Friday, October 12, 2007

Five elephants in one hand

I've only got myself to blame. I was already upset by the story of a blind, deaf, 18-year-old Jack Russell called Sprogget, who fell down a mineshaft and never came back.

And then I sat down and watched Stand By Me for the God-alone-knows-how-manyth time and, yeah, I sobbed, what of it?

When women do emotionally self-destructive stuff like that, they usually blame their hormones. I blame the fact that I just realised I'm older now than Richard Dreyfuss was when he played the yearning-for-his-lost-youth grown-up Gordie in the film.

6 comments:

patroclus said...

Crying isn't emotionally destructive; it's good for you.

That said, I hate it when films manipulate me into crying. It's like I'm playing right into their cynical little hands. The bastards.
Especially when it happens during Battlestar Galactica. Then it's not just annoying but also embarrassing.

Stand By Me is brilliant, though.

I'm not sure that I had a point, actually.

Betty said...

Geoff is the crybaby in our house. Well, he cries about football a lot. He cried when West Ham won the play-offs and went back into the Premier League.

Cinema Paradiso had us both in floods of tears though. We kept having to stop the DVD every five minutes. It was bloody ridiculous. Cathartic, but hormonal.

The Mistress said...

"Geoff is the crybaby in our house."

Thank you for this useful information, Betty.

*stores it away for unexplained future use*

Spinsterella said...

I hardly EVER cry - I'm just miserable all the time.

The only film that made me cry was Let Him Have It when I saw it on the telly a couple of years ago.

And ET, but I was only four or something.

Tim F said...

Is it any manipulative than when a funny film makes you laugh, Patroclus?

I've never cried over football, Betty, although I did say flip and blimey when Mr Redknapp went to Southampton.

MJ, you remind me of some sort of evil sprite, storing up snippets of information to use in wicked spells.

I was very moved by Let Him Have It, but didn't quite get there, Spin. I have lost it during ET, but not the first time. For the record: films at which Footman has blubbed, apart from Stand By Me and ET:

Cinema Paradiso
Brief Encounter
Casablanca
Goodbye Mr Chips (original)
Schindler's List
Dreamchild
Kotch
Beaches
Jeux Interdits
The Color Purple
Lord of the Flies (original)
Heaven Help Us
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Requiem for a Dream
The Elephant Man
King Kong (original and most recent, not the middle one)
Venus
and, if it counts, the last episode of The Royle Family

llewtrah said...

I'm not very good at crying. I just don't seem to need to. Oh well.