As I wrote in my last post over on REELFocus.org, I closed that blog and opened this one because I couldn’t commit the kind of time necessary to continue with a more “professional” blog. I also didn’t want to limit myself to just talking about movies when there are so many other things I am interested in.

So of course, here in my first post on Mental Graffiti, I am going to talk about movies.

More specifically, about the movie marathon that I attended this past weekend.  Once a month or so, the members of the Tallahassee Writers Group (of which I am a member) organize a movie marathon as an excuse to get together at an apartment, eat good food, hang out and watch movies for 12 hours or so.

This started after we decided to stage a marathon viewing of the entire run of the short-lived (but always awesome) TV space western Firefly. Our excuse in doing this was to introduce it to the couple of members who’d never seen it, but in reality we just wanted to get together and watch it again.

Since then, we’ve done a hodge-hodge “play whatever we’ve got on the shelf” marathon, an animated movie marathon, a “so bad its good” marathon and this past weekend we reached into the past and did a classic movie marathon.
We watched six films in all and somehow didn’t overlap casts once. I’m still not sure how we managed that, but here is what we watched:

We opened with The Philadelphia Story, the 1940 comedy starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart. Right there, really, is all you need to know to understand just how ridiculously amazing this movie was. Even now, 70 years later, I can’t think of a movie with that kind of powerhouse cast.  Just crazy.  Now, the movie itself was practically flawless (***** from me, easy), but I did learn something about the female members of the Writers Group – forthwith referred to as the Glitterati – that kinda made me worry for my safety (did I mention I’m the only male in the group?)

See, Katharine Hepburn’s character, Tracy Lord, is a very strong female character. And it’s a wonderful character to boot.  But as the movie unfolded, the Glitterati kept egging her on – imploring her to remain awesome, which is certainly not a problem, and then dropped into a conversation about which male character she should marry – noting that Jimmy Stewart’s character would be easiest to train. At this point I wanted to hide under the table.  It wasn’t the conversation that worried me – it was how serious they sounded about it.  I tell you, sometimes it’s telling to be the only man in a group full of women – and sometimes, its terrifying.  I kept wondering…am I being trained? Are they manipulating my brain with their womanly mental waves, training me to do their bidding without me knowing it? I mean, I already willingly cook for them when we get together, are they going to have me rubbing their feet next? (Not that I’d mind…probably).  I eventually shook off the fear, but it gave me something to think about.

From there we moved onto Casablanca, which is the most quotable movie ever made.  Yes, more quotable than The Princess Bride, more quotable than When Harry Met Sally… There are no movies that have had as many bits of dialogue enter our every day vernacular.  It was while watching this that the generation gap between me and the majority of the others in the group smacked me across the face.  For the most part, I don’t know their exact ages (they’re women…I ain’t goin’ there, thanks) but most are at least 10 years younger than me (one is only 13, but you wouldn’t know it – she acts with more sense and maturity than most people I work with), but most of them had never seen Casablanca. One who had was admittedly not a fan.  I had a hard time processing this information.  I mean…its Casablanca!  I felt like Spongebob when Squidward told him he’d never tried a Crabby Patty…can you use those two words in a sentence together like that? Does not…compute.

After Casablanca, we moved to Witness for the Prosecution.  It’s obvious to me after watching it that M. Night Shymalan’s entire career was spawned after he got drunk one night and watched this movie.  The first 98% of the film is a pretty standard courtroom drama, but the last 2% contains such a double WTF?? ending that the filmmakers felt compelled to put a narrated disclaimer over the closing credits asking the viewers to not spoil the ending for those who hadn’t seen it.  I mean…what the hell? Can you imagine trying that today?  The internet would have the ending leaked all over the place before the end credits finished rolling, and the narration would be mocked and used in jokes for months.  It’d become its own meme, I’m sure of it.

Then came Psycho.  The funniest part of this was watching the two or three who hadn’t seen it before.  Those of us who had were constantly in need of censoring ourselves when talking about the presumed murderer…saying stuff like “well, he..er…she did it because,” so as not to spoil the ending.  Two points: I feel like an idiot for forgetting how wonderful Hitchcock was at framing a shot, and the smile Anthony Perkins flashes at the end of the film is 100 times creepier than anything else that happened in the movie – no mean feat.

After the two dramas and the horror film, we switched gears and screened Singin’ in the Rain. It’d been forever since I’d seen it and man, I tell you, I need to buy this film. Debbie Reynolds is as cute as a button in it, and both Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor just made us all feel like unathletic slobs as we watched one ridiculous dance number after another (more than once, someone called out to the screen “I hate you all!” and we all understood).  Fun bit of trivia: When it came time to film the famous “Singin’ in the Rain” sequence, Gene Kelly had a 103-degree fever. The director wanted to send him home, but Kelly refused without at least trying one take. And that’s all it took. That entire musical number was filmed in a single take. That’s beyond absurd.  And its why Gene Kelly is the man.

We ended the evening on Swing Time, which has been a favorite of mine for a while.  I have to admit, though, my tastes had to have changed a lot since I first saw it, because it didn’t age well in my eyes. Oh sure, the dancing was still as ridiculous as I remember, but whereas I forgave the execution of the plot before, it really bothered me this time. It wasn’t a total loss, though. I got to watch Astaire and Rogers waltz to “The Way You Look Tonight” which, all in all, is not a terrible way to end an evening.

So, six movies down.  And this weekend, we’re doing it again. Normally, we’d space em out, but one of our members (Rachel) is heading to London for the Fall Semester near the end of August so this is our last chance to get together en masse.  Much food will be prepared and eaten, many jokes and stories will be told, cats will demand attention and we will watch a slough of foreign films. It should be fun.  At least, thats what my trainers tell me.