Culture Junkie: You only live once, but you can see stuff twice

I remember a conversation I once had with a famous Bay Area stand-up comic. At one point in our interview, he told me that, though he loves to watch movies, he’s never seen any film – even movies he truly enjoyed – more than one time. With only a handful of exceptions, he’s never seen any motion picture twice.

“There are so many great films in the world that I haven’t seen yet, and I’m not getting any younger,” he argued. “Why would I waste the time I have left watching a movie I’ve already seen?”

That was about 20 years ago.

Ever since, whenever I recall this short exchange, I can’t help wondering how someone so smart and talented could be so utterly and incontestably wrong. If I’ve learned anything from my 60+ years consuming movies, music, stage plays, TV shows, video games and books, it’s that when it comes to a truly engaging creative endeavor, there is no such thing as wasted time. Every second spent in the presence of a great piece of art, whether for the first time or the hundredth, is time well spent.

The reason should be obvious. In art, if you are looking for it and open to it, there is almost always something new to discover.

I remember seeing Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” in its initial release in the spring of 1979. I was 19 years old, living in Downey, California. As my friends and I walked into that theater in Orange County, I glanced at a poster for the buzzed-about Vietnam film I was about to see, with the prominent headline: “The first time, it will dazzle your senses. The second time, you’ll see it for the first time.”

I recall scoffing at it to my friends, offended at the bald commercial obviousness of that line, likening it to the posters for “Jaws” that sprang up everywhere in the wake of Spielberg’s blockbuster shark thriller nearly four years before: “’JAWS’: SEE IT 10 TIMES!” For what it’s worth, I’d probably seen “Jaws” at least 12 times by the time I saw “Apocalypse Now,” but that was beside the point. To me, telling someone that you’d need to watch a film more than once to appreciate it properly smelled like something a desperate advertising team would come up with to sell more tickets.

And yet, as the poster promised, “Apocalypse Now” did dazzle my senses. The experience was so overwhelming, I knew by the time the credits rolled that I would, in fact, be seeing it again. Perhaps not 10 times, but at least once or twice more. As it turns out, the poster was right about the other part too. When I saw the film again a few weeks later, it was as if I were seeing it for the first time, as the overwhelm I’d initially experienced the first time lessened enough to let me notice things I’d entirely overlooked before.

I was thinking about this last Friday night, when I went to see the outstanding two-person play “Stones In His Pockets,” at Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park. The brilliantly-crafted Irish comedy-drama by Marie Jones is currently running (weekends through Sept. 10), and features Petaluma’s Jimmy Gagarin and Oakland’s Sam Coughlin. In an astonishing act of quick-switch theatrical magic, the two actors play a total of 15 characters in the sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, always entertaining story of a small village in Ireland that becomes a movie set when a Hollywood production company arrives to shoot a splashy historical epic. Like jugglers keeping 15 flaming torches in the air – without ever dropping one, burning themselves or setting the place on fire – Jones’ play requires actors to take on a theatrical feat most people would have no idea how to pull off.

Such is the wonder of art.

This was not the first time I’d seen “Stones in His Pockets.” I saw a production once before, over 18 years ago, in May of 2005, at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse. It featured Dodds Delzell and Steven Abbott. Like this new effort, it was directed by Sheri Lee Miller.

For what it’s worth, Miller – for years one of Sonoma County’s most consistently excellent, emotionally intuitive and technically impressive directors – has proven only-slightly-less-reluctant than the aforementioned comic to repeat herself, rarely ever electing to direct a play she’s done in the past. So it says something about the script’s unforgettable appeal and promise that “Stones in His Pockets” – which received loud critical acclaim in its 2005 run – is one she decided to return to nearly two decades later.

As someone who’s been waiting all this time just to see another production of it, I should first say that, oh my god, was it ever worth the wait.

On a bare set surrounded by audience seating on three sides in a thrust-style arrangement, with its only set being a low stone wall stretching across the stage and a large screen onto which are projected a few bucolic landscapes to subtly establish the environment, Gagarin and Coughlin deliver two of the best, most charming and delightful performances I’ve seen in the North Bay in years. Jones’ script is full of characters we instantly recognize, each brought to life by clear shifts in the actors’ postures, accents, facial expressions and vocal choices. We meet dreamers and fighters and users and losers, the hopeful, the hardened, the loved and the lost. And the second act dance scene, when the pair give us the movie’s big ending celebration scene by dancing their way through most of the play’s colorful characters, is so good I can’t wait to see it again.

Which brings me back to my original point. There are countless reasons why someone would want to catch a play, see a movie or read a book twice, or even more.

There are books I’ve read at least once every five or 10 years for much of my life: Kenneth Graham’s “The Wind in the Willows,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” and “Sweet Thursday,” John Irving’s “The Hotel New Hampshire,” Madeline L’engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.” Not only is it pleasant to return to characters I’ve come to think of as old friends, as I grow older and gain experience (and hopefully a bit of wisdom), I bring new understanding to each re-reading, often – as that “Apocalypse Now” poster suggested – experiencing the book as if for the first time.

A couple of months ago, I saw the opening night of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s vampire drama “Let the Right One In,” and after purchasing and devouring the script, returned for the final performance a month later. Now that I’d had a chance to really absorb what I’d seen the first time by immersing myself in the play’s written version, I wanted to see if watching another live performance would be an even richer experience – and it was.

I’ve currently seen Wes Anderson’s sneakily ingenious recent film “Asteroid City” four times in the movie theater, and another one-and-a-half times on television. Because I discover more in the movie every time i see it, I genuinely love and appreciate it more with each new viewing.

Two weeks ago, I traveled down to San Rafael to see Marin Shakespeare Company’s delightful “Twelfth Night” (running through Sept. 3), a play I’ve seen at least a dozen times over the last 40 years, in vastly different productions. I don’t always enjoy what a particular director brings to Shakespeare’s gender-bending romantic farce of a play, but it’s a genuine joy to see how entirely different the show can be depending on the choices made in interpreting it. In this case, director Bridgette Loriaux has solved some of the text’s trickier issues with a risky series of bold alterations – one might even call them revolutionary – that effectively turns the slightly-icky original ending solidly on its head.

As for “Stones in His Pockets,” I’d waited 18 years to see another production in part because I remembered the 2005 version so fondly, and partly because I wanted to see what other actors would do with the same material. Since this version has the same director, it’s also fun to see if Miller’s own eye and ear have changed, to notice where she makes similar choices to the last time, and where she might have gone in a different direction. As a lover of theater, such games are invariably rewarding. Though I honestly couldn’t say that one production is better than the other, I can say that I’m grateful to have been able to see two such extraordinary stagings of a script that, no matter how many times I see it, never stops delivering surprises.

And yes, I probably will see "Stones in His Pockets“ again before the end of its run. Until then, if you’ll excuse me, I have the rest of my sixth viewing of “Asteroid City” to finish.

David Templeton’s “Culture Junkie” runs once a month (give or take) in the Argus-Courier. Contact him at [email protected].