Life Isn't Like the Movies, Except When It Is

A humble attempt at describing a quietly grand feeling.
I’m home now, in the late afternoon half darkness, with a wine glass full of cheap Cava because it’s the only thing I have to drink except Diet Coke, and I only allow myself one Diet Coke a day and I’ve already had it. Luckily there's no limit on Cava in place yet. And there’s a Lean Cuisine pizza beeping that it’s heated in the microwave behind me. This sounds like product placement but it’s not, it’s just what is surrounding me now and I want you to have a picture.
I went to the movies this afternoon, with one of my dearest, most special girlfriends. A lovely, melancholy, pleasant one. The movie, not the girlfriend. Although… she is truly lovely, and understands my melancholy, and makes everything pleasant. But the movie is what I mean; the movie, one of those big studio indies, quite popular in the theaters right now.
Movies affect me. Largely because I get filled with a kind of envy for wanting to be part of the movie making process. Any movie, really, makes me feel like that. I sit and watch the previews -- I wouldn’t mind a whole movie of previews, honestly -- and I wish like a child wishes that I could’ve been there participating in its creation. I’ve had just enough taste of it to know what a delicious thing it is to be part of something purposeful and imaginative and artistic and I am always, always hungry for more, more, more.
I know I’m not unique in that; lots of people wish they made movies. Music, too, I think, has that affect on certain types of people. Fantasy type people. “Creatives,” as we’re coming to be known.
I know life isn’t like the movies. Except for some moments of some days, when it is. There’s a line in Sleepless in Seattle where Rosie O’Donnell tells an adorably pre-Restylane'ed Meg Ryan, “You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in the movies.” That, that is brilliance. I want to be in love in the movies. I want to be anything in the movies. I want my life to be a movie, with a soundtrack of haunting, touching powerful music.
When I left the movie theater, it was raining. It’s summer, so it wasn’t cold, and it wasn’t raining very hard, so I walked the three avenues back to the train. Not really because I’m trying to save every penny (if I was, as I should be, I don’t suppose I would’ve gone to the movie in the first place) but more because sometimes walking in the rain in New York can make you feel like you’re in a movie.
That might be true in other cities as well; I don’t know. In every other city I’ve been in while it’s raining, I’ve always just run to get out of it.
But in New York, you can stop in the middle of a Union Square intersection, with people hustling all around you with umbrellas and without, and you can put on your iPod, which is the closest thing to a life soundtrack most of us will get.
When I’m feeling movie-ish and want something movie-like to happen, I always say a little prayer before I put the first song on. The first song will either kill the moment or cement it.
Today, in the rain, in an intersection in Union Square, it was a live version of “Break Your Heart” by Barenaked Ladies. Cement.
I walked down 14th Street exactly the way I would’ve walked down it had a famous director just said to me, “Okay, for this shot, we need emotion. But under the surface. We need to feel what she’s feeling, more than we need to see it. She’s hurt, but not broken. She’s vulnerable, but our audience knows she’s very, very strong. Stronger perhaps than she realizes herself at this point in the script. Now… walk.” Obviously I would be a terrible, terrible director. But I’m a good actor, and I think every extra on that sidewalk with me, as they parted just in time to let me pass without breaking my stride, could feel what I was trying so hard, and yet not trying at all, to convey.
I pushed pause at the end of the song because I was getting close to the train and I didn’t want the kill to come, and because if it was another cement song I wanted to wait till I was back off the train and could walk some more in the rain.
Eight minute train ride and I never broke character.
Climb the stairs, still raining, push play.
“A Beautiful Mess” by Jason Mraz. Beautiful. Another walk.
The problem is, now I’m just in my dark apartment, wet, with a bottle of bad bubbly that I’ll have to finish myself because you can’t recork Cava, and a microwaved lunch, trying to figure out how to both make that “I’m in a movie” feeling last for myself and transfer some of its magic to you at the same time.
This is the part they never put in the movie. I wish I was indie and fear I’m mostly just… Midwestern. I wish I was deep and complex and worry I’m more or less neurotic. I wish I was content and know that whenever I actually am I ruin it quickly in the name of drama. I wish I couldn’t cry on demand and that I didn’t run to a mirror every time I cried, because I am anxious that it makes my tears less earnest.
But even movie tears come from someplace earnest. Even in the rain. Even in the fake movies.