No longer afraid of clowns

 

From the desk of Dan Price...

I grew up scared of clowns.

As a young boy, I would see them in my dreams. A smiling face is seen at first glance, followed by a journey into the eyes of the clown…and suddenly into a world of make-believe. Yes, a little on the scary side back then… but not now.

As we age, we look back at what made us twinge during our adolescence. Those scary little things at the end of the block, the sounds in the forest, or maybe a face-to-face encounter with a wiggly four-legged creature we had never seen before as we tighten our grip on the adult nearby — the adult smiling at us, as we, the child, explore new things and widen our little world step by step.

And then, decades later came the 1986 thriller Blue Velvet with Dean Stockwell singing The Candy Colored Clown, to a group of misfits in a room that included actor Dennis Hopper, the one actor who never needed to wear a mask to get his point across.

At the same time, I was en route to a time in my life that was often referred to as middle age, where an endless display of Halloween movies appeared and suddenly I was a kid again, sitting with my eyes closed, trying desperately to avoid the next scene.

I guess that’s why I reverted to Western movies.

I was comfortable with a bag of popcorn, some milk duds, a soda, and a larger-than-life character on the screen who resembled more on the line of a Robert Taylor, a Glenn Ford…or the man who never needed to clown around: John Wayne.

Then came Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, the 2019 psychological thriller, an instant Best Actor Award for Phoenix, despite the film’s unsettling look into mental illness.

It took me three settings before I finally witnessed Joker from start to finish — all 122 minutes.

I guess it is safe now to bring in the clowns.