FRIENDOS, I’m kind of an asshole. My slow realization of this fact has been humbling and disturbing, because my personal evolution tracks like this:
AGE 9: I’m the fastest kid on this block!
AGE 14: I’m the smartest motherfucker in this room!
AGE 18: I’m the nicest guy in the world!
AGE 25: I … may have miscalculated.
AGE 35: I definitely miscalculated.
TODAY: I’m an asshole.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Part of being an asshole is liking yourself quite a bit, so I don’t lose much sleep over this revelation. But it does temper my reaction to things, because realizing that you’re kid of a dick is powerful stuff, especially when you realize that all those times people seemed to be celebrating your dickishness was really them shining you on a little.
For example, Hook.
Happy Thoughts for The Loss
To say I loathed the film Hook is an understatement. One of the few films I’ve never seen twice, I walked out of the theater in 1991 like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown except the cloud was anger and sarcasm. It was the relentless twee-ness of the film that offended me; by the time we got to all the guff about happy thoughts I was ready to set the theater on fire.
Back in 1991 I went to a lot of movies with a group of friends. Every week, sometimes more than once, we’d be in the theater; it was our default plan when we couldn’t think of anything else to do. Which means we saw some stinkers in that time, some real trash films, and yet I came out of those with a smile and a shrug. Hook just got to me in a way I couldn’t quite explain at the time, and I let everyone know exactly how I felt about it. I was hilarious in my rage, and it quickly became a joke among those friends. Hook became my talisman of anger, and any time a movie or TV show sucked people would make funny comments about whether or not this would be my new Hook.
Now, looking back with the full knowledge that I’m an asshole, I see it all differently. Because while Hook is a flawed film that I never wish to experience again, I didn’t take the time to analyze any of that and simply reveled in the joy of shitting all over someone else’s work.
Now, this is a minor thing. Thankfully, it all happened before The Internet, so it’s not like I have a million embarrassing blog posts about it. And it was kind of funny. To this day people will reference my outsize, jerky reaction to Hook, and we all laugh and laugh. But it reminds me, all the time, that someone created the things I am watching, reading, and listening to, and that being a jerk about not enjoying it might be fun but it’s also an asshole move that doesn’t help me understand why I didn’t like it. And the why is how you become a better writer. Not to mention how you respect other artists even when you dislike what they’ve done.
In the end, I think that Spielberg guy was okay despite my tiny fists of rage in a movie theater in Secaucus, New Jersey that night in 1991. And that’s the rub about getting older: You get more respectful and thoughtful, but much less hilariously ragey.
I think you’ve had an apostrophe!