Usually, I don’t bother going out of my way to meet someone or see something. Only a very few possible high points kick me in the ass.
I made sure I went to the screenings in Pacific Film Archive in 1997 for the complete films of Wojciech Has. Night after night, saw them all. And I was in attendance for The Saragossa Manuscript the evening Has himself spoke. Got to meet him, ask a couple of questions.
In Murfreesboro, Tennessee circa 1973 I went out of my way to get to the Ford dealership where Buford Pusser was signing big Walking Tall-style wooden clubs. Didn’t try to meet him — he was swamped — but did look at him, figuring that moment would be the closest approximation I’d ever come to seeing someone in the Wyatt Earp mode in person.
In the 1980s I think it was, I got to visit Ray Hicks in his home on Beech Mountain, North Carolina — Hicks, the legendary master teller of Jack Tales. Might not appeal to everyone, but for me it was big.
I’ve made some effort to meet a few writers — Fritz Leiber, Donald Wandrei — and on the side have met more writers than I could ever possibly remember meeting.
Occasionally I hear about something I missed that sticks a cutting pang of regret through me.
Yeah, I didn’t know.
If I’d known I could have showed up. . . .
Topping my short list of huge regrets is an event from fifty years ago. My first year in San Francisco. 1974.
On July 6, 1974 in the Warfield Theatre on Market Street they had the first ever preview screening of Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. I could have gone. But I didn’t hear about it. I didn’t know it was great (the audiences in the initial screenings hated it).
I wouldn’t see it for years, anyway. And I don’t think I heard about that first screening until I read the Warren Oates bio by Susan Compo.
But — I could have been there when Alfredo Garcia stepped into the culture.
Goddam.
