Speaking of being a p—y: I was talking tonight to my friend Matt who’d come out to SF for a business trip, and we got on the subject of being subjected to weepy movies in public places. There is a short list of movies that it’s okay for guys to cry during: Brian’s Song, Old Yeller, and possibly Rudy. I don’t have the final ruling, but I believe Schindler’s List is acceptable, too.
(One thing I forgot to mention tonight: in the “Justice League” animated series, one of the recurring jokes is that the tough ex-marine Green Lantern John Stewart cries at the movie Old Yeller. See, because it’s his one weakness. Which is genius.)
The problem is watching one of these movies in public, like a theater or even worse, an airplane, and having to find a way to cover up the fact that it’s made you cry. For me, sometimes I go for the “I’m just wiping my glasses” maneuver, but these days I usually don’t even bother trying to cover it up. I’m way too over-sentimental and easily manipulated, and for me to deny it would be ridiculous so I’m not even going to try.
I can’t even say that it’s a case of me being all girly, because there have been more than a couple times where I’ve been mocked for crying at a movie by the woman I’d seen the movie with. For example, “Is everything okay? It was just Forrest Gump for crying out loud.”
So I figure: why not embrace it? I’m a big weepy baby. The following is a list of the things that make me cry. (I’m going to limit it to movies and books and the like, not obvious things like bullies, hot sauce, bouts of seasonal depression, nose-hair trimming gone awry, or the current administration. I’m also going to limit it to stuff that works on me consistently, not cheap-shot manipulative things like the aforementioned Forrest Gump, which I admit depressed the hell out of me the first time I saw it, but I’ve seen since then and was able to correctly identify it as Touched By An Angel-level crap.)
- “The greatest honor of all is having you for a daughter” from Mulan
- “My friends, you bow to no one” from The Return of the King
- “I wonder if it remembers me” from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
- “It’s been a tough year, Dad” from The Royal Tennenbaums
- Completely random and unpredictable moments in Be Sweet by Roy Blount, Jr.
- The end of an episode of “Cowboy Bebop” called “Speak Like a Child” where Faye sees a tape of herself as a child cheering her future self to greatness, and she says, “I can’t remember”
- Finding Nemo in the bit where Marlin leaves Dory and she gets lost
- The end of The Catcher in the Rye (but in my defense, I was in 7th grade)
- The beginning of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius where he matter-of-factly talks about his mother’s cancer
- The last chapter of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
- The last scene of Pom Poko, when the man sheds his human disguise to run into a clearing and join a party of tanuki
There are most likely others that aren’t occuring to me now, but it’s good to get that out of my system and onto the internets. Passers-by can feel free to use the comments section to add their own, or mock me.
Update: Ones that got me but I didn’t list, and I’m not trying to cover up:
- Grave of the Fireflies, because come on. That movie is designed to make you cry.
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because I was having a very painful infected gall bladder attack
- The bit in Microserfs where the mom types “MY DOTTR” on the screen, because that’s such a blatantly manipulative moment in a shallow, self-conscious and manipulative book that I can’t believe I ever liked it
Update 2: Because I just realized this looks suspiciously like your typical livejournal post, I suppose I should add: Mood: procrastinating.