Suzy Says

Love/hate for Friday, November 22, 2002
Long Movies

Note: we’re planning to skip Love/hate next Friday, in honor of Thanksgiving and overall laziness. But tune in the following week for your regularly scheduled programming. Oh, and if you have some hot topics to suggest, email me at suzy @ suzysays.net and I’ll see if I can make your wish come true. Since it’s close the holidays and all.

End of Note.

You had to see this one coming, after my rant earlier this week about Lord of the Rings. The truth is, despite my advanced age, my attention span never grew up, remaining at approximately three year old levels since I was, well, three years old. I honestly think that this is why I can happily watch six episodes of Sex & the City, equalling approximately three hours of viewing time, whereas I have to be cajoled and bribed into watching a movie that is more than two hours long.

It’s just like how I hoard six weeks’ worth of The New Yorker before every trip involving a plane. My post-valium and vodka ritual is to read the New Yorker with all available attention during take-off, not taking my eyes from the page until we are level enough to get more alcohol. I can read dozens, or possibly hundreds of articles, with greater ease and enjoyment on a plane than a very long novel, even though you’d only need one very long novel. Having said that, though, on my last trip to London (11 fun-filled hours each way), I brought the entire third season of Sex & the City, two 400+ page novels, and 8 New Yorkers, just in case.

If that doesn’t tell you how much I fear boredom, nothing does. It rates as #2 on my fear list, right after Death, which is permanently #1 (and not in a Lynda Barry way). And boredom seems to be the inevitable consequence of movies more than two hours long. All I really require of movies, besides a humane running time, is that they distract me from the horror of life (I really, really don’t need to be more depressed, thanks anyway), preferably be amusing and/or thought-provoking, be well-written, be set somewhere nice to look at and be populated by people who are nice to look at. Life and ordinary fucking people, to quote Harry Dean Stanton in the perfection of Repo Man (a perfect 92 minutes long), are ugly enough. Oh, yeah, and I am always and completely bored by the crazy (you would be, too, if you had my under-medicated mother) and the noble terminally ill, particularly children. And since I already made everyone hate me, I might as well just admit right here that I don’t know what I hated more: the actual movie the English Patient (die, already!) or the way everyone pronounces it, with the emphasis on English, like there were patients of French, Russian, and other nationalities in the movie.

However, since it’s me, there are always exceptions, and they are embarrassing in their girlie-ness. I’m sorry to say that I love the following three very long movies (in alphabetical order; and, as it happens, in declining running time order):

1. Cleopatra, starring the breath-taking Elizabeth Taylor. 246 minutes (It’s like parents telling you their kids’ ages in months, telling you the running time in minutes. They know it would be far too appalling in hours)!

2. Gone with the Wind, starring the breath-taking Vivien Leigh. 233 minutes!

3. Titanic, starring the equally breath-taking Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. A mere 194 minutes.

Note the similarities:

Gorgeous cast; gorgeous settings; [melo]dramatic; romantic; and the history is just background. All fluff, amusement and all about the pretty. The way it should be.