The Reeler

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January 06, 2006

Sleeping Through New Year's With James Toback

The Reeler's long tradition of James Toback enthrallment continues this morning after a glimpse at The New York Observer's Web site, where the filmmaker was one of 20 New Yorkers who recounted their New Year's Eve revelry to writer Jessica Bruder.

Not that there was much to recount but a typically Tobackian story of existential crisis:

“This year, I fell asleep at 10:30 and woke up at 4, so I was about as far away from consciousness as I could get short of being dead,” said Mr. Toback, who is 61 years old and hasn’t celebrated New Year’s Eve since he was 12.

What ruinous rupture wrecked his holiday so many years ago? Mr. Toback explained that he had accompanied some older—but perhaps less mature—friends to a party. Then he watched them get plastered.

They were, he recalled, “vomiting a lot, laughing at things that weren’t funny, slurring words, repeating themselves so that a 3-year-old would have been bored. One guy, who I regarded as a great wit, kept repeating the same joke and getting the words out of sequence. And I kept thinking: ‘What has brought him to this depth?’”

O innocence, diminished with each passing year! For Mr. Toback, the loss hit early, hard and in a cinematic style.

“There’s that scene in Splendor in the Grass?” he suggested. “Where Pat Hingel is completely demythologized in front of his son by falling apart at this party.”

I totally sympathize. Like this year, there was that scene on TV? Where stroke victim Dick Clark was completely demythologized in front of a national viewing audience by deferring to Ryan Seacrest every 15 seconds. Talk about your haunting New Year's. I will celebrate no more forever.

Posted by stvanairsdale at January 6, 2006 09:35 AM

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Posted by: Ray Pride at January 6, 2006 07:37 PM