A friend and I were talking on the phone about I don't know what and suddenly she said the name of a movie, which I've now forgotten, and we both exclaimed that we never understood what the movie was about. We chattered about this movie for a few minutes before I said, "Bullet." Long pause from her. I then said, "What was it about?" She said, "Yeah, well... McQueen...it didn't really matter." Then she said, "Oh, oh...Natalie Wood" to which I said, "Yes! Yes! Love With the Proper Stranger!" She sighed. I sighed. Then I told her I had a tie-in paperback from the movie. This then led to her saying, "And that other Natalie Wood movie...with Redford...and a train." Long pause from both of us, trying to remember the name of it. I said, "Coppola wrote it." Nothing. Then we both were throwing out scenes until I finally yelled, "This Property is Condemned!" More sighs. And I reminded her the young girl in it was the young girl from To Kill a Mockingbird. And somehow I ended up telling her I also had a tie-in paperback from Hud with Paul Newman on the cover and said it was one of the sexiest covers I'd ever seen.
So that's how I ended up here. McQueen.
I don't purposely collect movie/tv tie-in books. They've just sort of formed a stack. Several of them were bought when I was a teenager, had seen a movie, and wanted to read the book. Then somewhere along the line I'd find them in thrift stores and buy them for a quarter. Soon I had a collection. It wasn't until I was at an event at the Mill Valley Film Festival that I realized this was an actual collectors item. Someone had a collection displayed, as I recall they were in a case. I was sort of dumbfounded. "Whoa, somebody else collects these things?" Okay, that meant there was potential competition at the junk stores. So now I take better care of my little old yellowed paperbacks. I know that somewhere out in the darkness someone covets my stash.
And as to my friend...I was just thrilled by the end of the call to find out she hadn't slept with McQueen. She seems to have slept with everybody else. But that's a blog unto itself.
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