“Yo, Steve, you got any movies, my dude?”

One of the youngbloods, a relatively new arrival here at the halfway house, is standing by my bunk with a look of desperation. It’s Sunday afternoon and he’s too broke to do anything but languish in here with us old timers. I slide my pile of Brooklyn Public Library DVD’s over for his perusal. After scanning the titles for a moment, he grimaces sadly and says, “I meant good movies.”

“There’s some good movies in there.”

He squinted at one box: “McCabe and Mister Miller? 1971? Man, I was born in 1983. Why would I wanna watch some wild west crazy shit made when I wasn’t even around?”

“Movies ain’t newspapers, youngblood. You’re missing out.”

“The old black and white Casablanca stuff y’all watch… nah, man, thanks, I’ll pass.”

I returned to the portable DVD player on my lap, to Carnival of Souls. I didn’t mean to lie to the young man– movies are newspapers, produced in a frenetic daily grind, stuffed with advertising, distributed in a blitz as far and wide as fiscally possible, then cast aside, forgotten the next day. But I figure asserting the notion of movies as something other than disposable infotainment would give him food for thought.

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