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Behind the scenes at Emulsion Compulsion

May 10th, 2008 by Scott Marks

54 could be the most underrated American film of the 1990s. Start with the dialectical…

I’m kidding. What do you take me for? I’ve had more entertainment in burn wards.

Aside from the babes, this thing is unclean, but on a personal level, it holds great sentimental significance. I became buddies with Charles Mxyzptlk (an alias, his first name isn’t Charles) in the late 80s when I stumbled into Flashback Collectibles’ Belmont Ave. location. We’ve remained close friends for over twenty years…well, as close as anyone is allowed to get to him. Hey, he actually took time away from the store (a rarity) to come to Columbia College for my big Jerry Lewis interview. Pop culture maven that he is, Charles was shocked when he didn’t see a piano on stage for our guest to sing Great Balls of Fire.

Charlie Flashback(s), as the mental patients who frequented the store liked to call him, is my partner in this virtual insane asylum. I pee celluloid and my site consort never goes to the movies. 54 is not only the last film we saw together, it’s the only film we ever saw together and that includes home video. (He did once slip me a couple of Traci Lords videos which I immediately burned.)

Talking to Charles about film is like talking to me about sports. Give it up. Once in a while I will slip up and start rambling about a new movie and through the phone lines between San Diego and a bunker on the Chicago/Wisconsin border, I can hear Charles looking at his watch.

Charles and I constantly fight. Who else is going to talk to us? He supports Operation Free Iraq and I swear by passive resistance. He’s a tekkie and I’m all about aesthetics. Charles made his fortune selling Brady Bunch lunchboxes and John Wayne Gacy t-shirts. When O. J. Simpson commited double-murder, Charlie was the first man in Chicago to cash in on the tragedy and I was there to help!

When I stumbled across this ad in an old copy of Premiere Magazine, I had to laugh. If the motion picture industry relied on guys like Charlie to keep box office cash registers ringing we’d all be in the dark watching television.

I asked Charlie if there wasn’t one movie that he actually considered seeing in a theater over the past twenty years. There was one: ***Timpanl*** Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. At first I thought he said Benie Stein, former owner of the Golf Mill Theatre where we saw our one and only picture together.

It wasn’t the Golf Mill goniff, but a right wing documentary about Bush’s pet version of Scientoloty written by an “actor” who was discovered by John Hughes. I’m sure the visuals were as compelling as Stein’s patronizing, monotone delivery.

Unfortunately the film bypassed San Diego on its way to airplanes for I would surely love to explore the only movie that Charles almost saw.

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