So the other day, I was watching The Princess Bride—a fantastic movie, btw–and thinking about a friend of mine. This is a friend I’ve mentioned before: Red. She’s since passed on, and you’d think that watching a movie that we watched together (more than once) would make me maudlin, but it didn’t.
Instead, it got me thinking of the last movie we saw together in the theater: Goldeneye (I just totally dated myself).
In any case, we were in college, and I was enrolled in a course called “Environmental Literature: The Importance of Place” or something uppity like that. I was an English Lit major (eventually, I took enough Linguistics courses to major in that, too), so of course I took classes that sounded pretentious. Thing was, I loved this class (I loved skipping it, too, but that’s a story for another day). I still enjoy reading Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams, and others. The landscapes they portray are quite lovely, and I’m a girl who likes setting, so when I see that Rick Bass has written an article for one magazine or another, I’ll always buy it.
And then we got to the section of the course where we talked about “erotic landscapes.” I remember reading our text and going, “Oh, my.” If you’re feeling “fingered by the desert,” or some nonsense like that, then, uh, great? I didn’t know dirt and sagebrush could do that. I’ve lived in the desert for most of my life, and I can tell you one thing: the desert doesn’t do jack for me, but if it did, I wouldn’t stick around to enjoy it. I’m pretty certain it’s the sign of the zombiepocalypse.
I digress.
So, anyway, I wasn’t entirely mature enough to take “erotic landscapes” seriously (Truth be told, I’m still not, because I still laugh until my sides ache at some of that imagery), but I was mature enough to apply it everywhere I went. Including at the movie theater.
Imagine, if you will, this scenario: an inappropriate female, whose mind is somewhat dirty, who is currently studying “erotic landscapes,” and who goes to see, of all things, a Bond movie.
Freud had nothing on me that day.
Everything had sexual connotations. Even the popcorn had some sexual connotation. And there I am, with my very proper friend (she couldn’t have been that proper, because she liked hanging out with me, but that’s beside the point), and during the movie, I’m howling.
I thought that movie was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life. But I didn’t keep it to myself and giggle quietly. Nope. In my obnoxiousness, I had to share it with her.
The beaches: “Oh, look at his waves, lapping her silken shores.”
The guns: “Look at him stroking his big gun. She wants to stroke his gun until it fires.”
Airplanes: “I bet he wants to put his plane inside her hangar. Over and over and over.”
And when the missile silo opened up, and the missile rose up out of the water, I was laughing so hard I could barely choke out something vaguely coherent. Something about her “hot, wet chalice” and his “rising missile.”
Luckily, the theater was relatively empty, so I don’t think I disturbed too many people. Mostly just my friend, I suppose.
It’s so terribly immature, and yet, to this day, I can’t watch Goldeneye and not laugh, even though, once, I managed to keep my comments to myself (I was with my grandmother. Even I have a line I won’t cross. Doesn’t mean I didn’t giggle during the movie.). I get that the movie isn’t supposed to be as funny as I think it is, but still. It’s Hi-larious.
Maybe it’s held on to its “funny factor” because of who I was with that day. We never saw another movie in the theaters together–I went to Europe and she went to school out-of-state, and once she came back, she was too tired to go out to see a movie with me–and so this movie has a special place in my heart. Of all the people in the world, Red was the one who most appreciated my sense of humor (besides Hubs. That man gets me). Oh, she tried to downplay it, and sometimes she would act like she disapproved (while she was laughing, of course, which just made me try harder to be worse), but once she got sick, whenever I would go over there, she seemed to make sure that whatever movie we watched would allow my inappropriate flag to fly. (That was a horrible sentence. My apologies. And yet, I think I’ll leave it. The benefits of having a blog–there’s no editor to tell you no!) But I can tell you all this: we watched movies where I could make her laugh by saying something outrageous and suggestive. I’m pretty sure we watched Goldeneye more than once.
I can guarantee you, we weren’t watching Beaches or Old Yeller.
Here’s my list of special movies:
1. Goldeneye
2. The Princess Bride
3. Two Days in the Valley (first movie I saw with Hubs. Lots of violence–Hubs’ version of a romance. That and Terminator.)
4. The Incredibles (when I first saw this movie, and Jack-Jack turned into a flaming demon, I thought, “Whoever wrote this had a kid with colic,” because Lord, that reminds me of Monk when she had it. Every time we watch that scene, Hubs and I will exchange The Look and start to laugh).
5. And, go ahead and judge: Zorro the Gay Blade. It’s what Red and I watched when we weren’t watching Goldeneye. Also, I have a thing for George Hamilton’s tan. Not George Hamilton. His tan.
What about you? What movies are special to you, and why?
Leave a comment, and, uh, I’ll wish a pony upon you. That would work, right?
–MCC
There's a Bee in my Bodice 