KM and I watched a couple of movies last weekend. Before that, I saw one without her, with our daughter, AA.
It was playing at Rave, which my brother-in-law Bob calls, “Wild.” It was less than wild, however, when we went on Wednesday night to see “Oculus” (Rotten Tomatoes: 72 percent from critics; 54 percent from audiences).
AA agreed more with the critics, while I was more in line with the audience. Oh, it had its startling moments, like when (slight spoiler) the daughter went looking for the mom, who had just tried to kill her a few minutes before.
She found mom chained to the floor of a bedroom (thanks to dad). When mom leaped out, I leaped a little myself. That was when the man behind us, there with his wife and, in my opinion, too-young children to be at this film, got up with two of the three kids, who were now bawling, and left. They were the only others in the theater. What started as seven of us, were now four.
I saw the dad after the movie near the restrooms; he looked to have been crying himself, which made it a little better.
Then on Sunday KM and I went to see “Heaven is for Real” (RT: critics, 48 percent; audiences 77 percent). I wish the guy who had freaked out his family, and himself, a few nights earlier had been at this one instead. I can see him trying to decide. “Let’s see, honey, shall we take the kids to see the movie with this killer crazed mom trying to chew off her kid’s faces, or the one about a walk through a meadow with Jesus? Call me crazy, but ...
Somewhere in between these two movies, KM and I rented “Joe,” starring Nicholas Cage in another attempt to revive his career. I’m really pulling for the guy who brought us Ronny Cammareri, Charlie Bodell, Jack Campbell and, of course, H.I. McDunnough. But it has been awhile.
So now he takes on the title character in “Joe,” (RT: critics 82 percent; audiences 78 percent) about an ex-con who befriends a teenager and tries to save the boy from an abusive father. Cage was good, but the story here is about Gary Poulter, who played the part of that bad dad, Wade, or G-Daawg.
They say that art imitates life, and to that, Poulter’s tale lends confirmation. The film’s director, David Gordon Green, was looking for realism for his movie and found it in Poulter, a homeless alcoholic living in Austin, Texas, the movie’s locale. When he was spotted the first time by casting agents on the street, he had an open wound on his head and looked like he’d been on a drunken bender. “I’m an actor,” Poulter told them.
He wasn’t lying, having actually been a background extra in the eighties TV show, “Thirtysomething.” He also “oozed charisma” and spoke fluent Japanese.
To read his story, Google “His Name Was Gary Poulter – Meet the homeless man who became a movie star.” By Joe O’Connell, in the Austin Chronicle.
The movie completed filming in late 2012. On Feb. 19, 2013, Austin police dispatchers received a call from a homeless man named Joseph who said Poulter was dead at their campsite near the Congress Avenue Bridge. There, investigators found him face down in shallow water on the edge of Lady Bird Lake. Nearby empty bottles of liquor and blankets were strewn on the grass.
Not long before, Poulter had told Joseph about his six months behind bars for breaking into the Chipotle restaurant at Eighth and Congress in 2011; he never mentioned starring in a movie.
Source: “His Name Was Gary Poulter” by Joe O’Connell in the Austin Chronicle