Two Fine Subjects: Movies and Alcohol

Movies make my world. I’ve always felt akin to Holden’s younger sister in Catcher in the Rye, the little girl who, though “just a kid,” knew the difference between a great movie and a phony movie. This perception of me has also been perpetuated by my father. After I insisted he take me to see Supergirl three times in a row, he sat me down and lectured me about ART. I should be interested in it, possibly make it someday, and Supergirl wasn’t where it was at. He read aloud Gene Siskel’s movie reviews, and I learned what it meant to give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. I learned most movies were MOVIES, but the rare great movies were FILMS. Also, evil people such as PHILISTINES and REPUBLICANS hated art and films. We also watched the McLaughlin Group because if I were to understand art better, I should be aware of CULTURE and SOCIETY. Such was the weekend education of my childhood. I learned little else, though the knowledge that two packs of cigarette butts can fit into the empty beer can has proved to be a fun game to introduce at parties.

My dad is also an alcoholic. I’ve never seen him be anything but utterly charming while drunk. The funniest lines from my book are those of my father’s, such as this slurry drunken one: right after he slams into a neighbor’s living room, empty beers cans the only other passengers in the car, and he says, “Goddamnit! I zagged when I should’ve zigged!”

After Roy was displaced by Katrina, he found a new home with me and Brock. We took him in for some of the buggiest and most difficult six months of our lives. Somewhere in the middle of his stay, we invited him to my mom’s for Thanksgiving. The timing was auspicious—it was just short of their 25 year divorce anniversary. He kept my mom in the corner of the kitchen for hours making fun of all the fat pigs in our family, said they should be carved, said they had gravy in their veins. His pants were three inches too short and Brock, also pretty tipsy, made the joke that Roy was still waiting for Katrina. “Too soon?” he asked. It’s never too soon for impropriety. He and I were married a year and a half later.

Alcoholism and the movies converged in my life this weekend when Netflix mailed me the film Days of Wine and Roses. It’s a 1962 flick about a two-martini-at-lunch man who meets a teetotalling secretary, introduces her to the chocolate-y tasting Brandy Alexander, and it is drunken unhappy days for both thereafter. And having known in my life several kinds of alcoholics—the day-long slow nippers, the “I’m only drinking beer from here on out” deniers, the weekend bingers, the hidden vodka in the glove compartment liars—the one thing they have in common is their desperation in trying to conceal the truth, and their stealth at this concealment. Despite Roger Ebert’s lauding review (and his bona fides in being an alcoholic himself), I have to say this movie doesn’t tell the truth, or truths, about alcoholism.

The Jack Lemmon character in Days of Wine and Roses does not care to hide his alcoholism. He actually seems to flaunt it. And I’m not ignoring the historical context of late 50s, early 60s two-martini lunches. The character who seemingly wanted to drink till the end of his days didn’t do the exact things he needed to in order to maintain the lifestyle: he wasn’t private about it, ever. In the middle of the film there’s a scene where, after having dried out for two months, the Lemmon character and his wife are staying with and working for her father. And to reward themselves for their hard work and asceticism, Lemmon pilfers for them three pints of whiskey. Two pints are wisely strapped to his ankles underneath his work pants, but the third he’s insanely hidden in the vast maze of his father-in-law’s greenhouse. What follows is a scene of absurdity in which, blasted off the two pints he’s guzzled, Lemmon rips apart every plant in the greenhouse, basically destroying years of his father-in-law’s work in search of the holy pint. When he finally finds it, dirt and rose petals on his face, he dumps the entire contents down his gullet. He is hospitalized and strait-jacketed and he cries and shakes and sweats for the alcohol. Darn it. If only he hadn’t caused thousands of dollars of destruction, he’d still be able to drink.

My point is this movie proffers tangible tragedies that result from alcoholism, thus making its purpose more didactic than truthful. (At another point in the film, the wife character almost burns down the house and her daughter with it because, whaddya know, she had too many shots of gin and left a cigarette burning overnight. Moral: drinking may cause you to nearly kill your young child). Alcoholics usually leave more emotional destruction in their wakes, a fact the movie mostly ignores. Most alcoholics in the real world live, on the surface, normal lives in which they hold jobs steadily. They tell friends and family all is fine. They are funny. They suffer in silence. Of course many want to stop—but they aren’t willing to lose face in order to do so. Certainly they won’t destroy public and private property at every other turn. Instead they slowly make people fall out of love with them. They forget how to love as well.

So what I’m saying is that I feel an affinity for the idea of this film, or movie, but not the end result. This would make a great contemporary remake. It would show two lovers who drink a lot, who are smart enough to get away with it. Maybe there’s already a film out there like this, only I’m not remembering the name of it. Must be all the years of wine and roses.