You know how a certain song can suddenly trigger a flood of feelings flashing you back to that certain special someone or moment? How just a few chords can transport you back in time and space with alarming vividness? Certain movies have the power to do that too. Important recollections don’t have to be limited to “our song,” or “our restaurant,” “our park,” or “our lavatory.” Movies can be a shared experience as well, and for many the mere mention of a film’s title can dredge up a dizzying treasure trove of emotions.
So (at little expense), I have interviewed scores of people across the country over the years to amass as many precious celluloid memories as possible.
For Mrs. Constance Noring, a housewife and mother of three from Groton, Connecticut, the one movie that evokes the most sentiment is The Notebook. “My husband and I saw that together on our 20th anniversary. James Garner starred as a man sitting in a nursing home at the bedside of an elderly woman (Gena Rowlands) suffering memory loss, telling her the star-crossed story about the love between an ardent poor young man (Ryan Gosling) and a beautiful rich girl (Rachel McAdams). The movie reduced the Norings to tears, and their anniversary celebration continued with seaside dining and many drinks. Unfortunately, later at home Constance asked her husband what he would do if she was suffering from dementia, and he callously replied, “I’d be at the ringside table of Flashdancers strip club ten minutes after I dumped you off at a nursing home.” That wisecrack slightly soured the evening for Constance, and later that night she murdered her husband with a cast iron skillet while he lay passed out in the rumpus room. It’s an act she now deeply regrets, serving 25 years-to-life in the Connecticut Women’s Correctional Facility.
The most meaningful movie to Gil T. Azell is Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the 2007 fake comic biopic of a rock-and-roll legend, played by John C. Reilly. “That movie made me realize I was a homosexual,” he proudly admits. “I was 13 when I saw this with my parents at the Landmark Mayan Theater in Denver, Colorado. “I got such a woody looking at John C. Reilley. God is he hot.” Mr. Azell wasn’t kidding when he described his attraction to the actor John C. Reilly. Gil was arrested last year when he was caught masturbating in a movie theater during a screening of Stan & Ollie.
Emma Roids, a Manhattan magazine editor talks about a movie that was turning point in her life. “I was dating a man for over 8 months and things were getting serious. My boyfriend suggested we go to a movie one night and I told him to pick the film and I’d meet him there. When I arrived by cab he was standing in front of the Multiplex proudly holding two tickets to Hot Tub Time Machine 2,” she recounts with a shudder. “I just took one look at him and thought, do I really want to spend my life with someone who would choose this film as viable entertainment? So I jumped back in the taxi and took off. I dodged a bullet that day.”
The Fault In Our Stars is a key film for Carlotta Tendant of Holmesville, Nebraska. The 2014 film about two teenage cancer patients- Hazel (Shailene Woodley) and Gus (Ansel Elgort)- who meet at a support group and fall in love. “I cried for a full week after I saw that film,” and admitted going back repeatedly during the movie’s run. “I’ve never had a film touch me the way this film did,” Carlotta confessed. Several years later Ms. Tendant made the news for an arrest after stalking cancer patients at a nearby clinic and fleecing people out of money on a GoFundMe page, pretending she was dying of thyroid cancer.
“Titanic changed my life,” sighs perky teen Torah Thyman of Gainsville, Florida when I interviewed her in 1998. “I saw that movie 27 times! But I’ll always remember the 15th,” she sighs. For that was when Jim Pansey finger-fucked her in the theater during the finale while the boat was sinking. “I know it was sad that all those people were dying, but if felt so awful good what Jim was doing,” Torah says with a giggle.
Sex seems to be an important component of many movie memories. “I got the best blow job of my life at the Crestview Drive-in during that Doris Day film- With Six You Get Eggroll,” admits Nick Rafilia, a gas station owner in Macon, Georgia. And Barb Dwyer of Boston, Massachusetts recalls “a pretty strenuous lovemaking session” with her boyfriend after watching Saving Private Ryan on DVD. “He really stormed my beachhead, that’s for damn sure.”
Not all celluloid memories are happy ones. Mrs. Helen Hywater and her entire family all vividly recall the time they went to see Mrs. Doubtfire. “We all laughed our asses off when Robin Williams set his fake boobs on fire,” she says, “God, did we scream!” Sadly, that wonderful day was marred by tragedy when their little 4-year-old Clementine (“our precious angel”) snuck into a kitchen cupboard and fatally drank an industrial size bottle of Whisk. “I still consider Robin Williams a comic genius,” Mrs. Hywater says, fighting back tears, “But I could never bring myself to see Patch Adams.”
Or consider the bizarre tale of Morty & Myrah Maines of Portland, Oregon, who were so worked up by the burning of Atlanta scene in Gone With The Wind that they inexplicably burned down their neighbor’s house later that evening. “The fire was real pretty but the Technicolor one was better,” Myrah cheerily remarked to reporters as she was led off in handcuffs.
But then there’s Barbara Seville of Great Falls, Arkansas, who rented a DVD from Netflix and curled up on the couch with her boyfriend. She got up to microwave some popcorn and about a half-hour later she discovered, to her delight, an engagement ring hidden among the freshly popped kernels. “I’ll always remember the movie we were watching at the time, and it always reminds me of our happy wedding and the romantic years afterwards. The film they were watching was Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College. “That film will always remain a keepsake to proudly pass on to my children and their children and their children’s children.”
Hey–I know Constance Noring–she’s a great gal! Groton is just sooo cool.