It's funny how a movie you know so well, backwards and forwards, seen at least 50 times, can have the same effect on you time and time again. Yesterday on tv, I was flipping through the channels and came across the movie, "Beaches". This movie is easily in my top 5 favorite films of all time. It was playing on the WE network, which stands for Women's Entertainment and needed 3 full hours to play to fit in all the commercial breaks. It doesn't matter that I own the movie on DVD and could've played it straight thru without interruption. There is something special about finding a classic on tv, when you aren't expecting it and tailoring your original plans (read a book? play with the kids? start dinner?) to accommodate watching it.
I first saw this movie with my mom in the theatre when it came out in 1988. To this day we can still get a good laugh over how I started bawling in the theatre in mid movie (when you realize that Barbara Hershey's character is going to die and Bette Middler's character is on her way to her) and couldn't stop. Really. 30 minutes after the movie had ended and we were driving back home, I was still crying. And crying hard at that. It was insane. At one point during the movie when my crying was in full effect, I couldn't catch my breath and the sobs got harder and louder. I am pretty certain that everyone around us in the theatre stopped their tears because they were distracted by the display I had going on. Yes, it was bad and I went through a lot of napkins.
To this day, I am not sure what caused me to cry that hard or for as long as I did. But each time I've seen the movie since then, I can still start crying - no matter where I join in the film too.
Now here is the crazy thing about watching it yesterday at home. I would cry up until the commercial break, take the 2 minutes to do something and then start crying again when the movie came back on. Is this normal?!?! I can't imagine it is.
Towards the end of the movie, we had dinner on the table and I had it playing on our little tv in the kitchen. I managed to not fully lose it while eating dinner with the family, but the minute we started clearing the table, it was all over. Fortunately Jeff has seen my reaction to this movie a few times before in our relationship. He's good about coming over to give me a hug, comforting me and moving on. Since it has been a good 21 years from when "Beaches" first came out, I no longer cry past the ending. I am getting good about only giving the appropriate amount of tears and keeping it short and sweet. Although, by now you would think that I could recite every line, know what is coming up and brace myself for it. But that is not the case. Even putting in commercial breaks every 20 minutes did nothing to dull my sadness.
From a rational standpoint, I find this absurd. But this is me, who I am. And, if I channel flipped tomorrow and came across it, I'd still stop everything and watch it and have a good cry.
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