Daily Excerpt: A Movie Lover's Search for Romance (Charnas) - Losing My Mind
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Excerpt from A Movie Lover's Search for Romance -
ADRIEN: LOSING MY MIND
Early this spring
my friend Candace called to tell me she had recorded the previous night’s
episode of Saturday Night Live for me. She explained that the object of my
“crush” and winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Actor, Adrien Brody,
had hosted the show. Not wanting to be unkind, I thanked her for the
thoughtfulness but felt compelled to correct her.
“I think we need
to call this by its proper name: my pathetic, middle-aged, divorcée’s crush.”
Candace, knowing
the truth when she heard it, didn’t argue the point.
How did I, at the
age of forty-three, find myself with a serious crush on this particular young
actor? I ask myself this often. I’ve been in love with movies for thirty years.
I easily passed for eighteen by the time I started high school, and I could gain
entry into any film I wanted to see without an adult escort. During my
adolescence, I planned all my free time around movies. I saw my five-hundredth
movie when I turned twenty-one and then stopped counting. (In the 1970s, video,
DVDs, and live streaming didn’t exist. Only theaters showed new releases.)
Movies have been one of the primary constants in my life. When I’m happy, when
I’m sad, when times are great, and when they’re awful, I go to the movies. They
help me relax, feel a range of emotions, and think about people and life outside
my own existence. When I can’t make it to a movie for more than a few weeks, I
become cranky, as if I abruptly stopped taking a necessary medication.
But for the last
thirty years, I haven’t had a single crush on an actor. I’ve followed actors’
careers, and I’ve appreciated their physical attributes. Like many other
straight women in America, I inhaled deeply the first time I saw Brad Pitt in Thelma and Louise. But until now, I
hadn’t felt the true tingling of a completely irrational attraction.
In 1999, my former
husband and I took in a bargain matinee of Summer
of Sam. The movie had received mixed reviews, but I’m a huge fan of the
director, Spike Lee, and my motto is “never trust a critic.” Neither my husband
nor I was prepared for the power of the film. An elderly man who’d seen it by
himself engaged us in conversation as we left the movie. He continued to gush
about it for five minutes outside the theater. He told us he loved it so much,
he just needed to talk about it with someone. We loved it, too, and didn’t mind
chatting with him.
Before Summer of Sam, I’d never noticed Adrien
Brody although I’d seen him in small roles in other films. I found him
compelling in his role as Richie, the aspiring punk rocker, and I remember
hoping to see more of him soon in other films.
For three-and-a-half
years, I waited. My Uncle Jon went to an early New York screening of The Pianist and insisted I see it. I was
thrilled Adrien Brody had the lead role of Wladyslaw Szpilman, the Polish
Holocaust survivor. I saw the movie as soon as it was released in San Diego, my
hometown, and found Adrien’s performance deeply stirring. My pathetic crush
began.
What happened to me? Although he’s attractive, Adrien doesn’t
have standard movie star good looks. Surely it made more sense to swoon over
actors like George Clooney or Antonio Banderas, more classic Hollywood glamour
boys who are closer to my age. Perhaps Adrien’s beautiful black hair, which he
wore slicked back at the beginning and the end of The Pianist, ignited my crush. My father has dark coloring and
black hair. Am I at the mercy of something embarrassingly Oedipal? It’s a
reasonable theory.
In my twenties and thirties, I dated a couple of guys with
Adrien’s tall, rangy build and broad shoulders tapering to a trim waist. Maybe
I’m unconsciously longing for the romances of youth. Or am I captivated by the
profound soulfulness of Adrien’s performance? At the beginning of The Pianist, he looked as natty as
Humphrey Bogart in his prime. As the movie progressed, Adrien looked
increasingly like a rabid rat. Throughout, he conveyed his character’s
fundamental humanity, all of it accomplished with little dialogue. I like this
theory better. It would be more flattering to think that I’m in the grips of a
transcendent performance.
Despite the Vegas odds-makers, I wasn’t surprised when Adrien
won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a leading role. I’ve watched the Oscar
telecast every year since 1971, and I like to flatter myself that I understand
the voting patterns of Academy members. I screamed when he won. The beautiful
acceptance speech Adrien delivered when he received his award did nothing to
subdue my crush. The United States had been fighting the war in Afghanistan for
two-and-a-half years by the night of the awards, March 24, 2003. The war in
Iraq began just a few days earlier. Who among us didn’t feel our hearts tug
when Adrien made a plea for peace and mentioned his buddy, Tommy, in Kuwait?
Whatever remained of my equilibrium disappeared in those few minutes.
After the Oscars,
I had myself a little Adrien Brody film festival. I watched all two hours and
forty-five minutes of The Thin Red Line, an
epic World War II movie. I searched for Adrien, who, as it turned out, was
mostly left on the proverbial cutting-room floor. He had about three minutes of
face time in that movie, which is probably why I didn’t remember him. Then I
rented Liberty Heights, a lovely
little Barry Levinson movie I’d somehow missed when it was released. In this
film, Adrien plays the older son of a Jewish family in 1950s Baltimore. He
lusts after a beautiful blond girl from the other side of town and appears on
screen in his undershirt. I enjoyed Liberty
Heights immensely.
Next, I rented Summer of Sam, which I hadn’t viewed
since 1999. It was just as good as I recalled. Adrien is sometimes shirtless in
this film. Last, I rented The Affair of
the Necklace, a movie I probably would have skipped had it not been for
Adrien’s presence. In this movie, Adrien’s clothes remain on, but he plays a
European count with a nifty accent and long black hair hanging down his back,
like a young George Washington.
I enjoyed my crush
and my all-Adrien film festival until the morning I woke up and realized,
aghast, that I’d been dreaming about Adrien all night! I had serious concerns
that something silly and fun had begun to haunt my dreams. I wondered if this
was how stalkers were made. Did crazy ladies with too much cellulite suddenly
go over the edge? How could I, a mature person—a social worker, for goodness’
sake—have reached this state? Although happy to admire and pine a little, I
didn’t want to end up as the lead story on Entertainment
Tonight. Why did a ridiculous crush hold me in its sway now, when my life was finally stable and
calm?
I’m beginning to
think that’s exactly the point. At forty-three, I have no real regrets about my
love life. I’ve been deliriously in love more than once, as well as alone and
lonely, and everything in between. Two years into my separation and divorce, liberated
from the pervasive emotional needs of my youth, I’ve become a free-range
romantic. But I’m fine on my own. I can do and feel whatever I want, including
going weak in the knees over a movie star thirteen years my junior.
So, I guess I
won’t worry about my all-night Adrien Brody phantasmagoria. Adrien’s mother has
declared she thinks he’s beautiful, and so do I. He is a gifted actor. I’ll
continue to bask in his celluloid glow whenever the opportunity arises, and
he’s welcome to invade my dreams. I know that’s the closest I’ll ever get to
him. And when his next movie comes out, whether it’s a masterpiece or a mess,
I’ll be in line to buy a ticket.
Read more posts about Joanna and her books HERE.
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