By Kevin Sweeney

I now think Jack Nicholson telling Tom Cruise
he couldn’t handle the truth in A Few Good Men
was similar to George C. Scott telling Paul Newman
he didn’t lose to Jackie Gleason in The Hustler
because he drank too much during long hours of
straight pool but that he didn’t know how to win.

I wonder if Tom Cruise, maybe a method actor,
pretended Jack’s accusatory comment referred to
Ellen Hurley from Glen Ridge NJ who turned down
Tom’s request to go to the prom before he was a
scientologist. Had Paul Newman’s Fast Eddie Felson
been a scientologist he wouldn’t have gone to this
one pool room where he got badly injured. Maybe if

he’d hung out at Chiefs Pool Room in the Monongahela
Valley where young guys would pay Johnny Onions to
pick up 6–packs at Sepesy’s. Johnny would require
a dime for the game of 8 ball he’d just won, a fee for
this illegal favor, then perhaps exit the back door of
Sepesy’s and keep the money. Certainly a truth

not easy to handle but a practical lesson for under–age
drinkers who’d one day see Jack Nicholson on TV,
courtside at Lakers games, flaunting more wealth than
the pittance they’d given Johnny Onions. It was time
to not be a loser but be Paul Newman as Fast Eddie
playing Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats a second time

and WINNING. Soon Paul would be the world’s most
handsome man then create pizzas and morning tea to
support social justice. I probably won’t ever watch
The Hustler again as I hated the sound of Paul screaming
when bad guys from Lawless America broke his thumbs.

Although Paul was about to die when he and Robert Redford
charged the Bolivian army as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid, they were both still–life alive when that movie ended.
Only we, the audience, would have to handle the truth
and try whenever possible not to lose.

By Kevin Sweeney

I Lost it at the Movies
with apologies to Pauline Kael

Some days life feels like Jack Nicholson’s nose
in Chinatown after Roman Polanski sticks in
that little knife and rips it open. Now with
a maimed face, you go about your business
making sure Los Angeles won’t lose its drinking
water though residual pain from the slash wakens
you in the night, but it’s 1937, so there’s no
Ibuprofen let alone Hydrocodone; you’re stuck
with aspirin and whiskey which would help
if you already knew that later in the film you’ll
get to sleep with Faye Dunaway who studied
theater at B.U. but in the movie she’s Evelyn
Mulwray; hence no boring stories of obscure
Boston bands with true artists. She’ll never
say “There was a time when my only friends
were the musicians in Cambridge coffee houses,”
so self–involved she doesn’t notice blood leaking
through that bandaged nose, dripping onto your
double–breasted beige suit, making you curse
the shoddy metaphysics of a God whose
word arrives through the prophet, a revelator
speaking only to you, the Moses of North
Broadway. “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

By Kevin Sweeney

One of the best things about the movie was Kirk Douglas
being blonde, like me, a fat 10 year old, so I gained hope
one day I too could have a chiseled face and muscles with
veins and not be afraid of heights, one day climb walls
while people above are throwing spears at me. Kirk was
tougher than Tony Curtis, tough as Ernest Borgnine
who jumped into a pit of wolves screaming “ODIN!” a
Scandinavian word that meant something other than “free
health care.” Vikings weren’t afraid of anything. Later
I heard some got shipwrecked near Ireland and swam
to shore where, after converting to Catholicism and
having sex with Irish wives, they fathered blonde blue–eyed
babies who looked like ME! I’d heard something similar
about the Spanish Armada survivors, which is why some
Irish babies had dark hair but were still as gloomy as the rest
of us. What I remember most is how Kirk didn’t kill
Tony, pondering a moment the possibility Tony was his
half–brother. Tony, afraid and seeing an opening, suddenly
killed Kirk, who, the end of the movie suggested, wasn’t
a bad guy, though no one would use an un–Viking word
like “sensitive.” So maybe the other lesson is that Irish
Catholic Guilt wasn’t born on the Emerald Isle but came
to us via those reasonable and sharing people of the
fjords who refuse to kill their own kin, believing, the
song about smiling on your brother still holds true

By Nancy Goldberg

My daughters sit snuggled on the corduroy couch,
a pottery bowl painted with splotches of blue and yellow
brushstrokes
overflowing with buttered and salted popcorn
occupying neutral territory between the cushions.
They are held captive by the princess, the farm boy,
a gorgeous gown, a pirate, duels of wit and brawn.
Sometimes, giants and revenge–seekers battle an army and win.
Sometimes, a farm boy can arise from being “mostly dead.”

I look at my daughters:
One is just starting to roll her eyes at my words,
shocking me daily with her newly sharpened voice,
her desire to wear skinny jeans and fish–tail braids.
Her older sister looks like a grown woman from the neck down,
and has freshly earned knowledge of how to navigate Geneva’s
trams,
but still has the full cheeks of girlhood marked by acne.

I’d like to encase them in a castle surrounded by a moat
until they’re ready to be buffeted,
but for now, they’re spellbound by a kiss,
as they watch the farm boy save the princess from death by blade.