John Cusack, Man of Many Faces.

After majoring in beer for my first year of college, I decided that it would be in my best interest to leave and seek a fresh start someplace else.  My parents suggested that I return home and finish an associate's degree at a community college in Ocala before attempting university life again.  I agreed that it was probably my wisest choice and began moving my stuff back home. 

In the bottom of my bedroom closet I found a tightly packed Tyvek mailing envelope.  It was full of the brochures and catalogues of the small private colleges that send mailings to every high school kid who can spell his name right on the SAT.  (I'm not good at throwing things away; I find value in everything.)  I had considered each of them, back when I was a high school scholar with promise, and they had all had been successful in painting a picture in my mind of walking amongst alluring green spaces and smiling in stately libraries with my beautiful friends.  One by one they crossed paths again with my promise as they found a new home in the Hefty bag. 

A card stuck out from between the pages of one of the catalogues.  I pulled it out as I dropped the booklet into the trash.  It was an offer for a $10,000 scholarship. 

Who, me?

I pulled the catalogue back out of the bag.  What college was this?  Why had I not seen this card before?  How could it have been sitting at the bottom of my closet for an entire year, or longer? 

The catalogue was for an art school.  I wouldn't have opened it because I wasn't an artist.  I liked to draw, but even my delusions weren't grand enough to convince me that I could make a living at it.  Why would an art school offer me a scholarship?

The card was quick to answer.  My high ACT score had attracted the school's attention.  With my kind of potential they could turn me into an artist in four years or less.  My promise called to me from the trash.

Really?

I called the phone number on the back of the catalogue.  The scholarship was real, and they still wanted me.  Listen, I said to the admissions officer, you don't want me, and here's why.  It was the first honest conversation I ever had about what had gone down during the previous year.  She told me to send everything to her directly.  It's past the deadline, I said, school starts in five weeks.  There's no hope.  She told me to believe in miracles.

Two weeks later, I received an acceptance letter to the Savannah College and Design.  Two days after that, my mom and I were in her car, in the driveway, examining a AAA TripTik she had made for the visit to the school. 

"My friend Cindy gave me a audiobook all about Savannah," she said as she started the car.  "She said we'll love it.  It tells about all of the popular places in town."  She slid the abridged audiobook of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil into the car's CD player.

The trip took four hours, and we arrived in downtown Savannah as the story ended.  "What in the hell kind of place are you wanting to move to?" my mother asked. 

Midnight was ubiquitous in downtown Savannah when I moved there in 1995.  There were Midnight tours and Midnight tourists.  Midnight landmarks.  Entire stores were dedicated to hawking Midnight merchandise.  I thought there might be a time when it would get old, but in the spring of 1996 it was announced that Clint Eastwood would be directing the Midnight movie, and the frenzy began anew. 

A year later Savannah was overrun by production crews.  Filming around the downtown area was constant, and every day became a scavenger hunt to find out where Clint Eastwood and his camera would pop up next.  On one of these days my phone rang.

"You've got to come over here," my friend Dave said.  "They're setting up a scene right outside our window." 

Dave's apartment on the corner of Liberty and Habersham was quite a place.  It made the crappy hotel where everyone went to do heroin in the movie Traffic look like the Four Seasons.  Once I was walking through the place in my socks and the biggest roach I had ever seen ran under my foot right as I was taking a step.  It exploded with a sound like a gunshot as I crushed it and soaked the sole of my sock with black, putrid goo.  Once I was going over to make lasagna and Chris, another friend of mine who shared the apartment with Dave, called to warn me to stay home.  The entire building's plumbing had backed up and raw sewage was filling up their bathtub and sinks.  "There a piece of crap that's not even ours just floating in the tub," he told me.  None of that really matters when you're twenty, however, and it was a place great hang out.

When I arrived, the scene was already set and I lied to security that I needed to get to my apartment.  They let me through, and the three of us watched the scene from a small, junk-filled room in the back of their place.  John Cusack was there in a suit and sunglasses.  Clint Eastwood was behind the camera.  Lady Chablis walked around the corner, and John Cusack surprised her with a bouquet of flowers he pulled from behind his back.

"That's such a John Cusack thing to do," said Chris.  "Does he play the same guy in every movie?"

Lady Chablis walked back around the corner and suddenly the set was flooded with loud punk rock.  Everyone on set looked in the general direction of our window.

"And there goes Pinball Sex Machine," said Dave.

Pinball Sex Machine was a popular local band and some of the members lived in the ground floor apartment in the red brick building next door.  They were well known on the block for their loud practices, and they rarely got going this early in the day.  One of the production assistants went running across the set and disappeared from our view.  The music stopped.  Those involved with the production went back to setting up for the next take and a moment later the production assistant walked back to his place behind the camera. 

"Let's go," we heard Clint Eastwood say.  Lady Chablis walked around the corner again, John Cusack produced the flowers again, and Pinball Sex Machine rocked out again. 

It was no mystery what they wanted.  Clint Eastwood stepped down from where he was sitting, calmly walked across the set, and disappeared from our line of sight. 

I often wondered about the words he said to them and how they were delivered.  I'm sure that he was very polite, asked them to please stop so he could get his job done, and thanked them for their cooperation.  Then again, I've read that if you combined the characters that Clint Eastwood has portrayed, the body count of those who have crossed him numbers somewhere near 375.  If characters truly become part of an actor, what did the members of Pinball Sex Machine see in his eyes? 

I imagine that Harry Callahan's .44 Magnum would be no match for Clint Eastwood's glare. 

Clint Eastwood walked back across the set, Lady Chablis got her flowers, and the crew began breaking down the scene.  Pinball Sex Machine never got going again, so I figured that whatever they got from Clint Eastwood, they were satisfied.

That, or they were dead.