cry, baby
Logic has never been my strength. I’ve told you how I love the radio show This American Life. I’ve most often listened to it through endless mornings with coffee, late nights with cocktails. Since I do not have endless mornings or late nights very often, I have a little bit of catching up to do, and came across an episode i found in particular fascinating a couple of weeks ago.
I laughed loud when I came to act four, where Q’s Brett Martin tells about his experience as someone who never fails to cry at a movie on an airplane, even those that are dumb, cheesy or just plain awful. Man, did I find my soulmate in this guy! Most movies are selected by viewers for their entertainment value - and people that chooses to watch a movie anywhere but on a plane has in common that everyone actually chose the movie. Airplane movies are chosen by the airline for a captive audience who have nothing in common except traveling to the same destination. The goal is to keep everyone calm. Airplane movies are bland films chosen not for any other quality than being as unobjectionable as possible. I watch comedies and romantic comedies. All of them.
And that’s why I was so fascinated by Brett Martin, when he talked about how he cried in “Sweet Home Alabama”. All four times he saw it. It isn’t that he’s a softie, he doesn’t cry in the circumstances most people do. And after some deep soul searching, he has concluded he isn’t afraid of flying. There’s just something about being on a plane.
Having the plane crying syndrome myself, it makes my eyes water for the stupidest things, and movies I’ve sobbed through over the last couple of weeks only includes: Happy Feet 2, J Edgar Hoover and Contagion. New Year’s eve - where I essentially lost it, just like I did over Crazy, Stupid Love. It’s like my heart is a wobbly pile of jello whenever I get on a plane. I fall in and out of love on planes, I write letters so long, so intense and so enlightened (or au contraire, from reading them over after landing) I don’t know how my friends can stand it. It must be the lack of oxygen getting to my brain. Flying back to Vancouver soon, wonder what I will cry for this time? Like a lunatic, a lost girl, a traveler, I will let it all go…
ps I don’t know where that picture of Ryan Gosling is from, and I hope I will never see him feed ducks in a movie! I would cry so much my heart would burst into a million pieces. Logic has never been my strength.
