| Issue #50, March 23, 2007 |
Twentysomething…
Crying In A Movie
By David Lion Rattiner
I watched three movies this past weekend and each struck me in different ways. Yes, this is my pathetic life.
I saw 300 over the weekend, a movie about 300 Spartans battling an army of millions and losing, but not until after killing a bunch of people. What drew me to the movie theater was the fact that so many other people had gone to see it and the fact that it is a Warner Bros. movie, and history has shown me that if anybody that says a Warner Bros. movie is good, then it is really good (Matrix).
And yet, I went to see the movie 300 and the only thing I could think about the entire movie watching experience, is that I need to do more sit-ups. All of the guys in this movie had like sixteen pack abs. It was really depressing. I almost felt like their abdominal muscles didn’t do the movie justice because they were so distracting. This movie is supposed to be for men who like watching people get speared to death, not for women who like watching abdominal muscles flex.
On top of all of this, everybody with the super abdominal muscles dies. Which I guess is somewhat satisfying, but they are supposed to be the heroes.
What a depressing movie. I did some sit-ups before I went to bed Saturday night.
Sunday I was able to catch two movies, the first one being The Godfather, which I watched in the afternoon. After I saw this movie, I found myself sitting at my desk on the telephone talking for about three hours with an old friend from college who is going through a “quarter life crisis.” Like the Godfather, I sat back in my chair and gave him some advice, which was advice that I personally should listen to. Why do we feel the need to give advice to people that we should listen to ourselves? It’s ridiculous. I’m sitting there, telling him all of this stuff about life and being happy and not worrying so much, and here I am, just a day ago, unhappy that I don’t have abdominal muscles like the guys in 300. Screw those guys. They suck. We need more movies like The Godfather, where everybody is pretty much normal looking or has too much body hair, but still manages to be a hero. That’s the problem with movies these days. They are hiring way too many actors and actresses that are too perfect. Think about it. All of the good movies in the world had pretty much normal but charming people in them. Now it’s like a freaking perfection freak show. What a bunch of crap.
Anyway, I found myself shamefully crying my eyes out to the movie Little Giants, a football movie about nine-year-olds who play very, very badly. Kind of like a Bad News Bears type of movie, but with football. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you watch this movie. Rick Moranis is in it, and I think that he hangs out in East Hampton sometimes.
It’s pathetic, but there is this one scene where one of the kids scores a touchdown after running towards his Dad, who cuts work for the day to watch his son play in the game.
I was bawling. Literally bawling. Tears were coming down my face in a whirlwind of pathetic-ness. And this was all happening about four hours after watching The Godfather and about one hour after thinking of myself as the Godfather.
Of course, like a comedy movie in itself, my cell phone started ringing. I checked to see the caller ID, it was my Dad calling from Canada. He is on vacation and has left me in charge of the dog, which by the way is a huge responsibility. You have to feed dogs every day! I never knew that. I thought that they just needed to eat like once every three days. Call me crazy, but I’ve never had to manage a dog before. But yeah, they have to be fed every day. And they are just like people, too. They get all bent out of shape when it’s dinnertime.
Anyway, at this particular moment, my dog noticed me crying over the movie Little Giants, and he had snuggled up against me to make me feel better. What a great dog. This made me cry more.
“Hello?”
“David, it’s Dad. What’s wrong with you? You sound upset.”
“No, I’m fine, everything is cool.”
“Did you feed Moo?” (Our dog’s name is Moo).
“Not yet (sob, sniffle) but I will.”
“Okay, don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
“By the way, I loved your writing this week.”
He just had to say that at this particular moment, didn’t he? I looked at Moo who cocked his head to the side and felt the welling of tears. What the hell was he looking at?
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