Dream it never ends
I have always hated the word “nostalgia.”
It cheapens our complex relationship with the past. How can circling back to the touchstones of our youth ever be reduced to such a flat, cardboard word?
Nearly 50 years ago, I was a 14-year-old girl with big feelings who became enraptured by the movie Phantom of the Paradise. As most locals know, Brian De Palma’s outlandish 1974 fusion of rock musical, gothic horror romance and savage satire was a box-office flop that mysteriously became a long-running sensation only in Winnipeg.
20th CENTURY FOX
Paul Williams as Swan and Jessica Harper as Phoenix captured the imagination of a generation of Winnipeg kids.
When it caught fire here in early 1975, I experienced it at least three times, taking the bus downtown from St. Vital with my 13-year-old neighbour, Patti. Other “phanatics” far outdid me, returning to the Garrick to see it dozens of times.
Some of those superfans, the instigators of local Phantompalooza gatherings, have organized the 50th-anniversary Phantom screenings set for the Burton Cummings Theatre this afternoon and evening, with cast members present.
Back in 1975, I bought and obsessively listened to the soundtrack LP, which sold 20,000 copies in the Peg. I also bought the book of piano music, which I still have, complete with its $4.35 pricetag. That school year, restless with surging hormones, I had quit classical piano lessons — to my mother’s dismay — in favour of playing songs that spoke to me.
Paul Williams, who starred as Swan, the diabolical, nostalgia-peddling music producer, was also the composer of the divine soundtrack. In June 1975, when the 34-year-old songwriter was parachuted into the Centennial Concert Hall for two sold-out concerts, I was in the audience.
It’s embarrassing to think that we girls essentially became Swan’s fawning groupies from the movie. (Williams, a very small blond man, was a suitably soft, non-threatening sex symbol for teenyboppers.)
I did recognize at the time that he was a superb songwriter who had penned hits such as We’ve Only Just Begun and An Old Fashioned Love Song.
One of the sinister threads in Phantom is the entitlement of powerful men in the entertainment industry. De Palma depicts both the artistic exploitation of the composer Winslow (William Finley) and the sexual exploitation of young women who are hungry for approval and success.
The question of why Phantom connected so deeply with Winnipeggers aged roughly 10 to 14 has been insightfully explored, notably by Doug Carlson in an amazingly comprehensive online essay called Why Winnipeg? The 1975 Phantom Phenomenon.
Carlson, who was 10 during the craze, shares this wonderful memory of kids embodying and reworking the film: “By day, across the city, elementary and junior high schoolyards were witness to our very own passion play, as we acted out scenes from the movie during lunch hours and recess (I was always Winslow, if you’re curious).”
Today, the movie is more than a cult curiosity, with such ardent fans as horror director Guillermo del Toro. I now “get” that Phantom is a feast of references to other films, but as kids we absorbed it in a pure way, as a timeless melodrama wrapped in a dazzling rock ‘n’ roll package.
By playing the LP over and over, then circling back to the cinema and singing along, we became participants in the spectacle.
20th CENTURY FOX
William Finley (left) played the naive songwriter deceived by producer Swan (Williams).
I have only seen Phantom once in all the intervening years. Watching some of the musical numbers now on YouTube, what amazes me is that my favourite part, when the ingenue Phoenix (Jessica Harper) breaks into dance after singing Special to Me, is extremely brief. I love the fact that in my imagination it stretched out, at least three times longer.
In the art magazine Border Crossings, Meeka Walsh once wrote that in Winnipeg, a place of flat terrain, geographic isolation, harsh climate and lack of wealth, “it is necessary to dream a city.”
In the bleak winter of 1975, we collectively dreamed that we belonged inside a wild, exhilarating trip of a low-budget movie that was goth and glam, campy and sexy, strange and affecting. Could there be a movie with a more fringey spirit? We were fringing before it was a thing.
I believe Phantom found its audience because of Winnipeg’s funky, quirky, wise old soul — a soul shaped by hardships such as the 1919 General Strike and the 1950 flood, and by generations of music-making and play-acting in defiance of flatness and emptiness. It’s in the blood.
I wasn’t planning to attend the 50th-anniversary celebration. But as it approached, I realized I had to be there, especially to honour the 84-year-old Williams in person.
My eyes just filled with tears as I typed the word “honour.” This is something so much richer than nostalgia.
Fifty years on, we have grey hair and some of our Phantom-loving friends are sadly no longer with us. But we’re still dreaming. Let’s honour ourselves for once being the kids with the weirdest, best taste in the entire world.
Credit: Dream it never ends
