Christopher Lee
Man of My Dreams?
Well, if you'll pardon
the cliché, another year has come and gone. This year I thought I'd
do things a little different by updating and revamping my webpage. I promised
ages ago my webpage was to be less a Shrine To Me and more of a dedication
to my interests. Apart from my blatant mini-ripoff of "Kevin's Hiking Page,"
I'm afraid I didn't really make good on my promise. I decided in 2003 I'd
change that, by offering a webpage that, I hope, people would actually
want to visit. I thought of pages I liked to visit, and what made me want
to visit them, and decided that's what my site needed. So, along with the
new music and film reviews, there's also this page, just dedicated to random
thoughts and current obsessions. I know I'm no Herb Caen, but then, I am
someone. I just hope I'm someone with stuff to say that people might find
interesting to read.
Of course, this led me into a sort of pickle.
What if I can't think of anything to write about? Much to my, I suppose,
luck...inspiration of a sort struck me just at the turning of the new
year.
I spent New Years' Eve with my friend Al.
Of all my friends, he seems to have the highest tolerance not only for
bad cinema, but the particular sort of bad cinema I find highly enjoyable
(Keep an eye on my cinema page to keep tabs on that). Anyway, just for the
record, the last film of 2002 we viewed was the MST3000 version of "Robot
Holocaust," while the first of the new year was the MST version of "Time
Of The Apes."
All of this is nifty background, but I think
the point I'm trying to make (apart from the fact that I'm slightly anti-social
and like to hang around other slightly anti-social people) is that he
let me spend the night at his place so as not to have to brave the highways
laden with hundreds of drunken souls at such an ungodly hour. So I spent
the night on a plush reclining chair, which was remarkably cosy, all things
considered.
That night I had a dream. I clearly was supposed
to be Gandalf, as I was clad in a grey robe and there was a white, patriarchal
beard flowing down the middle of my chest. Seated across from me in a
dark room was Christopher Lee. Not Christopher Lee as Saruman. In fact,
not Christopher Lee as anyone! Well, he wasn't exactly in street-clothes
either, as he had a black cape over his brilliant red suit. And he was
surrounded by yellow gas cylinders. Oh, lovely...and if the fact that he's
surrounded by blatant phallic symbols weren't Freudian enough, the dream
rapidly took a more explicit turn toward the sexual. I'll spare you the
gory details in the hopes that you'll keep reading.
Anyway, I found the dream rather amusing,
but didn't really think much more about it at the time. I did make the
(I guess) mistake of telling the dream to Al. Not that he blabbed but...what
was that superstition about telling your dreams before breakfast again?
I wouldn't even be writing this had Mr. Lee
not appeared in my dreams the very next night as well! And this time it
was plainly obvious that he was himself, not playing a character, as this
time he really was in street clothes, eighty-ish English gentleman variant.
Again, the dream rapidly took turns toward the sexual, and again, I promise
not to go into any more detail than that.
All right, now I was obsessed, if not quite
freaked out...at least not yet. In waking life, I had shown no conscious
tendencies toward an obsession to Christopher Lee and his enormous oeuvre,
up till now anyway. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I find the man "hideous,"
but I can think of dozens of other actors I find more attractive. Which
leads to other questions. Is my subconscious using "Christopher Lee" as
some sort of metaphor? If so, what am I trying to tell myself? Is Lee perhaps
an astral projector, and is using his nocturnal spiritual prowls to invade
my dreams? If so, why has he chosen me? And why Christopher Lee anyway?
Why not Ian McKellen? At least I stood a ghost of a chance with him (with
the emphasis on "ghost." Believe it or not, there is something of a realist
in me).
More likely he was just telling me, "You're not
getting any younger, kid. Stop being so bloody picky!" I'd say that was
the most sensible interpretation.
Anyway, I flashed back to what I thought of
Mr. Lee in the past. My first experience was probably his appearance as
host of Saturday Night Live during its glory years, for which I found him
funny, impressive and, yes, even a little attractive (must have been the
moustache). Ditto for "Rasputin: The Mad Monk," hardly the high point for
his or anyone's career, in which he appeared far too well-scrubbed to convincingly
portray the real historical figure, who looked as though he daily combed
his hair and beard with a treatment of Pennzoil that had already been through
a car's inner works. I wept for him after catching him at a career low
in "The Castle of Fu Manchu" (amazingly, neither the first nor the last
film he'd do for Eurotrash megahack director Jesus Franco), and cheered
after seeing his triumphant turn as Mr. Flay in the adaptation of Mervyn
Peake's epic "Gormenghast" (a favourite novel series of mine) for British
TV.
But, of course, in recent memory I'd thought
of him as Saruman from woofy Kiwi Peter Jackson's "Lord Of The Rings" films.
Sure, he looks haunting with closed eyes, his bare hand purposefully hovering
over a palantír. But the only thing I could think that actually
linked him to these specific dreams was a documentary on the films, in
which he impressed me as being the one actor with a true and deep, almost
scary love for the source material. Specifically, the way he rattled off
a passage of Elvish (with impeccable pronunciation that Liv Tyler would
be insanely jealous of, no less) from deep memory, in much the same way
an English schoolboy rattles off something he was forced to memorize phonetically
by his stern Latin instructor. Which is not to say that I disapprove of obsessiveness;
anyone who knows me can tell you that. (Hell, shouldn't this little treatise
offer enough proof to those that don't?) But to see it on display, well...it
never stops being a little bit creepy.
Of course, all these thoughts led to a sort
of feeling of anticipation. Would Lee visit me in any further dreams? If
so, in what context? And would such a "hat-trick" of dreaming of the same
saturnine British actor three nights in a row be some sort of World Record?
Should I pick up the phone and call Norris McWhirter? Is Norris McWhirter
even still alive? Such questions became beside the point, as I was met
with no further Christopher Lee dreams. I was almost disappointed.
In recent days, I've become more philosophical
and accepting about my strange nocturnal encounters with Mr. Lee. OK, I'll
be honest, I never seriously thought there was some deep psychological problem
in such a dream. Far more likely just a wild coincidence that was the result
of me getting caught up in the LOTR-mania. Still, I've come to think of
Christopher Lee as a sort of guardian angel...much in the way Kevin McDonald
had Elvis (or an Elvis impersonator) as his guardian angel in that one "Kids
In The Hall" sketch. So, for better or worse, Christopher Lee had become
the patron saint of this site. Please, just indulge me. Feel free to back
away slowly.
Still, isn't it just a little cool? How many
other people can say that they have Dracula as their guardian angel?
Click on Saruman to return.
©2003 by Progbear.