Like an Old Friend

I come from a movie-loving family.We used to know our neighborhood movie place by heart. That was back when you could rent movies from places owned by small business owners, not Hollywood Video or Blockbuster or Netflix. The owners would say hello and give us the inside scoop on sleeper hits. They would even call us at home to tell us when a movie we had wanted was returned. That was cool. They had a little popcorn machine and charged 25 cents for a bag of fresh popcorn. For a buck, each member of the family could have popcorn for our movies that night.

We used to get this deal that was one new release movie with three older movies for free. That was how I saw a lot of family movies, musicals, and old classics. My sister and I had two favorite movies that we would beg our dad for if we couldn't find another movie we had wanted to see. Newsies and Clue. I'm sure we rented those so often that we could probably have bought ten copies of each! We would dutifully scour the store for anything we hadn't seen yet and, if nothing else was found, we would grab a copy of Newsies or Clue and try to sneak it into the pile. My dad would just roll his eyes. If he protested TOO much, we went for the throat and threatened to choose Back to the Beach.

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Because I just can't think of these wonderful movies without memorable quotes flying through my head...(just bear with me, y'all)

Newsies:

Jack: "And I said, 'I ain't in the habit of transactin' no business with office boys. Just tell him Jack Kelly's here to see him.'"

Les:"And that's when they threw us out."

Clue:

Col. Mustard: "Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?"

Wadsworth: "You don't need any help from me, sir."

Col. Mustard: "That's right!"

Back to the Beach:

Bobby: "I believe it's the plural form, meaning more than one. Do you want me to conjugate that for you, Dad? Do you know what conjugate means?"

Frankie: "I'd like to conjugate you on the back of the head with a rock!"


Ok, thanks...that's it. I'm done. I feel better. It's like scratching an itch.

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So, anyway, in the middle of all this NY garbage that's happening, we've also had to cancel our cable. So, I'm back to surfing Craigslist for writing jobs and watching our dvd collection. When we originally packed in Texas, I had a gigantic box of movies I was fairly certain I couldn't live without, but they were all on VHS. There was no way we could store all those movies here. I could barely lift the box. I had another decent sized box of dvds that I was positive were coming to NY, but I left all the dvd cases at home and brought them in a huge dvd portfolio thingy to save space. Although some true classics on VHS didn't make the trip (like Little Women and Iron Will and Tremors and Singin' in the Rain and Tommy Boy), thank heavens I was able to bring the dvds. Among the madness of rude people and no cable and weird food and no money...I'm back among friends.

Right now, for instance, Cher and Dionne are about to take Tai under their wing (although Dionne fears their "stock will plummet") in Clueless. What a fun movie...so dated. I love it. Speaking of dated, today, I watched Protocol and actually smiled when Goldie Hawn was elected into Congress at the end. I also left French Kiss running a couple of times throughout the day... Kevin Kline's a genius.

Although I've seen our dvds a million times, the characters are so friendly and funny and the music is so good and the lines are still clever...and it's all so KNOWN to me. Around here, anything KNOWN is practically therapeutic. I want to know what to expect, where the high points are and, most of all, I want some freakin' comic relief. I know for a fact that I've been on a smile and laugh drought in New York. There's just not that much that's funny right now. If emotions are actually chemical reactions in the brain (check out, What the Bleep Do We Know?) then I'm on serious happiness withdrawal. (I wonder how THAT will manifest itself...) But if watching Clue on my iPod on the subway keeps me sane and laughing to myself, then I say there are worse ways to escape real life. A good movie is a wonderful, manageable, pretend world with a beginning, middle, and end...and some great lines along the way...and I need that right now.