My life in the movies

I’ve lived a lot of my life vicariously in the movies.  Or have writers stolen my diary material?  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn inspired my college career.  I was Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed.  And when I saw how Sandra Bullock (While You Were Sleeping) snagged the man of her dreams while he slept, I was hopeful.

When I was very young, after sitting in the front row of the local theater watching Lady and the Tramp, I decided to raise cocker spaniels.  That never happened.  And long before DVDs, I quoted every line of Gidget.  Moondoggie was near perfect, except for that funny ear.  I actually believed that now-proven-bogus cross-stitch hanging on Gidget’s bedroom wall — “To be a real woman is to bring out the best in a man.”  I was convinced one day a man would recognize my invaluable worth and beat down my door looking for me.  That one never happened either. 

I longed to discover the feeling of ”what happens when your real life exceeds your dreams” (Broadcast News).  Instead, in the same movie, Holly Hunter cried ten minutes every morning whether she needed it or now.  If it worked for her, why not me?  Then like Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give, I actually got “abnormally brilliant at crying.”

So I kept going to the movies, watching my life played out on the big screen, thinking one magical line would change my life.  And some did in a way.

I’ve had several near death experiences buying into Marlon Brando’s “I’ve got an offer you can’t refuse” (Godfather).  I’ve been lucky enough to have friendships that “feel like home” (Mirror Has Two Faces).  I’ve experienced firsthand the Zero Effect of “what doesn’t kill you defines you.”  I feared turning into Albert Finney in Big Fish where “everyone likes you, but nobody loves you.”  A few people I’ve meant “had me at ‘hello’ (Jerry McGuire).  I’ve understood completely how Struther Martin felt when he declared, “what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate”  (Cool Hand Luke).  The Family Stone clarified, years later, why one of my suitors during my stent as a single mom ran off (to the circus, he claimed) — “less clowns.”  Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer) really got me when he said, “You think back on all the times you’ve had with someone and you just replay it in your head over and over again, and you look for those first signs of trouble.”  I, too, accept blame for everything.  When I’d hear someone summoning, in an unrelated conversation, “Who did it?” I raise my hand. 

In my closing act, “I want to spend my life making a life” (Conversations with God).  I really do.  So I’ll keep going to the movies.  Besides I agree “everything’s better with butter” (Julie and Julia).  That’s the movie that started me blogging.

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