Nothing to Do With Elections!

From 1970!

I have been going through my papers. Seventy-eight boxes of them. Whooo. And I found this odd little thing I wrote for the Atlanta Journal. It appeared in the Journal on November 20, l970, dateline “New York.” Thought you might enjoy it.

                 I attended the informal world premiere of a movie entitled "The Groupies" with our Brooklyn neighbors, Frank and Carol, and oddly enough it was like old home week. The main reason we went was that Frank knew the co-director of the movie -- a low-budget documentary on the girls who follow rock groups around. ("After I made the same mistake about fifty times," says a former groupie interviewed in the movie, "I realized they were just interested in me for my body.")

            Before the feature started we were standing in the lobby looking at the exotically dressed crowd waiting with us. "I'm wearing the same kind of clothes I wore in high school," said Frank proudly. He was wearing corduroy pants and a car coat. "I'm wearing the same kind of clothes I wore in grammar school," I said proudly. I was wearing Levi's and a warm jacket.

            "There was a period, though," said Frank, "when I didn't."

            "Me too," I said.

            "Frank," said Carol, "ask him if his name is Steve."

            The person to whom she was referring had big black mustachios and was standing right next to Frank. "I don't want to," Frank said under his breath.

            So Carol asked him if his name was Steve, and he looked at her and said, "Carol."

            It turned out they had gone to the first through the sixth grade together, in Queens. "Is he the one you bit?" Frank asked.

            Steve didn't think he was, but Carol said, "Yes. I bit him."

            The explanation was that Carol was trying to give a report, in the fourth grade, and Steve kept teasing her from the front row. "So I grabbed his arm and bit him. I was a little, shy girl. But I had sharp teeth."

            "I don't think I had this then," Steve said, referring to his mustachios.

            "The teacher called me 'a dog,' Carol recalled.

            Then the movie started and what do you know. One of the first groupies on the screen, when asked where she got her start, said "In Atlanta with the Box Tops." She acted embarrassed, whether about Atlanta or the Box Tops I couldn't tell. She was now associated loosely with Spooky Tooth.

            "This guy came in here and grabbed me by the throat and picked me up two feet off the floor she said later in the film, "and said 'You got twenty seconds to decide to leave here with me.' I told him, 'Listen, maybe you can get away with that with these New York chicks, but I'm a Southerner. I'd just as soon kill you before I'd leave here with you. Anyway you're not even with a group. You're nobody.'"

            Another groupie said a member of Led Zeppelin "started hitting me with this leather strap, and I didn't even know him. He was hitting my girl friend too and she liked it. But I didn't. I went home."

            On our way out we talked to Ron, the film-maker, whose first major credit this was. He said he'd been standing outside asking people what they thought of the film. Most of the reaction, he said, was so-so. A couple of people just said, "Wow." One person thought the film exploited the people's culture. Ron said  he hadn't had any trouble persuading anyone to appear in the movie, even in curlers.

            I told him I heard someone in the film said "Hi Ronnie" while looking into the camera. "A couple of times," he said proudly. He had a rave review already from Judith Crist, Ron said, and the Daily News had said that the film offered some good moments if you were looking for something sordid. Ron was waiting for the Times review to come out at midnight. TheTimes, as it turned out, liked it too, especially Iris.

            But my thoughts kept turning back to Carol biting that guy.