A few nights ago, Kelly and I introduced our sons to one of my favorite movies: Bill Forsyth's Local Hero. It has been a part of my life for two decades now, and it has been a staple of the various lists I've occasionally posted or thrown out into conversations, but this viewing was an experience different than any other I've had with a film.

I first found out about the movie through a rather odd channel: a guitarist. Les Britt, the brilliant, gifted, and occasionally obsessive guitarist who anchored the John Santa Band in the early eighties, was a huge fan of Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. Soon after I'd joined the band (as keyboardist and sometime singer), Les showed up at practice with an imported twelve-inch single of a Knopfler instrumental called "Going Home (Theme of the Local Hero)." He played it for us and we were suitably impressed--great melody, wonderful snarly guitar licks, lilting sax, and even some great-sounding synthetic drums. I noted that it came from a movie soundtrack and didn't think much else about it.

Soon afterwards, I spotted the bright yellow cover of the soundtrack album in the "heavy rotation" box at WXYC, where I was a student announcer at the time. I quickly discovered that the album contained a number of intriguing tracks in a variety of styles: a soft jazz slowdance called "Smooching," a synthesizer-washed folk tune called "The Mist-Covered Mountains," a twanging rockabilly thumper by the name of "Freeway Flyer," and even a soft modern country tune titled "The Way It Always Starts" with vocals by Gerry Rafferty. But "Going Home" and its acoustic-guitar-and-keyboards version, "Wild Theme," were the tunes that really stirred me. I played the album a lot, sometimes even when it wasn't technically supposed to come up in the rotation during my shift. I also began to think that a movie with music this good was worth checking out.

The movie finally turned up one Friday at the Varsity Theater downtown, but I didn't realize it until late that evening and couldn't find anyone to go see it with me. With time running out, I did something I'd never done before: went to the movies alone. I sometimes wonder if I would have reacted to the film in the same way if I'd seen it with someone else. As it was, I fell under Forsyth's spell completely. The quirky characters, the rich and improbable accents, the stunning scenery, the swirling strains of the music... I wanted to be in the village with Mac more than I would have believed possible.

And so I went. In the spring of 1984, I left my exchange-year-home in Manchester and traveled to the north of Britain to seek out the names listed in tiny print at the end of the film: Morar, Arisaig, Pennan. I found Morar and Arisaig in the western part of Scotland, an area I'd visited with my parents nearly two years before. I had fond memories of the beauties of Oban and the lochs of the Great Glen, but I was burning to find the beaches where Mac had picked through the tidal pools and the rocks where Danny had sat and watched Marina gliding through the water. I had persuaded some of my American friends to make the trip, and I'd done so largely by stressing the attractions of Oban and Edinburgh, but to me the real goal was to travel the so-called Road to the Isles, out toward Skye, and find the little village, the ceilidh hall, the improbably red phone box.

I found some beaches. I found some rocks. I saw some stunning beauties. But I never did find that village, or its phone box.

Nonetheless, Local Hero wouldn't release its grip on me. After I returned home and fell in love with Kelly, I took on the task of selecting music for our wedding. We chose the preludes and recessional with little difficulty, but we couldn't find a good theme to accompany her walk down the aisle. And then I thought of the slow, stately, droning version of "Going Home" played at the ceilidh, and I knew that had to be the song that led us into married life.

With that as our wedding processional, of course, we had to travel back down the Road to the Isles on our honeymoon. We tromped along the beaches below Loch Morar, and Kelly and I delighted in the streets and pubs of Mallaig, the last town before the ferry to Skye. We went to the Isle itself in a constant drizzle, marveled at the rainbow of seaweeds and rocks on its beaches, and helped deceive the parents of a young Atlantan on the ferry by posing in a photo with him--he'd told his parents he was traveling with friends so they wouldn't worry. And in some photo album somewhere, or so I like to think, Kelly and I are still smiling anonymously out at his family.

But we still didn't find the phone box. Maybe it's in Pennan.

Some sixteen years later, we fired up the VCR to watch the movie, this time with our kids. It opens in Houston--still an abrupt and surprising fact--and spends a leisurely amount of time in offices, airports, and laboratories in the early going. I was pleasantly absorbed in the story, watching out of the corner of my eye to see if the kids were bored by it all, or having trouble with the accents.

And then suddenly Danny and Mac were rolling down the Road to the Isles and I felt my heart in my throat.

The misty air, the curve of the hills, the greenness of summer grasses... the soft hum of a synthesizer, a wistful tune, as the car sped along... it was as if every day of the last two decades had been washed away and I was twenty again, but somehow everything important from those decades--wife, family, time, growth--was still with me. It was a moment where I felt nothing important had ever been lost, or ever could be lost. It took twenty years to make that moment, and I'm not sure who to thank for it--Forsyth, Knopfler, Kelly, the boys, or all of the above--but I'm grateful to know that such moments exist.

And the phone box? Oh, it exists, too. I'm quite sure. I've heard it ringing.
9:49 AM

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