March 22, 2004
"You been goofin' with the bees?"
Posted by pete at March 22, 2004 12:43 PMI know one member of my family who will be first in line to get Harry Nilsson's The Point when it comes out on DVD for the first time tomorrow.
Originally released in 1971, The Point is the story of Oblio, the only pointless person in the Land of Point. He runs afoul of the son of the evil Count, and is banished to the Pointless Forest with his trusty dog, Arrow, and has exciting encounters with the likes of the Pointed Man, the Rock Man, the Fat Sisters, and a giant pterodactyl. Somewhere in all the vague psychedelia and "point" puns, a lesson about nonconformity and discrimnation emerges. Oblio, in the end, undergoes both a physical and a philosophical transformation.
How do I know all this? Because my father, who is otherwise a decent human being, subjected his toddler son to replays of the album - by my estimation - every night for three years. Since 1978, I think I've heard the album once, but I can still remember the lyrics to "Think About Your Troubles" ("Now everybody knows that when a body decomposes...") "P.O.V. Waltz" ("There was a time, there was a time, when you were mine..."), and all the rest. They're burned into my brain like the Oscar Meyer jingle and my love for the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I know the movie had three narrators (Ringo Starr, then Alan Barzman, then Alan Thicke), even though Harry Nilsson himself narrated the original album (I still use his sinister inflection of "good night" in my personal sign-offs). As a child, I thought the Rock Man was the grooviest cat this side of Frankenstein Jr.
I'm afraid to watch it now. I fear that The Point, like everything else entertainment-related in my childhood, was actually really lame. Luckily, I won't have to shell out the money for it, since Dad will be playing it for me every time we visit him from tomorrow on. These forced viewings will most likely continue until all of his children rise against him and put him to sea on an ice floe with copies of The Point, Nilsson Schmilsson, and the poor cat he saddled with the name 'Oblio.'
Only then will I have peace.
Don't forget the Dustin Hoffman version.
You poor, poor bastard.
By the way, the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle rocked! Right up there with Rock'em Sock'em Robots and that vibrating football game with the running back that keeps going in circles.
I remembered it from my teen years (maybe I was stoned) as being kinda cute, so I checked it out a couple years back to show to my kid (who was about 4 at the time). It was HORRIBLE!
Oh. I wasn't stoned on the second viewing.
Hey, maybe Eric Clapton wasn't God.
As a young pup, my parents had enrolled me in a drama day-camp at College Hills elementary. As part of the curriculum, I think we saw this movie. The earworm for me was "Me and my Arrow".
Awful stuff.
I'm sorry you had to go through that.