Call Me Shocked

You know how sometimes our celebrity crushes, if you will, come to us via osmosis? When we all fall in love with a celebrity, famous person, entertainer, and then discover someone in their life is just as awesome and talented? This happens to me all the time, usually with musicians but occasionally with other entertainers as well.

I’ll give you an example.

Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan launched their careers by starring in Step Up. Jenna had already been acting for 4 years when the movie came out. Channing, only for two. While his career went stratosphere, can’t grocery shop for himself, paparazzi chase down, hers continued without as much fan-fare.

She had plenty of credits to her name (more than her husband in fact) but the biggest credit probably came when she added the name Tatum to a hyphenated Dewan. Which kind of sucks but only kind of. All of a sudden there were tons of people who wanted to know her, to watch all of her past work, to hire her for future work, just because she and Channing got married.

That desire to know about the people in the lives of the celebrities we love is the reason I came to know Patty Duke.

I read every teeny bopper mag back in the 80s. All of them. Because all of them back then featured a boy who still remains at the top of my celebrity crush list all these years later, Sean Astin.

It was only a matter of time before I read enough about that cutie to find out he came from a very famous family. Hollywood royalty if you will. His dad starred on The Addams Family. His mom not only won an Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, but 17 years later she came back to that story playing Anne Sullivan.

Helen Keller was a woman we studied in school. Probably because her primary place of residence, and where Helen first encountered Anne, was in my home state of Massachusetts. And I grew up idolizing that woman’s story.

Deaf and blind. Not only learns to speak but goes on to become one of the most accomplished women in history. She spoke to huge crowds. She wrote numerous books. She was a leader and activist who helped change perception of deaf and blind people.

That woman, along with Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale, were my childhood heroes.

So when I found out that my celebrity crush’s mom played a woman I idolized, I knew I had to see the movie. But there was no Netflix, Amazon, or internet back in those days. If it wasn’t available on video I had to wait to watch it on television if it made the rounds.

I rented it. No way I was waiting.

I watched it and I cried. For the first time since I got interested in learning real stories about real people, I discovered an actress who left it all on the screen. All of those connections – her birthing of my favorite actor, portrayal of one of my favorite women in history – made her a permanent fixture in my brain.

Osmosis.

Then I needed to watch, learn, read all about this amazing woman I’d discovered, Patty Duke.

Her book, Call Me Anna, was the first Autobiography I ever read. I found her journey to, through and out the other side of the Hollywood machine (somehow still intact as a person despite the bipolarity), to be so inspiring.

Back in those days I still had these delusions of grandeur that I’d become a world famous actress. So it was cool to read about a woman who not only did it but seemed to maintain some type of family values, teach them to her kids, and hold onto her soul in an industry that can, and will, suck it right out of you if you’re not careful.

She became a new hero to me. I bought her book and read it about 10 times. Tried to get my hands on everything she’d ever made so I could watch her performance of literally becoming a different person for the cameras. She told stories, some salacious and irreverent, others powerful and moving, but her resume is huge.

To learn of her passing yesterday hit me a lot harder than I would have expected considering I didn’t actually know this woman. Just her name, face, relations to the actors I liked, work she’d done starting back in 1954. She was about 12 years old, I wouldn’t even be born for another 19 years.

I couldn’t explain it, the reasoning for feeling so sad, but maybe the woman she embodied said it best:

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart.”- Helen Keller

To celebrate your life I will once again read your Autobiography. RIP Anna Marie "Patty Duke" Pearce.

• • • • • • • • • • •
In addition to this drivel I also write books, both fiction and non-fiction.
Learn more on my author page.

I’m Not a Non-Conformist but I Play One on the Internet

For a long while now I’ve been following the blog Chick Lit Is Not Dead. A year or so ago I even sent them a print copy of Ripple the Twine to see if it would be something they’d be interested in reviewing – slash – featuring on their blog. The lovely ladies over there took a pass on my book but I wasn’t disheartened. Can’t please all the people right?

Since then I’ve followed their blog pretty regularly as a subscriber. Delivered right to my inbox, the stories and interviews were easily accessible and in finding out more about the Author and their books I was sure that either my Kindle storage space would shrink or my time at the library would grow. But a funny thing happened, I felt little connection to any of the Authors featured on the site and never downloaded more than one or two books. In a year that’s not a whole lot of material.

A while back CLIND changed their feature format and started a new thing where they asked the Author to give their best ever in a few standard categories – song, movie, book, moment, bit of advice. I thought it was pretty clever. But other than Jen Lancaster I felt like I couldn’t relate to a single one of these people. Because their top five references were far too obscure for me.

I wondered, am I stuck too much in mainstream pop culture? Is it possible that every single Author who writes Chick-Lit or Rom-Com is a hipster? Or whatever the new, trendy title is? Am I actually a conformist? Is that even a bad thing anymore? If I say I love The Goonies, Stephen King and Jason Mraz am I going to sound like a boring follower even though I’ve been reading King & listening to Jason for far longer than it's been a thing?

Then this morning I got around to reading a favorite email subscription, Catherine Caffeinated, and there it was. The answer to my pop culture follower prayers. She had posted a top 100 movies of all-time list and right there in the number one spot was a movie that finally caused me to sigh with relief. She picked Jurassic Park.

Oh happy day! I’m not the only one out there who can appreciate that sometimes mainstream pop culture is fun, that it is fine to appreciate and enjoy and that no one cares if you admit it out loud and proud. Not that it would ever bother me to admit who I am, I just started wondering what I’d have to talk about with Authors I ran into at conferences. All I could visualize was me, outside during lunch, smoking a cigarette in my crappy car while listening to Dave Matthews and they’d all be inside discussing the finer points of the latest Louise Erdrich novel. And I’d be all ‘Um, I just finished downloading Gone Girl and will probably get around to reading that in a year or so.’

In the spirit of proving just how uncultured (read: non-hipster) I really am, I’m going to post the other 99 movies that rank below The Goonies in terms of favorites. These are essentially in no particular order other than the order in which they came to mind while making the list.

Thanks for the idea Catherine. And Jen, if you ever need advice on kick ass eighties hair band metal to rock out to just give me a shout. Preferably with two fingers tossed in the air. I’d be happy to help in that department.

Top 100 Movies (but you already know #1)

1. The Goonies
2. Lord of the Rings trilogy (it’s one book, I count it as one movie and it’s not the only trilogy taking up a single spot on this list)
3. Office Space
4. The Day After Tomorrow
5. Death to Smoochy
6. Rudy
7. Blue Crush
8. Reality Bites
9. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
10. The Breakfast Club
11. The Ref
12. Love, Actually (side note - I think you can tell everything you need to know about a person by which is their favorite coupling in this movie)
13. Armageddon
14. The Cutting Edge
15. 200 Cigarettes
16. Clueless
17. How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days
18. Groundhog Day
19. Die Hard (1-3 but 2 was not as good)
20. Happy Gilmore
21. Singles
22. Fight Club
23. Almost Famous
24. The Princess Bride (inconceivable!)
25. Dogma
26. X-Men (1-3 mostly but Wolverine was pretty good too)
27. Team America: World Police
28. 8 Mile
29. Fever Pitch
30. Back to the Future (the trilogy)
31. Indiana Jones (the original trilogy)
32. Jerry Maguire
33. Old School
34. Grandma’s Boy
35. Twister (we’re goin’ green!)
36. Good Will Hunting
37. The Wedding Singer
38. Waiting
39. Girl, Interrupted
40. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
41. Stand By Me
42. Pulp Fiction
43. Legally Blonde
44. Point Break
45. Dirty Dancing
46. Better Off Dead
47. Honeymoon in Vegas
48. Can’t Hardly Wait
49. Rear Window (one of very few psychological thrillers that make the cut)
50. Say Anything
51. Tommy Boy
52. High Fidelity
53. Forces of Nature (no judgment)
54. American History X
55. The Crow
56. Xanadu
57. Toy Soldiers
58. Castaway
59. Brokeback Mountain
60. The Fox and the Hound (seriously, I still cry every time)
61. The Sixth Sense
62. The Bourne movies (1-3)
63. Three Men and a Baby
64. Grease
65. When Harry Met Sally
66. Sixteen Candles
67. Noises Off
68. I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (he og’d!)
69. Saving Grace
70. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
71. America’s Sweethearts
72. 9 to 5
73. Practical Magic
74. Dazed and Confused
75. The Lost Boys
76. Drop Dead Gorgeous
77. Just Friends
78. Lucas
79. Rock Star (again, no judgment)
80. So I Married an Axe Murderer
81. Shawshank Redemption
82. E.T. the Extra Terrestrial
83. Napoleon Dynamite
84. The Birdcage
85. An Affair to Remember
86. Hot Fuzz (just saw this again recently & still love it, hilariously dark)
87. It Could Happen to You
88. Idiocracy
89. Keeping the Faith
90. Ocean's trilogy
91. Sleeping with the Enemy
92. Pretty Woman
93. Speed
94. Ever After
95. The Lake House
96. L.A. Confidential
97. White Water Summer
98. The Jerk
99. Empire Records
100. Steel Magnolias

What movies make the cut on your list? Or are you more a reader, listener, television watcher? I'm sure I'll think of 100 more as soon as I put this list up but sitting around all day thinking of movies isn't on the agenda for this Saturday so there it is.

It’s the Little Things

Not that I need another reason to take time away from my already full schedule, or rather, I don’t need to add another profession to my already jam packed life, but I keep thinking I should be editing film or television for a living.

It started over twenty five years ago when my long time favorite movie “The Goonies” was released. I never saw the movie in the theatre. That’s a story for another day, but the first time I saw it, if I’m not mistaken, was with my friend Karen and the second it was over we both wanted to watch it again. I think we ended up watching that movie something like 27 billion times that year.

Or something like that. I used to keep an actual count but after this many years I completely lost track, and I suppose that’s not really tragic considering the number would probably make me feel tragic…

At any rate, the first time I saw the movie I noticed the first editing mistake I’d ever seen in a movie. Or at least the first very noticeable one that hit my radar on the first viewing. For those who haven’t seen this gem of a flick, first of all, HOW is that possible (???) and, second of all, run out right now, locate it in some format and then come back.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

Now, for the rest of us who have probably seen this epic motion picture at least once or twice, you’ll know the scene that I’m referring to.

The gang gathers together over at Mikey Walsh’s house, Mom Walsh leaves with the jumpy housekeeper Rosalita, and everyone starts talking about the crap in the attic. As they pull down the stairs there is a jump in the film. The jump is almost imperceptible but the stairs are being shown opening from inside the attic and all of a sudden…blip! Up and then down they go. Its minute, like I said, most people never notice this.

But I did. First time I watched the movie it was like “hey, did you see that?”

I was hooked on picking out mistakes, and it started with “The Goonies”. Or, as Mikey Walsh would say “It all starts here.”

I haven’t seen the movie in ages (and now will surely watch it tonight over a couple beers) but off the top of my head I can think of a few editing mistakes or oversights that I noticed pretty quickly. After Chunk does the Truffle Shuffle the balloon that pops is a different color than the one that originally blew up, when the gang unrolls the map for Andy to play the bones there are char marks visible over the notes that weren’t there before (read the book [yes, I have that too]), at the end Data talks about the octopus with reporters but there’s no octopus to be seen (read the book), when they dump out the marble bag into Mom Walsh’s hand to reveal the gems she is then isn’t wearing nail polish, Jake Fratelli is singing when they kidnap Chunk but simultaneously smoking a cigarette in the side view mirror, when they smash the glass over the map they toss it off the frame but then Mikey pulls the map out from under glass…I think you get the point. There are a LOT and believe me I’ve pretty much caught them all.

So that level of dedication has led me to noticing all kinds of things in all kinds of movies and television shows over the last quarter of a decade. Stuff like:

• Time on a clock bouncing around (especially on a non-digital)
• Amount of liquid in a glass (especially dark stuff like wine)
• The length of a cigarette/ash
• The wardrobe of the character
• Stuff moving as if by ghosts (an example of this happened the other night watching “Royal Pains”, a show I love on USA Network. Character holding 2 magazine props in front of her but the back mag was not the featured one for the scene and in every other shot it was sticking up further than the front mag. So distracting!)
• Seeing equipment like mics enter the shot, or cameras reflected in glass
• Geographical mistakes (when the setting is said to be Boston but a palm tree is clearly visible, or something to that effect)

And that’s just the short list, watch television with me sometime and you’ll be amazed. A movie is even worse. Matt is always quite blown away when, on the first viewing of something, I utter an ‘ugh’ and ask if he just saw the so-and-so mistake. It might be a conservative estimate but approximately 100% of the time he says no.

Where would one even get a start in a career like this? I’m sure a double major in communications and film production would land you a fetching position with a film or television studio…fetch a coffee, mail, dry cleaning, etc. Maybe even after thirty years you could move up to the place where you get to talk to the assistant to the editor of the show!

Um, nah.  I think I’ll just keep my current day job(s) and continue to annoy my husband, family and friends with my insanely accurate mistake catches instead. And if they ever make the long discussed (but hopefully, please, please, please I BEG OF YOU, NEVER!) sequel to “The Goonies” I’ll be the one in the theater, whispering, “Ugh, did you catch that?”