The storied career of AJ Mungo

You can call him AJ, you can call him Andrew ...

Call him AJ. Not a lot of people do these days, at least not in our little city where he a local celebrity — famous, you could say — where everybody knows him by his given name. The nickname goes back, way back, to the days  when he was a young punk and promising juvenile delinquent growing up on the wrong side of the river, back to his father, who people also called AJ, although the initials meant something else.  The father was Andrew Joseph, the son was  Andrew John. That became an issue at his christening, when the parish priest insisted that, to avoid a lifetime of confusion Andrew John have "Jr." tacked on to his name, which is why the name on the box of "Thanks for Listening, a Memoir" says, "a film by AJ Mungo and" — talk about a name — "Amie Spiridigliozzi-Keefe" instead of "Andrew J. Mungo Jr." It's also one of the stories Mungo tells in the film, which gets a proper big screen premiere this week at the Screening Room, the city's hip, alternative cinema, which he owns, and which, after three decades in fashionable, trendy Blueberry Port, has propelled him to superstar status or, at least, relative fame, but only within the city limits. He still has to pay cash in Strawberry Port, and in Raspberry Port he has to show a photo ID. The movie, the film-maker and -shower says, tongue squarely in cheek, is his bid to bust the fame game open — beyond the Merrimack, even. And, at the same time, goose his rep here, in the most delicious of the Ports, because fame can be fleeting, and while most folks may know who he is, this guy behind the camera, or the popcorn machine, or, depending on the day, the ticket booth, what do we actually know about him? And, while we're talking about him, what's the deal with his freakishly large head? 

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Andrew Mungo and the fame game

This is the story of two Andys. The first one came up with the insight — prescient, now a cliche — that in the future everyone would be famous for oh, just about a quarter of an hour. And he became very famous indeed, Andy, almost as famous as the amazing Lindsay Lohan is today. The other Andy has a peculiar relationship with celebrity. Unlike Andy I, a genuinely revolutionary artist who became famous the world over for being famous, Andy II is very well known, famous you could say, but only within narrow geographical constraints. Call him a local celebrity. If you’ve been in the city for a while, chances are that you know him. You’ve probably given him money for a good time. He's been a fixture in downtown Blueberryport for more than three decades .... What's that? Yeah, right, Blueberryport. That’s what our Andy — Andrew Mungo, the owner (and the guy behind the ticket counter and sometimes behind the projector and popcorn machine) at The Screening Room — calls the community that looks an awful lot like Newburyport in “Thanks for Listening, A Memoir," a film that has been in the works for a decade and that will make its big-screen debut this week. Not at the alt-hip downtown cinema, but just up the street, at a meeting of the Newburyport Public Library's Film Club.

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