Plimpton : The Movie

 I wanted to take a few minutes out from a somewhat busy time with a few projects I am juggling to speak of a new Biographical movie I saw this week in Manhattan. It open on May 22nd and will open on Los Angles on June 7th. The movie Plimpton starring George Plimpton  is a movie exploring the life of I must confess one of my hero's. He was an editor of Paris Review which was the sort of the literary magazine that introduced  such authors as Philip Roth , Terry Southern  and many others to the post war literary arena.. He was of the Ivy League , he could trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower. He spoke  with a rather upper crust , upper Manhattan accent one does not really hear anymore. So , why did I a country / suburban kid from Upstate New York have him along with Phil Hill the race car driver  as my early hero's. Well......I guess it is because of what else he did. and inspired a much younger me. He referred  of himself as a participatory journalist. He would actually do what others did so as to have a then unique perspective on a topic , often sports. He was a reality show before that term was coined. He boxed Archie Moore , pitched against Willie Mays , was a Lion Tamer and perhaps most famously was last string quarterback for preseason  Detroit Lions. He wrote one of his books Paper Lyon based on that experience. It was later made into a movie starring Alan Alda. I well remember coming out of a movie house in Saratoga NY thinking what an interesting perspective he had. The next year in my senior high school year as I began to {reform} my thinking it was kind of like he traveled along as well. on that journey. The reality that my life might be rather pedestrian rather than 007 exciting hung over me as it begins to with all most all adolescence young people. My mildly depressed outlook on the then world  was eased quite a bit when I was struck one day that if Plimpton could do interesting stuff while being an editor of what I then thought of as a stuffy journal maybe along life's way maybe I could be a Walter Mitty in a reality world as well.  So along life's way I have explored a number of topics and areas. They range from archeology , history , rebuilding a VW air cooled engine with a master mechanic that let me work with him , taking a faith healing course with The Episcopal Church. No I don't really do that. Once I volunteered at a Pirate radio station run by RPI guys off an old tug boat located near Troy on the Hudson River. They helped me build a special antenna that I used with a souped up radio to pick up electromagnetic signals  from Jupiter deep into the morning. Yes you can really do that. I have been given by my patient wife a gift of three laps around a track in Connecticut in a  vintage Jaguar. I have  helped form a battle line at Saratoga to recreate the Revolutionary War battle there.  Hot day , hot uniform. I may only do these things once and have done other things on other  occasions ,  even write about some of them. But this spice to my sometimes mundane life has upon times come with a price , trust me I rocked climbed only once and never will again.I guess this tribute has been to  make a few more people aware of George Plimpton who died from a heart attack in 2003. Intellect , explorer , writer , sometime actor and occasional inspiration. Faking it can be interesting , try it sometime.