I Cried Myself to Sleep

At the recommendation of a friend.

To be fair, she never actually said, “Suzy, tonight I’d like you to experience complete emotional collapse.”

She simply said, “It’s a great movie.”

Now, when someone I know and trust tells me a movie is great, I make certain assumptions. I assume I’m going to laugh. Or be inspired. Or at the very least come out of it feeling like humanity still has a fighting chance.

Instead, thirty minutes later, I was wishing I’d made myself a bowl of Prozac instead of popcorn.

Why, on God’s green earth, do people recommend two hours of human misery with the same enthusiasm they recommend a restaurant?

I’ve learned to mistrust a lot of things over the years. People who tell me, “It’s just down the street.”

The word gourmet, which now seems to describe everything from Michelin-starred restaurants to shrink-wrapped, caramelized, blood-pressure-inducing salty snacks.

Which are absolutely delicious, by the way.

And perhaps most of all, I’ve learned to mistrust the phrase, “It’s a really good movie.”

Good according to whom?

When it comes to entertainment, I lovingly refer to my friend and her husband, who often recommend movies to us, as The Angels of Darkness. Useful information to consider before pressing play on any of their thumbs-ups.

They will watch two and a half hours of emotional devastation, call me afterward and say, “Phenomenal!”

Phenomenal?

To them, entertainment is irreversible emotional damage followed by personal growth. To me, entertainment is two attractive people accidentally falling in love because somebody inherited Grandma’s bakery.

It’s not that I can’t appreciate a devastating movie. I can.

But if real life already clocks in at subterranean, why would we start shoveling?

Then there are my friends who are devoted to Korean dramas. When I say “devoted,” I don’t mean they enjoy them. I mean they’re into them in the way people are kidnapped, brainwashed, and eventually develop Stockholm syndrome.

I’ve tried. I genuinely wanted to understand because I love these people. Ten minutes into my first Korean drama, I was looking around the room for a fork to stick in my eye.

Clearly, I’m the problem.

Then there are the Character Study people.

Apparently “character study” is film critic for: “Nothing happens.”

A man looks out a window. Makes tea. Looks out another window. Critics call it profound.

I call it surveillance footage.

Movies were sacred in my family. Not just going to the movies. Movies. Period.

Long before streaming. Before VHS. Before Betamax. Back when watching a movie actually required planning.

My father bought a projector. He taught himself how to splice film together. He somehow found places that rented giant reels of movies.

The first time I saw Heidi wasn’t in a theater. It was in our family room. A giant screen rolled down from the ceiling. The projector hummed behind us. We had two popcorn poppers working overtime.

At some point my parents even found an old-fashioned soda fountain and installed it in our house.

Looking back, we probably could have ridden out the collapse of civilization right there and had a damn good time doing it.

Years later, I walked into David’s childhood home for the first time.

Sitting there was the exact same soda fountain.

I should have known my fate was sealed.

Apparently the only reason his parents bought the house was because it came with the soda fountain.

Those are my people.

I grew up on Fred Astaire gliding across the screen.
Judy Garland reminding us there really was somewhere over the rainbow.
Bette Davis telling us to fasten our seat belts.

Movies that somehow made black-and-white feel more colorful than real life.

At the time I thought my mother was introducing me to great movies. Now I realize she was introducing me to herself.

“This is what makes me laugh.”
“This is what breaks my heart.”
“This is what beauty looks like to me.”

Looking back, I wish I’d paid less attention to what people recommended and more attention to why.

Movie recommendations are tiny autobiographies.

So now, when someone tells me, “You have to see this movie,” I’m listening. Not for the review. For the autobiography.

If you wanted me to understand you just a little better, what movie would you hand me?

And why?