Hey, isn't that Cuba...?

I was driving to the downtown library Saturday afternoon and a police officer walked up to my car while I was stopped at a red light. He asked me to wait a light-cycle. I saw some of the crowd activity a few blocks earlier, and figured there must be filming being done today for "End Game". (Most of the filming is being done at Gonzaga University...here's a picture from the one of major action scenes.)

So, while waiting I had a front row seat for a police car driving scene, with squealing tire stunt-driving. Pretty cool. After I finished checking out a heavy load of books from the library, I walked over to Brew Bros. Espresso. There were bystanders watching the production crew set up things, there were people with walkie-talkies, but there didn't seem to be much happening. So I dug into my Wallace Stevens research, and looked up occasionally to see if anything neat was going on outside. Then, I see this man sprinting down the street with a gun in his hand...yup, it was Cuba Gooding Jr.

It was interesting to see how fascinated we all are when it comes to Hollywood movie stars and to see an actual movie being made. I find the logistics of it fascinating, and the complexity of putting a story into action and filming it in segments. And of course I'm excited to see "End Game" when it comes out and see if my white Subaru is in that one scene, and the college kid's face is visible looking out the window of Brew Bros. while Cuba runs by. (Don't even know what the camera angle is.) My real story, my car, can become part of this fictional story on screen, but will still be a part of the "filming of" story on this particular day in Spokane.

The point is, we have all the unique stories of our lives, which are constantly changing and growing--some days are more Oscar-worthy than others. We're enraptured by movies, especially action ones, because it allows us to escape our own lives and enter in to another time and place, to closely observe the story of another person's (fictitious, but reality-based) life. We can escape our own madness, and watch characters either more complicated or less complicated struggle with life events, and we will be entertained. The essential pleasure, however, is in the momentary escape, the distraction if offers us. And when Cuba's stunt double came in to get an espresso drink, I thought about what his real story might be, who he loves, and why would three Japanese students want their picture taken with him (did they really think he was Cuba?)... and how we all have events in our lives worthy of a "movie scene". Put some headphone music on while walking downtown, get the right CD in the car for that road trip across the state, and that's a movie scene--just without the film rolling.