Mom Censor

I don't know precisely how it happened but my son became obsessed with the 1984 movie, Gremlins. Well, he became obsessed with the idea of the movie, not the movie itself, because I wouldn't let him watch it.

The other day, he decided this was so oppressive BS.
Censorship.

"Mom, it's totally NOT scary," he insists.

"I don't know about that," I reply, "I remember it being very scary."

"But that's only because you were a wimp."

Which is not untrue.

"It's campy!" he persists.

The thing about having a nine year-old is they said stuff like this, stuff that leaves you wondering, "When did you learn that?" And then you remember that they have a life now, a life which includes a lot more than just you, with all sorts of various sources of incoming information and that thought is paralyzing.

"Just let me watch it first," I say, "To make sure there's nothing inappropriate."

"Like what?"

I wanted to tell him I'm not going to recite a list of all the possible content areas that would be unsuitable for his eyes, as that would defeat my purpose, which is to shelter and protect him, forever, from everything.

"Like geysers of blood,?" I tell him, "Primarily, I want to make sure it's not a blood bath."

He perpends for a moment. That's unusual these days. Now that he's an almost-tween, he's got an immediate answer for everything. But I can see he's trying to decide if he's in accordance with this criteria.

"Will you be looking for human or gremlin blood?" he finally asks.

"Only human blood," I assure him, "Gremlin bloodbaths are totally permissible."

He sighs: "Thank God."

And the epilogue is: I pre-screened the thing and as he'd assured me, it really wasn't that scary (I WAS a wimp, truly) and also, there was no human blood, only copious amount of gremlin blood which was totally unconcerning to me. I mean, it was kind of gross when the mom stuck the gremlin in the blender and green gremlin fluid splattered everywhere but that grossness, I'm guessing, is exactly what viewers like my son are tuning in for.

So I let him watch it and he loved every second of it. He decided that Terza is our own personal gremlin and has taught my toddler how to say such useful phrases as "Bye, Billy!" and "Light bright! Light bright!"

Clearly, it was an enriching experience for us all.

For Appropriate Audiences

I took Seconda and her cousin to the movie Happy Feet 2 this weekend and we scurried in just as the previews were starting. The first preview was for the new Snow White (or one of them, I should clarify, since there is a slew of new takes on the old tale): the kids were into Mirror Mirror and dug Julia Roberts as the stepmother. Then came a preview for the Titanic sD. This seemed odd to me and I worried the kids would be frightened by the sight of the ship breaking in two and huge rushes of water flooding into the cabins. When the preview for the next movie announced that it was made by the people who made Bridesmaids, I started to get anxious. It was a movie about people having babies, and so, I reasoned, that might be why the movie people thought kids would like it, but the humor seemed way too mature for the four year-olds in my charge and at the end of the preview, when a Bradley Cooper-type said the word, "bitch," I gasped audibly.

"That's not a nice word," I volunteered.

"WHAT'S not a nice word?" the girls piped up.

The moviegoers in front of me laughed at this.

"Oh, nothing. Its OK. Forget it," I muttered, thinking. "What the fuck are the people at UA thinking today? Am I a prude of is this shit out of control?"

When the green screen popped up before the next preview, which was ok'ed for "appropriate audiences," my palms started getting sweaty. What would be next?

And there was a little boy, leaving a greeting on his family's answering machine which said, "Hello. Today is September 11th."

Oh no, I thought, not . . .

Yep. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Featuring a kid, but not, in my estimation a kid movie.

"Did the daddy die?" my niece asked me.

"Um," I said shifting in my seat, "yeah."

"Ohhhhhh," she said, "that's sad."

"Yeah," I agreed.

Someone in the control booth is on crack, I concluded. Or I'm on crack. Either way, this little cinematic outing isn't going well.

Finally, after thirty five very stressful minutes of previews, the movie began and it was . . . New Year's Eve.

Somebody went to the manager to tell them they'd put on the wrong movie and in a few minutes, we were back on track again, watching animated penguins dance in unison, just as we'd intended.

I guess I should be lucky they didn't play the preview for Saw 14 or the re-release of Last Tango in Paris or whatever. The worst the kids were exposed to was a terrorist attack, the greatest shipwreck in the history books and the word "bitch." Not too terrible, I guess.

The Youth

In celebration of my birthday, David and I had a night away, courtesy of my parents. In the midst of our romantic stay-cation, we caught a film, a little romantic indie called Like Crazy.When we left the movie, I told David, "Get ready to listen to an hour-long rant about the state of youth." I pretty much tired of my own rant after five minutes but the gist of it was basically that young people today have no stinking stamina or patience. The movie, which was well-acted and looked good and all that, is about a pair of recent college grads who fall in love - he's a California-born furniture designer and she's a journalist from London. They spend an idyllic summer together and then she readies to go back to England to get another visa so she can come back. But then she decides, oh screw it, I'll just stay here, overstay my visa and I'm sure it'll be OK. Of course, they're fucked from that point on -- relegated to live on separate continents. Except, not really. Because though the girl's got to stay in England, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever the guy can't move to London with her. No reason they can't stay on separate continents and just work it the hell out for a while. Or, I guess, there is a reason, and that being . . . they have no stamina and patience.

I went on for a while about how I blame texting and twitter and the like for making young people so incapable of a love worth fighting for. Man, I'm an old geezer.

Ryan Gosling is My Boyfriend

What, you don't believe me? Is it that remote a possibility that I, Mom Amok, would have a man on the side, and not just a man, but a bo-hunk member of Hollywood royalty?

I concede he is not officially my boyfriend but I do think the fervor of the love I feel for his chiseled face and shut-the-front-door chest is powerful enough to bring us together, someday, somehow.

My husband has had to hear this kind of one-way Ryan-Gosling pillow talk for the past few months since recently, every time date night rolls around again, there's a NEW Ryan Gosling movie to see. The movie world is so Ryan-Gosling-heavy right now that when we go see a movie he's in, we get glimpses of his upcoming performances in at least two previews. Crazy Stupid Love caused me to actually swoon with the shirt-off-a-poolza, and then there was Drive, and last weekend, we caught The Ides of March, where his (scripted) brain was almost as hot as his (professionally groomed) chest. Ahhhhhhh . . .

A girl's gotta dream.

Dinner and a movie

David and I have a decent track record of making it out for dinner together and an equally respectable one for sneaking out to a movie sans kids. But dinner AND a movie, well, now you’re talking three, four hours of adult evening entertainment and there are few people who can withstand the force of our children for that long, even when we pay them. So the only time we are able to score dinner and a movie is when we get my parents to take the kids overnight – which is precisely what we did on Friday.

Dinner at Resto, this delicious Belgian place that had the impressive ability to please David (Belgian beer! burgers!) and me (fancy sauces for my pommes frites! Wafels with chocolate sauce!). Plus it was restaurant week which is perhaps my favorite New York holiday ever, so three course ran us $35.

Movie was Inception, in IMAX. The great thing about when I see movies nowadays is that whereas before I used to hear all the buzz and read movie reviews and know what to expect, these days I don’t know jack. Which means when we’re choosing a movie David gives me a two-sentence sum-up, mentioning names of stars or directors, and the basic premise (we do get into trouble sometimes since David often has a different read of movies than I do; take, for example, his description of American Psycho as “not scary, no, comedic in a suspenseful way!”) Now, I show up to movies ready to be surprised. This is great because I don’t ever get disappointed when a movie doesn’t live up to its hype.

Consequently, I go to Inception, and I’m like, “Whoa, cool. It’s a dream within a dream!” and then I got to have my mind blown when it was actually a dream within a ream within a dream within a dream. I didn’t love it the way I did Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but I give it major kudos for making some pretty thought-provoking existential ideas very mainstream and accessible, I did leave thinking however that the movie might cause an overly thoughtful or sensitive person to go straight to the looney bin. The subtitle could be, “Inception: recipe for insanity.” I will, for instance, never mention the idea to Primo, who frequently wonders aloud, while eating dinner or watching TV if he is, in fact, dreaming. Of course, there is the distinct possibility that he’s right and I’m the one who’s dreaming right now. Maybe in my waking life, I’m an accountant living in the Tulsa and this dream of blogging and drinking coffee in Brooklyn, is just mind-blowingly exciting.

Babies, the movie

What's cuter than a baby? Four babies! From four different parts of the world, doing more or less the same baby things, albeit in different ways. I'm talking about the new documentary Babies, and you can watch the clip here.

I like the goat just chillaxing at the end, trying to score some bathwater while the getting is good. But what I love is the babies attacking each other in the beginning, because it cracks me up that the cameraman is just sitting back and watching this rumble unfold. Reminds me of a home video my uncle took when I was about 10 and my sister was about 8. We were on the beach and I threw some sand at my sister's head. Big mistake. That child was 50 pounds soaking wet with rocks in her pockets but, man, could she get mean. She grabbed me by my ponytail and commenced to drag me around the beach thusly, while I screamed for help. Meanwhile you hear my uncle behind the camera laughing and going, "Hey, you guys, c'mon. (chuckle chuckle) cut it out."

. . . and it was still hot.

I am aware that you can’t enter any establishment which caters to kid clientele without running straight into some piece of marketing for Where the Wild Things Are. Maybe you are sick and tired of it by now. Maybe you’re thinking, “Enough already with the Wild Things blitz!” Maybe you’re thinking that the movie couldn’t possibly live up to the hype.

It totally does.

Where the Wild Things Are rocked my socks off. Knocked me off my feet. Bewitched bothered and bewildered was

I.

Here’s what’s so great about it:

1. Max Records, the kid who plays Max is pitch perfect. Not one of these Culkin-types. Natural and un-Hollywoodized and totally not precious at all. And infinitely lovable.
2. The wild things look real and fantastical at the same time! I’m not a big fan of CGI but used with real puppets, it has a terrific effect of making them so human-seeming, with sad eyes. I was wowed.
3. It is visually spectacular. Every shot is like a painting.
   
4. Jonze really honors the story but lends a fresh, dynamic perspective. He doesn’t treat the story with kid gloves at all, and allows himself to use it as a launching pad. Purists will not like it, although I’m not sure how you could make aWild Things movie a purist would like. I have to confess, I did balk – out loud – when instead of having the forest grow and grow and grow in Max’s room, Jonze has Max running out of the house, away from his mother, into a nearby forest. I was counting on seeing the walls becoming the world all around. But in Jonze’s version of the story, you don’t get the “I was dreaming all along!” Wizard of Oz ending that Sendak suggests. Instead, there’s nothing to rule out the idea that Max’s adventure really happened, and hey, I’m a fan of magic realism, particularly in kid’s books, so I dig that. When Max returns home after his adventure, it’s his mother, not a hot supper, that’s waiting for him, but the scene which follows, the last scene of the movie is so true to the heart of the book I sobbed and sobbed. Jonze has Max and his mom hug and then cuts to Max at the kitchen table, scarfing down a big piece of chocolate cake and milk while his mther leans on the table, cheek on her hand, and just watches her boy with the adoration and gratitude and peacefulness that we all experience when our kids come home.

Holy shit, it was good.

I wouldn’t bring young kids, though. David and I were dying to bring Primo, who has loved the book as much as I did when I was a girl. But we quickly realized there was too much that was sad and serious and scary about it – nobody gets hurt and the wild things are friendly but they are feral, after all, and there are plenty of moments of real tension where you wonder if Max is going to be OK. Plus, I think it’s slow and serious enough that a little kid would be bored. There were two kids, preschool–aged, in our theater and by the ending they were pretty restless.

I think my husband puts it best:

“Not a kid flick by any stretch or leap. But parents should go -you will love the fuck out of it. Jonze rocks the hiz-ouse and Sendak started the revolution.”

Man on Wire

I saw the most amazing movie last night: Man on Wire. Its not some esoteric, off-the-beaten-path pick -- it won the Oscar last year for Best Documentary. But me and the old hub finally got a chance to view it last night. Holy shit does it haunt me, in the very best sense. Watch this trailer and I bet you money you will be clicking "Watch Instantly" on Netflix tonight.

It’s about this Frenchman, Phillipe Petit, whose life’s dream was to walk on a tightrope between the Twin Towers. While waiting in the dentist’s office as a child, he read in a magazine that these great towers were going to be built and he knew that they were being built for him, so that he could walk in the clouds between them. While he waited years and years for them to be built, he undertook other high-wire feats, like walking between the towers of Notre Dame and above the Harbour Bridge in Sydney. But through it all, he was thinking about those towers and living for the day that they’d be finished. He was obsessed – you kind of have to be, if you’re going to pull something like this off.

Now, of course, he couldn’t just waltz right in to the World Trade Center with his cable coiled over his shoulder and set up shop for his death-defying trick. This kind of shenanigan is totally illegal. So he went guerrilla. He and his team conned their way into the towers with fake IDs and disguises, hiding under tarps, and then, in the middle of the night they worked like mad trying to rig everything up.

The whole thing is so fucking insane you can’t believe it. And you think he’ll never – there is no way – he couldn’t possibly pull it off. But – spoiler alert – he does.

He steps off the the roof onto a wire and he walks straight through the clouds to the other side. Eight times. And he doesn’t just walk, he kneels, and even – it will give you goose bumps –lays flat on his back, right there, in the air, one hundred and ten stories up, so high that the people on the street can hardly even make him out.

I can not stop thinking about it.

I think what it comes down to is, that’s exactly how I want to remember the Twin Towers. Beacons of hope. The impossible made real, for all of us.

The funniest part is that after he’s done it, all the Americans want to know, “why?” and he, French to the core, just laughs it off. It is an outrageous question. Why did Van Gogh paint Starry Night? Why did Joyce write Ulysses? Why did we build those towers? It’s the kind of moment where I think, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Park Slope is the new Hollywood

I thought I was leaving the movies behind when I moved out of LA. But I have this sneaking suspicion Hollywood is following me.

I have walked past, through or into more film shoots on the block where I live in Park Slope than I ever did in Los Angeles. Today, for instance, I am not nestled into my usual table at Ozzie’s, the reason for that being that Jason Schwartzman is shooting an HBO pilot, Bored to Death, at my neighborhood coffee shop.

This is constantly happening. A few months ago, Meryl Streep was shooting this Julia Child movie at the restaurant on our corner, so our street was filled with vintage automobile. Scorcese shot the communion scene in The Departed at the church on our other corner, where David and I got married and the kids got baptized. And a few years ago, it was The Squid and the Whale team filming, literally, in front of our apartment.

And just wait ‘til they start shooting that Darren Star Slope in the City series – I won’t be able to push my stroller in between all the craft services tables jamming the sidewalks.

Despite the inconvenience, I love this shit. I think its because although I’ve retired my headshots, as it were, I still have this fantasy that one day I’ll be leaving my house, yelling at the kids not to push each other down the stairs or they’ll break their necks, battling with the double stroller, dropping my diaper bag down the stoop steps so all the contents spill out, you know, just another day in paradise until --- I go to retrieve the tube of Desitin that has fallen on the sidewalk and another set of hands is there, picking up the diaper rash cream and handing it to me. It is Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen who are shooting a movie in front of my house. They look at each other and look at me, and look at my kids and look at each other again, and Apatow says, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” and Rogan says, “You guys oughta be in the movies.”

And just like that, me and my crazy, beautiful, unmanageable children, are discovered. And Primo never has to cry at drop-off again, because he never has to go to school, he’ll be tutored on set, and I will have a team of three Italian au pairs devoted exclusively to the task of insuring that Seconda does not put anything in her mouth that isn’t food. We will hire people to wake up with the children at night and I will sleep 8, 9 hours at a time. I will take bubble baths and get a full head of highlights. David will quit his day job and just write all day, wildly successful literary fiction that reinvigorates the dying world of publishing. And we all live happily ever after.

And the best part is, we won’t ever have to leave Brooklyn, because Park Slope is the new Hollywood.