Diary Friday: “I LOVE movies like that – with meanings.”

And here is an entry which completely proves the power of cinema. Movies are powerful, they can touch us on a very deep level. Especially “movies with meanings”. For example:

This diary entry is from when I was 15 years old. It was my summer vacation. Here we go!!

JULY 10

I haven’t been doing ANYTHING! Yesterday all I did was watch TV. The Great Gatsby was on. [I don’t know why that strikes me as funny. But I did love that movie. Strangely enough. I think it’s kind of awful now. But I sat around on my summer vacation watching … The Great Gatsby?]

And my weekday schedule is sleep till about 10, and just laze around until 12:30 and then follows my great soap opera stretch. [I must have been driving my parents crazy.] Ryan’s Hope, All My Children (skip One Life to Live) and then General Hospital – and then I do my paper route. Yawn. Yes, it is boring. I have to get a job. [Yes, you do. Also, poor One Life to Live. What has that show done to deserve your scorn?]

But oh, I have to tell you about Thursday. First of all, I got my ears pierced. See, my mother drove Mere and I up to the big malls – the one with the escalators and fountains. [Sheila, you have been to that “big mall” a gazillion times. Why do you suddenly feel the need to describe it? Also, Rhode Islanders – especially southern Rhode Islanders – does this language not sound familiar and crack you up?? “The big malls”?? “The big malls up there in the city”!! As opposed to the rinky-dink little mall in our town with Waldenbooks, Weathervane, Zero Wampum, and Richie’s House-a Bah-gnz to keep us occupied.] She also had to do some birthday shopping so she dropped me and Mere off at the cinema so we could see War Games. There was a total of 7 people in the theatre (including us). It was GREAT! No bratty noisy kids. We bought candy, etc., and the movie started.

[Okay, here comes the embarrassing part. It’s kind of long.]

The movie is totally anti-nuclear war. And Matthew Broderick – I am sorry, I really am [as though my crushes BURDEN my journal], but add another name to the long list of heart throbs. [See? Embarrassing. What … the JOURNAL is gonna add the name to a list? Who ya talkin’ to, Sheila?] I know it gets monotonous but he really is an excellent actor. He won a Tony and he’s like 21 years old!! He is really good. And he’s cute too. He has sort of a baby face – huge eyes – wide mouth – God, he was so good! [Wild that this was way before Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Matthew Broderick wasn’t yet a household name. ] So was his girlfriend. I am not sure of her name [Again, this is pre-Breakfast Club. It is hard to imagine a world BEFORE Breakfast Club … but here we are. Where I did not know Ally Sheedy’s name.] – but I would have loved to play that part. I felt like I could relate to her. At the beginning she was just a silly giggly teenybopper and by the end she was sensitive and caring.

[So, the character had an ARC? Is that what you’re trying to say? That’s called Screenwriting 101, Sheila.]

I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT AGAIN! I can’t go into the whole plot because it is massively confusing [It is? Really? Have you seen THE BIG SLEEP, Sheila?] but by the end World War III is just about to be launched and they can’t stop it because it’s a stupid computer doing everything. So David Lightman (Matt) [I am already shortening his name, as though I know him well enough to call him “Matt”, not “Matthew”.] tries to stop it by playing games with it to break the code. He starts to play Tic Tac Toe with it because an old strange professor said that WWIII would be like Tic Tac Toe – no winner. I mean, he’s right. How can you win a nuclear war? You can’t. (By the way, it drives me crazy when people say ‘nucular’.) [And it still does. You won’t even believe how MUCH it will end up driving you crazy, Sheila. Say, around 2002, 2003. You will shout at televisions repeatedly, etc., berating the leader of the free world for saying “nucular” every other word. ]

So in this frenzied scene, the computer starts to zoom through trillions of combinations of Tic Tac Toe as it also plays out all the different turnouts of WWIII on its huge screens – the scene is crazy and sort of scary. And the last line in the movie is on the screen by the computer – Finally, the screens go blank and these words appear: I suggest another game. The only winning move is … not to play. Doesn’t that give you shivers? God, it did me. If only people could think that way!! You can’t just WIN a war like that. But I LOVE movies like that – with meanings. [Movies with meanings. I love myself here. I am so sincere.]

And Matthew Broderick did a really good job, I think. He was really impressive. I mean, half of the movie was computer talk, and him staring at a computer screen – and it could have been boring. I am glad they made it through the eyes of a kid. Somehow, it made the story less technical or something. And Matthew really held his own up against all those machines. [I actually think this is a rather astute observation. The majority of that movie is Broderick fiddling with computers. And yet he manages to convey an increasing sense of urgency, fear, vulnerability … It could so easily have NOT been so, with an actor who wasn’t so good.]

And – see – the movie could have been boring – but they put humanism in it. They put in the sub-plot of David and the girl and those two had some GREAT conversations. I think the most meaningful part was when the two of them were on this remote island with this eccentric old scientist who was a hermit. (He invented the big computer who played WWIII like a game). And the 2 of them went to find him to tell him he was the only one who could stop it. His house was cluttered with relics and dinosaur pictures and globes and all sorts of — stuff. And to the kids dismay, he seems very blase about WWIII. And he says some things that really make you think, and make you scared. [This is pre-Berlin Wall falling. I know now that as I wrote this journal entry the Soviet Imperium was cracking at the seams … but I did not know that at the time, and I was terrified of nuclear war, and terrified of a war between the Soviets and the US. NuCLEar war. I saw “The Day After”. I read “On the Beach”. I was scared. These were very real fears. War Games totally tapped into those fears.]

The scientist was saying stuff that scared me. Stuff like – I don’t matter. Human beings don’t matter. We don’t matter. If the world blew up tomorrow, the sun would keep shining, the planets would keep going, no one would notice. In spite of this, I still, deep down, believe that things would change. So I don’t agree. I think we do matter. Why, though? If we are stupid enough to destroy our world, the only world we have, then maybe we shouldn’t matter. Maybe we should blow ourselves up, maybe we don’t deserve to go on surviving. I don’t know. I always push these thoughts out. Probably cause I’m too conceited. Like I think my life matters to the universe. We are all conceited. But it bothers me when I hear people say blase stuff like that – like the Professor was saying in the movie: “If we blew up tomorrow, it won’t matter. Nature will just start over again …” and the expressions on those two kids faces! I knew just how they felt!! Jennifer went, “But I’m only 17! I’m too young to die!” I may sound like a philosopher or it may sound like a bunch of crap – but I do think humans have a need to know they matter, that they have made their mark. I know I do. And if I thought the world was gonna blow up tomorrow – I don’t know what I do! I haven’t done anything to mean anything. It makes you realize how short a time we do have.

Well, I hope that if anyone is dumb enough to start WWIII, I’m either unaware of our immediate destruction so I won’t go around dreading it, or old enough so I’ve lived my life and reached my goals, whatever they are. [Ah, Sheila. You are so young. “reached my goals”. You say it so blithely, so easily.] That’s what David said, in my favorite scene in the whole movie. They get frustrated with the Professor and left and start wandering around the island looking for a boat. But it’s nighttime and they can’t find a boat! So then Jennifer, who is an exercise freak, [as well as a raging anorexic, but that’s another story] kicks off her shoes and says, “Come on! You want to try to swim for it? We can make it!” And David, who is now totally helpless, sighs, “It’s gotta be 3 or 4 miles…” and she scoffs, “3 or 4 miles. Come on!!” And then he says, “I can’t swim.” She stares at him. “You live in Seattle and you can’t swim” and David sinks down onto a log. “I always thought there’d be time.” (God, what a line. Isn’t it true of everyone?) Then there is this silence where Jennifer is frozen, just staring at him through the dark. Matthew was so good here. You could just feel his confusion – etc – he’s all mixed up. “I wish I didn’t know about this. I wish I could just be asleep and then tomorrow would be the end ….” Can’t you see? Isn’t that true? If I knew it was coming, I think I’d kill myself before it happened. Just sitting around waiting to die would be hell on earth. I’d slit my wrists.

And he sits there, in tears almost, and she comes over and sits next to him and says cheerily, but softly, “You know, I was gonna be on TV this week.” David looks up and stares at her. “Really?” “Yeah. Me and a couple of girls from my dance class were gonna do some aerobics.” And then he grinned at her in his sweet way. “Wow! The movies!” She laughed. “No big deal. No one would have watched it anyway.” Pause. David: “I would’ve.” Shivers. Then he sort of took her face in his hands and kissed her.

Meanwhile, I am in the audience having a heart attack.

I pray I meet someone someday who is like a mixture of the conglomeration of men I have in my mind. [a “mixture of the conglomeration”?? That sounds so scientific. And wait for it. Here comes the “the conglomeration”. I truly hesitate to print this, because I open myself up for scorn – but here comes the list!!] Harrison Ford, James Dean, Matthew Broderick, John Stamos, JW, Lew S., Travis, Matt, Josh B.

I am one desperate girl. I’ve never even kissed anybody. Will I have to wait for an impending nucular war to get a kiss? [Sheila, relax.]

Oh well, I don’t care. It’s so much FUN and until I get bored of these crushes, I will keep having them. [You certainly will. Uhm. Uhm. Uhm. Uhm.]

But really, War Games was excellent. I KNOW Matthew Broderick will do more. He’s on Broadway now – Brighton Beach Memoirs – I hope – see every year Drama class goes to NYC for the weekend to see a play and I’m gonna push for that one. Even if the rest of the class goes to something else, I’m allowed to go to that one. I would die. I really really would. [I ended up not being able to wait for the Drama class trip in, say, December. I ended up being so on fire with the “Matt” Broderick thing – that I went down to NYC in August – stayed with my aunt Regina – and she got us tickets to go see it. It was heaven on earth. He was just as good as everyone was saying. He’s even better live.]

To see him in person – acting – right in front of me! HELP!

I would love to act with him someday.

I love him I love him I love him