coming soon to a theater near you
2002-05-01@6:22 a.m.

For some reason on almost every informal, personal survey I've ever taken there is a question about what person, living or dead, that I would like to meet. Its a stupid question. There are too many to choose from and making the choice is its own kind of hell. You have to consider so many things. Okay, I have to consider these things, since I find it almost impossible to be completely honest without taking into account how my honesty will come across to someone else.

So I have to think about how I want the person who's asking to percieve me. As sentimental: My maternal grandfather who died before my birth. When in fact I don't really want to meet him because I've heard so many terrible things about him and his alcoholism from my mother on the rare occasions that she herself drinks too much. Alright then, Intellectual: Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar was instrumental in the first few years of my depression in helping me realize that, no, I was not alone, and yes, there was something wrong with me. But I'm doing so well right now and just thinking about her is enough to open wounds that only just closed.

The true answer, the one I think to myself upon hearing the question and quickly shut away, varies constantly. It depends on my mood mostly. Wistful, I'd like to meet Amelia Earhart and ask her what the hell happened. Upset, I still want to meet Sylvia and ask her if she found peace in the afterlife. Horny(or drunk for that matter) I would like to meet Michael Rosenbaum and fuck his brains out.

Today though, I know exactly who I would like to meet. Orson Welles. For many reasons that span many years, but most immediately because of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay for digging up my nostalgia(and for basically just being a damn good book that will probably be discussed at greater length later.)

My love affair with Orson began in my early-to-late teenage years when I was still in that pretentious phase in which I professed to any and all who would listen how much I loved old movies. And foreign movies, and indie movies, and movies that most people(myself included) only pretended to understand so they wouldn't look stupid. Any of them and all of them. In truth though I was surprised and vexed at how few examples of the above really earned my love. I wasn't brave enough to criticize them even in my own head though, believing that doing so would make me no better than the average media consumer(a terrible thing at the time), so I was never able to pin point exactly what it was about them that I didn't like. Now it doesn't matter, I can admit that it was because I simply didn't like them, enough said.

Despite my growing disillusionment with the wholesale goodness of the genres above there were still a good number that I loved, adored with all my heart. And Citizen Kane was admired above them all. I had just about given up on the old ones, even some of the best of them are terribly dated, so I was not expecting to like Kane at all. I bought it for $4.95 at Suncoast on a whim and promptly forgot about it. When I finally got around to watching it I sat down in front of the tube expecting to be bored out of my mind. And was so pleasantly surprised that I watched it again immediately. And again and again in the weeks following.

It shocked the hell out of me by not being boring so it took a few more viewings before I realized it was the best movie I'd ever seen. I'd never seen characters so real, or acting so good in the other grainy black and whites I'd watched. I finally understood why the Rosebud sequence was so often imitated and parodied. I cried when I found out Rosebud was a sled.

I was still so taken with it a year later that I wrote a research paper on it for my Junior English class. I don't remember much about the actual paper. I can tell you that none of the libraries in Dyersburg, TN have more than a couple of books that even mention Kane so I had to rely almost solely on the internet and an old Art of Cinema type textbook as my research tools, and that 'chiaroscuro' appeared so many times that I developed such a loathing for typing the word that it almost killed the paper completely. I also got a C, apparently I didn't have enough research sources.

So I imagine if I met Mr. Welles I would tell him about the paper. And since its my fantasy, I imagine he would smile at me and commiserate about the pain of finding good source materials in a hopelessly hickified town.

Then I'd just let him talk. I don't really have any questions, nothing I'm dying to know, except, "What's on your mind?" I can't imagine anything more fascinating than getting even a glimpse of that.

< my sims have better furniture than I do - the abyss also looks into you >

Name: MsMongi aka Kim
AIM: Lola_N_Slacks

Too Pink? Bite me.

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