MICKEY: Now, by "family films" I don't mean to suggest that Blockbuster/tv guide manufactured category of movies considered safe for the whole family - I'm talking about those movies that become particular favorites of your family and the special place those family favorites have. I just returned from a family reunion in the land of my youth - California. I was blessed to enjoy visits with cousins and uncles, etc, I hadn't seen since I was 10 years old, and to meet some cousins and uncles, etc, I had never met. The last movie-talk I had with my own children before leaving for California was comparing and evaluating our appreciation of classic Westerns . . . we spoke specifically about The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Magnificent Seven, Destry Rides Again, etc. At the reunion, when someone started to talk about favorite movies, I counted it a thrill to hear these very same movies listed.
Of course, many people who have nothing to do with me count The Searchers and/or Destry Rides Again as a favorite, however that my own children and I, on the other side of the country, were just talking about the very titles that my 1st cousin once removed, Karen, then lists as among her favorites suggests a kind of kinship that goes beyond or deeper than simply a common ancestry. Movies are storytelling, they communicate ideas and feelings, and it often appears to us indecipherable why some people like a certain movie and don't like another . . . I know Citizen Kane is a great movie, it is well done and important - but I don't enjoy it. And I know very few would regard Earth vs. The Flying Saucers to be a great classic, but it wonderfully achieves what it sets-out to be and I thoroughly enjoy watching - every 2 or 3 years, again and again.
Movies aren't just stories that happen in front of us on a screen, they are stories that teach us and move us, they cause us to reflect on who we are and laugh at what we do. The fact that movie history is populated with uninspired slasher films, pornography, and an endless stream of derivative crap doesn't diminish the reality that movies are our storytelling, and storytelling from Aesop to Dickens to Scorsese both records and creates the hopes & fears and the consciousness & community of our time. We all know that spark of connection, the energy of immediate fellowship when we discover a new friend likes many of the same films that are our favorites and doesn't get the same ones we don't get . . . constructed, performed, and presented storytelling provides a kind of short-hand toward camaraderie.
I was delighted to find my long-lost relatives in California to be just as bright and clever and warm-hearted and sophisticated and charming as I am . . . it must be an Edwards thing - thank you Pansy Maude Essie Burton Wade Edwards.
