I AM GOING TO MAKE A MOVIE

 

 A movie camera is in many of my dreams.

"Jung famously told us that we don't become enlightened until we face our darkness and make it conscious. "

Linda Yael Schiller, MSW/LICSW, author of PTSDreams: Transform Your Nightmares from Trauma through Healing Dreamwork.

 

Over twenty names of well-known movie stars have appeared in my dreams over the years. I have come to believe that these stars, from their physical appearance and the characters they portray in movies, are clues, or metaphors for individuals I met during my abduction whose real names I didn’t know, or have forgotten.  Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and Dustin Hoffman, famous for the criminals they portray, are some of the stars who have appeared in my dreams, sometimes more than once.

 

DREAM: I Am Going To Make A Movie With [{famous movie star.}] (Saturday, June 5, 1991.

One year and nine months after my memory returned.)

 

I am with some people. There is an older woman and a man. She is wealthy. She announces that she wants to go to the races and asks who wants to go. People run after her and I decide that I want to go too. I run to get my shoes so I can join them, and pass a man who seems interested in me.    

 

Later, we are all sitting together on some bales of hay at the races and this man joins us and he talks about me being in a movie with him. He says, “I like what I see.  Don’t worry about yourself physically. I’m very happy with you. There is one thing I am wondering. Do you think you can learn the lines? Do you think you can do it?”

 

“You bet I can!” I reply enthusiastically. I’m really happy because I am going to get to make a movie with [{famous movie star.}] I’m going to be his girl. I imagine myself nude being photographed with him. 

 

The man stands up and he has a gun in his hand.  He removes the gun and there is a callused area on his thumb. It has a metal thing attached and looks like one of those things people put in their hand when they are going to hit someone. “Do you know why I keep this callus here?” he asks.

 

“Yes, so people will be afraid of you!” I giggle. 

 

There is a girl sitting next to him and she says, “I’m the one who introduced you to him.”

 

 

I believe the wealthy woman in this dream is Virginia Hill, the one-time mistress of Bugsy Seigel. She owned a box at the Del Mar Race Track. She was savvy at horse racing and made money playing the odds. She appears in a number of my dreams. I write about her in my book.  

 

 

 

I was recently at the Friendly Used Book Store in Rogers where I like to browse, and came across Brando: Songs My Mother Taught me, as told to Robert Lindsey. This reminded me that when I was fourteen years old, I fell madly in love with him. I had seen “The Wild One,” and liked his rebellious ways. He was over the top handsome and manly, and at the same time vulnerable. I found him irresistible.

 

At that time I had a high school friend named Thelma. She was a foster child living in the home of Dow Fonda, a relative of the great actor, Henry Fonda. If I remember correctly, they were cousins. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of his wife, who figures prominently in my story. She knew I was crazy about Brando, and mentioned that she and her husband were going to a performance of Clifford Odets, The Country Girl, starring Dorothy McGuire, Henry Fonda, and yes, a seventeen-year-old Jane Fonda who were all from Omaha. The performance was to celebrate the opening of the Omaha Community Playhouse’s brand-new theater.

 

At the performance, Marlon Brando, also a native of Omaha, Nebraska, sent a congratulatory telegram to the cast. Mrs. Dow Fonda, had to fight Jane for the telegram because she wanted to bring it home to me. A few days later, Marlon showed up at the performance, and she was able to get his autograph, along with those of Henry Fonda and Dorothy McGuire. I have carried these treasures around since 1955.

 

When “On the Waterfront,” for which Brando received an Oscar as best actor, came to Denver, the Denver Post,  held a competition offering two free tickets to anyone who could come up with the most words in Marlon Brando’s name. My family owned a four-inch-high dictionary and I spent hours going through the entire dictionary trying to win the prize. My 300 words lost to someone who came up with something like 500. I’m not sure I believe it. Needless to say, I bought a ticket and suffered for Brando through the two-hour-long movie as he fought for the longshoreman and was nearly beaten to death. Here is Brando’s signature.

 

 

 

 

My final memory of Marlon Brando takes place sometime in the 1980s, when I was home visiting my parents. My father and I were watching The Appaloosa on television. In the movie, Brando is tied to a railing, and whipped without mercy in a long and gruesome scene. I became physically restless and extremely uncomfortable, and suddenly blurt out, “If I didn’t know better, I would think I was tortured in another life.“ My father looked startled, but said nothing. The reason for this comment became clear to me when I woke up in the middle of the night on September 9, 1989, and began remembering my abduction. But, at the time, I had no idea why I would say such a thing.

 

 

By the way, Brando’s book is full of interesting stories and wonderful pictures, and for me was a "can't put down read."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onward and upward.