ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 7.6.23

This may wind up being my first written-to-completion post, so I feel like I’m still introducing myself to you, the hypothetical reader.

Probably one of the first things you should know - or could easily guess - about me is I’m movie people.

In this instance, for the purpose of illumination, I’m Keanu.

This isn’t badge of honor or an attempt to gatekeep - though in the past I’ve certainly used it as both and done a lot of work to, y’know, stop that - but a statement of fact. It just means that the most prominent form of commercial art for the past century is the art form that got its claws into me first, foremost, and which renews its hold on me daily.

In my dating life, if we can count back that far, my being movie people wasn’t a problem exactly, but it didn’t really help - they could like a movie just fine, but then there I was, taking in what should have been an evening’s diversion with deathly serious obsessiveness. Every movie I loved was a bend in the river of my destiny, every movie I disliked (which was most movies) a harbinger of bad things to come in an ever-worsening culture. Forgetting for a moment that a single movie probably isn’t either of these extremes, it made me not a lot of fun to be around.

I suppose it just never dawned on Younger-Me to seek out other movie people. This was probably fueled by something between my need to be The Expert in the relationship and my inability to evaluate whether prospective g.f. and I were a good match when we could be using that time to make out, but I digress.

For sixteen years, I’ve been married to Tanya, the absolute love of my life, and she, too, is movie people. This isn’t only an attribute, but an element that magnetized us early on, even as we spent our first few years knowing each other as friends, before eventually, maybe inevitably, hooking up.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 8.28.23

I was chatting with my sister last week, who mentioned she’d just watched Witness for the Prosecution for the first time - a movie I haven’t seen, but I’m sure I’ll get to it - and she mentioned that it was somewhat belabored by today’s standards in terms of how its twist unfurls.

It got me thinking about how, as movies have evolved, and moviegoers’ understanding of them has (mostly) evolved with them, getting a character on board with their overall situation is usually a much quicker process.

Take, for instance, George Bailey’s refusal to engage with the test Clarence has put him through; George doesn’t deny that he’s witnessing Bedford Falls without his influence so much as he fails to understand that that’s what he’s witnessing, despite Clarence’s repeated patient explanations of the premise.

This goes beyond Joseph Campbell’s “call refused” - this is “call rejected, call repeated, call rejected, call sent to voicemail.”