'Nightmare On Maple Avenue?'

“You make a deal then you figure out how much sin you can live with”  - Director Martin Scorsese

Following the Republican Party's announcement that County Legislator, Frank Sparaco, had been 'filming' conversations in search of alleged political corruption, a defamation lawsuit against him, Clarkstown Highway's Superintendent, Wayne Ballard, County GOP Chairman, Vinny Reda, and Clarkstown GOP Chairman, Bob Axelrod, is expected to be filed the week of August 12, 2013 by Clarkstown's Fleet Manager, Dennis Malone.

Malone has stated that, if elected Highway Superintendent in November 2013, he will eliminate the $75,000 part-time patronage job created by the Town Board for Ballard to hire someone with good listening skills to answer his telephone in inclement weather.  Malone's promise to bid 'adieu' to Sparaco and make him "happier than he is now by returning him to the tanning salon business from whence he came" apparently triggered a movie-making escapade which in turn triggered Malone's lawsuit.

“Cinema is a matter of what's put in the frame and what's left out”  - Martin Scorsese

The pre-screening of what should have been called 'Who Wants To Make A Deal?' has shown it to be a somewhat disjointed sequel to 'Nightmare on Elm Street'. It received poor reviews by the local movie critics who had been assembled in the Republican Party's 'Stuck-Clock' Theater to view the three trailers. Most reviewers commented that the story line was missing significant parts of the dialog thus rendering the plot difficult to follow.  Director Reda and the movie's lead actor Sparaco, cast in the role of Inspector Clouseau, have since been hawking snippets of the film around various local editors who continue to insist they will only screen this production when the snippets in which the actor claims he is destined for stardom in 'Albanywood' are reinserted.

That of course will not happen and so all of the principal, unprincipled backers of this expensive flop, including the Board of Directors of 'Clarkstown Patronage Studios' located on Maple Avenue in New City, can expect to be deposed and asked who said what to whom and why, when what was said to whom, it was misinterpreted.  In this matter most moviegoers, if they ever get to see the unexpurgated version of this drama, will not need to have their names in 'Who's Who' to be able to figure out 'What's What' should the curtain ever rise on this spectacle.

Ironically, bad as 'Nightmare on Maple Avenue' is with a plot that is slow as molasses, there is a certain spellbinding voyeurism to it. The best scene occurs when a grubby Perry Mason look-alike speaks about Sparaco's $75,000 part-time "bulls**t job" and asks Sparaco if he thinks "seventy-five thousand makes a f***ing bit of difference to the Town of Clarkstown?".

Mason then attempts to explain to Inspector Clouseau that a "quid pro quo" is illegal and therefore the "quid pro quo" that Mason was offering to Clouseau should not be taken as a "quid pro quo" but should be viewed as a 'gratia referenda'. The befuddled Clouseau, clearly not understanding that Mason's reference meant 'favors must be returned', stared blankly at Mason leaving him convinced: 'satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum' – Clouseau has a surfeit of talk that does not compensate for a critical deficit in mental capacity.
Then, there is the mysterious sub-plot as to why Director Reda, and Producer Axelrod, both of whom are shrewd movie moguls, along with Stage Manager Ballard, who possesses a particularly strong trait of intelligence absent in his two cohorts and for which they can offer no credible explanation, would go along with Reda's 'hare-brained' or, some might say, 'hair-brained' movie scheme.

Sparaco, who was urged by Director Reda to play the role of 'Inspector Clouseau' gathering "evidence" of supposed corruption, was subsequently allowed to present his 'magnum opus' to the critics with a digital time stamp showing that numerous snippets of key dialog had been deleted. But as Alfred Hitchcock once observed: "What is drama but life with the dull bits cut out". 

Thankfully we don't need to speculate further whether this movie is a tragicomedy or simply a Clouseaunean farce.  Its arcane plot will become clear when its backers are deposed under oath. Director Reda did movie lovers a service by his foolishness in directing a script without having the FBI review its syntax or grammar and with 'Clarkstown Patronage Studios' having no inkling as to how many of their other patronizing actors were involved in yet unseen, and perhaps unseemly, cameo appearances.

Don't be surprised therefore if the Clarkstown studio's boss, the modern-day Alfred Hitchcock, receives a separate lawsuit having taken no action to examine the ethical violations of the actor he had under part-time contract and who has now surreptitiously appeared in a B-rated production controlled by a competing movie mogul.

The plot thickens .....

In the absence of large sections of the movie's story line one must wonder if Inspector Clouseau's director has seen too many of Scorsese's movies and has removed the missing sections from the "frame", as Scorsese recommends, to use as promos in future sequels?  If 'Weiner'-like phone conversations have been recorded perhaps there is a second movie in pre-production with the title 'Sextexts, Lies and Phonetaps' featuring key individuals in Hitchcock's own studio, perhaps including Hitchcock himself? This would be the perfect follow-up to the recently released smash hit Sex, Lies and Videotape where mock threats of sodomy and a late night romp around a gas station supplied an entertaining few hours of titillation. 

What the Board of Directors of 'Clarkstown Patronage Studios' should do about their beloved actor remains a question of breathtaking suspense. Will it recognize that he should be suspended from his "bulls**t job" until the Studio's Ethics Board examines his behavior? Will the Deputy Studio Attorney assigned to the Ethics Board recuse himself in favor of an external and independent attorney who will assist the Ethics Board through the process of fulfilling its responsibility to the moviegoers of Clarkstown?

Who knows but maybe the Stuck Clock Studio's movie will be a mega-blockbuster after all? Join me on the evening of August 20th in the Clarkstown Town Hall to find out. The sequel to 'Nightmare on Elm Street' - 'Nightmare on Maple Avenue' - will be screened at 8:00 p.m.

The Homer Simpson picture is courtesy of Onpoint.wbur.org.  It is a parody of Edvard Munch's painting 'The Scream'. 

Michael N. Hull is a retired senior citizen who writes opinion pieces on local political issues. He is presently a Director of Clarkstown Residents Opposing Patronage with Tom Nimick and Ralph Sabatini and is President of the Residents Association of Bardonia. Hull contributes periodically to the Facebook page Clarkstown: What They Don't Want You To Know and he is assisting in setting up the 'Preserve Rockland' election line so that the electorate may be offered an alternative slate of candidates in the 2013 local elections for Clarkstown Town Supervisor, Town Board, Highway Superintendent, and for County Executive.