I am a secret movie weepier. Not secret in the sense that, should you and I watch Field of Dreams together, you'd somehow miss the tears rolling down my face when Kevin Costner asks ghost-dad to play catch. Secret in the sense that I'd never admit that, forty-five showings later, I'm bawling like a baby again.
And it's not just Field of Dreams -- which, after all, is a pretty manly movie to cry at. Heck, episodes of Friends and ER, the send-the-kids-off-to-war scene in the Two Towers, made-for-TV-movies like Not without my Daughter, Spock dying in Khan (the Wrath thereof) -- my movie/TV weepiness knows no bounds. Pretty much every try at fake emotion or chinzy heart-pulling has the potential to provoke a tearful reaction from me. Most times I conceal it, but, even when I can't, I don't admit to it.
Well, no longer. Consider this, then, your "I ain't hidin' it no longer" open thread.
I, after all, cried at Steel Magnolias. And I liked it.
Or, in other words, I'm not prepared to post on Why I Hate Howard Dean. But it's coming.
Posted by: von | November 26, 2003 at 03:02 PM
Welcome back von. Hope your work over the past two weeks was fruitful
I was chuckling over the 45 times line when I realized that 'Amazing Grace' or 'How Great Thou Art' do the same thing to me after a hundred times. I'd make a lousy public Englishman.
Posted by: RDB | November 26, 2003 at 04:00 PM
Well, speaking as a public Englishman, I'd make an awfully bad over-familiar American, so fair's fair.
;-D
Hmm. Films/TV that make/made me cry. Actually, it's more songs that do it. I have never liked listening to 'Bright Eyes'.
Most movie moments that von mentioned are not so much crying moments for me as "No! NO! You can't DO that! What's wrong with a happy ending, dammit?" moments.
Posted by: James Casey | November 26, 2003 at 04:41 PM
...actually, on a Star Trek-related matter, I refuse to watch the part of Generations where Kirk dies. On... er... principle.
Oh, and I almost always skip 'She's Leaving Home' when listening to Sgt. Pepper, because I don't like the mother breaking down in tears bit.
Posted by: James Casey | November 26, 2003 at 04:51 PM
Von,
First off, GREAT Louden Wainright/Johnny Cash reference.
As for the secret weepies, the Olympics and Bud Greenspan's stories on them always get me. The dedication and committment...
The theme to Brian's Song...Jacques Prevet's poems...Churchill's oratory...children being exceptionally kind to the unfortunate...my Mom and Dad dancing...uh, ok, I gotta go now...
Posted by: spc67 | November 26, 2003 at 06:48 PM
Little Women, latest version, when Beth dies. I've seen it four times, and it gets me every time*.
The Iron Giant. Every other person I've ever met who breaks into tears at that film breaks up at the exact same point.
There's some other stuff, but that's all the personal junk I'm tossing out tonight. :)
Moe
*My mother liked Louisa May Alcott. I grew up reading the books. Anybody want to make something out of it? :)
Posted by: Moe Lane | November 26, 2003 at 08:25 PM
Iron Giant is brilliant. The kids are starting to tire of me forcing them to watch it over and over. Maybe the crying disturbs them.
The last episode of Buffy Season #2. No kidding. Buffy must send the man she loves to hell in order to save the world because he's evil but then she realizes he isn't evil anymore but she has to send him to hell anyway. Okay? (And the accompanying theme, which, don't' ya know, is on the series soundtrack.)
Most any black and white footage of RFK in '68. There's a framed campaign poster from that year to my immediate left on the wall.
The famous Olympics moment when the marathoner staggers into the stadium, limping badly, well back, in fact last to finish, and the crowd cheers his bravery and his spirit and...
Okay. I gotta go, too.
Posted by: harley | November 26, 2003 at 09:37 PM
"The last episode of Buffy Season #2. No kidding. Buffy must send the man she loves to hell in order to save the world because he's evil but then she realizes he isn't evil anymore but she has to send him to hell anyway. Okay?"
Yep--Buffy's "Edith Keeler moment." Worse for her, of course, because at least Jim Kirk didn't have to run Edith over himself to save the universe as he knew it. Of course, the Star Trek version has one of the great final episode lines of all time: "Let's get the hell out of here." (Shatner's delivery was perfect--a man who had been beaten badly by life and is holding onto his sanity with his fingernails). The James Blish novel adaptation actually did the broadcast episode's ending one better by using Harlan Ellison's original ending, with Spock telling Kirk: "No woman was ever loved as much. Because no other woman was almost offered the universe for love."
Posted by: M. Scott Eiland | November 27, 2003 at 03:37 AM
I cry at the end of Flowers for Algernon. No matter how many times I've read it, no matter how detached I tell myself I'm going to be this time, when the end comes and Charlie Gordon reverts...
Posted by: Jesurgislac | November 27, 2003 at 08:07 AM
The last episode of Buffy Season #2. . . .
I cry at the end of Flowers for Algernon.
Yup, those are brutal -- a stone would shed tears. And the death of Simba's father in The Lion King.
Happy Thanksgiving, all.
Posted by: von | November 27, 2003 at 10:14 AM
Oh yeah and the President spending Thanksgiving with the troops.
Posted by: spc67 | November 27, 2003 at 01:50 PM
Goodbyes. Birthdays. Puppies. New babies. School pictures. Sleeping children. most any song you can think of. Altar call. Holidays. Parades. Public displays of hand-on-heart when the Stars and Stripes goes by. Campfires with the family. Missed phone calls from the tanker in Iraq. When the tanker returned home. Sunsets. Secretly watching the boys play together. Thursday. Hell, dern near everything makes me cry. But I'm a Mom, so it's okay. And I'm menopausal and hormonal and apt to fight if you think otherwise.
ha!
Posted by: Dave'swife | November 27, 2003 at 05:20 PM