bridge over troubled indemnity

Waking before the first alarm clock this morning I found myself in the midst of a dream where one of the people I work with was in a movie.

It was a real, big-time, commercial-type movie, set in New Orleans, with Sandra Bullock in it.

And in my dream, I had seen this guy whom I work with, in the movie, standing on a bridge, yelling at a guy.

He wasn't yelling with anger or obnoxiousness, but rather -- good-naturedly.

And the bridge was not a firm, solid bridge made out of concrete, it was one of those bridges that's made out of cloth, or rope, or something -- where it can swing back and forth when people are crossing it.

"Wow!  He was in a movie!" I was thinking, in the dream.

And when I asked him about it -- "God!  Wow!  I never knew you were in a movie!" -- his answer was, "Yeah, I might-a been in a movie; I won something...won the contest and the prize was being in a movie."...

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None of this played in front of my eyes or ears literally, or in specific words, in my dream -- but all of these concepts and pieces of information drifted together and made an impression; everything became known to me through, like, "vibes."

In the dream, I thought -- How could someone be in a big commercial movie and not remember for sure...("Yeah...I might've been...." ??)

And then after waking up and realizing in a few dreamlette-moments that it had been a Dream, and that my workplace associate had not been in any movie, really, I had Another Thought:  This Guy -- if someone told him he won a contest and would "get to" be in a movie, he'd probably demand to be paid for doing the job!  He wouldn't fall for the idea that being in a movie was such a Big Deal that if he "won" a chance to be in one, he should just run out and do it. 

He would refuse to be that impressed with Hollywood-stuff; he'd say, "If you want me to act in your movie, show me the contract."

Or he would just hang up or show them the door in the first place with no discussion.

(How, in my Subconscious, does one miscellaneous co-worker get
ONTO a bridge,
IN a movie?
And...New Orleans?  Why??)

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[excerpt from Eric Lax's biography of Woody Allen]------------------- If one movie epitomized his childhood, it is Double Indemnity.  "I love it," he says.  "It has all the characteristics of the classic forties film as I respond to it.  It's in black and white, it has fast badinage, it's very witty, a story from the great age.  It has Edward G. Robinson and Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray and the tough voice-over.  It has brilliantly written dialogue, and the perfect score by Miklos Rozsa.  It's Billy Wilder's best movie -- but practically anyone's best movie."------------------- [end excerpt]

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[D. Indemnity script excerpt]
It began last May.  About the end of May, it was.  I had to run out to Glendale to deliver a policy on some dairy trucks.  On the way back I remembered this auto renewal on Los Feliz.  So  I decided to run over there.  It was one of those California Spanish houses everyone was nuts about 10 or 15 years ago....

It was mid-afternoon, and it's funny, I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that block.  I felt like a million.  There was no way in all this world I could have known that murder sometimes can smell like honeysuckle...

...PHYLLIS:  You're a smart insurance man, aren't you, Mr. Neff?
NEFF:  I've had eleven years of it.
PHYLLIS:  Doing pretty well?
NEFF:  It's a living.
PHYLLIS:  You handle just automobile insurance, or all kinds?

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See, the Classics never seem to have any people that I know in them....

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