Watching Movies In The Material World
Sammy Cahn's attention was piqued.
A few minutes into the advance screening of The Reflecting Skin, the shimmering weirdness of Philip Ridley’s grandiose Gothic was not just mounting but already in full display: children, gathered around a toad on an Idaho country dirt road, fought over the right to inflate and explode the unfortunate amphibian. “You always get to blow! I never get to blow!” one boy yells.
I looked to the left of the small screening room, where the then-seventy-year-old songwriter and succinct schmoozer Sammy Cahn, a regular when performing at the Wellington Theater, was, as always, enjoying the use of the courtesy telephone. Cahn was taken by the onscreen goings-on. “I’ll have to get back to you,” the ace lyricist of “It’s Magic,” “I Fall In Love Too Easily” and “Call Me Irresponsible” said, delicately placing the receiver down and moving to a middle row seat directly in front of my middle row seat in an audience of more than ten. The movie grows darker and darker in bright summer sun and Sammy Cahn slid, slid, then slouched to watch the entirety of The Reflecting Skin, framing my first encounter with it.
The lights came up: “Now what kind of sandwich does that require?” Sammy Cahn said, a smile across his face.