I've always been much more interested in character driven stories than by any others. I could watch a great movie, for example, where nothing ever happens if the characters are interesting enough. I think most plot devices used in mainstream movies are cliche' anyway-and unless the characters are truly human, and shine through these ridiculous stunts the writers are trying to pull, I lose interest. For example, the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. As far as I'm concerned, that movie was about Brangolina. Or the new movie Marley and Me. The book was not excellent by any means, but it was mildly diverting, and sometimes cute. The movie, on the other hand, is about Jennifer Anniston (who plays the exact same character in every role. She has the range of a 2x4), and Owen Wilson. The book was about a dog. Anyway, I just named two of the worst movies made in the last ten years. Perhaps I am being unfair.
It's the same for my taste in books. I could read The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov repeatedly for the rest of my life and be completely satisfied. Each book takes its time with each character that it introduces, and the plot is only there to provide reference for the characters and what they are going through.
I like the intense intimacy of spending that much time falling in love (or hate) with characters. It's not just that I get to be inside of them, but they get inside of me too. I am changed with them.
I think comedy too-the really good stuff, the important comedy is very character driven as well.
I think I have always been this way, but there is one movie that really stands out to me as the one that introduced me to this concept. I was eleven when it came out-perhaps a wee too young to be so serious. But I was an odd child. I was the youngest of ten kids, all of whom had grown up and moved out by the time I was six. So I was surrounded by adults most of the time. I was precocious and yes-I was WAY too serious. At any rate, when I was eleven I saw the first movie that made me the movie watcher/ book reader that I still am today.
It was Sophie's Choice. Yes-again-way too young to watch such a serious movie-but what can I do? I saw it, and I fell in love with Meryl Streep and Kevin Klein. I thought they were the most beautiful two people that ever existed. I wanted to be Stinko. I hope my child does not ever have such a dreadful aspiration. I want her to watch Tank Girl and aspire to that, for the LOVE OF GOD! Or at the very least aspire to be Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (if my child must be serious-and I could hope for her to be more playful than I was, and do my best, but she will be who she will be and all I can do is guide her a bit).
It's way too easy to dismiss Sophie as being vulnerable and in need of rescue. That's what Stinko did, and I think it isn't until the very end that he finally understands that Sophie did not need to be saved. Sophie knew exactly what she was doing and she knew why. And therein lies her longevity as a character, her originality, and what made her one of my all time favorite literary characters. Although she probably wasn't completely cognizant of all that was transpiring between her and Nathan, she understood what it meant as it came. She knew that Nathan was the last man she would love, whether she had the language for that or not. She also knew that in her own way she was rescuing Nathan from his demons.
And that is why I adored Stinko so much. I often felt like I was watching relationships unfold before me that I often did not understand-being a child surrounded by adults. I heard secrets, or at least I understood that there were secrets around me, but I never was able to fully grasp their meaning. Stingo had gone to New York to find out what those secrets were, and was given only a glimpse and had to decipher the rest.
That was my first experience with characters that were so messy and human that what they did made almost no sense at all. Nathan and Sophie's love for each other was so utterly destructive (to the point that my writing that sentence seems redundant), yet they brought a joy to each other that was immeasurable.
And on a much lighter note, Sophie's Choice was also when I decided that Carrie Fisher was not nearly as gorgeous as Meryl Streep. I felt as though I had made some huge step in my transition from little girl to woman when I made this discovery. Not only was Meryl Streep hotter, so was Kevin Klein. I was now in love with a whole different caliber of people! And that had to mean that I was growing up (I also blame this movie for my series of terribly ridiculous and impossible relationships in early adulthood)!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Wrap it up people
Last year I was pretty broken up about the fact that The Golden Globes were going to suck without writers (I can't decide who I love more: writers or actors, really, both such a gorgeous collective of neuroses, and ego-and an unmitigated desire to constantly be the center of attention-don't tell me writers are all humble and shit, we all know better)! At any rate, this year I was a little bit bummed that I was unable to attend or host any sort of fabulous Globes party-NEXT YEAR LOOK OUT Bizhes-it's ON.
So-my favorite parts of last night's ceremony:
1)Meryl Streep: "Mamie, Gracie, I Love you kiss kiss!"
2)I loved Collin Ferrel's acceptance speech, although it was a bit rambly and some of it didn't quite make sense. Still thought it was probably the most interesting and intelligent speech of the night albeit seemingly heavily influenced by coke-whether or not he was actually high is anyone's guess.
3)Tina Fey's acceptance speech when she told the people on the internet who don't like her to "suck it". "dianefan, you can suck it!" I LOVE TINA FEY!
4)Tracy Morgan: "I am the face of post-racial America-deal with it Cate Blanchet!"
5)I knew Heath Ledger would win whether he deserved to or not. I was actually saddened by his death, don't get me wrong. He was a fine actor who I felt like was on the verge of creating history, so I was genuinely saddened by his death. However, there are only so many times I can listen to people ask Maggie Gyllenhaal how it felt to be in his last movie with him. I could tell she was sick of it too, although, of course, she remained gracious about it. And I'm sure he did a fine job in his role in The Dark Knight-however, if he were alive he would have to wait for better roles for an award (and I'm positive that he would have gotten great roles, and would have won many awards).
6)Sasha Baron Cohen's speech which strangely offended some people: "our hearts go out to Guy Richie".
7)Kate Winslet's acceptance speech for her second award: SHE FORGOT ANGELINA JOLIE! Oh how satisfying that was. I know it was an accident-but I absolutely LOVED IT! OH GOD Who's the other one?! OMG it made me SOOOO happy to see Jolie get dissed! She takes herself so damn seriously, and the girl picks terrible roles, she can't even act in those, she has no class... and um, I have never quite figured out why she is considered anything more than a D lister! So while I know Winslet didn't mean to do it, I LOVED it!
My least favorite things about last night's Globes:
Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers-PLEASE GO AWAY. I am just waiting for them all to be found robbing a convenient store to get enough money for their heroin fix.
Most disturbing moment of the night: Mickey Rourke's acceptance speech. I am not understanding why everyone is loving him this morning for that speech. He was tragic and frightening. I have heard he is amazing in the movie, I'm not arguing that-but a wallet chain all the way to his knees? REALLY? And thanking his dogs? OMG I felt like I was watching a combination of Bar Fly and Urban Cowboy. I could just see him sitting in his double wide trailer drinking coors and in between lines of crank trying to convince people that he had once been a Hollywood sex symbol.
So-my favorite parts of last night's ceremony:
1)Meryl Streep: "Mamie, Gracie, I Love you kiss kiss!"
2)I loved Collin Ferrel's acceptance speech, although it was a bit rambly and some of it didn't quite make sense. Still thought it was probably the most interesting and intelligent speech of the night albeit seemingly heavily influenced by coke-whether or not he was actually high is anyone's guess.
3)Tina Fey's acceptance speech when she told the people on the internet who don't like her to "suck it". "dianefan, you can suck it!" I LOVE TINA FEY!
4)Tracy Morgan: "I am the face of post-racial America-deal with it Cate Blanchet!"
5)I knew Heath Ledger would win whether he deserved to or not. I was actually saddened by his death, don't get me wrong. He was a fine actor who I felt like was on the verge of creating history, so I was genuinely saddened by his death. However, there are only so many times I can listen to people ask Maggie Gyllenhaal how it felt to be in his last movie with him. I could tell she was sick of it too, although, of course, she remained gracious about it. And I'm sure he did a fine job in his role in The Dark Knight-however, if he were alive he would have to wait for better roles for an award (and I'm positive that he would have gotten great roles, and would have won many awards).
6)Sasha Baron Cohen's speech which strangely offended some people: "our hearts go out to Guy Richie".
7)Kate Winslet's acceptance speech for her second award: SHE FORGOT ANGELINA JOLIE! Oh how satisfying that was. I know it was an accident-but I absolutely LOVED IT! OH GOD Who's the other one?! OMG it made me SOOOO happy to see Jolie get dissed! She takes herself so damn seriously, and the girl picks terrible roles, she can't even act in those, she has no class... and um, I have never quite figured out why she is considered anything more than a D lister! So while I know Winslet didn't mean to do it, I LOVED it!
My least favorite things about last night's Globes:
Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers-PLEASE GO AWAY. I am just waiting for them all to be found robbing a convenient store to get enough money for their heroin fix.
Most disturbing moment of the night: Mickey Rourke's acceptance speech. I am not understanding why everyone is loving him this morning for that speech. He was tragic and frightening. I have heard he is amazing in the movie, I'm not arguing that-but a wallet chain all the way to his knees? REALLY? And thanking his dogs? OMG I felt like I was watching a combination of Bar Fly and Urban Cowboy. I could just see him sitting in his double wide trailer drinking coors and in between lines of crank trying to convince people that he had once been a Hollywood sex symbol.
May 25, 1977 and June 20 1980
I didn't have words for people like me when I was growing up. I lived in a terribly small mill town, and as far as I knew I was the only person like me in that town, and quite likely the world. I didn't even know what I meant when I thought "people like me". I only knew that I had already experienced first love by the time I was six. And that love stayed with me for years. It all began when I went to see this new movie that everyone was talking about: Star Wars.
Now, I know there are a lot of Star Wars fanatics out there. I agree with them on one thing and one thing only: Star Wars was our movie. It came at the perfect time in history. It came to a generation that was yearning for something fantastic, epic, mythological. Ours was the first generation to experience a collective cynicism at such a very young age. I know that every generation fancies themselves unique, and thinks that no other generation before or since went through what they did, so I'll spare you the cliche's. However, there was a sadness that permeated our childhoods, even so-called idyllic ones. Many of my friends had fathers who were MIA, or just back from Vietnam. One of our friends lived in a house that was shrouded in darkness (literally and figuratively) because his father was suffering PTSD (although I think we called it something else then). Another friend's father was MIA-I don't know if they have found him to this day. I only know these things because as I grew up I figured it out. When we were kids, it was all a secret. We just heard our parents whispering about it, and knew it was something we shouldn't talk about. It was the post '60's let-down. Nixon had just lied to the country and resigned. Elvis was fat, and playing gospel to Vegas crowds in too much polyester and diamonds (and would die before the year was over). All that which had excited an earlier generation was now fading to the brutal glow of disenchantment and a "now what are going to do with what we tried to create?" directionless meandering. We were in the early stages of reconstruction from the revolutions that the generation before us had participated in. There is that other generation between the boomers and us (we were unfortunately, and lazily referred to as "genXers") they were the teenagers listening to the Bay City Rollers and wearing green eye shadow. I have nothing to say about that generation except for the fact that I'm glad I wasn't born into it. They stole all that was good from the gays and blacks and watered it down until they got the BeeGees. Not my thing.
I always wanted to write a story or a screenplay about the subtle strangeness that was childhood in the 70's. Because it was surreal. I have never been able to capture that subtlety to my satisfaction. There was a movie many years ago that I think came as close to capturing it as I think might be possible: The Ice Storm by Ang Lee. I don't think he quite got it, but certainly more so than anything else that I've seen attempted. The TV show That 70's Show sort of pisses me off because it lacks any element of the 70's besides the fashion and the furniture-and even that is a half-ass attempt (it's less authentic than an Ikea retro couch). Nirvana did the best job of exemplifying what my generation experienced growing up. And I say that with reservation because quite frankly I think Nirvana is given much more credit than they deserve, and I am sick of hearing about how they are the voice of my generation. However, I can't deny how well they exposed us, and gave our weird childhoods a voice and an image. Damn them. Damn them to hell (ha ha ha).
At any rate, my love of Star Wars is quite unlike other Star Wars fanatics. I can't tell you anything about the finer points of the plot. I don't know what the hell a Sithe is, or even how to spell it. I don't care about what Han Solo's ship was called (although a quick google search told me it was the Mellenium Falcon). I remember the boys I played with all knowing such amazing details about it in spite of the fact that I went to see it every Saturday afternoon until it was out of the theater.
I am sure that my parents took me, at least the first time I saw it, but I don't remember them being there at all. When the movie opened I sat there holding my breath reading those words knowing that this was something special. Whether I went willingly or whether I was being pulled into it, I was entering an entirely different place, and was about to experience something that I would rarely, if ever, experience again. And in that theater that first time I saw Star Wars, I knew that this adventure was my own. It was my world away from my parents. No one could possibly go there with me.
I remember with acute clarity walking out of the theater thinking two things: "I want to do that. I want to give that to people. " and "I love Princess Leia" (I even had to do a google search to find out how to spell her name)! The latter was what was most important to me. I loved Princess Leia in a very different way than I thought a girl could love her.
It was during this time that I came out of the closet. I mean, as well as I could given the fact that I didn't know exactly what was happening in me. My dad and I were driving down the road, I'm not sure where we were going. I was talking incessantly about Star Wars. Even then I think I was a theorist (ha ha ha) because I was talking about how it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and that when I was in the theater watching it I felt high (of course that isn't the language I used). My dad totally understood and said that he had felt that at movies before. We talked about how amazing and magical movies were.
It was then that I said "I want to be a boy when I grow up".
My dad, being the lovely man that he was, and being very protective of his tom-boy daughter growing up in a very sexist culture said, "I know, it's not fair that Luke gets to be the hero. I have a book where the girls get to be the heroes, and when we get home I'll give it to you."
I said, "I don't want to be Luke Skywalker. Well, I guess sort of I do".
"Listen, girls can have adventures just like Luke. You'll see, trust me." My dad was so great, but just didn't get what I was trying to say.
"No, I mean, I want to be a boy so that I can marry a girl like Princess Leia" I said (still in the dark like the rest of the world that we would find out that Leia was Luke's sister).
"Oh," he said. He turned the radio down, and added, "Oh!" He cleared his throat and said, "Listen to me. You don't have to be a boy to marry a girl. You know your Aunt ____?"
"Yeah".
"And your Aunt ____?"
"Yeah"
"Well, they are married. You can marry whoever you want. Some people might tell you that you can't, but you don't have to listen to them".
This was 1977, a mere 8 years after the Stonewall Riots.
So from that moment on Star Wars meant something else to me. It was the world I entered where I could be a girl that was madly and passionately in love with another girl. I could have adventures and go anywhere in the universe. Not only could I have a conversation with talking (and quite gay in my humble opinion) androids, I could fall in love with other girls. I know I was young, but I think Star Wars became my outlet for my developing sexuality.
June 20, 1980
Both of my parents were passionate about music, particularly the blues and jazz. My mother loved Billie Holiday. And my father adored Miles Davis. They also smoked weed and loved Saturday Night Live. So it was inevitable that they loved John Belushi and The Blues Brothers.
Now my parents were far from perfect. They made a lot of mistakes, and I've got the therapy bills to prove it! But in spite of their many shortcomings, they quite enjoyed spending time with me. They rarely got babysitters for me. When I was very little, my sister babysat me. There was a strike at the mill that my father worked at. He was management, and was exempt from the union, but he refused to cross the picket line, and so he and my mother both had to get jobs to keep us afloat until the strike was over. At this time my sister took care of me. Other than that, my parents and I spent a lot of time together, and genuinely enjoyed each others' company.
So I went with them to see the Blues Brothers. I sat between them in the darkened theater not quite understanding the movie, but I did love the music and the dancing. I sat there watching, trying to act like I understood the humor when there she was again. My first love. With her brown eyes looking up at John Belushi. Plus there she was with a gun and all tough (seriously I did not understand what any of this meant).
I was in love all over again and felt like this secret of mine was something amazingly good. That feeling. That's what I called it in my mind when I thought about what it was like to see Carrie Fisher on screen. "that feeling". I was a little lesbo totally hot for Princess Leia, and my dad had told me that it was OK. I couldn't help wondering and hoping that she was "like me". I spent the better part of the next ten years looking for girls that were "like me" and damn it if not one of them were anything like Carrie Fisher.
Now, I know there are a lot of Star Wars fanatics out there. I agree with them on one thing and one thing only: Star Wars was our movie. It came at the perfect time in history. It came to a generation that was yearning for something fantastic, epic, mythological. Ours was the first generation to experience a collective cynicism at such a very young age. I know that every generation fancies themselves unique, and thinks that no other generation before or since went through what they did, so I'll spare you the cliche's. However, there was a sadness that permeated our childhoods, even so-called idyllic ones. Many of my friends had fathers who were MIA, or just back from Vietnam. One of our friends lived in a house that was shrouded in darkness (literally and figuratively) because his father was suffering PTSD (although I think we called it something else then). Another friend's father was MIA-I don't know if they have found him to this day. I only know these things because as I grew up I figured it out. When we were kids, it was all a secret. We just heard our parents whispering about it, and knew it was something we shouldn't talk about. It was the post '60's let-down. Nixon had just lied to the country and resigned. Elvis was fat, and playing gospel to Vegas crowds in too much polyester and diamonds (and would die before the year was over). All that which had excited an earlier generation was now fading to the brutal glow of disenchantment and a "now what are going to do with what we tried to create?" directionless meandering. We were in the early stages of reconstruction from the revolutions that the generation before us had participated in. There is that other generation between the boomers and us (we were unfortunately, and lazily referred to as "genXers") they were the teenagers listening to the Bay City Rollers and wearing green eye shadow. I have nothing to say about that generation except for the fact that I'm glad I wasn't born into it. They stole all that was good from the gays and blacks and watered it down until they got the BeeGees. Not my thing.
I always wanted to write a story or a screenplay about the subtle strangeness that was childhood in the 70's. Because it was surreal. I have never been able to capture that subtlety to my satisfaction. There was a movie many years ago that I think came as close to capturing it as I think might be possible: The Ice Storm by Ang Lee. I don't think he quite got it, but certainly more so than anything else that I've seen attempted. The TV show That 70's Show sort of pisses me off because it lacks any element of the 70's besides the fashion and the furniture-and even that is a half-ass attempt (it's less authentic than an Ikea retro couch). Nirvana did the best job of exemplifying what my generation experienced growing up. And I say that with reservation because quite frankly I think Nirvana is given much more credit than they deserve, and I am sick of hearing about how they are the voice of my generation. However, I can't deny how well they exposed us, and gave our weird childhoods a voice and an image. Damn them. Damn them to hell (ha ha ha).
At any rate, my love of Star Wars is quite unlike other Star Wars fanatics. I can't tell you anything about the finer points of the plot. I don't know what the hell a Sithe is, or even how to spell it. I don't care about what Han Solo's ship was called (although a quick google search told me it was the Mellenium Falcon). I remember the boys I played with all knowing such amazing details about it in spite of the fact that I went to see it every Saturday afternoon until it was out of the theater.
I am sure that my parents took me, at least the first time I saw it, but I don't remember them being there at all. When the movie opened I sat there holding my breath reading those words knowing that this was something special. Whether I went willingly or whether I was being pulled into it, I was entering an entirely different place, and was about to experience something that I would rarely, if ever, experience again. And in that theater that first time I saw Star Wars, I knew that this adventure was my own. It was my world away from my parents. No one could possibly go there with me.
I remember with acute clarity walking out of the theater thinking two things: "I want to do that. I want to give that to people. " and "I love Princess Leia" (I even had to do a google search to find out how to spell her name)! The latter was what was most important to me. I loved Princess Leia in a very different way than I thought a girl could love her.
It was during this time that I came out of the closet. I mean, as well as I could given the fact that I didn't know exactly what was happening in me. My dad and I were driving down the road, I'm not sure where we were going. I was talking incessantly about Star Wars. Even then I think I was a theorist (ha ha ha) because I was talking about how it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and that when I was in the theater watching it I felt high (of course that isn't the language I used). My dad totally understood and said that he had felt that at movies before. We talked about how amazing and magical movies were.
It was then that I said "I want to be a boy when I grow up".
My dad, being the lovely man that he was, and being very protective of his tom-boy daughter growing up in a very sexist culture said, "I know, it's not fair that Luke gets to be the hero. I have a book where the girls get to be the heroes, and when we get home I'll give it to you."
I said, "I don't want to be Luke Skywalker. Well, I guess sort of I do".
"Listen, girls can have adventures just like Luke. You'll see, trust me." My dad was so great, but just didn't get what I was trying to say.
"No, I mean, I want to be a boy so that I can marry a girl like Princess Leia" I said (still in the dark like the rest of the world that we would find out that Leia was Luke's sister).
"Oh," he said. He turned the radio down, and added, "Oh!" He cleared his throat and said, "Listen to me. You don't have to be a boy to marry a girl. You know your Aunt ____?"
"Yeah".
"And your Aunt ____?"
"Yeah"
"Well, they are married. You can marry whoever you want. Some people might tell you that you can't, but you don't have to listen to them".
This was 1977, a mere 8 years after the Stonewall Riots.
So from that moment on Star Wars meant something else to me. It was the world I entered where I could be a girl that was madly and passionately in love with another girl. I could have adventures and go anywhere in the universe. Not only could I have a conversation with talking (and quite gay in my humble opinion) androids, I could fall in love with other girls. I know I was young, but I think Star Wars became my outlet for my developing sexuality.
June 20, 1980
Both of my parents were passionate about music, particularly the blues and jazz. My mother loved Billie Holiday. And my father adored Miles Davis. They also smoked weed and loved Saturday Night Live. So it was inevitable that they loved John Belushi and The Blues Brothers.
Now my parents were far from perfect. They made a lot of mistakes, and I've got the therapy bills to prove it! But in spite of their many shortcomings, they quite enjoyed spending time with me. They rarely got babysitters for me. When I was very little, my sister babysat me. There was a strike at the mill that my father worked at. He was management, and was exempt from the union, but he refused to cross the picket line, and so he and my mother both had to get jobs to keep us afloat until the strike was over. At this time my sister took care of me. Other than that, my parents and I spent a lot of time together, and genuinely enjoyed each others' company.
So I went with them to see the Blues Brothers. I sat between them in the darkened theater not quite understanding the movie, but I did love the music and the dancing. I sat there watching, trying to act like I understood the humor when there she was again. My first love. With her brown eyes looking up at John Belushi. Plus there she was with a gun and all tough (seriously I did not understand what any of this meant).
I was in love all over again and felt like this secret of mine was something amazingly good. That feeling. That's what I called it in my mind when I thought about what it was like to see Carrie Fisher on screen. "that feeling". I was a little lesbo totally hot for Princess Leia, and my dad had told me that it was OK. I couldn't help wondering and hoping that she was "like me". I spent the better part of the next ten years looking for girls that were "like me" and damn it if not one of them were anything like Carrie Fisher.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
20 December 1974
I went with my father and his best friend (my Godfather, incidentally). I was only three years old so my actual memory of the first time I saw this movie, the first movie I ever saw, is vague. I sat in the back seat of the car, the adults smoking a joint in the front seat (it was 1974, everyone did this)! As we neared the cinema I saw this gorgeously ornate marquis. It was dark out and the theater seemed like it was made of gold. The marquis was lit up, and although I'm sure that I have since replaced my actual memory of this moment with adult perspective, I swear I read the words "The Godfather II" on that marquis. Fred made a joke about how really no more movies ever needed to be made because with Godfather, they had reached perfection. I didn't quite understand what he meant, but that statement became a part of me. In the darkened theater, the scenes of Vito Corleone in New York at the turn of the century left such an impression on me that later in life I would go on to study early 20th century American History.
It was 1974. Fred had just returned home from flying a helicopter in Vietnam. I learned much later in life that he came back really messed up. Apparently he was into some of the harder drugs. One infamous family story goes like this: At about three o'clock in the morning Fred called my parents (this was several months before I was born). He told my father that he had the answer to life and that my father and mother should go to Fred's house immediately. My parents knew instantly that he had taken a lot of acid. So they jumped in the car and got to Fred's house as fast as they could. When they arrived, Fred was sitting in his underwear surrounded by hundreds of tiny pieces of paper that he had written on. He excitedly told them that he knew the meaning of life now. He started rummaging through all of the papers, looking intensely for the one that had the answer on it. When he found it, he handed it to my dad. It read, "Where in the hell can you get a good hamburger in this town"? At any rate, my father Fred remained close friends until Fred's death I was twelve.
I was never allowed to talk to Fred about his experiences in Vietnam. Although, late one night I woke up to discover my dad and Fred huddled at the kitchen table whispering. Fred looked like he was in some serious pain. When I walked into the kitchen they looked up and did that thing grown-ups do when children witness something they're not supposed to. They quickly teased me about being up so late, pretending like nothing was going on. I've always believed that Fred and my dad (who fought in Pearl Harbor) were sharing war stories, and contrary to popular belief, war stories are not jovial.
Godfather II is set in two times. The "present", for Michael Corleone, is 1958. The world is about to explode. "The third world is just around the corner". Fidel Castro and Che are about to ignite a revolution that will change all of us-directly or otherwise. My father was Michael Corleone's age. The "past" is the time in American history when she was really and truly born. Our identity as a nation largely stems from the events that rocked this nation at the turn of the century (Nell Irvin Painter's book about this epoch is called Standing at Armageddon). There is a terrible truth in the juxtaposition of the birth of modern America, and the violence of an era that we (even as early as the 1970's) believed to be a time of innocence and prosperity (see Happy Days). Fred was on the other end of that spectrum. He was still in the throes of violence, and a war that he and many of his generation, did not understand. He was suffering shell shock. But Godfather II eloquently smashes American myths, and this had to be vindicating for Fred and my father both. Because while I wasn't allowed to talk to Fred about his experiences in Vietnam, my father flat out refused to talk about his experiences at Pearl Harbor. Both men had experienced first hand this secret history of violence before they walked into that theater. Both men must have been happy to see it acknowledged, even if somewhat peripherally.
As an adult, Godfather II is (clearly) one of my favorite movies. I have watched it so many times, in fact, that I have most of it memorized. I'm so glad that my first movie wasn't The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-also released in 1974. What a vastly different movie watcher I would be!
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