By SCOTT SAALMAN
Scaramouch
We didn’t finish Paper Moon.
We started watching it last fall at my childhood home where I first saw the Peter Bogdanovich masterwork on TV as a kid sometime after its theatrical release in 1973.
Paper Moon is one of my favorites. It’s a charming, funny, feel-good film. Mom was in a movie mood one afternoon. She hadn’t seen Paper Moon before, and if not then, she likely never would. She was nearing the final throes of stage four colon cancer.
I forgot that the movie opened bleakly with a mother’s burial. The right side of Mom’s face was on a pillow as she watched, a throw blanket veiling her mouth and nose. It was awkward watching the cemetery scene with my cancer-riddled mother. Her own prepaid plot awaited.
It was not my only uncomfortable movie moment with Mom. In 1982, she and I saw An Officer and A Gentleman at the cinema just after my high school sweetheart Jane and I had parted ways. My pathetic moping was sucking the oxygen from our house – Toto’s “I Won’t Hold You Back” replaying on the turntable didn’t help matters – so Mom figured it would be a good idea to go out for a movie – a ROMANCE movie! – to help loosen the tentacles from her firstborn’s tortured heart. I suspected her motive was not to help my heartache but to see cinematic heartthrob Richard Gere. I hoped she hadn’t seen American Gigolo two years earlier.
Luckily, there were no other 17-year-old boys on a date with their mothers that evening. No witnesses. Still, that didn’t offset the ensuing horror of having to be beside Mom, sharing popcorn, and suddenly facing a steamy sex scene involving gentleman Gere and naked Debra Winger. Nothing could’ve been more cringeworthy. I could only watch with one eye, the left one, the eye farthest from Mom. My right eye was shut tightly to fool her into thinking I’d fallen asleep. In that one-eyed moment, Debra Winger did make me forget about Jane. Maybe Mom was onto something after all.
A week later, Jane and I reunited, inspiring me to replay my Peaches and Herb “Reunited” 45 record, so much so that it started to snap, crackle and pop. Then Jane and I broke up again. Then we got back together. Then, during college, we parted for good. Suddenly, love seemed nothing more to me than a record that skipped, predictable chaos amidst the rpms, a shattered heart of glass.
In 2020, I published a book of essays about Mom, titled What Are You Going To Write About When I’m Gone? The introduction references another awkward movie experience with her, this time regarding Blake Edwards’ 10, a movie my underage buddies and I snuck into: “My mom made a surprise appearance during the movie after realizing her freshman son had deceived her by sneaking into an R-rated movie just to see Bo Derek change from her bathing suit into her birthday suit. She somehow found me in the dark theater and ordered me to leave with her. Luckily my buddies’ eyes were too glued to Bo Derek’s corn rows (or something like that) to witness my kidnapping. Even now, at 49, I still can’t bring myself to rent 10, too scared mom will kick in my front door.”
Even now, at 57, and even though Mom is now underground, I don’t dare watch 10. I’m sure she’s watching over me – if not for that reason alone – ready to re-release her wrath thru the incessant, deafening tintinnabulation of windchimes that a friend gifted in her memory and that Brynne and I subsequently installed on our balcony. The chiming reminds us of her.
Paper Moon did what I had hoped. Ryan and Tatum O’Neal as Great Depression-set grifters made Mom laugh at times. Laughter had been the glue of our mother-son relationship. I took great comfort being able to watch the movie with her, even though her laughs sounded more like whispers then. She fell asleep before the movie’s midpoint. A couple weeks later, when things had gotten worse for her, much worse, she said from her hospice-provided bed, “We should finish watching Paper Moon.”
“We will,” I said, but looking down at the husk of a woman that once was, I knew we wouldn’t. There was scant laughter left to squeeze from her. Even a hand squeeze was rare. She seemed satisfied with my answer, though, as if I’d given her hope that there was still time to un-pause the movie.
Last Christmas, the first without her, our small family visited Mom’s grave, shared stories, cried some, and toasted her memory. We left a tiny, plastic cup of wine on her tombstone before heading home to claw through a Christmas that didn’t seem like Christmas.
Photo provided by Scott Saalman
Dad, after one of his daily gravesite visits, called to let me know the cup was empty now, that Mom had finished her wine. “That or there are some very drunk birds flying around,” I said.
I can’t help but think about the opening lyrics to the American Standard, “It’s Only A Paper Moon,” from which Paper Moon got its title: “I never feel a thing is real / When I’m away from you . . .”
Mom’s passing remains surreal. I wish she was still around to finish Paper Moon. I’m tempted to stream 10, just to hear her chimes.
Email Scott at scottsaalman@gmail.com.