Lee Marvin made me do it

Half asleep in bed, I hear the faint rumblings of De Campo closing the front door. She comes into the bedroom. In her hands she holds a gigantic 1200ML sealed bottle of Bundaberg Rum that she found on the footpath in front of the house next to our recycling bin. She displays it proudly, label facing front.

“Lee Marvin.” I mutter. “Lee Marvin is behind this!”

(It's the morning of the first of three Lee Marvin nights that will take place over the next three Wednesdays at Cinemateque at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI))

At breakfast Olivia mentions the Lee Marvin connection I brought up. I have no idea what she is talking about. “I never mentioned him,” I say. Yet on top of the cupboard, there it is, the mysterious bottle of rum.

After work, I order a burger deluxe from the joint in the courtyard at ACMI. Why I ordered this I do not know. The burger has two robust patties that the bun is unable to contain. It’s hot out here and the flies are buzzing around my head and trying to get into my food and I am making such a mess with this burger that I feel I need to take a shower immediately afterwards. I am 35 years old and lacking the metabolism (not to mention the good sense) to process such a beast and yet here I am eating this double-beef monstrosity. Why, I ask, why? Two words: Lee Marvin.

The Professionals, Dir. Richard Brooks (1966)

A hell of a fun movie with a hell of a cast: Lee Marvin, Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Ralph Bellamy, Claudia Cardinale and Jack Palance. There’s horse-riding, dynamite, whiskey-guzzling, bodacious gunslinging babes, ample stunt-work, quality Mexican scenery, wicked salivating bandits and cool, badass dudes. What more do you want? Outstanding Hollywood product. The candied version of The Wild Bunch.

I stayed on for part of part two of the Marvin double, 'Hell in the Pacific', and was far less impressed with that, so I went home unencumbered by strange entity.