Dad could unpack DVDs like a son-of-a-bitch and he casually slipped back into his old role once again. The other thing that had become undeniably apparent was that Laura seemed somewhat interested in your old man, which delighted Dad to no end but also left him blissfully dumbfounded since he thought Laura was totally out of his league.
Rather than hibernate after an exhausting flight, Dad foolishly hit the town for a jet-lagged drink with your Uncles Burke and Tyson where they watched bands at The Evelyn on Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. Out of the blue Dad received a text message from Laura inviting him to a club where your Aunty Carlee was celebrating some sort of would-be-doctor’s-end-of-year-shindig where the students congregate after a year of tremendously difficult study and examinations to get completely hammered. But no one at this event would be quite as hammered as your Dad while he woozily balanced his inebriation and his mounting jet-lag. I told your uncles that I was off to a club to meet a girl and Uncle Burke immediately invited himself. Uncle Tyson wanted to come too but knowing that three would be a crowd Uncle Burke aggressively told him to fuck off and left him standing there, mocking him as he announced, ‘we’re going to meet chicks!’
In an effort to really decimate the jet-lag and to exemplify our liquid courage particularly as we had gone from loud-mouthed punters at a band venue to nervous wrecks with the advent of one text, we stopped at The Old Bar for a vodka and red bull, and swallowed it as though it was running away from the glass, we then stumbled onto the street and straight into a taxi. Once arriving at the city club on the corner of King and Lonsdale Street, we were denied entry until Aunty Carlee sweet talked the bouncers who let us in. By the time Dad finally saw Laura he was not able to function too well and when stepping over the red velvet rope, got his foot caught and dragged both the rope and the steel poles into the club behind him. Dad had a moment of clarity, behaved sober and apologetic then hurried inside before he was removed. There were no magical revelations that night, just a lot of yelling over loud music but what Dad was able to decipher amidst the noise, was confirmation from mediators Uncle Burke and Aunty Carlee, that Laura was interested and vice versa. Delirious, Dad tried to invite himself to the after party at a hotel room which was exclusive for female doctors and was thankful that he was denied since the second he returned back home with Uncle Burke he vomited for an hour. Uncle Burke exclaimed ‘aren’t you happy you came home?’ which in hindsight was certainly food for thought as Dads drunken antics and subsequent violent sickness could have changed the course of your history.
A texting war ensued the following evening. Dad elicited nervous, vague responses with an absurd notion that with one wrong phrase he could mess this all up, even though he survived the drunken jet-lag carry-on of the previous night. Finally a date was secured and when the night arrived you bet Dad treated Laura to a movie! Laura looked lovely in her red coat, neither of us can remember what Dad was wearing not that it’s relevant, but Laura insists she got changed several times that evening which proves that this was serious! Although Laura claims she would have been happy to see a movie at any old shopping complex, Dad wanted to step up the experience by taking her somewhere a little quainter. The venue was a no-brainer, Dad’s favourite Cinema-nova in Carlton, he knew the choc top ice creams were superb and that the films were always fantastic no matter what you went to see, as it presents the crème of the indie world on any given day. Even sweeter was that post-The Notebook, Ryan Gosling’s latest offering was screening at the time and without researching the plot Dad had partially remembered hearing something about a love story. What he didn’t realise that in Lars And The Real Girl, the love story consists of a neurotic delusional young man and his life size doll. This wasn’t quite what Dad had expected, and for Laura this was a far cry from the ever-reliable The Notebook and in case the film hadn’t been challenging enough, Laura and Dad were so nervous that the date is now remembered as an awkward, stammering cringe-fest. As they parted ways for the evening Laura felt this awkwardness needed to be addressed, particularly considering how when at work, Laura and Dad could get along famously for entire shifts at a time but when the ‘date’ tag was implemented they were at a loss for words. Laura insisted that the next date would see the future couple back in a pub (The Rochester) where liquor and loose lips would become the stars of the show and before long Laura and Dad were officially dating. When was the first kiss I hear you ask? Well it was beside Laura’s huntsman-spider infested car which was parked under a white-tailed-spider infested tree, right after a DVD screening of American Beauty at Dads place, just before Laura left to go home. Yes we did watch the film! and yes, I was hyper-sensitive about spiders.
Around this time EzyDvd went into receivership and Laura and Dad would no longer be working together which was a slight relief since we agreed to keep our forbidden in-store manager/employee unyielding romance a secret from other staff members (or something to that dramatic effect). Otherwise things henceforth progressed rather nicely, Laura and Dad had loads in common from films of course, to bands, to exploring a new shopping outlet, to falling sleep to a familiar TV show, and everything in between, so after a splendid courtship Dad decided it was time he proposed. In the ultimate display of movie loving affection he knew exactly how he was going to do it!
One of Laura’s all-time favourite films is Gone With The Wind and she wanted to take Dad to The Astor Theatre in St Kilda to see it. Laura liked this film so much that as a child your nanna granted her absence from school so that she could watch a matinee screening when it aired on day-time TV. Dad of course needed no further convincing since he was almost part of the furniture at The Astor, but this particular screening was at 2pm on a Saturday and the traffic on Punt Road was gridlock thanks to that hellish sporting event known as footy. Dad realised that there was no way they were going to make it on time so eventually he and Laura admitted defeat, spun around and went home. Disappointed and aggravated, the date ended on a sour note, but Dad made a solemn promise that the next time The Astor screened Gone With The Wind, they would be punctual even if it meant leaving six hours early (on a good day the ETA was about twenty five minutes). Dad kept a keen eye on the film calendar at The Astor and marked down the date of the next screening which was almost four months later.
After a lot of secret saving and lay-by payments, Dad finally had an engagement ring in his hot little hands which also coincided with The Astor’s next screening of Gone With The Wind. This was also mere days before Laura and Dad were about to take their very first vacation to Europe. The engagement was most anticipated by this time and Laura was adamant that she did not want to be proposed to overseas as she wanted to be close to her family at home, but it was also made clear that Laura wanted to be in Europe as Dads fiancé. Dad dutifully intended to respect her wishes. With time seemingly running out, Laura had practically given up on the idea of being proposed to beforehand and all that nail polish to show off the ring had gone to waste. No doubt whenever we left the house in the month prior to our holiday Laura had convinced herself that ‘today would be the day’. But when it came to the actual proposal, Laura actually lead your Dad directly to The Astor completely oblivious to the plan he had concocted. Months earlier Laura yelled out to Dad, ‘Gone With The Wind is playing again in June’. Dad knew this already and was fortunately washing dishes and staring at a sink not showing his blushing face at the time. ‘Oh is it? OK cool, we should leave like six hours early this time’ he joked …sort of. Then he didn’t say another word for fear he was being too blatant about his intentions which it turns out was all in his paranoid head.
The day arrived and Dad was ridiculously jittery and anxious. The ring was hidden in the breast pocket of a jacket he insisted on wearing to the cinema which might have been a dead give-away, for why would Dad dress so sharp just to visit an old movie theatre? But on the surface, Gone With The Wind was a classic so the jacket went unnoticed. Of course Dad insisted on leaving unnecessarily early for fear of missing the film due to unexpected traffic and when he tried to actually leave six hours before the film commenced it almost raised suspicious eye-brows.
After arriving on time, Laura reminded Dad that ‘last time we were here you said you would get two ice creams one now and one after intermission.’ Food was the furthest thing from Dads mind and in case choking down dinner wasn’t hard enough, Dad now had to continue the façade and force down two bloody ice creams. Although Dad and Laura had seen the film countless times before, on this occasion Dad failed to catch one word of it, Gone With The Wind was just a bunch of white noise and technicolour matte paintings. He even began to wonder if this was the longest movie known to mankind. In fact, if the movies whiny protagonist Scarlett O’Hara happened to be standing before Dad in the flesh he would have said a lot more than ‘frankly my dear I don’t give a damn’ for she was stressing Dad out more than he needed to be at this moment.
Dad’s plan was to propose during a scene in which the cheeky and debonair Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) proposes to the empowered yet stubborn and devious Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the scene was fast approaching. After the intermission people moved seats and a group of teenage girls sat beside Laura and Dad. Like clockwork they restlessly all needed to go to the toilet one after the other which heightened Dads terror, for in Dads mind they would knock the ring right out of his hands at the precise moment he intended to propose. At one point Laura held Dads hand and whispered ‘are you OK? Your hands all clammy!’ ‘It’s so hot in here’ Dad snapped back. He released his hand, stealthily removed the ring from his breast pocket and cupped it as firmly as his sweaty palm would allow. Once Rhett Butler proposes to Scarlett O’Hara Dad recited the words line for line in perfect sync with the silver screen before them, whilst holding the ring towards the light of the screen for Laura to see. Laura replied ‘are you serious?’ ……………….then ‘yes’!* Absolutely elated, Dad and Laura left the cinema after Dad confessed he had purchased the Blu-ray version for practise, which had been hiding in the sock draw so whenever they choose to revisit the ending for the umpteenth time they could. Next it was off to meet an eagerly awaiting Aunty Carlee at a nearby bar where they all celebrated with little regard for the fact they had to be at work early the next morning.
I guess at this point you know we got married hence the massive poster size hero shot that adorns your grandmothers living room, in fact the wedding was a success and the party kicked on until the wee hours of the morning in the quiet of the Victorian country side. The honeymoon took place firstly in Mexico in which Laura and Dad unwound and rejuvenated for the honeymoons latter half in New York where Laura and Dad had the good fortune of crossing paths with an unusual amount of Hollywood celebrities! Academy award winners like Tom Hanks, Jane Fonda and Cuba Gooding Jr, plus celeb-heavyweights Bono, Jimmy Fallon, Ricky Gervais, Matthew Broderick, Rob Reiner, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn and even Kim Kardashian’s ex-husband Kris Humphries. Actually scratch that last one as it will take too long to explain who he is by the time you can read, but know that Queen Kim of the Isle Of Kardashians was married to someone before his majesty the oppressive ruler King Kanye. Apologies too for Dad’s ‘how cool are we’ moment just now, but seriously, can you imagine how exciting these famous sightings must have been for two film buffs from the opposite end of the world?
There’s not a whole lot more to tell you without getting completely side tracked or by reiterating an account by account run-down of our every activity, but we next brought a house with a dedicated space for watching films, Dads prized theatre room which I’m sure you might have other ideas for soon enough, for instance a playpen? But as long as the big screen stays put then so will Dad. At one week old you already like Dads singing voice so you just wait until we get cracking on The Wizard Of Oz, Pinocchio and Charlotte’s Web! By that time we might also be ready to enjoy the wonder of Toy Story together and once we have a firm grasp on Woody and Buzz it might just be time for Star Wars, then The Marx Brothers, then Where The Wild Things Are, then Home Alone, then The Princess Diaries, then The Breakfast Club, then A Star Is Born, then Amelie, then…
- Yes, if you continue to watch the proposal scene in Gone With The Wind, it does end in an argument, but fortunately Laura had said ‘yes’ while things were still hopeful for Rhett.
