Popcorn

Do the films people love reflect who they are? I watched King Kong last night and just hated it. I also hate Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Ghost Busters, Beetlejuice, and X-Men. Michael, like the thousands of people who flock to the the theater to catch the next big blockbuster chocked full of special effects, loves them. As we drank our coffee this morning, I explained to him that "I just don't get it." I tell him that I only like films that are real. Hmmm...reality. Let's see, my favorite films - Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Dream for an Insomniac, Prelude to a Kiss, Joe vs. the Volcano, The Butcher's Wife, An Affair to Remember. See a common thread here?

Michael says it's because I had a happy childhood and he didn't. He loves to watch the Harry Potter films where the kids rise up against the adults. He sees King Kong as a beautiful love story where the beast gets the blonde. As for me, my childhood may have been happy, but give me reality. Of course reality means an old man who wishes to have his life in front of him makes a wish takes over a young bride's body or a psychic young woman who believes in split-aparts searches for her soul mate and finds him. Or perhaps a young man diagnosed with a brain cloud will finally find love and then jump into a volcano, only to be spit out. Or then there's the two friends who finally realize they were meant to be together after being friends for so many years. Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Robert McKee: Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love, people lose it! For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie? I don't have any use for it. I don't have any bloody use for it!
Charlie Kaufman: Ok, thank you.