While far from traditionalists, my wife and I will celebrate our upcoming wedding anniversary with the conventional movie date. After all, nothing says romance like holding hands while watching a movie about dust.
In observance of our 15th year of wedded bliss, my love and I are sharing the gift of cinema courtesy of the Traverse City Film Festival. However, tight work schedules and finding the perfect Mary Poppins baby-sitter made our choices limited. So that is why we'll be ingesting popcorn while watching a 90-minute documentary on dust -- in German. My throat is already parched in anticipation.
Taking a chance on a film is what the Traverse City Film Festival is all about. While my wife is open-minded, she balked at the only other movie that would fit in our limited time frame. I guess a documentary on a port-a-potty deliveryman isn't wedding anniversary material. Although my wife enjoys bodily function humor as much, if not more, than I do.
After more than two decades of dates and movies, I still remember our first nine o'clock show together in 1988. The movie "Alien Nation" remains unforgettable even though I've never seen a single second of footage. We went out that night, we just skipped the movie theater pretense. These days if we have a date night involving a movie, it's probably a 7 p.m. show for bedtime purposes -- ours, not the 6-year-old's.
Truthfully, I think my movie companion was just pleased that the latest cinema choice didn't involve one of my famous "dark" comedies. Early on in our marriage, I brought my spouse to see "Fargo" -- which I kept insisting was a "dark comedy" despite the Coen brothers' carnage.
She: (fierce whisper) "I thought you said this was a comedy!"
Me: "Ah .... are you going to eat that Good & Plenty?"
However, I did wade through two hours of Barbra Streisand in the "Prince of Tides" while seated next to my in-laws. So I figure we are about even -- cinematically speaking.
Speaking of frightening films, my first movie theater experience involved evil flying monkeys. For some reason, my parents took me to a matinee showing of "The Wizard of Oz" with its gravity-defying primates. I hid under my seat, clicking my Keds in hopes Dorothy would drop me at home on her way back to Kansas.
To this day, I have trust issues with monkeys. I can't even sit in the same room when my daughter watches "Curious George" on PBS. Of course, the real problem might be cartoon attention deficit. After all, I grew up on Looney Tunes, sugared cereal and lots of loud commercials posing as television shows.
Bugs Bunny and flying anvils, however, are hardly the sort of thematic movie material for a 15th wedding anniversary date. Conventional wisdom says go see a comedy light on Steve Buscemi in a wood chipper and heavy on the romance. Being the traditionalists that we are, we'll just share Junior Mints and every speck of "Dust" around us.
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