| August 26, 1998 Movies I Love
Movies are one of my life's greatest pleasures. I can
remember going to matinees as a child, alone, sitting in the dark and just letting myself
be carried away by the mysterious world unfolding in front of me. Again and again
since then I've come back to movies for entertainment, provocation, meaning, and
solace. I love that feeling of being taken to another place, outside myself or
deeper inside myself, and just exploring there for awhile. Like reading, but with a
soundtrack.
Mary sent me a magazine article earlier this year about how
movies can cement (or destroy) a friendship. I think it's true. When I look
back on my college years, I remember one quarter at the University of Georgia when Celeste
and I majored in movies . . . I was taking a film class where we watched at least two
movies in class a week, and were required to attend one foreign movie each week outside
class. On top of that, Celeste and I pursued an aggressive extracurricular
film-watching schedule in the viewing room at the library and the theater at the student
center. What blissful days those were. In the space of ten weeks I saw more movies
than can possibly be healthy, but boy were they great. Lawrence of Arabia, Something
Wild, Nashville, West Side Story, Au Revoir les Enfants, The
Stunt Man, Wild Strawberries, Salaam Bombay, Five Easy Pieces,
The Graduate, the Star Wars trilogy (a special highlight) and the list
goes on. And let us not forget Flash Gordon, the perfect birthday movie.
Later on, I found another kindred spirit in Shannon. We
spent at least a couple of years of graduate school carefully checking off films from our
"Best Movies of All Time" list, and attacking the indices of the VideoHound by
subject and actor. I think Shannon watched every gangster movie listed in the
VideoHound, then moved on to all the Viet Nam movies. She also joined me in my quest
to watch every movie ever made featuring John Cusack or Robert Downey, Jr. Everybody
needs a friend like that.
Then there are those movies that I simply have to foist on
everyone I meet . . . The Princess Bride was like that for me (I saw it at least
six times in the theater!), as were A Room with a View and Much Ado about
Nothing. Now I'm talking about the ones I own on videotape, that I'll watch --
or show -- at the least suggestion, like Strictly Ballroom or Impromptu
or The Fugitive or The Commitments or Beauty and the Beast or Muriel's
Wedding or The Cutting Edge or Henry V or Say Anything or Oklahoma!
or Bull Durham . . . my comfort movies, the ones I come back to again and
again. Most of these are the movies Marty and I both love, the ones we quote on a
daily basis. "Damn . . . fingerpainting."
I mustn't forget all those movies that can best be
appreciated in the company of like-minded friends . . . Maurice and Jeffrey
and Kiss Me, Guido, and My Beautiful Laundrette, and The Wedding
Banquet, and Parting Glances, and Scenes from the Class Struggle in
Beverly Hills (oh, I just can't help myself!).
And there is also the special joy of watching movies alone,
both in the theater and at home. I still think fondly on the day I attended The
Last Temptation of Christ alone, pushing my way through the picket line to get in.
And some films are just "wallows," like my Errol Flynn movies (I really
can't expect anyone else to love Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin
Hood the way I do), those 80s teen movies (The Breakfast Club and Sixteen
Candles, you know) and 1950s melodramas featuring all those heavily closeted leading
men. Oh, and White Christmas, which always makes me cry, and nobody else
but Dixie seems to be able to appreciate it.
I get that feeling sometimes that I know what the soundtrack
should be, when I know just how I'd film the scene, when I look at my world like
it was a movie. Always looking for that meaning, a way to tell the story that makes
more sense. Life isn't really like that, of course, but sometimes it feels
like that. Sometimes it's hard to let go of that mistaken belief that the audience
is always watching. But really, they're just out there, the movies, they're
an important part of my life. They help me think, and feel, and understand. |
