Six minutes. An eternity in the sack for your average American male, but a mere blip when you’re trying to wrestle a movie away from Don Murray. Or Jack Warden. But if you’re Carolyn Jones – yes, that Carolyn Jones, the sexy matriarch from The Addams Family – it’s all you really need, no more no less. See, if you’re going to secure an Oscar nomination for a mere 360 seconds of screen time, you’d better make viewers believe you wandered on set from another movie altogether. Perhaps another planet. For if Jones’ The Existentialist (writer Paddy Chayefsky’s sly turn) is anything, she’s the odd woman out. A freak among squares. The only honest human being in a culture that sold its soul to the body snatchers.
Had The Existentialist simply been a passerby, you’d still have taken a second look. Those eyes, a delightful mashup of Bette Davis and Marty Feldman, would force even the haughtiest New Yorker to pause curbside. She just looks like someone with something to say. And that haircut, like no one else in America at the time; part pixie, part madwoman with a bullet still in the chamber. She could take you aside for a philosophical coffee break or homicidal setup. Her choice, depending on how much sleep she got the night before. Though I’m betting it wasn’t much. As she says, apropos of nothing, “Promise you’ll wait, cause I can’t stand being alone at night.” Invitation to her feather bed? Perhaps, though it could just as easily be a demand to absorb her endless banter like a blow to the kidneys.
Again, six minutes. But when you don’t stop talking, it can seem more like sixty. On and on she goes, tossing a Baudelaire reference into an otherwise endless monologue about paying her rent. From her landlord to the old man on her shoulder just moments before, she’s feet-in-concrete convinced that everyone is in love with her. Maybe they are. With Mamie Eisenhower about, buttoned up to the chin, here’s to the raven beauty who may or may not swallow you whole. What’s her story? Where’s she from? Does she have a hubby and kids and loyal pup stashed away in Queens? It’s not important. It’s enough that she’s a vision of life where chaos noses out sour stability and marital boredom.
On this night, Charlie is her audience. Standing room only, until it’s time to test the mattress. He’s newly married himself, with a baby on the way, and he’s tired. Tired in that way unique to the sort of man who regrets everything not nailed down since he first put on the ring. Charlie, like all of his companions on this night of drinking, laughter, and reflection, is sniffing around the city for a reason – any reason – not to return home, but only Charlie actually manages some one-on-one time. “You’ll like me,” she says, “I’m supposed to be very amusing.” In spades, dear, and likely much, much more. As Charlie does a quick assessment, The Existentialist sharpens her blade: “Just say you love me. You don’t have to mean it.” Like the lowering of the drawbridge. Cue embrace, hard kiss, and the woman you’ll pine for until they administer last rites.
A meeting is promised, only she doesn’t show. Charlie figured as much, but he was there nonetheless. Just in case. Because a kiss like that holds a promise or two. Not having a name, address, or DNA sample, she’ll fade into the night like Charlie’s hopes and dreams since the bun hit the oven. Maybe she never really existed at all. A ghost. A specter of what could have been had he not done life by the book. Over a lifetime – hell, a long weekend – the chick would have driven you to a previously unknown state of insanity. If you hadn’t killed her, you would have tried, and even night school is better than Rikers. But for those six dreamlike minutes, a shot. A chance. A moment to savor. For the long, cold winters to come.
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