Perspectives: Sam’s Perespective – They Just Keep Coming

Wes Cravin died recently but his work and his concepts live on. In fact, I suspect some of his
‘on going work’ can be found living quietly here,… in, of all places, Oklahoma.

For those of you not familiar with his work, Wes Cravin gave us horror,… real horror in motion pictures. A friend of mine wrote Wes Cravin’s biography. John Wooley said in a recent Tulsa World interview that Cravin used an innovative technique referred to as “rubber reality,” which brought the terror closer to the viewer than ever before. John went on to talk about a scene in 1984’s “Nightmare on Elm Street,” in which the camera pans down a high school hallway with youngsters going back and forth to classes,… and there’s a goat, standing by a locker, with no one paying any attention. He said it was exactly the kind of thing you’d see in a dream. He and I have talked about this on occasion but John, being one of the most creative men I’ve ever known, was no where around when I encountered what could be, Wes Cravin’s work, unfolding right here in Tulsa.

You already know our streets are nothing to be proud of and the city seems to be playing catch up, in an effort to bring streets to a passable level. To do this, they begin with the orange and white barrels and posts, effectively blocking one and sometimes two lanes of traffic. Even though the city claims to have made advanced announcements, the interruption in traffic flow always seems to catch me by surprise, the exception being Riverside drive. That little project got more advance notice than the second coming, so I was ready when the barrels and posts and barriers went up. But all over town, it seems to be impossible to avoid a major street that doesn’t have train load of orange and white barrels and posts. I noticed that after a while, drivers have come to expect them to show up without warning. In fact, they don’t seem to be at all surprised when the street they drove home on last night, is altered in some way by morning. As a result, they are driving with what seems to be acceptance of the unexpected.

Which brings me to the point,… “rubber reality” has come to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wes Cravins would be proud. Just like in a dream, the unexpected barrels and posts aren’t given a second thought by drivers just trying to go from one place to another. They don’t even pay attention to them anymore. It’s now a case of point your vehicle at an opening, slow down and go. And speaking of ‘Go’ what happens to all those orange and white, barrels and posts after a street project is finished? We think they are picked up by trucks and carted off somewhere but where does one store them all? Maybe they aren’t stored. Maybe they’re just part of ‘rubber reality’ and simply go away until the next nightmare of trying to drive in Tulsa comes around. Or maybe, just like in Walt Disney’s Fantasia, the old magician comes back in the nick of time and all the brooms carrying buckets of water that Mickey Mouse put to work doing his job, simply disappear with a wave of the magician’s finger. Wes Craven,… Walt Disney,…what have you done to our town?
That’s my perspective.