Movie Day With James

Yesterday was Movie Day again. Kar's already gone on her India Trip, so I had the Kar role in the ritual. James did everything for me the same as he'd do for Kar, right down to giving me a smaller helping of french fries than his, because Kar will eat up all the french fries on her plate, while James will stop when he's full. He also gave me Kar's favorite type of dip for the fries. I even called him one of the favorite pet names they use. We were adorable together.

We got started a little earlier than usual, but we still only got to watch 3 films, because of delays that cropped up along the way, and then I wanted to go to bed at 9:00 to start getting ready for my 4:30 AM wakeup on Monday.

The last film of the evening was "Diner", with Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, and Ellen Barkin. I'd never seen it before, but apparently James used to watch it all the time with his group of friends back home. They could really relate to the small town gang of friends; getting into scrapes, being dufuses, not being able to figure women out, and ultimately aspiring to lead relatively normal lives.

The feel of the film reminded me a lot of Freaks And Geeks; another show James really relates to. One time I was visiting here and they were watching it, and every once in awhile James or Mark or Kar would yell out something about how exactly true the current scene was, how it matched their experience so exactly.

But with Diner and Freaks And Geeks, I didn't relate to them in the same way at all. With both of them it was just like watching long stretches of time where the plot doesn't advance at all, and the only thing going on is the interplay between characters. Which is fine. I love My Dinner With Andre, and there the whole movie is the interplay between characters. But the interplay that went on in Diner and in Freaks and Geeks was just harder for me to connect to.

One of the ongoing plot-lines in Diner is the fact that one of the friends is going to give his fiancee a 'football test'. If she earns a 65 or above, he'll go through with the marriage; otherwise, it's off. James can really relate to that, and as the movie ended he started telling me about how he used to test his girlfriends about Star Trek. Because if they didn't love Star Trek, they just weren't going to be able to stand him at all.

But to me, that whole plot-line, and it's triumphant vindication, just seemed so strange and unnatural. At one point in a supporting plot-line, Ellen Barkin's husband is yelling at her because she doesn't alphabetize his records properly when she listens to them; and she doesn't understand why he's yelling at her. Now, that kind of experience I'm familiar with; but the film uses it to justify the football test, as if to say, "clearly, obviously, if only this dude had done a music test, he'd be happy now; and so this dude is right on the mark with his football test."

To me it was all so misguided. The Ellen Barkin character clearly liked her husband's music - that's why she listened to it. And she clearly expressed what the problem was - his alphabetization scheme was too complicated and arbitrary for her to manage. And she'd be happy to treat the records however he wanted, if her husband could just organize them in a way she could deal with.

But the husband character is so caught up with his own ideas, and getting more and more frustrated because she doesn't have the same level of knowledge that he does, and yelling louder and louder, that he can't hear the fact that she's reaching out and trying to communicate.

It's horrifying. And instead of the ultimate point of the movie being that the husband should wake up and learn how to listen to something more than his record collection, the point ends up being that men should just make sure not to marry anyone who can't pass a test on their favorite topic. And James is sitting next to me going, "yup! I had a Star Trek test!"

So there was a surreal quality. But ultimately I found the whole experience interesting, the same way I found Freaks And Geeks interesting; because even though I don't relate to it directly, I seem to be friends with people who relate to it very strongly. And I like to get to know my friends better. James and I ended up talking a lot about what it meant to have a Star Trek test, and whether it would help result in a good relationship; and what it means to communicate with a lover; and so on. All in all, a good Movie Day. And I got to be Kar for a little while.