ME AND PONCE

 

In writing something recently about Ted Turner, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Gone With The Wind, I was reminded of my earliest days here in the subtropics of South Florida as a refugee from Hollywood.

It was very early on, even before I had developed my formula for success as a then newly retired individual … an accomplishment on which few, who knew me as a Type A Hollywood personality, would have bet money.

I did not know then, nor had I come to fully appreciate, that if one were a truly compulsive individual, it would be possible to be as driven about doing nothing as it was to be equally possessed about doing something.

The year was 1995 … a little more than 12 months after TCM had made its debut …  initially not making too much of a dent. I had just moved to Miami, and like Ted Turner before me, I believed in the potential of the public’s interest in the classic movie genre. I posited I could capitalize on that concept and make a little money, while indulging my ego by hosting and moderating nights at the movies for subscribers at an appropriate local venue.

I thought I found such a place on Arthur Godfrey Road in Miami Beach … an abandoned neighborhood movie house, shuttered for years, that was a mere 10-minute commute in those less trafficked days from my Island paradise.

True, at the time there was zero parking connected to the property, but what put the kibosh on the whole thing was the outrageous rent being asked for the venue. It has been thirty years and the place still has never been rented … proof enough, one would think, that I was right to believe the landlord was/is not a motivated individual.

My idea for hosting old movies and mining my expertise on the subject, giving what I thought might be interesting tidbits about the creation of those films, was put on hold; and then my own Fisher Island township suggested I contribute my time and expertise to such an evening, on the Island, once a week … gratis.

Well, money isn’t everything; my stock market holdings were doing all right and, I reasoned, massaging my ego by harkening back to my days as a guest lecturer at various California colleges, just might be payment enough.

It worked for a while but in one Q&A session after screening Casablanca I heard a neighbor ridicule the film because of the obvious phony airplane model used in the movie’s title sequence.

I had no rejoinder. If that is what was deemed memorable… or even worthy of mention … after watching one of the finest motion pictures ever made … then … I dunno, something about pearls and swine came to my thoughts and I decided, right then and there, to (once again) leave “show business” and remand myself to the beach.

Now and then, I am asked to repeat my Barney’s Nights at the Movies; it is flattering … a nice compliment, but the fact is that there is really no longer any need for those evenings whatsoever. Turner Classic Movies has caught on. It is a great success, proving Ted Turner’s adage that “if you live long enough, you cannot overpay for a library of motion pictures;” and it is right there … for free … as part of your basic cable package.

The movies on TCM run 24/7 without commercial interruption and (often) with great commentary and insight from the various hosts. I hereby fold my tent and defer to their winning recipe.

As to the formula that got me adjusted to retirement, I resort to a metaphor aligned with my upbringing as the producer of something like 300 hours of prime-time television:

“All my wires were plugged in to a television monitor … then one day I detached them all and plugged them all into a Fisher Island monitor instead. The secret? No loose wires.”

Once I discovered that the way this retirement thing was going to work was to fully commit to this lifestyle and not be half in and half out; I found the bliss in an unscheduled life. I am 88 going easily into my 90^th year, fully convinced that a health scare I had sixteen years ago at age 72 would have killed me if I had still been following my early life’s career plan.

Inactivity = longevity. Seems to resonate. Especially when you realize that Ponce de Leon searched for the “Fountain of Youth” in Florida and not Southern California … it all begins to come together.

At least it “works” for me.

 

Barney Rosenzweig