Leslie Nielsen Signs Autographs, Comments on His Disaster Movie
The Poseidon Adventure (1971)
Splintered, with metallic plastic shards,
the ray gun a Leslie Nielsen fan brandishes
is the genuine article
from The Forbidden Planet.
“Just point it at me!” he shouts, squinting,
chunky girlfriend standing ready
with the Polaroid. He refused to hold it,
but posed nonetheless, ever the trooper.
I walk up to him. Too cheap to buy
his new how-to golf tape, I offer him
a promotional flat of the cover. Pushed-in
by the line but still determined,
I spoke. “I just wanted to say
that I agreed with you—that if you
had taken up more ballast, you could’ve
withstood that wave.” Still looking down,
signing, Leslie Neilson paused, as if the burden
of an upside-down Shelley Winters
had been lifted, the chandeliers untousled
right here in a suburban B. Dalton.
“So, you think so, huh?”
Smiling ear-to-ear, Leslie
shakes my hand. “But then we
wouldn’t have had the disaster
—and all that conflict.”
–published in Painted Bride Quarterly
A lone tear carves a path through my MUFE primer and face spackle.
Only Leslie Nielson is in need of having his humor taken seriously. If he did not have this he would have been in tears, and if he was in tears he would not have been so funny in his phlegmatic manner. However, if he was so funny, why did he have that straight face? As if he had such a straingt face he would not be smiling, and, if so, would have been less funny as a result: truely, humor is the fall of dignity about your ankles…