Awkward Friends

When "Rushmore" came out, I realized two things:

1.) I will never be as simultaneously cool and awkward as Jason Schwartzmann.

and

2.) I love movies about awkward, unlikely friendships.

In case it's been too long since your last finely-aged Wes Anderson fix, I will take great pleasure in reminding you that, to the jangly soundtrack of the British pop invasion, bespectacled, precocious, and sometimes homicidal Rushmore Academy student Max Fisher becomes close friends with local business magnate Herman Blume, who is approximately four decades Max's senior, and wears monochromatic shirt-and-tie combinations.

In one of several touching scenes, after a falling out, Max and Herman meet outside of Max's father's barber shop. Max is wearing a green velour suit and, in honor of his friend, sports a gold shirt with a identically-hued bowtie. Max pulls a velvet-covered box from his pocket and opens it to reveal two lapel pins, both adorned with the Rushmore Academy bee mascot. "I thought you could wear one and I could wear the other," Max says, in that charmingly awkward way of his. One says "Punctuality" and the other says "Perfect Attendance," and Max offers one to Herman, also a Rushmore alum. Herman is obviously touched, and takes a careful moment to consider his choice.

"I'll take Punctuality."

And, through the rest of the film, Max wears "Perfect Attendance" and Herman wears "Punctuality," with pride.

There are a lot of reasons why I love "Rushmore." We don't need to go into all of them here, but I think the main reason why I love "Rushmore" is because it's a film that celebrates a phenomenon that I find irresistable: the bond between two inconceivably-matched men. Incongruous friendships-- intensely loyal, often tumultuous, engaging, interesting, maybe 3% homoerotically-charged, but mostly goofy, tender, powerful, gentle and real.

Although I'm writing this post at 8:07pm, EST on Sunday evening, I feel pretty confident in betting that one of those films is going to win the Academy Award.

While ardent linguistic schdorks like my wife may have been super-jazzed about the speech pathology implications and particulars of the film, it's tender-hearted schleps like me who were moved by the unlikely friendship between an English monarch and an Australian speech specialist and occasional amateur thespian. They laugh together, they fight like bears, they curse (bugger bugger bugger fuck!) and they find a way to continue being friends for the rest of their lives, in spite of the fact that, really, those two had no business cavorting about behind the radio microphones of the times.

One of my other favorite films stars Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt; it's called "The Impostors." Tucci plays Arthur and Platt plays Maurice, and they are two struggling stage actors who live together in impoverished circumstances. Together, they wind up as stowaways aboard a ship-- with hilarious consequences. Maurice calls Arthur "Arthie." They hug. They bicker. They sleep next to each other in little rickety twin beds. They fight crime together. And they practice making dramatic faces at each other. They share slices of bread and cups of tea and, when Maurice is ready to serve the meager feast, he makes sure, after thinking about it for a moment, to give his friend the bigger slice.

After a fight, Maurice pats Arthur's knee, to say, "I'm sorry" with no words. Arthur takes a sip of tea, nods his head silently, and pats Maurice's knee, giving it an extra little rub to say, "I know."

And I thought to myself and then out loud to Mrs. Apron tonight, where are these movies celebrating uncommon, kind of dorky, yet genuine and sincere and heartfelt female friendships?

"I don't get it-- why can't there be movies like that featuring to unlikely women friends? Or is every movie about female friendship, like, 'Sex and the City' or some horesecock like that?"

"Yeah," my wife said, "every movie about female friendship is, basically, that. Because women aren't allowed to be meaningful or awkward. We have to be hot and go shoe-shopping. I remember hearing an interview on NPR about a woman who kept getting cast as the stupid side-kick bitch in movies and she was like, 'No, this is a stupid device, and I'm not doing it anymore.' It sucks."

And it does suck. It goes hand-in-hand with the erroneous notion that women can't be funny. Women can have unlikely friendships in movies, and they don't have to be lesbians, or one hot chick and her awkward friendlette who is used for explication and emotional baggage unloading.

I don't understand why this can't happen. Would some intelligent feminist please explain this to me? I have to go not watch the Oscars.

Always a Little

There's a film I love very much called "The Impostors," starring Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt. It's a delightful, loud, boisterous, silly farce, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the films of yesteryear, where big hats and bigger reactions ruled the screen. Of course, even in a film that is so desperately funny, I tend to look for the quieter, softer, more sullen moments.

I'm just that way, I guess.

There's a scene towards the end of the film where the first mate of a ship approaches the Captain, played by the wonderful Allan Corduner. The scene is a lavish party on the boat, given in the captain's honor, with lively swing music playing in the background and all the elite ship's guests dressed to the nines. The first mate observes the captain for a moment and he says,

"Sir, you look sad."

The captain looks listlessly off into the distance and, almost casually remarks,

"I am always a little sad."

That bit of dialogue, lasting for maybe four or five seconds, is my favorite part of the film, and I suppose it is that way because we love what we feel instinctively is truth, and, for me, that's what that is. There's just those tiny, fleeting, almost absurd moments where you identify. Where you acknowledge. Where you catch yourself almost whispering out hoarsely,

"Me, too."

Back in college, when I was seeing a therapist once a week, I delicately broached the topic of anti-depressant medication with my therapist.

"Well," I said, "it's been a year-and-a-half, and I guess you know me well enough by now. What do you think?"

Rick sat across from me, curly carrot-topped, snowflake sweater, ruddy cheeks, content in his gayness and his charming, gap-toothed grin. His eyes crinkled as he crossed his corduroyed legs and said,

"What do you think?"

"Jesus, Rick," I said, "do you have to be such a fucking therapist all the time?"

He laughed. Which, of course, is just what I wanted. My own private audience for my weekly one-man show. And you couldn't ask for a better audience of one than Rick. He was, quite simply, to die for. And he thought the same of me. It was almost unhealthy.

I told him that I felt I ought to be farther along than I was, that I thought I had all the insight I was going to have and my mood wasn't changing, my writing was still intractably dark, and I was still bitter and angry and sullen about the same things I was bitter and angry and sullen about years before.

"I don't know," he said, "part of me thinks you're exactly who you should be right now. But you're never going to stop wondering, I suppose, so I'll give you a referral to a psychiatrist. Mostly to shut you up."

The next week, I found myself in a strange-looking, uncomfortably dark office on the other side of town, and in wheeled a quadriplegic psychiatrist in a motorized wheelchair, mouth-operated through a blow-tube. I talked to this guy for an hour. "Don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs" I repeated to myself in my head, over and over. He diagnosed me with chronic, low-level anxiety and depression and told me about medication he would prescribe to me, if I wanted it.

Turns out, I didn't want it.

And so maybe that's why I'm always a little sad. Maybe things would have been different if I had called up Dr. Hot-Wheels and said, "Hey, let's get those prescriptions filled." But I kind of doubt it. After all, they're pills, not pixie-dust.

I don't know why my brain is wired, or cross-wired maybe, the way it is, why it ventures into dark places sometimes, why it can't shut off at night sometimes, why it broods and obsesses and why it finds the sick and depraved funny, and why my lip trembles when I'm driving in my car sometimes.

Of course, the miscarriage didn't help.

It's been over a year, and the searing, shattering pain has worn off, but the cold, flat ache remains. The uncertainty about whether we will get pregnant again persists, and I hear it in every silence that passes between us, in every off-hand remark, in every sigh and in every cough. I hear it and my ears bleed.

But at least now I know why I am always a little sad.