I Like My Street Curbs To Be Fake

On TV And At The Movies

Martin Scorsese and I share a few things in common.

He’s Italian. I’m Italian.

He’s a genius. I’m Italian.

He likes real curbs. I like my curbs to be fake.

Street curbs, that is.

Big fake over-sized street curbs.

Like in the classic 1952 feature film, Singing in the Rain in which dancing king Gene Kelly, who co-directed with Stanley Donan, prances around wet streets, leaping and bounding over one fabricate street curb after the next. It’s a famous scene that was filmed on an actual movie studio lot — as opposed to some selected location shot in some form of reality.

But those are the kinds of curbs that Scorsese didn’t like to see in the movies.

Because they aren’t realistic.

So, the prolific director, whose recent movie masterpiece is The Irishman, always wanted to make certain that the street curbs he photographs and presents in his films are realistic — and not over-sized or fake-looking.

But to me, that’s what movies and TV are all about: being fake.

Television shows and motion pictures are not reality, or else they would be reality.

They can reflect reality; they can even be realistic. But they are not reality.

That’s why I like my street curbs to be fake on screen.

It’s also why I want things like Christmas TV specials to have fake snow.

No on-location Christmas specials for me — like that Rocky Mount one-time TV-outing John Denver once did — or even how the iconic Perry Coma made a singular attempt at doing so.

Those kinds of TV shows and specials are too real for me.

Give me a television or movie production that was filmed on a back-lot over an “on-location” TV show or movie any day.

I’ll always choose the back-lot days. I like my movies and TV shows to look like movies and TV shows.

If I want reality I can go step outside and spend time in reality.

When I want to escape reality I turn on the TV or go to the movies.

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