1. For a while today, I'd say all the activities over the last week caught up to me. I did some sitting and staring. I nodded off a couple of times.
After a while, feeling too lethargic and sleepy to read, I turned to the television.
I perked myself up.
At first, I thought I'd like to watch a cast of awesome actors deliver a superbly composed script and I put on the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross.
Too dark.
So, I fired up The Criterion Channel and decided to watch interviews with movie makers and this was the ticket to uplift and stimulation.
First, I watched an interview with Spike Lee and learned about the movies he grew up with and huge impact his college studies had on his vision and development as a filmmaker.
2. Then I watched an interview with John Turturro, one of my favorite actors, who also works as a director and producer.
Listening to Turturro talk about growing up with movies and his forays as a college student from SUNY New Paltz into New York City to watch films fascinated me. His deep emotional and intellectual experiences watching movies, acting in them, and learning about movies from other luminaries in the film making world filled me with even more admiration than I already had for John Turturro. His answers to the interviewer's questions were insightful and down to earth and his analysis of a handful of clips from movies that have influenced him over the years was brilliant.
3. Back in about 1985, when I used to spend as much time as I could at the downtown Eugene Art Movie House called Cinema 7 (and at the Bijou, too), I watched a movie that had a profound effect on me called Desert Hearts. It's a story of a romance that develops between two women on a dude ranch near Reno and was as tender and honest an exploration of love, affection, daring, mutual respect, and honesty as I'd ever seen in a movie.
Donna Deitch directed the movie and it uplifted me this evening to stumble, on the Criterion Channel, upon an interview Deitch gave to Jane Lynch.
I love Jane Lynch and she conducted this interview from her heart, not only drawing out of Donna Deitch details about the technical aspects of the movie and how she came to cast it, but she also told Donna Deitch what a profound impact Desert Heart had on her when she was in her late twenties. She watched the movie repeatedly, inviting it to help her understand and enjoy her experiences loving women and how she experienced great growth as a person and a dramatic artist thanks to this movie.
If a single thread ran through these interviews it was the powerful ways movies have the potential to expand our understanding of the world, to transport us into unfamiliar situations, to feel connection with characters and situations much different than our own, and to learn more and more about the complexities of the human condition.
I'd say more than anything else, I miss art movie houses in my life.
I miss going to independent movies, international movies, transgressive movies, provocative documentaries, movies that have very little to do with what my day to day life looks like, but that have everything to do with the heart, soul, suffering, love, and emotions of human beings.
That's where I went this evening with Spike Lee, John Turturro, Jane Lynch, and Donna Deitch and absorbing their stories, feelings, and insights turned what had been a humdrum day into an invigorating evening.
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