Flashdance reunion movie drag queen

I'm sitting in a crowded movie theater.

I talk with other people there as a film starts; this is a special showing of a movie that came out when I was in high school or college, sometime in the 1980's. Some of us, including me, appeared as extras in the movie.

The movie is a musical and looks something like "Flashdance" except that it takes place in a high school. It has lots of disaffected punk kids in it -- sort of like "Flashdance" meets the Sex Pistols on the set of "Grease".

As the movie progress, people in the crowd gasp and say "Oh my gawd" or clap and cheer when they see themselves on screen. Some groan at their bad hairstyles.

At one point in the movie, there's a big dance number that takes place in what looks like a nightclub.

People in the audience get up from their seats and walk into the screen. I join them.

I find myself wandering around the nightclub in the movie -- everything around me has film grain and scratches, like a movie come to life.

I wander through this multistory nightclub, moving in and out of the crowd, listening to the synthesizer-based 80's pop music blaring and seeing the lights flash and pulse all around me.

I am at the edge of what looks like a gymnasium floor. It is empty, people crowded around the periphery of it. The music plays, the lights are all around.

A spotlight points at me.

Next to me is a drag queen I used to know, Monica Marlowe.

"You should dance," she says.

"No," I say, a little embarrassed. "If I went out there and danced, I might run into myself. It would tear apart the whole space-time continuum of this dream."

Then I woke up.

Movie poster house dungeon

I standing in the living room in a little two-story house in an older suburban neighborhood. It reminds me of the quaint two-story homes that they have in the West End, where I used to live many years ago, in Winston-Salem.

It is a beautiful, Spring sunny day

I hear a knock at my front door.

It is my friend Stuart.

I am surprised to see him. He explains that things hadn't worked out for him in New Mexico, where he moved a few months ago. He had sold his place and was going to get another one out West. Until things got settled, he wanted to stay with me.

I show Stuart around the place. Each room is done up with a theme and includes posters from my movie collection.

As we look around the house, we talk. I explain that, somehow, I had bought the house outright.

I tell Stuart that I'm not working full-time for anyone and have enough money to live on for a couple of years. My plan is to write and work on films to try to make a go of it for two years; if it didn't work out, I'm going to look for a job in this new town.

The place isn't ornate; just simple and tasteful. There's a "studio" where I have my computer and some video editing decks (with some posters from documentaries); a nice living room and dining room that are open and bright with high ceilings. *It's where I keep my best posters that I want to show off.) There's also a "library" room full of my books, cd's and movies and a nice comfy chair for reading.

I show Stuart to his room -- it's on the second floor, across from my bedroom, and it's called the "Fellini" room. It's decorated with some posters from Fellini movies. Stuart seems very pleased.

We talk and work out an agreement where Start would help me build a dungeon in the basement of the house while he stayed there.

It was good to see Stuart there. I felt some really good vibes from his presence and missed him since he had moved away.

"Make yourself at home," I say, "My house is your house."

And then I woke up.

Fright wig used car salesman imaginary movie

I walk along streets in Raleigh, going to a basketball game at NCSU, for some reason. Along the way, I run into several fans who were really hyped about this important game, for some reason. I finally reach press area.

There is an older woman there who reminds me of Nan Kehone, the president of Duke. The woman is wearing a fright wing and red clothes. The university has hired this woman to be a "professional fan".

In the press area, there is a politician and his speech writer, working on some kind of speech for him to give at a rally for the crowd. They're having trouble with it.

I ask if I might help. They hand me the script and I read part of it.

The speech is dreadful.

Suddenly ...

I am a used car salesman in a lot located in a shopping center.

The car dealership is doing some kind of promotion. I have to take customers into a theater and write down what seat they sit in in the theater -- it is supposed to give us an idea of how good their eyesight is to see if they would wreck our cars. The theater manager glares at me in the lobby as I and other car salesmen pass by, annoyed at us coming into her theater with our customers.

And then ...

I am at a family gathering.

There is someone there I went to high school with. He was a real bum in high school. He had gone to college and worked with computers now.

Suddenly ...

Jason and I are in a hotel room.

We went to see a of performance reunion by the cast of Charlie's Angels earlier in the evening. He is excited because one of the cast members, Cheryl Ladd, wore a dress that he saw he wear in person when the show was originally on the air. The dress was a quite hideous blue and red number.

Cheryl Ladd is there, in the hotel room, lying on the bed, talking with Jason about the dress.

And then ....

I am driving an older car from the 50's, going to my new apartment.

It had been raining and it's hot and humid. The car is full of wilting flowers.

I am looking for water to put on the flowers so they wouldn't wilt. I notice that plants were actually growing out of some parts of the car. The car is very old and about to fall apart.

Suddenly ...

I am in a movie theater watching a Star Trek movie that doesn't exist.

The movie is about a space station being invaded by an alien that would seep through parts of the station like acid. The aliens kill Nurse Chapel. (I am aware that, in her contract, she stated she didn't want to be in another Star Trek movie.) The crew didn't know what the alien was and rush around trying to figure out what to do.

And then ...

I am at my college graduation except, in this case, the graduation consists of only 30 or 40 people.

One of the people at the graduation is a student who was doing his final assignment, a speech. No one listens to his speech - people just get up and leave.

When the speech is over, the student talks to his professor, sitting at a nearby table. He is worried that he might not pass the assignment. The teacher gives him a large wooden block with the letter "B" on it and the hands a report card to him.

Suddenly ...

I am in a movie theater watching another movie that doesn't exist. It is a documentary about the Minneapolis music scene of the 1980's.

The movie includes interviews with Prince, Morris Day, and several of Prince's girlfriends.

And then I woke up.

Airport Gameboy Plane Crash Birth Drama

I’m in a movie theater, sitting alone, watching a film.

In the film, there is an airplane, full of people.

Richard Dryfuss, Ellen Burnstein and their small child sit in the airplane. They're arguing about the trip they're making; the small boy ignores them, playing with a Gameboy.

Cut to the plane exterior. There's some kind of short or spark or something. The airplane's engine catches fire.

Richard notices it out the window.

"Look!" he says.

They stop arguing.

The fire gets worse and the engine stalls. The airplane starts going out of control.

The oxygen masks come down, the passengers prepare for a crash.

The plane starts going in a free-fall, straight for the ocean.

Cut to the interior of an airport.

Richard, Ellen and the kid are sitting in chairs at what looks like a concourse.

The boy is still playing with the Gameboy -- Richard and Ellen are just waking up.

They both talk about the dream they just had about their airplane crashing.

Richard and Ellen continue to argue with each other about the trip for a few moments.

Then, Richard notices that something's weird in the airport.

There's strange Muzak playing in the concourse, but no announcements. No airplanes are taking off or landing, everyone is eerily quiet.

Richard talks to one of the staff, asking them why things are so strange.

The staff are calm, cool, and friendly, but almost completely emotionless. They are evasive and do not answer his questions.

Richard and Ellen make their way around the airport, trying to ask different staff members what is going on.

They tell the boy to sit down and wait for them to come back.

They argue ­ Richard thinks something is wrong, but Ellen doesn’t.

They get no answers from the airport staff.

Richard and Ellen go back to their chairs and notice the boy is gone. They look around for him, but he is nowhere to be found. They ask passersby if they’ve seen him. No one has.

They turn around and there he is again, just popping up out of nowhere, still playing with the Gameboy.

They’re relieved and tell him to sit down.

Twice more, they argue, talk to staff and loose the boy. The third time, he doesn’t reappear.

They go to a security guard for help.

"Come with me, please," guard says.

They're led to a back room that looks like a surgery theater in a hospital. A doctor and nurse are there.

"Get on the table, please," the doctor says.

Ellen argues, but the doctor is firm and calm. She gets on the table.

"I'm afraid you'll have to go through the whole thing again," the doctor says.

Stirrups pop up on the table and Ellen is strapped into place; another nurse appears from a nearby room to calm down Richard.

Ellen's stomach begins to grow huge.

She gives birth to her son all over again.

He emerges from her vagina, fully clothed, Gameboy in hand, the same size and age he was before.

Richard and Ellen are again on the concourse, sitting in their chairs. They look at the child, then at each other. They wonder aloud if what just happened really happened.

Richard finally seems to understand.

“We’re not in an airport,” he says. “This is purgatory.”

Then I woke up.

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.

Pregnant Elongated Jodorowsky Bio-Pic

I am in the living room of a simply furnished, small suburban house.

There is someone in the room that I know. But they are not there in a physical form. I only hear their voice.

They invite me to look over their DVD collection.

I walk over to a corner of the room and there are shelves of DVD's sitting next to a large screen HDTV.

A highlight of the collection is a complete set consisting of what looked like fifty or sixty discs containing the complete Looney Tunes cartoons. I am amazed that someone actually released them and fondly recalled some of my favorites.

The person in the room asks if I knew that CBS was broadcasting a bio-pic TV movie about the life of director Alejandro Jodowrowsky.

I am surprised.

“Would you like to see it? It’s playing now,” the voice says.

“Yes, of course.”

The HDTV comes on. The movie is already in progress.

There is some kind of scene going on where Jodorowsky (played by his son, who is the lead in his film, Sante Sangre) is talking to another man. They are both dressed in 19th century clothing, sitting at a table in a saloon.

The scene shifts to Jodorowsky and his wife in their 19th century home.

They are having an argument -- Jodorowsky has been having an affair with another woman and his wife is upset.

The other woman comes into the room. It is the man Jodorowsky was sitting at the bar with in the previous scene.

The man, who has a beard, is dressed in 19th century women's clothes. His lips are painted red and he has eye shadow on.

The man is also very pregnant.

Jodorowsky and his wife keep arguing.

The “other woman” tries to get their attention. He/she falls to the floor and goes into labor, screaming hysterically and thrashing about. Jodorowsky leaves the room.

Jodorowsky, dressed in a dark suit and top hat, walks on a wooden sidewalk in a 19th century Western town. There is dirt in the street; horses and wagons pass by.

Everything in the frame is distorted, like a Salvador Dali painting come to life.

As Jodorowsky walks, his figure is stretched and elongated; some other people on the street appear normal, while others have enormous heads, feet, or hands. Some look like a beach ball and just roll along.

A horse, standing on its two hind legs, leans against a post, watching people go by with a toothpick in his mouth.

Wagons pass on the street with strange elongated or half-broken wheels that don't seem to affect their operation.

Jodorowsky passes a dead tree planted in the middle of the street. It begins sprouting leaves as he passes by.

A sign in front of a bank has an old style clock. It is melting.

As Jodorowsky walks along on the sidewalk, there are people on the other side of the street dressed in winter clothes, trying to walk in a snowstorm, while his side of the street is sunny.

A man throws a cigarette into some kind of sewage drain on the edge of the street. There's a giant explosion -- nobody flinches or even notices.

I sit there amazed by all of this, thinking that no one had before thought of using digital effects in this way. It’s a true surrealist film, brought to life in vivid high definition.

Suddenly, the picture fritzes out on the tv. It goes black.

There is a small bang and the tube cracks. Some smoke pours from the front of the tv. I hear a hissing sound.

I feel very disappointed.

"It appears that it exceeded the expected surrealist quotient of the current equipment,” the voice in the room says.

Then I woke up.

Black and White Village Ice Block Man

I am sitting next to my friend Gil in the middle of a large movie theater. We are the only people there.

A black and white film is playing on the screen. It looks similar to one that might be directed by Akira Kurosawa.

On the screen, peasant villagers work in a field. Men and women in tattered clothes till the soil or carry baskets.

A man approaches from the distance.

“Come here!” he yells, “They’ve found him!”

The man is speaking in Japanese and there are no subtitles, but we understand perfectly what he is saying.

The villagers drop their work and murmur to each other. They follow the man.

Music similar to the soundtrack of “Seven Samurai” plays.

There are men and women, old and young, following the man up the mountain. It is rocky and difficult to climb.

As they climb, the landscape becomes more sparse and rocky. They pass pine and cypress trees.

The man leads them to a flat stony clearing. There is snow on the ground and I can see breath coming from their mouths as they talk. From the clearing, I see the mountain jutting up far into the sky.

Three men are there with picks and shovels.

“Come help!” he says, “We have to get him out!”

The villagers watch as the men clear earth and snow from a mound. The mound contains a large block of ice. One of the men wipes the snow away from the top of it.

The villagers become excited, murmuring to each other, and gather around the unearthed object.

I see a shot from the perspective of the block of ice, looking up. The faces of the villagers are all around the frame. They look astonished.

I see an overhead shot of the block of ice. Encased within the ice is a man. The features are indistinct at first, but the camera moves closer.

I realize that the man enclosed in the ice is me.

Then I woke up.

Hazel Barbershop Television Land

I’m standing in the living room of a house.

Music from Fellini’s "Juliet of the Spirits" plays in the background.

Shirley Booth is in the living room with me. She is dressed as Hazel, the character she played on the television program in the 1960’s.

“I’ll get your briefcase, Mr. G,” she says.

She leaves the room and quickly goes upstairs.

"Hazel?" I think, "Where did she come from?"

I suddenly hear laughter in the background.

Canned laughter.

I look around, puzzled.

I can't see where the canned laughter is coming from.

The doorbell rings.

I walk to the front door and open it.

A man with a television camera on his shoulder and a woman are standing there. They’re both dressed like the poorest trailer park trash you can imagine ­ bad teeth, bad breath and everything.

The woman has a photo in her hand. She sticks it into my face.

The photo looks like Andy Griffith, dressed in shabby clothes like the people in front of me.

“Well?” the woman asks.

It’s as if she expects me to say something. I’m dumbfounded and just stand there.

"You're the sheriff. Ain't you goin’ after him?"

I look at the photo again.

It doesn't look like Andy Griffith. It looks like me.

"No," I say, "I’m not going after him. I really don't want to get shot today."

I hear giggles from the canned laugh track.

“What do you mean?” she yells. “He’s up on the hill makin’ moonshine and causin’ a heap of trouble! I heard he even stole somebody’s cat!”

There is laughter from the canned laugh track. The Fellini music becomes more prominent.

I seem to know that these two people do a kind of very low budget version of “Cops”, produced by trailer park trash.

I look out on the street in front of the house. It’s a typical sit-com suburban neighborhood with neat little houses and well kept lawns.

The bus from “The Partridge Family” passes by.

“Now you’re the sheriff ‘round here,” she says. “Ain’t you gonna do somethin’?”

The man with the camera focuses on my face.

“No, I don’t think so,” I say, annoyed. “Why don’t you go get him yourself? He won’t bother you.”

I close the door on them.

There is laughter and applause from the canned laugh track.

I think for a moment. I realize that the man and woman were Daisy Duke and Cooter from “The Dukes of Hazzard”.

Suddenly, I feel as though I am going through a tunnel, almost being propelled through some kind of portal.

I’m standing in the Cunningham living room from “Happy Days”.

Ritchie Cunningham is talking to his mother, Marion.

"Well, it's like this, mom," Ritchie says, "Think about it this way: What if Mr. Cunningham was a pimp, but Mrs. Cunningham didn't know about it?"

"Oh, I just don't know," she says.

There is more laughter from the canned laugh track.

Suddenly, I feel as though I am lifted through the portal again.

I’m standing in Floyd’s barbershop from “The Andy Griffith Show”.

Floyd, Opie and Goober are there.

Also in the room is Rob, the character from “Annie Hall” who was an actor in a television sit-com that convinced Woody Allen’s character to go to Los Angeles and work in television.

"I just don't understand it," Floyd says, "Aunt Bea has turned into such a whore."

"Well, times change," Rob says. Giggles from the canned laugh track.

"Floyd," Rob asks, "is there a tanning booth in this town?"

Laughter from the canned track.

I am sucked through the portal again.

I’m standing on the lawn in front of the “Hazel” house. It’s bright and sunny outside.

There’s no one around and I seem to have a moment to collect my thoughts.

“I don’t understand this place,” I say. “I just don’t know how to move around here.”

I look down and see a dog and cat run past me.

It’s Tom and Butch from MGM’s “Tom and Jerry” cartoons.

The dog and cat are like the cartoons, only three-dimensional and appear very real. They run around the lawn getting into trouble. They take tumbles and knock things over.

Tom runs up to me and comes to a sudden stop.

I hear the sound of screeching tires.

Tom looks up at me.

“You should have gone after that guy,” he says.

There’s something menacing about him that I don’t like.

He takes off after Butch again. They chase each other around, knocking things over and causing more havoc.

I hear cartoon music and sound effects.

Once again, Tom comes to a screeching halt in front of me.

"You know you should have," he says.

I look down at him.

"No,” I say. “I don't belong here. I don't understand this place."

"Of course you do," Tom says. "It's Los Angeles. You were born to be here."

Tom takes off again with the sound of a cartoon “ping”. He causes more havoc with Butch.

I suddenly realize that Tom’s voice sounds like Rob from “Annie Hall”.

As he runs through the yard, Tom screams at me to let him into the house.

“Oh no,” I yell, running for the door. “You’re not getting in here!”

I run into the house, quickly slamming the door behind me.

The door has a large window that covers almost half of it. I look through the window and see Tom running towards the door.

He’s unable to stop and slams into the door, smashing his head flat with a loud “thump”.

I watch as Tom slowly falls to the ground, his body sticking straight out from the door.

His smushed head makes funny cartoon sounds as it slides down the door.

Tom sits up, his head bobbing and weaving. There are little three dimensional stars and birds spinning around his head.

I hear a voice behind me and turn around.

“Here you go, Mr. G,” Hazel says, smiling and handing me my briefcase.

“Aren’t you late for work?”

Then I woke up.