October sees a big milestone for me: age fifty. This has already brought on the normal questions of my mortality, and a reconsideration of the state of my life, and ways I want it to stay the same, and ways I want it to change. And now, in anticipation of the event, I've started a 'real time' Spring cleaning of my overstuffed bookshelves...and have been reminded of who I have been, who I am, and even who I want to be. I have always enjoyed learning new things, reading new things, hearing new things. But I keep with me treasured works, even if I rarely come back to them. I guess this makes me a sentimentalist. If so, a modified one. Still...
I have many movies (plus filmed live performances) on VHS, DVD, and now Blu-ray disc. I kept and shall keep all of them. As I look over my shelves, I seem to see patterns that I have forgotten or never noticed. I have loved movies since I was a toddler (this was long before any of the above forms of replaying something over and over.) I sat on the floor in front of the television while my mother cleaned the house or took in laundry to make extra money for the house. She would come by and name some actor while I watched, usually not the star. I knew who Sidney Greenstreet was before I knew my neighbors. My mother started working a full-time job when I was five, still not in school, so I truly was young.
I'm somewhat selective: I won't watch just any movie. And I keep even fewer. But I have thousands, of many genres, languages, decades. I have silent films. Long live Charlie Chaplin! Buster Keaton! Michael Keaton, I can tolerate every few years in one of three movies. I have Harry Potter. I have The Marx Brothers (...I shot an elephant in my pajamas). I have Inception. I have Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. I have Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I have most of the movies of Hitchcock. I have very few movies by Frank Capra. (Everyone of them has a character do something so stupid, so unmotivated, so shoehorned into the story to cause conflict, so maddening, I yell 'Oh, come on!' and I have to turn it off.) I have many musicals. Singin' In the Rain: (Lina...she can't act, she can't sing, she can't dance: the triple threat.) Dreamgirls: (And I am tellin' you, I'm not goin') I love Spielberg. I do not love Clint Eastwood. (I don't hate him, either. I just think he is derivative. But at least he steals from the best.) I love Kurusawa. I do not love Godard. (I pretty much loathe him. God, what pretentious, amateurish, drivel! Root canal is less painful.) Martin Scorsese, genius. James Cameron, ingenious. Powell and Pressburger, one-of-a-kind. Blake Edwards, I kind of like three or four. Jean Renior, a favorite. Guy Ritchie, I own one. I love Cary Grant. I love Daniel Day Lewis. Meryl Streep is one of my 'gods' of film. Every frame of Jim Carrey should be melted down. (Ok, I like one movie he is in. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's the only movie where he doesn't mug for the camera.) Arnold Schwarzenegger should be melted down (actor and human.) Bette Davis, yes! Reece Witherspoon, no! I would watch Maggie Smith eat paint. Will Smith? A few movies. Perhaps he should try eating paint. Orson Welles is still under-rated. Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies ever made. Every line is quotable. Say 'Rosebud' to anyone over forty and they will show a sign of recognition. Say it to people under forty, and many of them will show a sign of recognition. A single word. But he made more: Touch of Evil, The Lady From Shanghai, Othello, The Magnificent Ambersons. Billy Wilder has more iconic (or at least important) movies that people don't know he made than any other major Hollywood writer / director. Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Witness for the Prosecution, Sabrina, The Spirit of St. Louis. ([I am big. It's the pictures that got small.] [I'm a man! Well, nobody's perfect.] [The insurance ran out on the 15th. I'd hate to think of your having a smashed fender or something while you're not, uh, fully covered.] [The minute we get off the train the alarm is sounded: The leper is back. Hide your liquor.] [Did you hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you. Shut up and deal.] [I am constantly surprised that women's hats do not provoke more murders.] [It's all in the family.] [We get through 99% of the time.] many, many, many more great lines. Quentin Tarantino just references iconic (or important) movies...not as wittily as he thinks or gets credit for. And I have barely scratched the surface. The list of great actors--or at least, great performances--could fill a (small) book. The bad ones? A shelf of books.
So what does this say about me? I cherish wit. I love great writing about people--super-human ones included. I love believable emotions, even when something blows up five minutes later. I love movies that never have anything blow up five minutes later. I love great acting in any form, even those created by animators and voice work. I love movies from every year going back to the earliest days. I love visually stunning work. (Not really things blowing up as much as an eye-catching point-of-view, or shots you wouldn't expect.) I love inimitable works. (Any of the movies above, but Citizen Kane especially.) I love inimitable actors. I love great music scores that add depth, emotions, even humor. (Far too many to name, but let Bernard Herrmann's North by Northwest be a great sample.) I love musical performances: all kinds of characterful singing and / or dancing to music from Jule Styne to Stephen Sondheim. (We'll talk more about opera later.) I love to think. I love to feel. I like to cry (sometimes.) I love to laugh. I want movies to show life in all its forms, even life writ large. Life in miniature is usually best left for the written word, where a shiver can be palpably described. I don't want rote. I don't want formula without surprise. I don't want mindless. I want what I want in my own life: memorable moments, big, little, good and bad. I don't want a 'safe' life... it's too short. Movies are a part of who I've become. I would not be the person I am without them. So I won't sell them or give them away. Other things, sure. But I'll watch them with (almost) anyone.
