I feel I need to apologize on behalf of my fifteen-year-old daughter Poppy and three of her pals. From what she has told me (in between fits and giggles), she terrorized you and a friend in both the lobby and parking lot of the Regal 14 Cineplex on the afternoon of Friday, May 20. I’m sure you recall the unfortunate incident.
I am a teacher and spring is a difficult time to teach. Although I don’t recall you playing any teachers (holy cow, a lot of cop roles though!), you did play the most famous teacher ever in The Last Temptation of Christ so you must understand where I’m coming from. Anyway, on Thursday in between classes, I received an email with the subject heading “pirates”. Then the message read “hy dad wil u tke me malina amelia and ben to pirates AT 7 2MARROW?” Willem, did I fail to mention that I’m an English teacher? Yes, you’d be disappointed too, I’m sure. However, I still agreed to take Poppy and her friends home from school on Friday and then drive them to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean on opening day. Willem, I’m sure you’ve met Johnny Depp (is he as nice as he seems?) and want to wish the bank accounts of your fellow thespians to be fatter than both Weinstein brothers at an all-you-can-eat buffet, yet as a man who has taught Hamlet fifteen years in a row, I had a hard time taking on the role of “excited” for this premiere.
From my flimsy research, I know you have a son but have you ever seen a gaggle of fifteen-year-old girls and one boy tear through a modest house looking for props and costumes? Perhaps it could be reminiscent of your early years with Project X at the University of Wisconsin (more flimsy research). I walked the high school stage in plays by Max Frisch and Ionesco, so I recalled the erratic behavior as I watched Poppy and her pals grab sashes and eyeliner. Willem, man to man, they believed they looked like pirates. Their appearance, however, truly resembled a community college production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with costumes stolen from the Salvation Army’s dumpster. It was sad, W.
So I drove these geeks-now-freaks in my modest car, windows down, music blaring (ah, youth!) down back roads, passersby craning their necks. The company stumbled out of my Honda almost an hour before show time and that’s when they saw you coming out of some film. Poppy tells me it was her friend Malina who spotted you first. “Is that the Green Goblin?” she asked her fellow cross dressers, rope dangling from her hand. Malina and her fellow innocents sadly do not know your fine work on Platoon (a pivotal movie in my childhood) Mississippi Burning, or Basquiat. They know you only as James Franco’s dad (which makes you doubly cool if such notoriety matters).
I’m not sure who shouted your character’s name first: Malina in her Captain Jack/Jane Sparrow outfit, Poppy in a pink hairpiece that barely stayed on her head, Amelia in her red velvet robe and Marilyn Monroe wig, or eye-patch-wearing Ben who said he could recognize your award-winning smile with only one eye. From all reports, you heard “Green Goblin! Green Goblin!” shouted repeatedly by a short campily-dressed mob shaking ropes and mysterious bags and you ran. I don’t blame you, Willem Dafoe. I would have run too. They said they chased you out of the lobby and into the parking lot where you hid behind a battalion of cars, an evasive maneuver obviously gleaned from Inside Man or perhaps a movie I hope Poppy will never watch, American Psycho.
In closing, I want to say that the behavior of a few teenagers (albeit freakishly dressed) does not reflect the tone or flavor of Santa Fe and its inhabitants. Then again, maybe it does.