Monday 30 March 2009
Based On A True Story
Coming out of the cinema after the film has finished, back of 10 at night kind of time. There is a homeless guy standing waiting at the exit, one I have seen before, though not the regular guy that sits crouched on the ground. He has the ragged older bloke look as he stands there with his inch stub of a polystyrene cup. Got any change, he asks, proffering his discoloured hands, clutching his receptacle. Sometimes I give money, sometimes I don’t. Tonight I do, saying, give me a second, I might have some. I pull out my wallet, and decide to give him a couple of pounds, searching out a few 50 pence pieces and a pound coin. As I do this, he asks what I saw, so I tell him.
He says he likes to get in and see a film sometimes, that there is one he’d really quite like to see at the moment. Its this true story, he says, about this group, four guys and a woman, and like one of them had super-powers. The Watchmen? I ask. Yeah, he says, then he explains how he found a newspaper, in the street, just the other week. The paper was from 1977, he makes this point clear, and it told the story about this group and how they attacked criminals. One of them had powers, though he wasn’t sure what those powers were, but the rest of them were just regular people. Though, he guesses, they’ll have changed that in the film, and no doubt they’ll have powers.
He told me how the police were happy for these folk to get the people they couldn’t get. But how that had changed when some like interfering politician or DA or someone get involved. So they had to put an end to it, except this one guy, with bandages over his face, and make up colouring them round his eyes, and mouth, who kept going. Through the conversation the guy seems to be a hybrid of Rorschach and the Joker. The conversation is weird and intense, I humour him, say how surprised I am not to have heard this and its news to me.
He steps towards me, confidentially, explaining how this guy walks up to the paedophiles and rapists, and he makes a stabbing motion to demonstrate what he does. A voice in my head gets a little nervous as he stands this close and goes through these motions, but I don’t really take it too seriously, I don’t really feel threatened, and the same voice questions my judgement. He goes into a rant about the legal system, how different and ineffectual the American system is compared to the Scottish, and how easy it is for bad people to get free, and kind of well obviously we need people who can make a difference.
He peters out after a bit of that, so I take that as my opening to leave, conscious of the fact that given the opportunity he will go on, conscious that I need to get home, conscious that its getting late and I have work in the morning, conscious that I can’t really say those things to a homeless guy. But we wish each other well and I get on my way, bemused by everything that just happened.
He says he likes to get in and see a film sometimes, that there is one he’d really quite like to see at the moment. Its this true story, he says, about this group, four guys and a woman, and like one of them had super-powers. The Watchmen? I ask. Yeah, he says, then he explains how he found a newspaper, in the street, just the other week. The paper was from 1977, he makes this point clear, and it told the story about this group and how they attacked criminals. One of them had powers, though he wasn’t sure what those powers were, but the rest of them were just regular people. Though, he guesses, they’ll have changed that in the film, and no doubt they’ll have powers.
He told me how the police were happy for these folk to get the people they couldn’t get. But how that had changed when some like interfering politician or DA or someone get involved. So they had to put an end to it, except this one guy, with bandages over his face, and make up colouring them round his eyes, and mouth, who kept going. Through the conversation the guy seems to be a hybrid of Rorschach and the Joker. The conversation is weird and intense, I humour him, say how surprised I am not to have heard this and its news to me.
He steps towards me, confidentially, explaining how this guy walks up to the paedophiles and rapists, and he makes a stabbing motion to demonstrate what he does. A voice in my head gets a little nervous as he stands this close and goes through these motions, but I don’t really take it too seriously, I don’t really feel threatened, and the same voice questions my judgement. He goes into a rant about the legal system, how different and ineffectual the American system is compared to the Scottish, and how easy it is for bad people to get free, and kind of well obviously we need people who can make a difference.
He peters out after a bit of that, so I take that as my opening to leave, conscious of the fact that given the opportunity he will go on, conscious that I need to get home, conscious that its getting late and I have work in the morning, conscious that I can’t really say those things to a homeless guy. But we wish each other well and I get on my way, bemused by everything that just happened.
# posted by remotepush @ 11:36 
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