THE OFFER

Dreaming makes use of many metaphors that we use frequently in speech as well as in stories, poems, and other works of art, and it also creates new metaphors to convey meaning. I will argue that the dream connects, or brings closer together, subsystems revealing similarities of the memory that the dreamer may not previously have noticed. 

---Dr. Ernest Hartmann. American psychoanalyst, and pioneer of dream studies. Author of Dreams and Nightmares.

 

From time to time I cannot find an appropriate icon that represents what each blog is about. I have therefore decided to show you how I use my icon art work on individual dreams.

In this dream, called "Am I Going to Crash?," repeated symbols over time include an airplane, the suggestion of being drugged, the sensory feeling of loss of equilibrium, and waking up with my heart pounding.  

 

****

THE OFFER

There is a new 10 hour series on Showtime/Paramount+ called The Offer, about the making of the epic movie The Godfather. The story is told from the point of view of the producers and in particular, Albert Ruddy who had to get in bed with the mafia in order to get the movie made. I loved the series so much that I splurged and watched the entire production in two sittings. 

I had read the book, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of the Godfather, by Mark Seal. This book was mainly from the perspective of Francis Ford Coppola, who nearly has a nervous breakdown trying to get the movie made, because management was constantly threatening to fire him, would not agree to his selection of actors, and refused to finance the movie as needed. 

The Godfather is my favorite movie and is considered by many to be the greatest movie ever made. I don't know why I never thought of this before, but the story takes place during the time I was kidnapped, -1945 - 1955,- which might explain my obsession with the movie. 

While watching The Offer, I was reminded that I had once met Francis Ford Coppola. During the time I worked at San Fransisco Opera, he was hired to stage a production of Aida, which proved to be a big success. Subsequently, Opera America (an organization of all United States Opera Companies), had a luncheon, and I was assigned to sit at the same table with him. I must confess I was too intimidated to engage him in conversation and just sat across the table looking at him. He didn't seem too happy to be there. The Godfather I and II had already been released and I could have had a great time talking to him.

Another memory reminded me of my friendship with Julie Zale who was in group therapy with me in New York. She had moved to San Francisco and was working as an editor for the Coppola produced movie Black Stallion. She offered to let me visit her in the cutting room. Sadly I never got there.

In New York, Julie lived in the half-way house run by Dr. Libby Lyons, whom I wrote about in my blog called Cartoons, published on October 7, 2023.

https://alicecunninghamdreams.blogspot.com/2023/10/cartoons.html

One day Dr. Lyons called and asked me to accompany her and Julie to Bellevue Hospital where Julie was to have shock treatment because of her attempt to commit suicide. I got into the cab with the two of them and Julie showed me the knife slice across her wrist. It was a big gash that went horizontal, which I understood needed to be vertical to cause bleeding to be effective. When I sucked my breath at the sight of it, Dr. Lyons decided she had made a mistake in bringing me along. I think Julie thought my presence would support and reassure her. I was sorry I had to leave. I wanted to be by Julie's side.   

Now that I think of it, the hospital looked like the one used in the filming of the Godfather when Michael (Al Pacino) protected his father, the Don (Marlon Brando) from a second assassination attempt.  

Another memory just returned. During a layoff at United Airlines, where I was working at the time, I offered to take the place of someone else so I could spend more time on my singing. Because I had a $500 debt to pay off, I took temp jobs for a time. In 1970, I became a hat check girl for a time at an Italian restaurant called Vesuvius, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The Vesuvius was a small but high class restaurant with a piano bar. Because it was located a long way from the subway, I got in the habit of riding my bike to work and changing my clothes in the ladies room. The hat check room was very small and I stood in the lobby and greeted customers as they entered and visited with men at the eight bar.

The clientele was high class, but I found myself puzzled when night after night a bevy of beautiful Asian women, dressed in evening gowns, entered the restaurant with one man as their host. I asked what was going on, but none of the employees would explain. There were also a number of young men dressed in suits who hung around. I eventually realized the women were high class prostitutes or call girls, and the man was their pimp. The restaurant was probably connected to organized crime and the young men were "soldiers." 

I eventually was able to quit when I was hired to work as a singing hostess at the Alpine Cellar in the McAlpine Hotel a few blocks from my apartment. I write about this job in my book, and about the woman and her private detective who accused me of having an affair with her husband.

Baritone Franz and I prepare to sing a romantic duet. 

Onward and upward.