Do you like scary movies?

WC: Mom, I tried to get you to see The Blair Witch Project, but that never happened, because you were still in St. Catharines.

Mom: No, I haven't seen that yet. It must be still out around here somewhere.

WC: It is. And it's out on DVD today.

MFF: Are you going to buy it?

WC: Oh, yeah. Of course I'm going to buy it!

Mom: I'll bring a pizza and we'll watch it at your place.

WC: Okay!

Mom: It's scary, right?

WC: It's very scary. Dad wouldn't like it.

Mom: Yeah, he wouldn't watch it with me.

WC: But it's not gory, so maybe he would. It's just tense. What are some other scary movies that you've enjoyed in your life?

Mom: [considers]

WC: What do you think is the scariest movie you've ever seen?

Mom: I don't know.

MFF: It's like a special Hallowe'en edition of The Reasonable Person.

WC: [to MFF] My dad won't watch scary movies anymore, because he saw The Exorcist and it put him off scary movies forever.

MFF: It was too scary?

WC: It was too scary.

Mom: He doesn't even read murder mysteries.

WC: He doesn't like movies that are really violent. Although we took him to see The Matrix and he liked that.

Mom: He really liked that. He actually expressed an interest in watching that one again. We did watch...What's the one -- I'll do it again -- with the number in it, and very scary, head in a box...?

MFF: Seven.

WC: I think it was called Head in a Box when it was released in Europe.

Mom: I think that was the scariest movie I've ever seen. And he did watch that.

WC: But he didn't like Fargo. I remember I made him watch it. You really liked that one, Mom, didn't you?

Mom: Oh, yeah.

WC: He wasn't crazy about that one, and it wasn't especially violent, although the violence in that one was more real. The violence in The Matrix is so cartoonish.

Mom: And he can watch it if it's sci-fi -- if that's the context. If the people who get killed only kind of look like humans but you can tell they're not humans, he can handle that.

WC: That's why I got him the Alien video, but he told me he still hasn't watched it because it's too scary.

MFF: Alien, for me, is way scarier than The Exorcist. Alien is scary-tense-uncomfortable. If you don't like that sort of "I'm on the edge -- what's happening?" feeling....

Mom: I like that.

MFF: But if you don't like that, you won't like Alien. For Hallowe'en, Kate and I are planning to stay home and watch scary movies and give out candy. Giving out candy is fun. But I digress. We're going to watch scary movies. We're trying to decide what to watch. She hasn't seen The Exorcist, so I think we're going to watch that.

Mom: It's so funny when you go back to old stuff, because the special effects seem so weird. Wilted.

WC: [Sars] and I, last night, were talking about that, in reference to The Changeling.

MFF: Not scary at all.

WC: Really? She said it was the scariest movie she'd ever seen.

MFF: It lacks scariness. It's one of those movies that might have been scary at the time, but when you watch it now, it seems really hokey and dumb.

WC: Really?

MFF: That's what I found. I watched it a few years ago because everyone told me how scary it was. But there are some movies that continue to be scary. You know that original Nosferatu? It was made in the 20s. It's silent. And it's really kind of scary.

Mom: I think I've seen scenes from it but never seen the whole thing.

MFF: I'm thinking we should get at least one stabbing film, like Friday the 13th. I'm pushing to get Funhouse. It's this justifiably forgotten movie from when there was a plague of movies like that, but for some reason I'm obsessed with it. It had the best tagline: "Pay to get in. PRAY TO GET OUT."

Mom: Ha!

MFF: Like that's not going to be good. And the whole premise of the movie is that people go to a funhouse and get killed, one by one, in front of wacky mirrors.

Mom: [to WC] I've watched scary stuff with you.

WC: I was thinking that. You know one movie that I thought would be stupid but was actually quite scary? Candyman. I watched that with you.

Mom: Yes!

WC: Remember? In the Projects?

Mom: Yeah, that was scary.

MFF: [disbelievingly] Candyman?

WC: Yes. Candyman II: Farewell to the Flesh? Not scary. But the first Candyman was pretty scary.

Mom: Yes, it was.

MFF: When I was in grade two, I begged -- BEGGED -- my mother to let me go to this birthday party where the kids were going to go see the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy.

Mom: Oh yeah.

MFF: I don't know whose idea it was -- I guess the birthday-party parents, who were crazy.

Mom: Grade two? They'd have to be.

MFF: I BEGGED my mother to let me go. And it was so scary. For a year afterward, I was freaked out. The whole movie is about coming around a corner and finding, essentially, your loved ones turned into disgusting, quivering husks. So all I could think about was that I'd go into the bathroom and my mother would be a husk. That's pretty heavy stuff when you're in grade two.

WC: When I was in grade two, my aunt and uncle took me to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and that was pretty scary.

Mom: It was.

WC: Do you remember that one?

Mom: Yeah, and I didn't find out you'd gone until later. I remember I wasn't very happy that you had gone.

WC: I was kind of wimpy. E.T. really scared me when I saw it.

MFF: WHAT?!

WC: I'm serious.

MFF: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial?

WC: Yes.

MFF: What part was scary? When they were riding their bikes across the moon?

WC: No, it was the actual E.T. that scared me. I'm serious, I couldn't sleep that night.

MFF: [laughing] But he was so cute!

Mom: You were pretty young when that came out, though.

WC: Not really -- I was in grade two.

MFF: But he turned out to be so nice!

WC: The Dark Crystal also scared me.

MFF: Well, it was dark. It's not called The Bright Crystal.

Speaking of Jim Henson productions....

WC: [Glark] and I just saw the end of The Muppet Movie on TV a few days ago.

Mom: The very first one? That was a good one.

WC: I was telling [Glark] about that really cool poster that I used to have, from The Muppet Movie.

Mom: Yeah, whatever happened to that?

WC: Do you think that's the best of all the Muppet movies?

Mom: Absolutely.

WC: I agree.

Mom: [to MFF] We used to have the record album for that movie.

WC: Yes, we did, and we knew all the lyrics to every song.

Mom: When we got rid of all our records, that was the one I wished I'd kept, and I've never seen it on CD.

WC: A lot of Hey! It's That Guy!s in The Muppet Movie. Austin Pendleton. Charles Durning. A great, big, fat Orson Welles.

Mom: The first one has all the frogs on crutches.

WC: Yes! [to MFF] Have you seen it?

MFF: Of course. I saw it in the theatre. I love that movie. The Muppets were great. Jim Henson was a kind of a genius.

Mom: You know....What's memorable to me about him is -- I was working here [in Toronto], actually, and I don't even remember what was going on at work, but whatever it was, it was very stressful. I was driving back from Mississauga to St. Catharines. I had a phone in my car and often did work using the hands-free setting. And I was talking to this woman in Regina, and the news was on and I heard that he had died. And no one even knew that he was sick, so it just said he'd died suddenly in whatever city he was in. And I just lost it -- completely lost it -- and told this woman, "I have to hang up." The next day this woman left me a voicemail saying, "Obviously you need help. I understand that you're living a very busy life, but if the death of someone so far removed from you can cause you to cry --"

WC: Aw!

MFF: But that woman -- that's so cold!

Mom: Anyway, Jim Henson's death really affected me. Him and Harry Chapin.

WC: Not John Lennon?

Mom: His death wasn't the same. I didn't feel the same kind of loss -- even though it was horrible, of course -- but I didn't feel the same because he was sort of...done. He'd already done his best work. But I don't think Henson or Chapin -- I think they both still had stuff to do, and we didn't get it.

MFF: You feel like it really is the world's loss. As opposed to -- is Jimmy Stewart dead?

WC: Yeah.

MFF: Really?

WC: Yeah, he died when I still lived in Los Angeles; he's been dead for a while.

MFF: When someone like that dies, it's sad, but they're in their dotage.

WC: But when Phil Hartman gets shot....

MFF: Yes. Phil Hartman.

WC: Phil Hartman is my Harry Chapin.

MFF: That's such a cold thing to say. I can't believe that woman in Regina!

WC: She deserves to live in Regina.

Mom: She moved to Guelph.

MFF: Really? GOOD. I remember being in grade nine the day that all the girls in my Theatre class found out that Jon-Erik Hexum had accidentally shot himself in the head. Do you know that guy?

WC: No.

MFF: You would have been too young, I guess. He was like the poor man's Jan-Michael Vincent, if you can imagine that.

WC: Who's the rich man's Jan-Michael Vincent?

MFF: Jon Voight.

WC: Ha!

Mom: You've got an answer?

MFF: Jon-Erik Hexum was the star of this terrible show called Cover-Up, the premise of which was that he was a secret agent of some sort, but his cover was that he was a male model, and he was investigating the intrigues of the male modelling world, so he'd go on a shoot and they'd take his picture, but then he'd pull a gun on them.

WC: I'm assuming that every show hinged, in some way, on cocaine.

MFF: No, it was one of those really corny 80s dramas. You must be too young to remember a time when Riptide passed for something that was acceptable to watch in the middle of the week. Or The A-Team, or Battlestar Galactica.

WC: Or Miami Vice -- let's face it.

Mom: In another generation, it was Ironsides.

MFF: Yeah. But Jon-Erik Hexum was such a minor celebrity, and was apparently goofing around on the set, took a gun that had blanks in it, and was like, "Ha, look at me!" and pointed it at his head, not realizing that even if the gun is shooting blanks, there's still a concussive force. It cracked his skull, and he died. So some girls in my Theatre class heard this and started bawling uncontrollably, as if the President had been assassinated or something. I remember thinking that was a little bit of an overreaction. But not Jim Henson.

Mom: I actually can remember my whole state of mind -- that whole feeling.

WC: Poor Mom.

MFF: I was thinking that there was someone who died recently that made me feel that way.

WC: Wilt Chamberlain?

MFF: Yes. So many more women to sleep with. He barely made a dent in the world population.

WC: George C. Scott?

MFF: No, it must have been Phil Hartman.

Mom, you don't watch a lot of TV, do you?

MFF: There's no show that you actively watch, week after week?

Mom: Law and Order. Wait -- no. I watch old reruns of Law and Order on A & E. Until I started living in the city, I had to go to bed earlier than 10 PM, so I couldn't watch the new ones.

WC: I didn't know you watched Law and Order every night. What's your favourite Law and Order line-up?

Mom: Hmmm. That's an interesting question. I noticed that there was a new -- did you watch it this week?

WC: Yeah!

Mom: Is that psychiatrist new, or has he been on for a long time?

WC: He's pretty new. Skoda.

MFF: He's Schillinger.

Mom: Schillinger?

MFF: It's really weird to see him because he's on another show, this prison show [Oz], which is on HBO --

WC: It's also on Showcase, in Canada.

MFF: He plays this neo-Nazi. He's like the J.R. Ewing of the show. He's so mean and evil.

WC: He's really excellent, though.

MFF: So, then, to see him on Law and Order saying things like, "Tell me about your feelings," is very odd.

Mom: But on the episode that was on this week, he started with "Tell me about your feelings," and then he told the patient, "I've had enough of you," and he went behind his desk. I thought that was pretty aggressive therapy, compared to the woman who used to be on the show.

WC: But it worked.

Mom: That was the point, of course. And he's the psychiatrist for the State; it's not like he's actually going to treat him.

WC: Do you like Ben Stone?

Mom: Which one was that?

WC: The bald lawyer.

Mom: Right -- yes.

WC: [Michael Moriarty, the actor who played him] hangs around Toronto a lot. He's crazy.

Mom: Is that right? I noticed that he's been in a bunch of Canadian TV movies. I'll see him in Bethune, or something like that, and then when I see him in the Law and Order reruns, I wonder how he got so old, so fast.

MFF: Were you a big Chris Noth fan, like your daughter?

Mom: I don't know who that is.

MFF: He was the cop --

WC: Logan.

Mom: [quickly] Oh -- yes!

MFF: He was on before Curtis.

WC: Really cute dark-haired Irish guy.

Mom: Yes. Very nice.

WC: Do you think he's sexier than Curtis?

Mom: Yes. But I think women also like Logan better because it takes so much longer on that show to develop that deep a relationship with a character.

WC: He has so much more charisma. Curtis just seems to be sleepwalking through his scenes. You can tell he doesn't care. He's like, "I'm sleeping with Julia Roberts. Whatever, Jerry Orbach."

Is Mom going to add any new shows to her regular rounds?

WC: Did you watch that show Once and Again? It's on at 10 PM, so I don't know if you would have watched it. It has this lady [shows Mom a picture of Sela Ward] in it.

Mom: Nope. She was a Sister!

WC: Yes she was!

Mom: Yay!

WC: Excellent!

Mom: We watched the Biography this week of My Favorite Martian, and they showed lots of scenes from that other one...Picket Fences? Look at that -- I did a title.

WC: Right on, Mom! What was My Favorite Martian's name?

Mom: Oh, I just watched it and I don't know.

WC: That's okay. It's Ray Walston.

Mom: Right. But I can say "My Favorite Martian" and people will know who I mean.

WC: True.

Mom: Anyway, I was thinking that one [Sela Ward] was on Picket Fences too, but she wasn't -- she was on the show with the three sisters who didn't look alike at all.

WC: Four.

Mom: Four sisters who didn't look alike at all.

MFF: Was Swoosie Kurtz on that show?

WC: Yes.

Mom: Which Sister was she?

WC: She was the redhead.

Mom: Oh, right.

MFF: I think with a show like that, there's a Hollywood by-law that Swoosie Kurtz has to be involved in some way.