Talking Movies An Essay by Dr. Daniel     I recently attended a dinner party. I'm not typically the dinner party type -- I'd rather eat a can of Beefaroni alone by the TV -- but I was duped into going on the pretense of meeting someone of the fairer sex. I was in the supermarket browsing the Cap'n Crunch aisle, when I ran into my lawyer Clive Sparrow and his wife, Marge. (They were checking out the Rice Chex.) Marge immediately started gushing at me like we were poker chums, which had me suspicious since I'd only met her once before, and made quick work of inviting me to her house for a Saturday "get-together." She explained, "Our lovely niece, Sarah, will be there, and you've just got to meet Sarah. He's just GOT to meet Sarah, right, Clive?" Clive hinged his head vigorously, "She's a looker, V.B." I hemmed and hawed, but gave in on the outside chance that she might be Ms. Right.     Well, once I got to the "party," Sarah appeared, looking like a crayon rendering of Olive Oyle. She wasn't sinfully ugly, but you could say my mating instincts were firmly in check. Besides that little disappointment, the crowd was a veritable Who's Who of American Dullards -- in attendance were the Sparrows; Clive's Atlanta accountant, Lawrence something-or-other; a hefty female chemical engineer named Priscilla, who was "passing through" to meet her husband in Pennsylvania (go figure); and a couple of bland stockbrokers and their pale wives. I promptly forgot their names. Some old fart who owned a Mercedes dealership was there too and he kept calling his wife "sir" by accident. I thought that was funny, but that unfortunately was the highlight of the night.     Anyway, as these parties are apt to go, the hostess tosses out a few topics of conversation along with the appetizers, and everyone's supposed to chunk in their two cents and show how charming they are by the end of dessert. We started in on mutual funds and the bull market, moved to some fill-in-the-blank political controversies, slid on over to nuclear power and low-mileage sedans with pneumatic shock absorbers, and by the time I had finished my tomato-crustacean salad thing, we were chatting the relative merits of hiring illegal aliens.     The point of all this drivel, is that on intermittent occasions, when I gutted in to express my opinion, I found that my primary frame of reference was movies. For instance, when they brought up the stock market, I thought about Wall Street; when they mentioned nuclear power, I mouthed dialogue from The China Syndrome; when they mentioned politics, it was The American President that sprung to mind. About chocolate mousse time, I chuckled aloud that my opinions seemed to revolve around Michael Douglas movies, and they all stared at me with that "pop culture is so juvenile" look, and after a long uncomfortable silence, Sarah asked, "Michael who?" Priscilla chimed in, "He's that man who's always cheating on his wife." The stockbrokers nodded, and someone quickly complimented Marge on her caterer.     I considered pulling a Jack Nicholson from Five Easy Pieces and raking all the china off onto the floor and marching out, but I figured it too would go unappreciated. I finished my mousse, tipped my hat toward the Sparrows and rode on home.     First thing I did was turn on the computer and log into the alt.cult-movies newsgroup. I caught up on the latest rants about Das Boot and the Best Headwounds on Film and read a blistering rimshot about William Shatner's performance in Kingdom of the Spiders. Some folks were volleying back and forth about Phantasm and I even saw a plea to help save an historic moviehouse in Arizona.     It was enough to convince me that there was nothing wrong with me, and that pop culture was not only NOT juvenile, but was infinitely more interesting than stocks and shocks. So, in short, next time I'm invited to a dinner party, I'll just say, "Remember the dinner party scene in Fatal Attraction?" If I'm met with a blank stare, I'll just politely decline. Get reel soon, Dr. V. B. "Doc" Daniel