Sonnet And The Graduate

Here is my Sonnet, as lovely as the Green Mountains behind her (I note to her that if I was in college she would be Mrs. Robinson - that joke didn't fly so well). Thinking of 'The Graduate,' Dustin Hoffman in town for the premier of his new film "Last Chance Harvey" where he plays a divorcee who arrives in London for his daughter's wedding only to find himself on the edge of things like disappointment and loneliness - with Emma Thompson, he wonders around London. Sort of like 95's "Before Sunrise," where Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy dealt with similar narcissisms but in their 20s. And in Vienna. So The Graduate: Hoffman was 30 or 42 years ago when he made the film and was his stardom certain? "No" says he in Time Out. "The opposite. In those days I hung out with Ropbert Duvall and Gene Hackman and we were certain we were never going to be romantic leads. I was waiting tables and Duvall was working all night at the post office." And further: "we just hoped to be character actors who could earn enough to make a living for the rest of our lives. When 'The Graduate' came about, I didn't even want to try for it. I'd read the book and I thought it was a role made for Robert Redford. I was always going up for 'character juvenile' roles - which meant you weren't attractive." Well, this is all fine and good but those of us from Berkeley grumble that Elaine's college UC Berkeley shot on UCLA's campus; or that Benjamen's drive to Berkeley on the top of the Bay Bridge which heads away from the East Bay .. but these are small trifles in a film I first saw in 8th grade.. then again during orientation week at Brown, and again several years later in New York and most recently in my 30s on a transatlantic flight. It provides a wonderful insight into the conservative side of the 60s and post-college misery and its freedom -- who can forget the last scene on the bus? It is nice to be reminded of this from time to time, especially in middle age. Letting go is never easy, even when young at heart and nothing to lose.

"Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose.
"
-- Simon & Garfunkel