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posted by me in another blog somewhere
Feb. 7th, 2007 12:15 pmI rarely get scared by movies. Point blank, I'd be embarassed if I did. Too many days and nights and both at once spent in the darkened wombs of theaters. But, once, I was scared and shamed at the same time. Requiem for a Dream. There with a friend named Jerod in a crowded indie place and we almost got turned away because Mapquest didn't get the one-way streets in Denver quite right.
We got the last two seats together in the middle of everyone for the late night showing right when the movie first came out.
My only smidge of a defense is that Pi had been more cerebral, less visceral, and, because of the narrative distance, I might not have known quite what I was getting myself into.
And I couldn't stop snickering. Comedy is a tough sell for me but, when I wasn't cackling like a sadist on helium, I giggled like a schoolgirl at a Johnny Knoxville film.
I want to pretend that it was because it seemed, amidst all the grimness, like it was a fun movie to make. I want to pretend that -- like I usually do -- I was thinking about camera angles and special effects and if they were faking things just right, but that's not it.
I was laughing because I'm terrified that my dreams are going to get devoured just like their dreams were. The tubes going into Sara Goldfarb's nostrils will eventually go into my nostrils too, if I'm lucky -- but I wasn't ready for that yet so I laughed at her suffering. I have a melodramatic streak that's miles wide, but I'm usually able to keep it reined in.
And everyone in the audience heard me and figured I was unhinged. Maybe in a tiny way I was or am. They told me to stop laughing and I couldn't.
It spooked me enough that I haven't stopped making self-deprecating jokes about it yet. I tell people that Requiem for a Dream is my favorite romantic comedy.
Suspiria can still disorient me. Hellraiser can remind me that human motives are sicker than any monsters we can dream up, and Pan's Labyrinth gives a chilling reminder that fantasies aren't always real even when they should be, but Cubby Selby and Darren Aranofsky embarassed me by holding up the mirror and forcing uncontrollable nervous laughter out of me because, just like anyone, I can delight in imaginary human suffering, even though it makes me ashamed of that dark nook of who I am.
So I'm embarassed. And it's not the little kind like when I spill coffee on myself. And the shame's not because I happened to jump at a grabber of a cat in a closet or a puppet's head spinning round, but because the grumbles and hushings from the crowd, the quick glances when the lights came up, made me know a part of myself that I really didn't want to know. The knowledge is enough to scare the excrement out of me in a way that I don't really want anyone else to know about either, but the Gnostics and lots of others say Know Thyself, so I'm grateful, grudgingly, for the awareness.
We got the last two seats together in the middle of everyone for the late night showing right when the movie first came out.
My only smidge of a defense is that Pi had been more cerebral, less visceral, and, because of the narrative distance, I might not have known quite what I was getting myself into.
And I couldn't stop snickering. Comedy is a tough sell for me but, when I wasn't cackling like a sadist on helium, I giggled like a schoolgirl at a Johnny Knoxville film.
I want to pretend that it was because it seemed, amidst all the grimness, like it was a fun movie to make. I want to pretend that -- like I usually do -- I was thinking about camera angles and special effects and if they were faking things just right, but that's not it.
I was laughing because I'm terrified that my dreams are going to get devoured just like their dreams were. The tubes going into Sara Goldfarb's nostrils will eventually go into my nostrils too, if I'm lucky -- but I wasn't ready for that yet so I laughed at her suffering. I have a melodramatic streak that's miles wide, but I'm usually able to keep it reined in.
And everyone in the audience heard me and figured I was unhinged. Maybe in a tiny way I was or am. They told me to stop laughing and I couldn't.
It spooked me enough that I haven't stopped making self-deprecating jokes about it yet. I tell people that Requiem for a Dream is my favorite romantic comedy.
Suspiria can still disorient me. Hellraiser can remind me that human motives are sicker than any monsters we can dream up, and Pan's Labyrinth gives a chilling reminder that fantasies aren't always real even when they should be, but Cubby Selby and Darren Aranofsky embarassed me by holding up the mirror and forcing uncontrollable nervous laughter out of me because, just like anyone, I can delight in imaginary human suffering, even though it makes me ashamed of that dark nook of who I am.
So I'm embarassed. And it's not the little kind like when I spill coffee on myself. And the shame's not because I happened to jump at a grabber of a cat in a closet or a puppet's head spinning round, but because the grumbles and hushings from the crowd, the quick glances when the lights came up, made me know a part of myself that I really didn't want to know. The knowledge is enough to scare the excrement out of me in a way that I don't really want anyone else to know about either, but the Gnostics and lots of others say Know Thyself, so I'm grateful, grudgingly, for the awareness.
