My Prince Moments
And by that I mean the rock star Prince. Not Wills. Not Harry. Not Achileas-Andreas (look him up). Not even your neighbor's German Shepherd. I'm talking "Prince" Prince.
Forty years ago this month, in September 1984, Prince released his single “Purple Rain,” the title track from its eponymous movie and album. They were all monster hits, making boatloads of cash for Prince and many others. In 1984 we were Prince crazy. His brilliance for writing, recording, and performing music broke open a lot of creative boundaries we didn’t know existed. There’s a reason Prince remains a cultural icon since his first album, For You (1978). Gone eight years now, his enormous body of work continues to enthrall new generations. Prince was a one-of-a-kind talent.
Given this 40th anniversary, I have have two Prince moments worthy of sharing. One is amusing funny. The other is…well, a little off kilter but still funny.
First thing’s first: As I said, Prince was a one-of-a-kind talent, at least when it came to music and live performance. His movies? Not so much. None of them have aged well, particularly his 1984 debut film, Purple Rain. Rampant mysogny gets played for laughs.1 The plotline is predictable, over-stuffed with clichéd characters and formulaic scenes. Parts of the film are unintentionally hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
The first time I saw Purple Rain, I was bored out of my mind despite my love for Prince. Was my initial impression wrong? After all, the film was a critical and box office success. Surely I was missing something. I went back to the theater, hoping to discover what that “something” was.
It was true. I was missing something. And what was that something? The price of two movie tickets. Purple Rain was then and is now nothing more than an extended MTV video with dialog—and not very good dialog—delivered by wooden performers garbed in pseudo-sexy underpants and way too much eyeliner.
Only the final concert sequence holds up, but that’s because Prince’s music is phenomenal. Music, not acting, is what Prince did best. The subsequent soundtrack album is timeless in a way the movie can never be. It’s filled with some of Prince’s best songs: “Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” and of course the title track.
Another song on the Purple Rain album instigated my first Prince moment.
My Prince Moment #1
Impromptu Subway Musical Theater
It is sometime after the release of Purple Rain. Maybe six months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. It doesn’t matter. I'm getting on the subway, heading to meet a friend in downtown Chicago. The train car is more or less empty, other than me and an older woman, who is probably in her late 60s.
At the next stop, a couple of kids get on the train. The boys are 15 years old, tops. They've got a boom box the size of a hotel room mini-fridge. Its powerful speakers, heavy on the bass, are blasting the Purple Rain soundtrack. Prince’s music reverberates throughout the train car. The boys dance up and down the aisles. It’s annoying but gleeful in a way that can only be pulled off by goofy kids blasting a boombox while dancing on a subway train.
The older woman looks irritated. Those dang kids and their head-splitting music!
The sounds of “Take Me With U” fade out. Up comes the next track. I recognize the opening chords. I know what is coming next: "Darling Nikki." The opening lyrics are, to wit:
I knew a girl named Nikki
I guess you could say she was a sex fiend
I met her in a hotel lobby
Masturbating with a magazine
She said, "How'd you like to waste some time?"
And I could not resist when I saw little Nikki grind
I look at the old lady city ahead of me as the vocals commence. My first thought is “uh-oh.” I’m right. She explodes into a rant of epic proportions, a torrent of condemnations as only an outraged older lady can spew.
The boys eat it up. They laugh while jacking up the volume of their mighty boom box to thunderous levels. You can’t avoid the erotic danger in a song with lyrics like: “She had so many devices/everything that money could buy” and “can't tell you what she did to me/but my body will never be the same.”
I'm torn between feeling bad for the older lady, while trying not to bust out laughing. The impromptu rail-bound musical theater goes on for two more stops. The older lady continues with her unrelenting haraunge that no one listens to, let alone can hear over the boom box bangarang. We reach my stop. I get off. The train doors close. As it pulls out from the subway platform, the two boys are still dancing while the older lady lamblasts away.
My Prince Moment #2
The Low-Rent Lookalike Triad
A few years later. Grad school. Late night class is over. I'm walking down subway stairs to catch a train home. I get to the bottom, hit the turnstile, pay my fare, and head to the tunnel for my train. The station is more or less empty except for me and two others. On a normal evening I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Not tonight.
They are a couple, holding hands. The guy is dressed like Prince. That is, he’s dressed like Prince if Prince buys his clothes from the Salvation Army. Low-Rent Prince has a greasy pompadour, wispy mustache, and way too much eyeliner (even by Real Prince standards). He’s wearing a purple jacket (of course) with pants that sort of match, plus scruffed-up black high heel boots. Jacket and pants are augmented by a white tuxedo shirt with ruffles that have seen better days.
The girl is wearing torn lace fingerless gloves, black camisole top which has also seen better days, short black short shorts which expose a slightly paunchy midriff, torn lace black tights, scruffed-up black high heel boots which resemble those of Low-Rent Prince, and what is best described as a goth glam black hat with a wide brim. Makeup is heavy on the dark purple eyeshadow. She looks like Madonna. That is, if Madonna spent ten bucks (at most) for her outfits at the same Salvation Army store where Low-Rent Prince shops.
It’s early spring, not mid autumn. Halloween is a good six months away, so people aren’t wearing their costumed best on the subways. It hits me: Low-Rent Prince and Low-Rent Madonna are dressing this way on purpose. They want this knock-off look. Well, to each their own, as the saying goes. Even when their own is someone else.
As I walk towards them en route to the subway platform, Low-Rent Prince gives me a long, hard stare. He turns to his girlfriend in astonishment and says to Low-Rent Madonna: "That cat looks like Al Pacino!"
Umm…what?
As far as I know, Al Pacino and I have spare few things in common. For one, we’re both short. I’m 5’ 4". Pacino is 5’ 6”. At the time I also have long black hair (which will be all gone in a few years). So does Pacino. My eyes are dark brown; Pacino’s are hazel-grey, which often photograph as brown. Regardless, our ocular quartet is blessed with long lashes that makes the girls jealous. Pacino and I both have olive skin, mine owing to my Russian-Polish-Latvian-Ashkenzai Jewish mix, and his from Sicilian-Italian Catholic ancestry.2 That’s it.
So how do I, as that cat, look like Al Pacino?
I’m no Michael Corleone from The Godfather (1972).
Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is one of those movies that astonished me the first time I saw it and many times since then, but I don’t look a thing like the incompetent, yet sympathetic bank robber Sonny Wortzik.
Tony Montana in Scarface (1983)? No way. In his rise to power, Tony whacks a corrupt narcotics officer with whom I share a surname.
As I said, during this period in life I have long black hair, brown eyes, long lashes, plus olive skin. Add to that a full beard, battered army jacket I wear just about everywhere I go, and an earring sported in my left ear.3
So how does this cat look like Al Pacino?
It’s not filtered through any of Pacino’s criminal roles. I might vaguely resemble one of his good guys: the “based on fact” honest hippie cop fighting corruption within the NYPD in the film Serpico (1973).
With my ratty jeans, battered Army jacket I bought at Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street Market, long black hair, earring, and soulful eyes (right?), I’m a deadringer for Al Pacino. Or, at the very most, a deadringer Low-Rent Al Pacino.
So there you have it. My two Prince moments. Coincidentally, both take place on the Chicago subway system. Not exactly the kind of “I partied with Prince at his Paisley Park mansion” memory one might hope for, but this pair of reminiscences will do. Besides, they beat that the time I got on a bus, and was greeted by the only other passenger with what was clearly a compliment on his part: “Did anyone every tell you that you look like Ratso Rizzo?” You know, the sleazy street urchin bum-legged con artist played by Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy (1969). This guy clearly intended his comparison of me to Ratso as a positive.
Turns out Midnight Cowboy is one of my favorite films4 and Ratso is one of my favorite movie characters.5 I took the oddball flattery in stride.
Story Links:
David Kehr’s spot-on review of Purple Rain
All things real Prince at the official Prince website
All things real Madonna at the official Madonna website
Serpico the movie verses the real story of Serpico
The history of Chicago’s much-fabled and dearly missed Maxwell Street
What are your faux brushes with low-rent greatness? What cat do you find the most tasty and delicious look like? That’s what the comment section’s for. Give me your best.
Thanks for reading The Typewriter's Collage. Connect with me at Twitter/X, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram at the handle @RealArnieB. I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook under my real name. While you’re at it, click your mouse or trackpad over to my website, www.arniebernstein.com.
And because you made it this far, here’s your bonus content:
Prince William visits some schoolboys during the U.K.’s annual Men’s Health Awareness Month and tells them a knock knock joke.
Click here for info on England’s Male Mental Health awareness campaign
Among other things: A woman gets tossed into a dumpster. Prince’s character “The Kid” convinces a woman to go skinny dipping, then drives off on his ultra-cool motorcycle, leaving her stranded sans clothes. In both cases, this gets played for big laughs. Look how these girls (grown women but “girls”) get humilated! Hardy-har-har! Audiences in 1984 responded accordingly. Today, not so much.
It’s no small irony that Pacino’s family background has roots in the Sicilian town of Corleone.
I later got a second earring in the same ear. I no longer use them as accessories. Why? When I lost my hair it became abundantly clear that I had inherited my grandfather’s Dumbo-like ears. Earrings accentuated that biological quirk, but not in a good way. Thus, I said goodbye to my grad school jewelry. You can still see the holes, which I consider souvenirs from a time gone by. Those holes are still open. I’ll stick an earring in them from time to time, just to take a look at my past.
As are The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scarface.
Ratso is played by Dustin Hoffman, not Al Pacino.
Years ago I learned rapscallion from you. Today colliwobbles. You have my vote!!
Just trying to picture you with long black hair… this was a very fun read… I can hear your voice in its telling.. and your grin from ear to ear!