This Thursday evening — and again, early next Monday morning — Turner Classic Movies is running They Shoot Horses, Don't They? This was the 1969 feature directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Gig Young in a downer tale about old time marathon dances. Depressing? No more than watching small, helpless animals die. But the film was oddly entertaining in its way.
I saw it twice when it first came out, both times at the Picwood Theater in West Los Angeles. The first viewing was with a bunch of guys I knew, one of whom I discovered that afternoon had a dread fear of the cinema device known as the Flash Forward. He believed that films should be structured in a linear, chronological manner with one event after another. He could occasionally tolerate a flashback because, after all, in real life we sometimes talk about things that occurred in the past. But we do not have a clear glimpse of the future and this fellow hated it when a movie did.
They Shoot Horses contains a couple of Flash Forwards. When the first one came on the screen, we all felt our friend freeze and shudder. Softly, we could all hear him mutter, "Oh, dear God…no. Not Flash Forwards!" The second time, he rocked in his seat as if slammed in the face and after that, he sat there whimpering until the next one. When the third Flash Forward occurred, that was all he could take. He jumped to his feet and screamed out, "No, no! Not Flash Forwards! NOT FLASH FORWARDS!!!" And he began squeezing past everyone's feet, trying to get to the aisle with the same urgency as if the theater was ablaze. Everyone told him to shut the hell up but there was no stopping the guy. In fact, he couldn't understand how the rest of us were sitting there so peacefully, pretending to be enjoying a movie that contained the unspeakable horror of Flash Forwards.
When he reached the aisle, he sprinted up and out of the theater. Being true friends, we decided to just forget about him and enjoy the film, which we did. After it was over, we found him sitting in the lobby with half a box of Milk Duds, still shivering and murmuring to himself, "Flash Forwards…brrr…"
A few days later, walking in Westwood, I ran into a young lady I'd known casually in high school and lusted after from afar. This was early 1970, as I recall…seven months or so after we'd both graduated and gone our separate ways. We got to talking and as I attempted to angle the conversation around to the topic of perhaps dating, she noticed a bus go by with an ad on it for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Unknowingly making my job easy, she said, "You know, I really want to see that movie. Have you seen it?" I said no — not the biggest lie a male ever told a female, but a lie nonetheless. When I suggested we view it together the following Saturday evening, she agreed and even offered to drive since I didn't. (I started to ask her, "You aren't bothered by Flash Forwards, are you?" but didn't just in case she was and that would cause her to cancel.)
As dates went it was among the worst of my life, starting with the moment she picked me up and I asked her how she was feeling. She began a non-stop monologue about how she hated her mother, loathed her father, wanted to see her brothers and sisters all killed in a fiery car crash, thought her boss at work should be in prison, was deep in debt, hadn't slept in weeks, thought all men were evil and was experiencing menstrual problems that were agonizing to her and everyone around her. This went on all the way to dinner, throughout the meal and up until the moment the movie began. The graphic descriptions of her cramps and bleeding were expertly timed to coincide with the arrival of our entrees at the restaurant. I didn't eat a lot.
Finally, we made it to the Picwood and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The people exiting from the previous showing looked depressed because, well, the film just had that effect on the normal person. Having listened to Sunshine Sally for the previous hour and a half, I was thoroughly dejected on the way in and I recall thinking, "Boy, I'm really going to be cheery by the time this is over." But an odd thing happened when the movie started. My lady friend loved it. The cynicism and pessimism didn't bother her one bit…and neither did the Flash Forwards. She just sat there, enjoying the hell out of the movie. The more miserable the people were on the screen, the more she liked it. In the first scene where one of the main characters dies (I won't tell you which one in case you haven't seen it), she had a big grin on her face and she emitted a small but audible cheer. The worse things got for the people on the screen, the more she liked it.
I was so amazed at my date's reaction that I hardly watched the film at all. At the end, she was happier than when she'd gone in and I had to ask her why. The answer was along the lines of, "It cheers me up to see people whose lives are so much worse off than mine." She told me that sometimes, she liked to page through the newspaper, savoring all the stories about people who'd died in horrible accidents. I guess I can understand that…but not really. This was not exactly schadenfreude. It was some sort of even more perverse enjoyment of the misery of others.
After that, she drove me home, parking a few doors away so, I guess, we could engage in a bit of physical contact without the chance that my parents would look out the window and see us. I think that's what she had in mind but for the only time in my adolescent life, I wasn't interested in any of that. I didn't know if she'd have a bad time if she liked it or a good time if she didn't. Matter of fact, I felt like I needed to end that date a.s.a.p. and did. There was no second date.
I haven't seen They Shoot Horses, Don't They? since then. I've set my TiVo and I'm going to watch it in the next week or so, but first I'm going to try to get myself in the same frame of mind as that lady. She obviously enjoyed it a lot more than I did. You will too if you watch it from her point of view. Especially if you don't mind Flash Forwards.