The House Next Door

Fantastic debut, Annie! You'd think that menstruation would be a natural subtext for more horror films... the genre's just too male-dominated/male-centric, I guess.

Thanks for your insight. I have always liked this movie, especially for the almost Hal Ashby-like affection for all the quirky characters.

The brother in his tighty whities, holding a bong and singing "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" still makes me giggle.

For me, either Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man or....

don't judge me...

Gummo.

I think it has something to do with being a latchkey kid growing up in the south.

I asked my husband just now what was the first film that made him feel understood. He said he doesn't know if any film has made him feel understood; nor does he know that he doesn't feel understood.

Ah, to be so content.

I don't have an answer. I can only think of films where I wished I was the girl. The Little Girl Who Lived Down The Lane. I wanted to be like Jodie Foster's character. And Jodie Foster. My 10-year-old image of Jodie Foster, that is. Me being the 10-year-old.

I'm not sure a film has been made that made me feel understood. Sure there have been characters I've identified with heavily (Aaron Altman in "Broadcast News" springs to mind), but I really can't think of any film that I've seen that I would point to as something that explains me or seemed to know where I'm coming from.

For me, it's Close Encounters, for a variety of reasons -- my childhood fascination with UFOs, my chaotic and sometimes upsetting home life as a child of divorce, the fact that the characters who travel to Devil's Tower are all pursuing a vision that just appeared in their heads and that they attempt to flesh out through art (I drew comics and wrote sci-fi stories as a kid). Also there's the whole gestalt of the movie, which I absorbed by reading making-of books and collecting trading cards -- the idea that this movie was Spielberg's crazy obsessive personal project and a tribute to his own childhood neuroses and dreams, like a cinematic version of Roy Neary building a mountain in his living room and then finally seeing the damned thing in three-dimensions in Wyoming, as if he somehow willed it into existence.

And that ending -- Roy gets on the spaceship never to return, and it's presented as a fullfillment of all his dreams -- still seems like a happy one to me. I wanted to be on that spaceship with him.

I was completely traumatized by Close Encounters back in kindergarden. Anthony Mangini brought the lunchbox in, and I had a freakout of epic proportions when I saw the alien. I couldn't stop crying, and my hysterics grew even worse when they sent in Dr. Schutzman, our kindly but BALD principal. My mother says that it was all they could do not to laugh at me, quivering in the corner in abject fear. And Anthony Mangini had to paint his lunchbox black. I still can't watch it.

nspector--I LOVE Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane. I totally wanted to be her. But I was nothing like her.

I love "Slums of Beverly Hills" (AND "Carrie"!). Thanks for featuring an underrated movie a lot more people should see.

I don't know about "first," but Wim Wenders' 3-hour "Im Lauf der Zeit" ("In the Course of Time"/"Kings of the Road") -- seen at the age of 21 or 22 -- seemed to fit me like a second skin. I can't quite describe it, but watching it was like finding home in a strange place, seeing unfamiliar things through familiar eyes. I just felt utterly comfortable in its sensibility. Afterwards, I got on the freeway and drove and drove and drove, going nowhere in particular...

An excellent post, Annie. Though if you think male adolescence doesn't involve blood you haven't watched our bonding rituals too closely.

For myself? I kind of agree with Mr. nspector; anything I've gone through has been done so by literally millions of people before me, and I've not needed a movie or confessional interview to confirm that. But as a mixed-race Mexican-American (Dad's side is your standard European-immigrant mishmash) who doesn't speak a word of Spanish, I can't deny the special wallop dealt me by the scene in David Mamet's HOMICIDE when the Orthodox student in the library slides the Talmud under Mantegna's nose and, realizing his lack of comprehension, pricks him with "You don't understand Hebrew? What kind of Jew are you?"

So it took a cop thriller about Jewish self-identification to get under my skin about my own relationship to my heritage. Chalk one up for genre movies as vehicles for empathy with the Other, I suppose.

Annie, wow, that's quite a Close Encounters encounter. I think if you made a movie about that I would feel understood. (Though, I actually loved Close Encounters. But I was a little older than you. Way back then, at least.)

I've rarely gotten to speak to people who have seen The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane. But I rarely speak to people who know movies. And I am not a person who knows movies.

I'm glad someone brought up Broadcast News except that I always identified with Holly Hunter's character, not for gender reasons (obviously) but as someone driven to do her job well and the world not living up to her standards.

Not the first, but the last I can remember had to be--hip or not--High Fidelity. Trouble with girls/relationships, playing in bands (or being a dj--whatever, close enough), working at a record store: it's all there.

I was at one time convinced that Cameron Crowe was following me around and writing about my life.

First "understood" moment: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 15 years old, seen in the mall after my shift at Mall Munchies (don't ask). I sat in the movie theatre, watching JJL's Stacy and feeling for all the world like Christian Bale in Velvet Goldmine in the living room with his parents ("That's me! That's me!)

Wait, is it disgustingly meta to compare a real feeling felt while watching a movie, with a feeling expressed by a character in another movie?

Then came Singles when I was 25: "If I make a basket, that's means I call him", "If I was playing games, I would have waited a week to call you", etc. etc. Like a little tape recorder on mine (and my roommate's, and all my friends') bedroom wall(s).

But I didn't become a sports agent or a rock star, so that was it. :)

I don't think I've ever enjoyed reading comments more. It's like a family reunion down here.

So, I'll add, briefly -

'The 400 Blows',though I saw it late in life, mid-thirties, had me reeling to the point that I was nearly speechless.
I never would have imagined that a movie even could have suggested what it was like for me as a kid. And, yet, here it was.

That was a very nice experience. If kind of literal.

Most of my childhood was spent watching forties films with my parents, and I missed the teen films somehow. Then college brought Breathless, and I was . . . .

JJ sez:

--around age five or so: The end of the first Muppet Movie. I so clearly remember sitting in a theater as a little kid and somehow understanding there was a place in the world for people who did'nt feel normal, and for me that place would be in the film industry. It was the last big musical number: "Hey a movie / and it's gonna be terrific..."

--teen years: Taxi Driver: No, not porn, handguns or racism. Just lonliness. And Goodfellas--not for organized crime or execution style murders, but the whole East Coast blue-collar Italian American wiseguy (neighborhood tough guy, not low level mobster) milieu. Scorcese just got it cold and preserved it forever.

--in my 20s: Days Of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. Because somebody else noticed all the beuty in the world. And Clerks, Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting: they all, to greater or lesser degrees, reflected the world I knew and the way I felt, but Chasing Amy in particular was a beutiful portrait of comic book fandom and sweeping romanticism. One that I never expected to see on screen and the other that I never thought would be paired with it; thank you, Kevin Smith, for being the first to grant dignity to us fanboys and the cool geek girls we love, and lose, and never forget.

Tarkovsky's Nostalghia. That scene where the protagonist first lies down in bed while the sound of rain inhabits the moment. Then His dog appears and comes to lick his hand.

I've never owned a dog but always wanted to.
I've never been at peace but this scene is peace for me.

When I started watching Tarkovsky I understood that I should desire the peace that passeth understanding.
I understood that God exists in me for the first time. I grew up in the church but Tarkovsky has made a serious life of prayer and fellowship in the church possible. He's the reason that I watch film.

-Shantih.

Dn. Nicholas Garklavs

I'm a cliche:

First it was THE GRADUATE and then it was supplanted by RUSHMORE. Recently I've seen the mysteries illuminated in films as varied as MIRROR and BEFORE SUNSET, despite my young years.

To this day, the film that speaks to me on most levels remains THE THIN RED LINE. I was baptised Episcopalian, like Malick, and despite an atheist adolescence I've been engaging the conundrum of faith ever more earnestly since then with the help of this film and Kieslowski's DEKALOG. It should be hard to single out a moment in THIN RED LINE's ether but there's one line in particular (that I think I've mentioned here before) which says it all: "You're a magician to me." I'll never believe like Witt but his heedless altruism is something to relish in awe. I think the same can be said for Malick.

On a personal level, I've never really felt like any single movie (or character therein) showed an intimate understanding of who I was. However, on a professional level, as a teacher, I hafta say that there was something about Philip Seymour Hoffman, both the role and the performance, in The 25th Hour, that really struck close to the bone. That sense of sadness and deflation that comes when you have a class that doesn't love the material the way you do, and you can't quite communicate it the way you know that a great teacher would, well, that was pretty damned painful to watch.

I've never had an Anna Paquin come-on, though. Or, perhaps I was too clueless to see it at the time. I'm ancient now, so that particular threat has passed.

Ryland: I almost mentioned The Graduate myself, not because I was ever in a situation analogous to Benjamin's, but because I was young and depressed when I saw it, and it captured the feeling of being young and depressed better than any film I'd seen up to that point.

Sort of like JJ's affinity for Taxi Driver, above.

And of course, as soon as I publish this I am reminded of two films that really do seem to shine a spotlight into my soul, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. The battle that rages in me between romanticism and cynicism has never been more compellingly set before the cameras.

Walking & Talking, I think...I feel like there must be one before that, but that's the one that sticks out. Some of the interchanges between Amelia and Laura could have been taken directly from my living room.

"This sponge smells like hot dogs. ...I can't stop smelling it!"

Late entry: E.T. (at age 9) and Chameleon Street (23 to Present).

This is a tough one to answer, but I'm gonna have to go with Tom Hanks' Allen Bauer & his predicament in SPLASH.

And no, I'm not going to explain it.

Okay, I have to fess up now. There have been a couple of speeches in other films that may have captured something about me.

Lloyd Dobbler, Say Anything:

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that."

Mark Renton in Trainspotting (Though I am not, nor have I ever been a heroin addict, the recognition or the hypocrisy of our war on drugs really strikes a chord with me):

"Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday night. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?"

Sars--Walking & Talking is a great one... I saw that movie with my best friend soon after she got engaged. It actually helped me deal with the experience.

Another one I considered, but that wasn't as strong for me as Slums, was Sarah Kernochan's All I Wanna Do (aka The Hairy Bird, aka Strike! when Miramax ruined it). It's the only movie that's ever gotten it right about the all-girls school experience. All the rest are frauds--I'm looking at you, Mona Lisa Smile (though I haven't seen the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I'm sure gets it, too).

Ross: "And no, I'm not going to explain it."

Dude, you're such a tease.

I first caught Heathers on Comedy Central or something when I was in high school, and to me it perfectly understood not only the cliches about my (and everyone's) high school experiences, but also that sort of nihilistic fatality I felt about it, that the only way any of that stuff would ever go away was if you just killed everyone, and even then it might not. To this day it's my favorite movie.

Matt -

It may have something to do with the line "All my life I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's... she's a fish."

Not sure there's a finer point to be put on it. I do know that I had a *major* Daryl Hannah obsession for well over a year though. I even talked my local video store into giving me this massive banner poster of this image (nearly life size it was) that hung over my bed for god knows how long.

I'll third Ryland's GRADUATE mention, which when I was in high school was a movie whose vibe I obsessed over, and much like yourself, had no logical reason to do so.

In my early adult life I really connected to Bill Lee in NAKED LUNCH, which sorta goes to show how much adult life sucks compared to the innocence of youth - when mermaids were a helluva lot more appealing than bug powder.

Beneath every cynic lies a romantic, Dan Jardine.

Preach it, nspector. I have a real love-hate relationship with myself. There's many a day I have felt like the human embodiment of Robert Mitchum's fists in Night of the Hunter.

Annie (great piece, by the way), I'll have to check out "All I Wanna Do"...what did you think about Susan Skoog's "Whatever"?

I guess we're sort of veering away from "made me feel understood" and into "made me feel spied on," kind of, but there were several times during "Whatever" when I could not even look at Liza Weil straight on because it was so uncomfortably familiar.

"the innocence of youth - when mermaids were a helluva lot more appealing than bug powder" -- I'm-a stitch that on a pillow 'cause it's awesome.

For me it was A THOUSAND CLOWNS with the transcendent Jason Robards and a very young and talented Barry Gordon.

Sars--I remember really liking "Whatever" when it came out. I just thought of it the other day, and am curious to see if it holds up to my memory of it. I was at a curious place in my life when I saw it, and I wonder how much of myself I was projecting onto it, if that makes sense.

I saw Whatever again a couple of years ago, and it does hold up. I'm starting to think it might be one of the great unseen American indies of the 90s.

Also, for anybody's who's interested in a non-male-fanboy perspective on Carrie, check this out.

Annie,

You are soo right about MOlly Ringwald. YOur debut article was a GREAT read. ANd, truly hit the mark for me, too.

For me, by far, the first film I can remember watching where I felt understood..was "Now Voyager" with Bette Davis. To this day, it is still one of my all time faves.

Silence of the Lambs. That was my wife's quick answer when I asked her this question. For me, this is a pretty tough one. It's much easier to think of books: Notes from the Underground when I was silly young man, or Kafka's story "The Burrow" for the silly man I am now. For a movie I'll go with Mystery Train, mainly the first part. That Japanese kid had me pegged. People thought he never smiled, although he was having a ball; and he took photos of the hotel rooms he stayed at rather than sightseeing stuff because those were the things he would forget. I never related to teenage characters when I was a teen, maybe because the actors were usually older.

The funny thing in reading all this (and maybe it speaks to growing up without TV until high school) is that I connected much more deeply with books. Felt the most understood — in the eerily spied-on sense — when reading the first two paragraphs of Alain de Botton’s On Love, when I was in my early 20s.

Books I read and reread and reread in childhood invariably all were by women writers chronicling their childhoods — Maud Hart Lovelace in the Betsy-Tacy series, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott. Maybe since they all taught me what a (young) writer’s life is like, it’s no surprise my first book hews closely to that example.

Movies ... oy. I’m tempted to say Maria in Sound of Music, or Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed. That might be the reason I thought of books first. ;) Although, Hugh Grant’s struggle to fill “units” of time in About a Boy was really on the mark when I was unemployed. Great writing, Annie. :)

I think it was Harold and Maude for me, not for Harold's wealth but for his depression, loneliness, budding freedom, and love for someone his family and peers didn't approve of.

Oh, and I agree with Andy and the others: fantastic debut.