Sunday Stealing

THE MOVIES

1. Have you ever had a movie both totally captivate and complete confuse you? Yes. All Is Lost (2013). Redford plays a sailor, alone on his boat, fighting to stay alive after an accident. I don't know anything about sailing, so I don't understand many of the choices he made, or even what he's doing. Since his character is all alone, there's (almost literally) no dialog and therefore no exposition. Yet his plight and performance captured my heart. If it shows up on your favorite movie channel, be sure to catch it.

2. When watching a movie, do you prefer things all laid out or to have to 'hunt for your own clues' along the way? Depends on the movie genre. If it's a mystery, I hate it when the detective somehow has information we haven't received. Unless it's Hercule Poirot. He's allowed to have information no one else could because he's Hercule Poirot.


3. Do you want an ultimate ending to your movie or do you prefer to have it open for conjecture and discussion. Ultimate ending. That's another thing about All Is Lost that confused me. The title certainly implies an ending, doesn't it? And yet that last shot ...


4. Do you talk during a movie (preferably one in your home, not in the theater)? No!


5. Have you ever seen a blockbuster movie and not get what was so great about it? All the time.

6. What book frightened you as a young person? I don't recall being scared by any book as a kid.


7. If you had to become a ‘living book (i.e. able to recite the contents of a book cover to cover upon request – reference Fahrenheit 451), what book would it be? I would not do that. We don't live in Bradbury's world, and one of the joys of reading is that you get to "hear" it in your own, intimate voice as you go along.

Shudder!

8. What movie or TV show scared you as a kid? The Greatest Show on Earth. A doctor is unjustly accused of murdering his wife and avoids prosecution by joining the circus as a clown, and never ever removing his makeup. Being a child, I missed the "unjustly accused" thing and was terrified by his pointy, painted-on, I-just-killed-my-wife smile.


9. What movie (scary or otherwise) will you never ever watch? I won't buy a ticket for anything written by, directed by or starring Woody Allen. Which is a shame, because I appreciate his work so much. But he is a despicable human being and I won't share my money with him.

10. Do you have any phobias? Clowns (see #8). Squirrels, because when I was a child, my dad told me a very graphic, harrowing (and likely untrue) story about a little boy who was bitten by a rabid squirrel that stayed with me. Air travel.


11. What's the happiest thing to ever happen to you? I've had a lot of joy in my life. I can't rank.


12. What's the saddest thing to ever happen to you? I had an irrefutable moment of reckoning about the man I'd spent years with. The sadness was overwhelming and indelible. I mourned the time I wasted, the way I'd fooled myself year after year, and the work involved in extricating myself.

13. What's the thing that got you the most angry in your life? Oh, God. One day, when I was about 14 or 15, my dad just kept picking at me and picking at me. It was so passive aggressive and petty, and I was so disappointed that the man who is supposed to support me was behaving this way, that my knees went out. I've never felt such a physical manifestation of anger before.


14. What's the most frightening thing to ever happen to you? I had a cancer scare. That's what precipitated my hysterectomy in 2011.


15. What's the most unbelievable thing to happen to you in your life? I partied with Bruce Springsteen.