I don’t know why I was thinking of Gary Coleman, specifically his movies, recently. Perhaps it was one of those things that came to mind in the middle of the night, when I tried to enumerate them in the darkness in the hours between sleep.
I mean, we know him from Diff’rent Strokes mostly. I remember those days, when I was a kid and thinking I was just like Arnold Jackson except I was white, the older brother, and I didn’t get adopted into a high rise apartment in New York. But otherwise I was the same kid.
The crossover events with other television shows, where Arnold Jackson showed up. Heck, I probably saw him most recently in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century when I watched the DVD series…. Gott in Himmel, I was watching it in 2004 and I recounted my progress in a series of blog posts 22 years ago. Heck’s pecs, he has run for governor of California in the interim. And died.
But, no, I was thinking about the movies and how I saw them on television in the day. On the Right Track (1981), a movie theater film. The Kid With The Broken Halo (1982) which was the basis for a brief cartoon when I was watching cartoons on Saturday mornings. The Kid with the 200 IQ (1983). The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins (1984). The dramatic turn as the firebug in Playing with Fire (1985). I can still see scenes from these films or their promos in my mind; shining shoes and crawling in a bus station locker in On the Right Track and flickering firelight on his face for Playing with Fire. I know I’ve seen these films; I’m less sure of The Kid from Left Field (1979), Scout’s Honor (1980), and Jimmy the Kid (1982), but…. Maybe? I mean, he was relatively everywhere in those years.
Maybe the films weren’t on heavy rotation on television in those days–I seem to recall them being on television as the movie of the week in prime time and a major event, such as things were when we had only three networks, PBS, two UHF stations, no cable to speak of. But I don’t remember seeing them available on home video, which was fairly new at the time. I guess some things are available–Ebay indicates you can find some of them on VHS and Betamax (man, I wish I’d kept the one I’d come across in my Ebay peddling days), but, day-um are they expensive. I will keep my eyes open specifically for them when I’m out and about.
And should I find one and pop it into a player, I do not doubt that 40+ years will fall off of me like autumn leaves for a little under two hours.
