Tragedy & comedy at the movie house

Kirk Ericson | Oct 14, 20210

“We should stay,” I told Mrs. Ericson and our friend Martha after the lights came up in the theater. “How often do we get to hear from the director of a movie we’ve just seen?”

A person at Olympia’s Capitol Theater was busy moving two matching armchairs and a small coffee table onto center stage. The three of us sat in the balcony, our tears either wiped or still drying on our faces.

We had just finished watching “East of the Mountains,” a movie filled with Washington connections. The movie was shot in Eastern Washington, it was directed by Western Washington resident S.J. Chiro and it stars another Washingtonian, Tom Skerritt. It’s based on a novel by Seattle native David Guterson, who wrote “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

The movie’s opening scene tells you a hard road lies ahead. Skerritt sits alone and hunched over his kitchen table contemplating, then eating and laboriously swallowing, what could be the driest piece of toast in the history of toast. The character is in his 80s and he is in ill health. He rises, shuffles to a bedroom, where he extracts a case from the closet. He pulls the pieces of an heirloom shotgun from the case, assembles it and then balances the butt of the gun on the bedroom floor. He presses the business end of the gun against his forehead and reaches for the trigger.

The rest of the movie continues along a similar soul-grinding trajectory. By movie’s end, you might feel the place where you’ve buried your fears about death, regret and loss has been cracked wide open.

The three of us stayed to hear the director. After the furniture was in position, the director came onstage and the audience of about 25 applauded. She sat and began talking with two fellows sitting in the center of the front row. Theater people, I guessed.

The chair for the director’s questioner was empty.

After a few minutes, we become aware of a figure on crutches, his left foot in a nearly knee-high walking boot, hobbling down one of the two aisles that led to the stage. The man approached the four or five steps that had to be climbed to get on stage. The theater turned silent. This man had a tall test ahead.

The questioner slowly negotiated the stairs — whew — and after leaning the crutches against the chair and dropping his coat on the floor nearby, he sat. He hadn’t said anything yet, but he had everyone’s attention, like a spotlight was on him. He pulled out a piece of paper and then patted his shirt and pants pockets, slowly.

“Oh,” he said. “My glasses.”

He rose slowly from his chair, tottered a couple of steps and bent over to pick up his coat.

As he picked through his coat pockets, he looked at the audience. “I’m a little hobbled,” he said. Someone in the audience asked, “Who are you?”

He gave his name. “I’m on the board,” he said. “I also dabble in filmmaking.”

He dabbles? This man’s level of affectation and lack of situational awareness, as cops and soldiers say, was stunning. And I feared he wouldn’t mention why he’s in a walking boot, even though that boot was an overwhelming part of his presence. It would be like bringing a mule on stage and not mentioning the mule.

I’m as sympathetic as the next guy who’s sympathetic to the next guy, but the scene was funny and absurd, especially after having our emotions so thoroughly excavated by the movie. I laughed, perhaps because laughter is the best medicine, and I got a little elbow from Mrs. Ericson.

“This has to be a skit,” I told her. “Or some kind of performance art. This can’t be on the level.”

“Knock it off,” she whispered, but I saw her grin.

He finally found his glasses and returned to his chair, slowly. After he sat, he maneuvered his right hip out so he had space and leverage to lift his right leg over his left knee, which was difficult because of the walking boot and the shape of the chair. That took a while, too.

Finally, after perhaps 10 minutes had passed since his entrance down the aisle, he was poised to ask his first question. He looked at his piece of paper and then tilted his head back, which apparently is how you convey deep thought on stage.

He looked at the director and asked, “How did you get involved in filmmaking?”

That’s the question he apparently wrote down and didn’t want to forget.

“East of the Mountains.” I give it two thumbs-up.

Email Kirk Ericson at [email protected]