Jerry Maguire is right there on my TV set and I can't look away. I have a flood of emotions even now upon my 500th time watching this movie. I feel the same way when I watch Top Gun or Stand By Me and of course, Forrest Gump.
Really, like certain songs; specific movies stay with us forever.
I was just a little kid when I saw E.T. I believed every damn thing about that movie. That heartbreaking moment when Elliot tells his alien friend to "stay" and ET counters him with "come"; at the time, I couldn't understand why their two worded argument was necessary. Just fucking go with him, Elliot, I thought to myself at the tender age of ten. What's so great about earth? True friends are worth a little long distance trip in a space ship. I walked out of that movie theatre bawling like a ten year old and I was a little angry.
Life isn't that complicated when you're a kid and solutions to every damn problem can be found in miliseconds. In other words, we don't have self-debates and we aren't overanalytical until puberty.
I saw that Nicholas Cage movie, Leaving Las Vegas with an old best friend many years ago. Ironically not coincidentally, it was one of the last movies I ever saw with him before he left us. It is a surreal feeling to be sitting next to someone in a movie theatre whose life at that moment resembles the life of the main character in the movie you are watching. When Nicholas dies at the end of the movie, it literally dawned on me that the man sitting next to me would realize the same fate. And I was right.
And I deliberate. Still do. Because yes, life imitates art.
Funny thing about that old saying is Redd Foxx who famously faked heart attacks on Sanford and Son died from a heart attack in real life. Coincidentally, not ironically.
Right now is that scene in Jerry Maguire where that meloncholy Bruce Springsteen song is playing as Dorothy is deliberating whether or not, she should have married Jerry. I love that scene and that song is perfect for that moment. On the rare occasions, I hear that song on the radio, the same emotions I get from that scene in the movie flood straight through me. It's amazing how a song and a movie are forever married and become a parasite that clings to its host.... us.
There's these two 80's movies that might be a little obscure but they were intensely relevant to me back in the days of dollar theatres and renting VHS tapes: All the Right Moves with Tom Cruise and Some Kind of Wonderful. I had an opportunity a few months ago to watch them online and I figured they wouldn't hold up well. Surprisingly, both movies still had a profound effect on me. I suppose those of us who liked sappy movies when we were younger simply graduate to The Notebook when we are older.
Speaking of The Notebook, it's movie I liked the first time I saw it. I despised it the second time and it just might be because it's the cool thing to say... kinda like telling people you hated Friends. Everyone was at Woodstock and everyone hates Friends. I think those are two biggest lies people tell. What is cool to say is that Seinfeld is your favorite show ever. I admit I love Seinfeld but I will never get over Jerry's fashion choices. He dressed exactly like Jack Tripper and wore stupid looking sneakers. Go watch Threes Company and you'll see what I mean.
My favorite movie of all time is 500 Days of Summer. It's not something I can sum up in a short paragraph. Unless you've seen it, it can't be understood. It's pure unadulterated cinematic story telling of a boy who meets a girl. And it's as real as a movie can get on this subject.
Tom is a trained architect but works as a writer for a greeting card company. In a state of heartbreak, he tells his co-workers, "It's these cards and the movies and the pop songs, they're to blame for all lies and the heartache, everything",
I have deliberated on this quote for a long time. I've been in Tom's shoes and understand misdirected anger. But he's wrong. Movies and music are not only therapeutic but they play an integral part in our lives. They are bridges that connect our present to our past.
It's amazing that I can hear Journey's Open Arms on some classic rock radio station today and remember that neurotic phone call I made to KZZP twenty seven years ago and dedicated that song to some doe eyed girl from 7th grade, whom wore skin tight Jordache Jeans, I thought I was going to marry someday.
It is incredible that I can still watch Some Kind of Wonderful twenty something years later and being able to relive that undeniably most tramatic part of being young called unrequited love then looking back and realizing your friends were right... Someday, you will get the girl.
How beautiful it is to be ripped to shreds on the inside when John Coffey does the dead man's walk to the chair in The Green Mile because we then realize the depth of our own empathy. And years later watchiing it again, we realize that we haven't lost our heart and we are just as compassionate today as we were 15 years ago when that movie was released.
I can simply just list characters from movies and most people will be able to formulate some significant memory from the moment they first met them. Take Vada at Thomas Jay's funeral in My Girl or Forrest telling Lt. Dan he's got magic legs. Man, nothing else builds a bridge to our past like movies do.
I saw Stand By Me seven times at the local dollar theatre. The last time I saw it was my first real date alone with a girl. During the scene at the end when Richard Dreyfuss, as the narrator, tells the fate of each boy, that girl touched my leg.
The first time a girl touches a guy's leg is worthy of being relived over and over again.
Thank you, Stephen King, Rob Reiner and really, all movie makers for that opportunity.
Jerry Mcguire just ended.
Coincidentally, not ironically.
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