It's Just So Sad!

Several of my friends adored Josh Hartnett when we were teenagers. I'm not sure who I was giddy for at the time, but I wasn't a fan. I just didn't get it. Where was the pizzazz, the personality?

Eh, I'm not that excited.

I liked Ben Affleck a little more at the time, so I was willing to check out Pearl Harbor when the posse got together one summer afternoon to head to the movies.

Oh, that Affleck.

I didn't really care for the movie. I had the same problem with Pearl Harbor that I did with Titanic. I was ultimately more interested in what was going on around the main characters than the characters themselves.

However, the silly love triangle between Affleck, Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale resulted in the most incredible overreaction I've ever seen in my life.

To refresh your memory, Kate Beckinsale dates Ben Affleck before the events of Pearl Harbor. She thinks he dies during the attack and seeks solace in the arms of his best friend, Josh Hartnett, and gets pregnant with his baby. Somehow, Affleck comes back, everything is more or less forgiven, they go off on the Doolittle raids in Japan with Alec Baldwin, where Josh Hartnett dies. Affleck returns to Beckinsale with the bad news, and they raise Josh Hartnett's son together as their own.



Right around the 2:30 mark is when my friend completely lost it. She started crying really hard as the image flowed and the credits rolled. (Apologies if the audio is too low, that's how the link came. Plus, do you really want to hear the malarkey that Michael Bay wrote?)

With a huge sob and a sniffle, she exclaimed, "He looks....just....like him!!" We started to leave the theater, but the tears were a-flowing like you wouldn't believe.

We talked her down and she was able to laugh it off, admitting that she probably overreacted. But never before or since have I seen someone burst into tears that badly during a movie (except that time I watched Selena at a slumber party, but that's a whole 'nother post).

"I'll never let go!" Ugh, I don't care.

The first opportunity I had to see that juggernaut of film, Titanic, I blew it off to see The Faculty, starring a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart, then popular Josh Hartnett, pre-Hobbit Elijah Wood, and a bunch of other people.

I was with my cousin, aunt and uncle, I think around the holidays, and we went to the movies. My cousin and I just so weren't into seeing Titanic at the time, but for some reason had to go into the theater for the very beginning. (Were we theater hoping? Possibly, but it was family sanctioned). So we sat through the old-timey footage at the start, then after maybe five minutes bounced to the next theater and watched people stab pens full of homemade crack into other people's eyes (Jon Stewart included!).

Eventually, I did see Titanic all the way through with some friends. I've always been into history, and have developed a special appreciation and interest over the years for late Victorian into Edwardian and post WWI history. Sadly, Titanic was not history heavy, and more love story heavy, despite quite a bit of period detail. But all that got shoved aside in favor of crap like this:

Get lost twerp and make with the history! Back down to steerage with you!
Also, R.I.P. Italian guy on the right there

My mom, also a history nerd, made numerous comments when I'd watch the movie at home about how a variety of things just wouldn't have happened because of the social constrictions of the time period. These included, the romance itself, and all the spitting gags early in the movie. Rose asks Jack to teach her to spit like a man, and they start hawking loogies over the side of the ship. According to my mom, Rose would never have done it because of her upbringing and social standing, no matter how into slumming it she was and it was actually illegal to spit in public like that because of the health problems it led to (TB and other diseases).

But one of the biggest deals about the movie was how sad it made everyone. How everyone cried during it. For the most part, I wasn't completely moved. Oh I cried, just not at the parts everyone else cried at.

The parts that made me cry when I saw it in the theater:

-The Irish guy being shot
-The Italian guy being crushed under the steam stack
-Mr. Andrews, the ship engineer guy, setting the clock as he stood in one of the tilted dining rooms before he died.
-That old couple lying bed together as the water rises around them.

And the biggie:

-The Irish mom in steerage, tucking her kids into bed and telling them about the land of Tir Na nOg. Why was this so sad for me? Well, in Irish mythology, the land of Tir Na Og is the land of the ever youthful, where no one ever gets sick or grows old. I was a little familiar with Tir Na nOg, having read about it and having seen a movie called Into The West, where one of the legends of Tir Na nOg features prominently (great movie, see it!).

She's telling the kids one of the stories and encouraging them to sleep, clearly in hopes that their impending death will be swift and painless. Mind you, at this point, the steerage level has been locked down, and they are essentially trapped in the belly of the Titanic as it goes down, not to mention there's no lifeboats anyway. Oh my God, that part just made me burst into tears. No one else seemed to understand why I sobbed so hard at that part as opposed to anything else, but the combo of injustice and the knowledge of the story made me lose it.

Parts that didn't make me cry:

-Anything involving Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Sorry. I was unmoved my his frozen corpse and all the "I'll never let go Jack!" stuff.

Just dunk his ass already!

I did overall like the movie at the time though. It was entertaining, had some history, and I got swept up like everyone else. I won't try to rewrite history and pretend I was just too cool and smart for it. I got into the movie, watched it at home, had the soundtrack, the whole nine.

But I was too cool for Leonardo DiCaprio. And I hate that no one believed me no matter how much I explained that while I enjoyed the film, the overall story of the ship and the other people as well as the clothes and history were what kept me coming back. "Sure, sure. It's okay if you have a crush on him," said every adult I would ever talk to about the movie with a smug smile.

Speaking of fashion, I went as Rose from Titanic for Halloween that year. My awesome mom bought the pattern for the dress she wears during the sinking and made it for me (with similar colors and everything). Sadly, I ruined the dress by leaning against something in the lunch room that left a big black smudge dead center in the front.

Truly, the internet never fails to amaze me because this is the exact picture on the front of the McCall's pattern my mom used to make the dress. She made the one on the right for me. I was just trying to find some stills of the doomed characters I cared about, but this is a pretty sweet consolation prize.

I also fell on my ass walking into school because the shoes I wore to go with it had crap traction. So Halloween day I roll in feeling cool, looking good and BAM! Fall right on my ass in front of everyone in the morning holding area. I recovered quickly and went to a back corner. I don't think too many people saw me, and that's how I'm going to keep that memory.

I'd like to add that I would wear the shit out of that blue dress she wears on the prow of the boat there with DiCraprio.

I would look awesome in this dress.

I definitely dug the music at the time too. Not so much the "My Heart Will Go On" song, but the actual score. I was way into that. I tried to learn the main theme on my clarinet. Also, does anyone remember when they'd play "My Heart Will Go On" on the radio and they'd play dialouge during the musical bridge? That was hilarious. It also drove my dad nuts.

Titanic also yielded a fair share of jokes too. Anytime a foggy window was around, someone would inevitably slap their hand on it and drag it down like they did when they were having sex in that car. I tended to get yelled at for doing it though, since it was going to "mess up the window" with fingerprints. Not to mention everyone yelling "ICEBERG, ROIGHT AHEAD!" at any point where it felt appropriate, even if it wasn't.

If I'm bored and it's on, I'll still watch Titanic. It's not a particular favorite, but it's kind of fun to watch every now and then. Unfortunately, I only seem to catch the last third when the ship is sinking, and never the earlier parts I enjoy more. But that's what happens when you watch it on cable, specifically TNT.

Well, it was supposed to be fun.....

Sometimes, movies just don't live up to the hype. For example, I was all hyped up to see The Final Destination (I could take or leave the 3-D) mainly based on a scene featured in the commercials and trailer where a girl appears to be doomed to die in an automated car wash. I couldn't stop thinking about just how you could possibly die in an automated car wash since it just seemed so improbable. So, using some free passes, I dragged a friend to an early Friday showing, shelled out two bucks for some very Devo-esque 3-D glasses (crack that whip!), and settled in to watch the sexy young adults succumb to the most ridiculous deaths every committed to film (The Final Destination series trademark, for the uninitiated). The scene arrived, the girl's car stopped in the car wash and a series of unlikely mishaps within the car wash seemed destined to culminate in her inching slowly towards killer brushes (seriously). But, as it turns out (SPOILER!) she didn't die in the car wash, she was saved at the last minute and end up dying later in the movie. What a let down.

All this brings me to another very much helped film that I met with excitement and my mom thought it would be fun to take me and some friends to. As you may have guessed, it was a disappointment, but I don't think anyone was as disappointed as my mom by what we saw.

My neighborhood friends and I used to love watching "Son of Godzilla" when we were little. Compared to other Godzilla movies, some of which my dad had shown me, "Son of Godzilla" was pretty silly and wasn't really "scary." It cracked us up to no end, and we would watch it in my basement, rewinding the best parts (back in the day with the good ole VCR). We kind of liked other Godzilla movies, but by far the one I remember best and enjoy the best is Son of Godzilla.

So then the fancy Godzilla remake came out in 1998, my mom thought it would be a great idea to take me and the gang to theater to see it. It had all sorts of hype leading up to it. 7/11 or Taco Bell drink cups with the "new Godzilla" on them, who was much more dinosaur and lizard-like than the classic Japanese version. I think there toys floating around too, as well as tons of commercials. By the day we went, we were pretty amped up.

We got in the theater and I remember that we ended up being pretty close to the screen for some reason (it could have been close to opening weekend, but I lack any kind of ticket stub to tell you the precise day. oh well). The other things I remember about the movie? Being bored out of my little skull. It just took forever to get to the monster, and then you only ever saw parts of it like a foot or the head. Only once did we see Godzilla in all its supposed glory, the Brooklyn bridge in a brief wideshot (meant to prove how big it was I suppose). I know kids are supposed to like action, but it just kind of left me numb with all sorts of car chases and running around New York from a thing we barely saw. I do remember getting a kick out of Jean Reno's character in the film, a mysterious French guy trying to cover up the Godzilla mess (or something. It didn't really matter in the long term with the movie since it was supposed to be "Godzilla!" and ended up being "oh, Godzilla.") He was what I remember chatting about the most with my mom after the fact.

The movie ended, I think with a "Godzilla had babies!" twist, and we just left the theater in a flurry of chatter, but I don't know that any of us really liked it. I know my mom didn't. It wasn't just that she's not terribly into action movies, but the fact was she was hugely disappointed that it wasn't more fun for all of us.

To this day if it somehow comes up in conversation she'll always say "Man, I just really thought it would be a fun movie for you guys. You guys used to cackle at those Godzilla movies in the basement. What a let down."