Diary Movies

Dear Diary,

Why is it when people write in their diaries in the movies, or when said diary is used as a framework to tell the story in that movie, why is it that the diaries are so well kept and with profound insight?  For example, a few weeks ago I finally saw "Benjamin Button" (yeah, late, I know).  Now, aside from the modern context given to that story (Hurrican Katrina) they give the story another context, and use Benjamin's diaries to tell the story of his life and all the people he met who died.  Okay maybe that's kind of reductive but that basically is the movie.  I'm not wrong.  He met so and so, they were old and died.  He met so and so who cut his hair, she was old and she died.  He went to war, all the people he knew there, died too.  And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.  Anyway, in each diary entry, he is able to speak with great perspective, hindsight, and foresight, even though we are to assume that the way people write diaries are in fact the opposite of that.  

Por ejemplo, when I write in my diary, I say something like this:  

Dear Diario, I had a crazy dream.  In it my sister was a pig and she was wearing a real fur jacket and my mother was telling her to get into the car otherwise we would never make it to lunch on time.  We lived by central park in this dream and the reason my sister was dilly dallying was because she was performing beautiful choreographed kung fu numbers in the trees on 82nd and Central Park West.  Oh yes and in this dream we were rich and my mother was white.  Weird.  Oh and also I can't get enough of Jeff Goldblum.  He is not replacing Steve Martin in terms of fuckability but I'd say they are more on an even keel these days because I saw a picture of Steve Martin in Malibu on the beach and brother is looking a bit saggy in the gut.  Til tomorrow, Love, Mrs. God.

My diary, as evidenced by above, is nothing like the diaries of films, which go like this:

Dear Diary, as I enter into these final years of my life I think it's important that I write something

that pretty much sums it all up. First off, I was born on a hot summer day when the wind was

so heavy you could have worn it as a blanket. And although my father died when I was just a 

kid, I could always hear him singing me to sleep. And then for a number of years I was young and 

banging lots of hot chicks. You should be able to glean this from the montage of me walking into 

fancy hotels and eating caviar with a lot of lovely ladies, but I'd like to reiterate that that is what 

happened. But of course a man tires of such things and so I married the prettiest girl in the town 

who may not have been pretty by Hollywood standards** but boy could she make a mean cherry pie. 

And So on and So forth.

So do you see what I mean? Why do diaries exist at all in movies? I guess they need to exist to catch

serial killers and child molesters and other socially unacceptable characters who keep very detailed accounts

of their devious behavior, but other than that, why on earth would someone's diary matter? With all

of the manuscripts in my home (thousands of pages, I'm sure) there are probably only five, coherent and

well thought out paragraphs.

In fact, when I have a child, I'm going to tell it to never keep a diary, and I'm also going to tell it to

burn all of mine. The last thing I want is for someone to make a biopic using only my diaries. God, can

can you imagine? A movie made entirely of thirty second dream sequences in which my sister (who

doesn't exist) has different animal heads and other dream sequences in which Jeff Goldblum and I drink

tea at the Huntington Gardens and discuss P.G. Wodehouse. Then again, maybe they should make that movie.

I apologize to all of you for not posting last week. Last week I really needed to drink a lot of whiskey

and fancy cocktails on Monday and when I returned I needed to feel queasy and nap instead of blogging.

But forevermore, there will be no excuses. I promise.

Love and Virgen Candles,

Mrs. God

**Don't think I forgot: this character will be played by Mary Stuart Masterson or Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Open Letter Re: Good Movies

This is an open letter to a professor of mine that shall remain nameless.  Well, then again, since I am almost positive you will never read this, and since you can't technically punish me grade-wise for (respectfully (?)) disagreeing with you, then I'll go with first name only.

Dear Harry,

The Dark Knight was the most perfect movie ever.  That thing you said in class about it being bad, that was wrong.  You were totally wrong.  I won't even really go into the reasons why it was so good, because everyone in the world agrees with me except for you and probably a handful of your shitty artsy friends.  That's right, I'm assuming you have shitty friends.  You see, I have this totally infallible system of superficial judgment, and judging by that system, you have friends that have let you make some bad decisions.  Among but not limited to these bad decisions are the following:

1. they let you wear baseball caps of football teams

2. they let you wear those caps slightly upward, askew and the forward way. If you are doing it sincerely, you're a class A dickerd, and if you're doing it ironically to make fun of some totally "pedestrian" Ashton Kutcher-esque style, then you are a class A dickerd in an advanced placement program.

3. they let you hate the Dark Knight, and when you said you didn't like it, they didn't press you about it, they probably applauded you for thinking that, because it was so effing unique of you.

Okay, but enough of this digression about your presumably shitty social circle and back to how wrong you were about the Dark Knight.  I guess I should write my grievances with your grievances in the order that you expressed them, chronologically.  

So....You said that you didn't like the Joker.  And you didn't even specify whether or not you meant the character or the portrayal.  Now if you didn't like the portrayal, there is something seriously wrong.  What are you, made of stone?  Is your heart dead and cold?  Did you kill Heath Ledger?  And if you didn't like the character or this particular incarnation of it, then you're equally as mixed up.  You claimed his lack of origin story made him boring, not compelling.  Did we see the same movie?  There is anything but a lack of origin story.  In fact, there is a plethora of origin stories.  He cut is face doing blank, his father cut his face cause of blank, he cut his face cause of you don't know because Batman starts kicking his ass before he can finish the story.  It's called mystery.  You know? Mystery, like on Masterpiece Theatre or in Agatha Chrystie books or on Murder, She Wrote, etc etc.  

But then again, maybe I'm wasting my breath, because halfway through writing most of this rant in my notebook (faithfully transcribed, very little clean-up) during class, you admit that you haven't even seen the whole movie.  You walked out!  Who walks out of the Dark Knight?  At what point did you feel it was a good time?  I know a person (not me, okay maybe me) who got a urinary tract infection from holding her pee because she was so riveted.  It's called non-stop action for a reason.  Additionally, how many people saw the dark knight and disagreed with you?  Oh, that's right: everybody...except your shitty friends.

Who knows, maybe next week I'll walk out of your class.  And when you ask me why I'm leaving with all of my notebooks and bags, I'll just say, "Oh, don't worry, it's just that I hate your lack of origin story."  Then I'll high five everybody, fart on my way out, lock the door from the outside, and go watch it on blu-ray.

Sincerely (suck it),

Mrs. God

p.s. please don't fail me.  I do the reading every week.