Danger Third Rail Is Alive.

I saw Cloverfield.  Online listings say the movie is one hour and twenty-four minutes long.  I don't know.  But I watched all of it, right down to the green PG-13 screen that appears just before the theater lights come back on.

Then I walked out on to 42nd street and headed for the McDonalds.  I ordered an apple pie.  The counter man corrected me, asking: "Two apple pies?"  Sure.  It was a buck forty-two.  I thought it was ninety-nine cents, but no matter.  I gobbled the first pie standing inside the entrance, holding my bags.  Then I went out on to the street and looked at the cops on the horses.  I wanted to ask them would they protect me if the Cloverfield monster really came.  I mean, what a stupid question, of course they'd try.  But they're not idiots.  We all know what happened seven and a half years ago.  Trying isn't enough.  Still, it occurred to me to ask.  And I found myself throwing a dollar in the cardboard box in front of the homeless guy at the base of the stairs on the NRQW platform.  He was holding a cat, which needed a bath, but it looked healthy, if tired.  I felt pity, or affection.  And I was thankful for the guy upstairs with the drum machine and the synthesiser; and watching a mother and her adult daughter stilt down into the station on their high heels was particularly sweet.

I waited on the NRQW platform for only a minute or two before the train came.  I had time to eat my second pie, and see the sign.  "DANGER Third Rail is Alive."  Well, obviously.  It was a paper sign, taped to a steel support beam.  Maybe they'd been doing track work and the power had been off.  And when you turn it back on, you hang a sign, so everybody knows.

The movie scared the daylights out of me.  I wish I hadn't seen it alone.  It's much nicer to have her to comfort when something awful happens, holding hands tight as if you could squeeze the fear out, crush it into a safe, tingling nothing.  It would have been good, too, with someone else, just a friend, both of us pushed back into the synthetic velour of our seats, each tentatively aware of the other, wondering: is he scared?  More, or less, than me?

The movie didn't make complete sense.  Liberties were taken.  An awful lot of power stayed on.  And the subway tunnels were unreasonably dim--your eyes adjust, after all.  And what about that Third Rail?  Maybe it's off, maybe it isn't, but Every New Yorker would debate the matter before hazarding a stroll on the tracks.

And just how long does a video camera battery last these days, anyway?

But the joy of the movie was that it left so many other more interesting questions unanswered.  Scary stories always do.   Cloverfield is smart enough to have the characters speculate because they're scared, and their lives are at stake, and something has got to make sense.  But while they speculate fruitlessly--no lucky guesses help explain the
story--we all want to know: where did it come from?  Why is it here?  What Does It Want, for God's sake, and what's it going to do next?  We, the audience, only get an answer to the last one, and hardly a complete answer at that.

Seeing a scary movie with someone else is comforting.  It draws you together.  But walking out of the movie by myself I found my world brighter and more precious--bless the cat and the man with the box!--and I had time to stop and watch myself feel that way.  And I felt the freedom to write it down without hurrying off somewhere else.  And so, I hope, I have shared a little bit of the feeling with you.

Or would it have been better if we'd held hands?

I don't know.