Once

Once

Every Valentine’s Day I do get to teach Malvina Reynolds by using her Magic Penny song. I loved Malvina Reynolds. When I was in my 20’s I wanted to marry her. Her second husband, Bud Reynolds, was a merchant seaman so maybe it could have been a strange kind-of vicarious marriage.

I typed her name into the IMDb to see what would happen. Turns out Magic Penny was used on a soundtrack for a ‘50’s beach movie called Summer Love. It’s not available on video which means the penny might not have been magic enough to overcome a lame story. I would love to see it just to hear Malvina on a movie soundtrack that wasn’t a documentary. Oddly, the movie people didn’t want one verse so they asked her to change it. She did and the movie version got copyrighted which means I’ve been singing that one all along. Here’s the verse she took out of the original--‘Don’t play with fire,/Once burned, twice shy,’/But now I’ve played with fire/And all I want to do is fry.” Maybe I’ll sneak it back in.

Another song I’d like to sneak some verses back into is Woody’s This Land is Your Land. Every school I’ve taught at or been a student at has sung it but never with the last two verses which I remember being told back in Maryland that they were too subversive.

But lo and behold, Malvina is on YouTube! Check it out. So is Woody. One of those clips has to have all the verses.

Speaking of musicals and Black History Month, we saw Once the other night. Once, as in “once I write the hits I’ll be a star.” At least that’s what the IMDb says the title means. Black history as in it takes place in Ireland and the newspaper in Saint Paul ran an article recently reminding us how the Irish still think they are “the blacks of Europe.” It’s beyond me, but then the closest I’ve been to Boston in 30 years is listening to WUMB on the Internet. Great station. Last time I was in Boston, I saw Psycho II. Wow! The best cure for the nightmares caused by a babysitter letting me watch Psycho I on TV when I was 9 or 10.

In answer to the people who asked the theater people why so many of us were laughing our heads off in the last 20 minutes: The movie was a satire on the first Psycho and was supposed to be funny. I didn’t laugh that hard again until I saw Malibu’s Most Wanted. I saw that one in the theater, too. People were moving away from me. I even managed to embarrass my children. Very funny satire on everything.

Once is a very sweet movie. Bob Dylan said it was his favorite movie which is a clue that it needs subtitles. It’s in Irish-accented British English except the character named “girl” speaks English with an Irish accent with a Czechoslovakian accent added on top. It all makes the dialogue almost unintelligible which puts it right in Dylan’s middle phase.

The “f” words are intelligible and there are lots of them since Ireland is close to England which means any movie other than Jane Austen movies has to have the “f” word at least once in every sentence. Also, it’s what gives the movie an R rating and therefore a hipper feel. I have read that some directors will manipulate the movie to get an R rating so young people will think it’s hip and therefore applies to them.

Kind of the opposite with Racing With the Moon which started out with an R rating then got changed on appeal to PG. Any movie with a great shot of a really young Sean Penn’s butt followed by a great sex scene with Elizabeth McGovern on the beach probable deserves to be PG. Maybe they appealed the R because they both had to be naked in a lake in northern California in the middle of winter. Maybe PG refers to pregnant which means if Sean Penn is in it then there’s going to be an abortion. Maybe I’m being satirical.

Once is a lovely love story which turns out in a way that I could have predicted if I wasn’t so naïve about how movies turn out. But I do like predictability even if I don’t recognize it. It’s what gives me a sense of knowing where I’m going.

The two main characters are actually credited as “guy” and “girl.” Wonderful casting of the girl’s mother and the guy’s father. Maybe they can get together for the sequel.

There’s a good scene of a group of people at someone’s home having a traditional singing circle. I’ve gone to some here and more back in Portland. Some of you are laughing, but not knowing how to sing never stopped me. Except the time I tried to join a 200-member men’s singing choir and the director said he never turned anyone away until he met me.