Page 24 - Finding Tulsa - Preview

16 Jim Provenzano

our first victim. Dressed as a bum, my Jekyll character mimed beating him
with a cane.
What would a psychotherapist say to that one?
My brother lost these films in an abrupt move one cold night, as he
hastily departed from Chicago to his now-wife’s apartment. The landlord
in Chicago did not care for non-paying tenants and did not have a polite
way of expressing this dislike. Dan now lives in San Francisco with his
lovely wife Gloria and their cherub, Gloria II.
Before his abrupt move and subsequent loss of our filmic property,
my brother did, however, get these scenes dubbed onto video before los-
ing them. I cursed him, spat violent threats over the phone, and swore to
disown him until he made a copy for my pre-Ace Awards Entertainment
Tonight interview.
It seemed our name just came up at a party, and some high-aired
creative director met my bro, the up and coming San Francisco comic
animator in town for an MTV party conference schmooze session. Before
I knew it, Dan’s video was on a segment of the show, and he later snagged
a spot himself to promote his new video game.
On a much smaller PR scale, I’m scheduled to do an interview with
my hometown newspaper before the tribute to Arthur McCabe, whom I
like to call my professor. Actually, he ran the entire small but magical the-
atre department of Brookside College. He was also my dad’s best friend.
My love affair with the theatre really began there. Forget those damn pup-
pets. None of the kids on the block liked that stuff anyway. Besides, they
didn’t really like me, even though I only charged them a nickel.
Brookside, Ohio, where Baptist churches emerged from the ground
faster than Monolith Monsters, where Young Men’s Christian Athletes
could merely burp and appear in the local newspapers. Who would think
that such a tiny town in Ohio could hold such treasures for an up and
coming director?
Every few weeks of the summer of 1976, when my lust awoke, I
passed an hour or so in the fourth floor no-action college library john,
Duane Michals’s first photo book in my lap or delicately placed on the
toilet paper dispenser. Naked men in wings and masks and strange, time-
less, mythical symbol image plays urged my boy juices up and outward.
Eventually I collected enough change to photocopy the entire book and
paste it together at home, then I hid it in my attic filing cabinet of eaves,
between dusty pink fiberglass insulation.
Playing with the pictures of Duane Michals taught me to understand
storyboarding and sidetracked me into photography for a while, but hey,