It seems that our video store has gone belly-up, leaving us with two of their DVDs and them with 15 of our euros.  One of the films, Dreamcatcher, though adapted from a Stephen King novel by the man who literally wrote the book on how to write a screenplay, is very possibly the worst movie ever made, although I would argue Ishtar is also a strong contender for the title.  Given that Movie4U has our passport number and credit card information, and we have nothing except a cell phone number whose owner laughs when I call about the video store and then says lots of things in Italian I can’t understand, and a website whose only contact information is for franchising information, we’re not exactly sure how to negotiate a surrender without being arrested for DVD theft.

Bereft of our beloved DVDs, we headed out for some real culture: an American movie in English without Italian subtitles at the theater.  This one was actually pretty good, if depressing (Running with Scissors), although the only thing truly cultural about it was the theater.  Cinema Odeon has been open since 1922 in a grand theater with gilded boxes and a stained glass cupola, but the building itself is a palace constructed in 1462 (yes, that’s before America was even “discovered” by the Europeans).  Over the years leading musicians and actresses have appeared there, including Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Anjelica Huston, and of course up-and-coming screenwriters Diana Ohlbaum and John Allen Hahn.  (At this point, the only thing I can say about my writing is a quote from Annie Dillard: “I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend.  During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders.  I hold its hand and hope it will get better.”)

On the way from the movie to dinner, we managed to stop into the Baptistery, a 5th century pagan temple later converted to Christian use which stands right next to the Duomo.  It is known best for its sculpted bronze doors depicting scenes from the Bible, which Michelangelo called the “Gates of Paradise”.  We left just in time to squeeze in the worst pizza we ever ate, at a pizzeria that came highly recommended from several sources and whose only redeeming quality was its location across the street from an English-language theater to which we had evening tickets. (Maybe if we’d been doing this all in Italian we’d actually speak the language by now.)   It was actually quite interesting to see Agnes of God, a play about the conflict between science and faith, in the country of Michelangelo and da Vinci and so many others whose portrayals of and for the faithful depended upon their knowledge of science.  The play began at 9 pm, which is the normal starting time for cultural events here, but only in Italy could the after-theater discussion still be going full-force at 12:30 am, when we finally decided to call it a night.