Randy Howlett isn’t comparing himself to Gene Hackman and it’s not like the 1983 Battle Mountain girls track team was the Vail Valley’s “Hoosiers.” Still, a good sports story is worth writing down. “I’m 71.
THE VILLAGE IDIOT begins on a glorious spring day in Paris 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists of the age have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated regally in a bathtub pulled by a flock of canvasback ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has a secret advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub from underwater. Soutine, an unwashed, misfit artist (who incidentally can’t swim), has been persuaded by the Italian to don a ponderous diving suit and trudge along the floor of the river Seine. Disoriented and confused by the artificial air in his helmet, Chaim stumbles through the events of his past and future life.