A Man & His Cars

My Dad 

In this picture he is about to chauffeur a wedding with his 1941  Packard 180 Touring Sedan. 

When my father was about 73 years old he answered an ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer, looking for vintage cars and their owners to be in the film "Birdy" being shot in North Philadelphia. He was accepted and became a member of the cast of extras. I believe he got a SAG card after working 3 days. I'm not sure, but he went to work everyday for a month or so and some days had to do a lot of sitting around, mostly on the front steps and porches of people who lived in the neighborhood where they were shooting. He also got meal vouchers.

This experience was very exciting for him. He was raised in a family of movie theater owner's and theater equipment specialists. His father, who came to this country from Italy in 1898, and settled in Northern Pennsylvania, built a movie theater in the little town where my father was born and raised. My grandmother sewed the huge velvet curtains that opened and closed on the screen. One of my father's older brother's, called Scissors because of the way he could "cut those keys" played the piano for the silent films that were shown. My father, the baby of the family, made and sold the popcorn. So this movie stuff was in his blood, and being part of a major production like Birdy, even though it was just a quick little drive in a yellow Chevy Bel Air, up a hill and out of site, over before you could blink an eye, was a big and beautiful deal for him.

This is a video showing the  style and features of a 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air.  It's not my dad's actual car, which was 31 years old when the movie Birdy came out and not restored.  I suppose the authenticity of my dad's little Chevy contributed to his getting chosen as an extra for the film.

Birdy is a 1984 American film directed by Alan Parker and starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage. It is based on the novel of the same name by William Wharton. The story is about two friends, Birdy (Modine) and Al (Cage), who become friends at school and serve in Vietnam. Birdy already has a disturbing fixation with birds and his Vietnam experiences push him over the edge: when he returns from the war, he is sent to a mental hospital for assessment and his friend Al stays with him to try to reach him before it's too late and he'll be separated from Birdy, leaving him alone and lost inside his mind. The film contains many flashback scenes of their life together as teenagers in 1960s America and their developing friendship and views of life.

The film's soundtrack was written and performed by Peter Gabriel. The music contains some adaptations of tracks on Gabriel's third and fourth albums. The music makes heavy use of the Fairlight CMI IIx music computer, which was one of the first sampling systems, Peter Gabriel being one of the first customers.


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