Above is a picture of Paul Zahl, the dean of a prominent Episcopalian divinity school. He's my oldest friend. We met when we were 12 years-old and he introduced me to Famous Monsters Of Filmland -- and the rest is history. We were both somewhat nerdy bookworms who shared a (for me anyway) life-changing realization -- that we could apply our intellectual powers to the stuff we really loved, like movies and monster movies in particular . . . that we could take them seriously. That gave me, among other things, a vocation in life -- filmmaking -- as well as a source of never-ending intellectual joy. It meant, for example, reversing the dynamic, that I could find as much fun in Shakespeare as I did in The Bride Of Frankenstein -- that I didn't have to make the sort of value judgments between forms that official high culture uses to diminish the prestige (and disguise the power) of the popular arts and to turn the classics into dust.
Paul and I quickly discovered another classmate, Bill Bowman, who shared our love of horror films, and like so many other children of Famous Monsters in our generation we immediately started making our own versions of the classics in 8mm, and these little epics survive as testaments to our passion.
Paul and I hadn't seen each other for more than two decades but when he showed up for a visit last weekend we started jabbering away at each other with all the excitement we shared as teenagers -- talking about The Searchers, The Bride (as we always called the mother of all Universal horror films), Blake, Dylan and theology in a continuum of appreciation that crackled with the action of genuine intellectual adventure.
The eclectic craziness of Las Vegas helps encourage this way of thinking about things, in which disparate visions illuminate and deepen each other. We sat on the terrace of Mon Ami Gabi at the edge of a recreation of Paris, within sight of a recreation of ancient Rome and an evocation of Lake Como and discussed the plastic eloquence of John Ford, the precise relationship of incarnation and atonement in the Gospels, the sly wisdom of Bob Dylan and the best images in The Creature From the Black Lagoon . . . as though all in the same breath.
It was the sort of thing we had given each other permission to do in our youth and I realized again what a blessing that permission truly was.
Paul brought with him a gift -- the February 1963 issue of Famous Monsters, the legendary double issue on The Bride Of Frankenstein with the stunning cover by Basil Gogos. When we saw this cover for the first time at a newsstand, when we were 13 years-old, our pulses quickened. Looking at it now, my blood still runs high. It's just cool. Always was, always will be.
