I asked the cashier for a bag because I was too ashamed to carry it out of the store. In question: Marley and Me, the DVD. I was looking for a lachrymal stimulater — in other words, I wanted a good cry. I should have rented Love Story. Never fails.
Before I discuss what this post is really about I want to ask, if anyone knows, did Owen Wilson try to kill himself before of after this movie? And next, whatever they used to put that dog down so peacefully, I’d like some of that when I lose my verve to chew through manuscripts.
When I was fourteen, I went to an “alternative” arts camp. Instead of putting on Fiddler on the Roof and Guys and Dolls as we had at my previous camp, I was now in plays by Lanford Wilson and Edward Albee. Musicals gave way to theater, or more precisely drama. It was my first exposure to “serious” art and, little sponge that I was, I picked up on my counselors’ disdain for Neil Simon and his ilk. I came home that summer changed. Soon after, I started reading poetry and writing. And I would continue to gravitate towards counselors and teachers who shared a similar world view.
I wonder how my tastes would have developed without that experience. I’m still a deeply sentimental person. At a recent middle school performance of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” you could find me bawling during what may have been the most off-key rendition of “Happiness” the world has ever heard.
I like to cry. I want to cry. So what does it take? Why did four million or so people cry for Marely, and not me? Or Tuesdays with Morrie? Or Last Lecture? My dying uncle, who read and loved Tuesdays with Morrie, said I was a snob. People cry when labradors and old professors and young professors die because it’s fucking sad. But it’s kind of like Woody Allen’s line: if a person is stoned and you get a laugh out of them, it doesn’t count.
Why do we feel one kind of writing is manipulative and another authentic, when it’s all manipulative? There was a really cute guy at that alternative camp who I had a major crush on, until he read me one of his poems. We were in the woods and I believed my first kiss was around the corner. He read the poem as if he were alone, which is to say with too much feeling. When I said that I didn’t think it was quite working, he said in his own defense: these are my feelings, you can’t criticize feelings.
A full calendar year would pass before I would know the sublime pleasure of a first kiss.
Betsy Lerner 
Melodrama is funny, the essence of kitsch–an exaggerated sentimentality.
What makes me cry? Sorrow accepted, emotions constrained, emptiness waiting to be filled. Genuine restraint under difficult circumstances.
For instance, I cried while reading Middlemarch, The Bluest Eye, A Wrinkle in Time and Angela’s Ashes.
Bravery make me cry. Pooch flicks not so much.
Hi Betsy! This is a general shout-out to you and your bad-ass blog. I just officially subscribed but have been reading for a couple of weeks. It’s like that first sip of early morning, very strong iced coffee — necessary and fortifying.
A true story, from many years ago when I was a sweet young thing with a part-time job in the subscription department at the Atlantic Monthly. The phone rang, it was John Guare on the line. Trubs with his subscription, missing issues, something like that. My heart pounding, I confirmed with that he was in fact the playwright, and then I launched. “Mr. Guare,” I gushed, trying not to gush,” I just want to say that I am so very happy to help you with resolving this issue with your subscription, and also that I am such a huge fan of yours, and Six Degrees of Separation is one of my favorite plays, and I’ve seen it three times, and just, well…I’m a writer too and you’ve inspired me sooooo much. And also I can extend your subscription for free if you want.” There was silence on the end of the line. “Thank you,” said John Guare with great dignity. “You’ve just given me a reason to take my head out of the oven.”
Hurray and huzzah Betsy!
Thanks to you my head’s out, too.
Your Fan,
Kathy Ebel of the Los Angeles Kathy Ebels
I second CJ. Restraint in moments of crisis or sadness creates a unbearable tension that the reader or viewer releases on behalf of the character. Another example is the ending of City Lights. Who doesn’t cry watching that?
I sobbed for twenty minutes straight at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The nobility of the characters, their sense of honor and duty, their toughness under pressure, not to mention they were all freaking GORGEOUS—that’s what reduces my inner warrior-maiden to mush.
Kathy Ebel: If you like Betsy’s blog, you’ll love her book!
Movies that make me cry, even after watching them a gazillion times: The Deer Hunter, Love Liza, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
(And Forrest Gump, okay? There. I’ve said it..)
That eBay television ad from a couple of years ago, about the toy boat that was left behind on a family outing at the beach that was swept up in the tide and caught in the nets of Japanese fishermen who put it on line 30 years later so the little boy who’d been looking for it his whole life could buy it back on eBay…that used to get me every time. The tag line was, “What if nothing was ever lost?”
Also, listening to my tape of A. Bartlett Giamatti (the MLB Commissioner and ex-Pres of Yale U. who died suddenly of a heart attack about 15 years ago) reading his essay about baseball, “The Green Fields of the Mind” is so be-yoo-tee-full that that, and a big stonking glass of wine, is a guaranteed weeper.
The first time I heard Paul Weller’s version of “Paris Match” on the Dutch import Style Council mini-LP, I burst into tears. It was 2001 and I was in London, stalking Paul Weller, and that’s when I realized I was about 20 years too late.
Thanks for the John Guare story, Kathy Ebel from LA. I’m going to sit right down an write a thank you letter to my favorite living writer, something that I should have done years ago.
Owen Wilson tried to kill himself before he filmed Marley & Me.
I know this because Jennifer Aniston mentioned in her Vogue interview something about what a great spirit he has, and how it was great working with him and seeing him bounce back “after all he had been through lately.”
It was the Vogue article that is now-famous because she ALSO said, “What Angelina did was really un-cool.” That’s the quote they put on the cover, and that’s what made me pick up & read the entire article while standing up in the airport terminal. Then I put it down without buying it and ran to my flight.
Anyways, Marley & Me made me cry… like a baby. Felt great.
“…Why do we feel one kind of writing is manipulative and another authentic, when it’s all manipulative?…”
Authentic manipulation is when you get others to do what they wish you would get them to do. It is the righteous goal of writers and strippers everywhere.
“…There was a really cute guy […] . He read the poem as if he were alone, which is to say with too much feeling. When I said that I didn’t think it was quite working, he said in his own defense: these are my feelings, you can’t criticize feelings. …
I wonder how many years passed before he got kissed?
“I’ve Loved You So Long” made me bawl. SO good. But, maybe, only if you have a sister.
I can finally stop feeling guilty- I thought I was the only person who Hated Tuesday’s with Morrie!!! Also , to make matters worse, for some long forgotten bizarre reason, I listenen to the author read this book on tape! It is manipulatively sentimental. I must really have been stuck in commuter he’ll in a Chicago traffic nightmare but the thing is, he got me hooked at one part. When I reached work, I remember sitting in the parking lot, listening to the end. I too a sucker for sentiment – I love Gone with the Wind and Bruce Springsteen lyrics but not this drivel. Am I a bad person? Apparently not!! Thanks for the post.