Sunday With The Turk

On Valentine's Day, we went to the movies and saw "The Turk."

If you're wondering who's in it, or how it did at the box office compared to "Avatar" or the new movie that's actually titled "Valentine's Day," let me set you straight before this goes any further: "The Turk" is not the movie we saw last Sunday, but it could have been the name above the title.

In truth, My Wonderful Wife Peg and I went to a Sunday matinee screening of "Up in the Air," which stars George Clooney as a character named Ryan Bingham. But in watching him, I wasn't thinking as I usually do, that Mr. Clooney is this Hollywood's Clark Gable and Cary Grant all rolled into one.

No, this time, as we sat in the dark among the few others who were late in catching this hit film or maybe seeing it again, a different notion rose up and grabbed me early on. I suddenly realized that I was watching "The Turk" in action.

If you follow professional football to the extent that you not only watch the games on the field but read about the other stuff -- the "metagame" -- you caught my drift in the opening sentence.

But if, like My Wonderful Wife Peg, whose interest in watching any kind of football has always been determined by whether a family member was involved, "The Turk" is part of the unknown.

To anyone familiar with the challenge of trying to gain or maintain employment as a player in the National Football League, however, no explanation is necessary. Like an encounter with "The Grim Reaper," first-hand knowledge of "The Turk" is to be avoided at all costs. To meet him is to die.

"The Turk" is the fellow who makes the rounds at training camp each time the team's roster needs to be pared down. He's the one who knocks on a player's door to deliver the dreaded words: "Coach wants to see you --- and bring your playbook."

At that moment, when someone's hopes and dreams have just been tapped on the shoulder by an angel of death, what name the messenger may have been given at birth or called at baptism matters little.

To those he seeks out, he's simply "The Turk." When he comes a-knocking, the next thing you know, you've been cut loose.

The first time I read about this entity, as necessary to a pro team's functions as the guy who maintains the Gatorade, the image I conjured up was inspired more by an interpretation of the monicker and less by reality. Of course, since I had never actually met anyone worthy of such a name, I initially relied on imagination and came up with something that was meant to be more imposing than the truth.

I imagined "The Turk" as a cartoon character --- a big, bald-headed brute with an enormous handlebar mustache, possibly with a hoop earring dangling from one lobe but surely wielding a mighty scimitar. This seemed to match my idea of somebody who handles the execution, though it's actually the head coach who tells you to sit down and then throws the switch.

Even so, I knew that the mental picture I had painted could be an animation cell for a 1930s Popeye short. To make "The Turk" truly frightening, I'd have to make him real.

Casting "The Turk" from the ranks of real people, I was reminded of a certain professional wrestler, who went by the name Abdullah the Butcher and was sometimes billed as "The Madman from the Sudan," even though he came from Canada. With deep gashes in his bald head, ones in which he reportedly could stick poker chips, Abdullah was not a pretty sight. But among the living, he was my idea of what "The Turk" should look like.

So it was something of a shock to be sitting in the Bellmore Playhouse last Sunday afternoon, when I looked up to find George Clooney -- the handsome devil for whom, by agreement, My Wonderful Wife Peg can leave me just as I can leave her for Vanessa Williams -- playing "The Turk."

The movie "Up in the Air" has nothing to do with football, but everything to do with a character who has embraced the lifestyle that comes with flying back and forth to practice his art of leaving ordinary people in a terrible place as cleanly as possible.

It may be a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, especially in a recession. So we watch as Clooney's Ryan Bingham goes from city to city, making his appointed rounds and delivering the bad news on behalf of the employers who have contracted with his company to handle the terminations.

The unlucky speak to us, reacting as they meet their doom, and some responses seem worse than others as they take their turns articulating at least one of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' stages of grief. Shock, denial, anger, bargaining and depression are all displayed. But in the end, there's the acceptance of taking the information packet from Bingham that puts the terms of an occupational demise neatly in print.

Meanwhile, seeing this introduction to Clooney's character was a little unsettling at first, considering that I've been out of work for three months now, ending a run of employment that spanned 30 years at two different places.

Fortunately, there is more to "Up in the Air" than watching how longtime workers do in coming face-to-face with "The Turk" and as a moviegoer, I'm glad I saw it.

Some scenes serve as amusing distractions. After Vera Farmiga's character -- Bingham's ideal woman -- becomes part of the story, one might entertain the notion that producer-director Ivan Reitman is shuttling his audience to the land of romantic comedy, where the lead players are warm and likeable even if their actions are not.

I had that feeling to such an extent that for a moment, I could see Rock Hudson in his heyday cast as Ryan Bingham, except for one thing: the U.S. economy in the early 1960s was a different story than the one that keeps the character busy in "Up in the Air."

As it is, a thorough appreciation for this take on current events figures to be difficult for anyone who has lost -- or is in danger of losing -- a job. When Bingham's boss, portrayed by Jason Bateman, gets giddy while talking at an office meeting about the country's deepening recession, he seems more heartless than any villain named Darth.

But for every person who has been turned into an unemployment statistic, one scene in particular might prove as discomforting as it is unforgettable. It has Bingham's young female colleague, perfectly played by Anna Kendrick, trying to perform as an efficient, electronic version of "The Turk" to an older worker named Mr. Samuels. The exercise does not go well for either of them.

Later, on our way out, My Wonderful Wife Peg and I shared our enjoyment of the film, though she admitted that had she known what kind of work the main character does, she probably would have suggested another movie for our Valentine's Day --- George Clooney or no George Clooney.

Like me, she had winced when all those employees about to receive their packet of doom from Ryan Bingham paraded across the screen.

That night, I got to thinking about something I had heard many years ago, regarding one man's remembrance of having seen Arthur Miller's tragic play, "Death of a Salesman," when it first opened in New York City.

"Usually, when people walk out of a sure-fire hit show, they're talking about how wonderful it was," he said. "But here were all these middle-aged men who were walking away in silence. They had just seen their lives and it scared the hell out of them."

More than that, they had just glimpsed "The Turk."