Saturday, May 8, 2004

Technicolor Hostage Cereal Gangster

I am alone in a huge movie theater.

I am watching a movie.

It looks like a bright, vibrant Technicolor movie from the 1930's. But the film is one of those Warner Brothers gangster movies, which were all done in stark black and white.

A gangster is holding a woman captive on some kind of road trip. With them, they have a Black cook, a young girl.

The man resembles George Raft; the woman reminds me of Loretta Young.

The house they're staying in is dark, with high contrast shadows all around.

The clothes the characters wear or objects in the room are vibrant reds, greens, yellows and blues, standing out from everything there.

They’re about to have breakfast. The gangster sits at the table in the dining room, reading a newspaper. He talks about the cops not being able to find them.

The woman tries to figure out how to get away. She nervously drinks coffee and spreads some jam on a piece of toast.

The woman says something about checking on breakfast and goes into the kitchen.

The cook is there. The woman starts yelling at the cook and the cook recoils.

She leans in close to the cook and whispers in her ear.

“He’s trying to kill me. Just play along.”

The woman takes a stack of brightly colored dishes and throws them to the floor. She yells at the cook, asking her why she has to be so clumsy.

The woman leans in and whispers in the cook’s ear again.

“Run away and get help.”

The woman crashes some more dishes against the wall and yells at the cook again.

The cook seems like she’s in a state of shock and doesn’t know what to do.

The woman pointss at the door. She pleads with the cook, motioning with her hands.

The cook quickly and quietly scurries off.

The woman regains her composure. She picks up a tray that has some food and dishes on it, along with two boxes of cereal.

The woman carries the tray into the dining room.

"What was that about?" the man asks.

"I just fired the cook - she’s so incompetent,” she says, trying to remain calm.

The woman moves the tray towards the table.

Two boxes of Life cereal are on the tray -- the kind of boxes they had in the 1960's with "Life" spelled out in brightly colored letters.

As she sits the tray on the table, some of the letters on the cereal boxes float away into the air, forming the word "Lie".
Then I woke up.