Nora had told me that Henrik was too impatient to read films with subtitles. Aunt Abigail and Aunt Martha associated all foreign films with sex. Unless they took Nora with them to the Franklin, Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan drove to Durham by themselves. From Exeter, it was a slow half-hour drive. The Franklin Theatre changed my life. Someone said it’s now a Thai food place. I don’t want to know. I will always remember my first time at the Franklin, and my first trip to Durham.

“Is the French film a comedy?” I cautiously asked Uncle Martin, who was driving.

“Of course it is!” Uncle Johan shouted from the shotgun seat.

I knew from Nora what my uncles thought of comedies and tragedies. As it turned out, my first film with subtitles was a comedy, and I laughed as much as Uncle Martin and Uncle Johan.

Directed by and starring Jacques Tati, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot—in English, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday—won me over. At twelve, I couldn’t tell the Marxist intellectuals from the fat capitalists, or recognize the other prototypes of the French political and social classes, but I understood they were all being mocked. Without meanness, the film makes fun of everyone—Mr. Hulot included.

Jacques Tati was a gentle and intelligent introduction to French cinema and movies with subtitles. The Franklin Theatre would become my film school. Those foreign films I saw in Durham made me want to be a screenwriter. Moby-Dick had introduced me to the nineteenth-century novel; I would soon read Great Expectations. The Franklin was my introduction to European cinema. In contrast, American movies seemed juvenile.

Take Tarzan, for example. The sexual scandals of many American movie stars outlast the short-lived fame of their films. Yes, I know—sexual infamy lives longer than movie stardom, not only in the United States. But just look at what happened to Lex.

Lex Barker and Lana Turner were married from 1953 to 1957, about as long as Lana usually stayed married. She was married seven times—eight, if you count her marrying Joseph Crane twice (their first marriage was annulled). In 1958, a year after Lana kicked out Lex, Lana’s then-boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, was stabbed to death in the Beverly Hills home Lana shared with her fourteen-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane. Cheryl stabbed Stompanato with a kitchen knife, either in self-defense or to protect her mother.

“That girl should have stabbed Tarzan!” Aunt Abigail declared, when she heard about the Stompanato killing.

“I’m sure Cheryl must have wanted to kill Tarzan,” Aunt Martha chimed in.

All my mother said about Cheryl Crane and the Stompanato stabbing was: “Poor Cheryl would have been only ten when her mom married Tarzan. She was thirteen when Lana kicked him out.”

“You weren’t too young for Tarzan. The big monkey took an interest in you, Ray,” Aunt Abigail reminded her.