If you had to name 10 movies that mean the most to you, what would they be? And what would they say about you?
I’d gotten my list down to 10 …until I asked other people for theirs.
“The Wizard of Oz”! I have to add that!”
“So,” said my husband, “This list goes to 11? Like the amps in ‘This is Spinal Tap’?”
“Darn, now I have to add that, too!”
But most of my “10” I hadn’t seen in decades. Were they still any good? Luckily they were all at the library.
“Working Girl:” At the opening notes of Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run,” over shots of the Statue of Liberty and Twin Towers, tears started running down my face.
I realized this screening would have to wait.
“Superman:” I always loved the TV show, and when Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder appeared in the 1978 movie, I loved it, too.
Something appealed to me about a hero who must keep both his identity and his powers a secret.
But when Superman scoops up Lois and takes her for a joy-flight around Manhattan, I did wonder how they kept her high heels from falling off and killing people.
I remembered this again, years later, when I was trying to be “Supermom” myself. Whether I was “flying” from drop-off at my child’s nursery school to my two-days-a-week part-time job, or back again, trying desperately not to be the last Mommy at pick-up… it seemed I always arrived late and in the wrong shoes. Where’s Superman when you need him?
“My Brilliant Career:” The girl in this movie can’t decide if she’d rather be a writer or a concert pianist when she grows up.
Alas for her, she is the daughter of a ne’er-do-well dirt-farmer in Australia, in the 1890s.
But she holds firm, eventually choosing writing over marriage to a rich young rancher, played by an impossibly handsome Sam Neill.
“She’s an idiot!” I rant, to the man I married. “What is her problem? He’s too handsome?”
“Judy, you know that marriage in those days meant ‘popping out a baby a year’ — if it didn’t kill you.”
“Even so…Writing goes with motherhood better than any other career I can think of. Plus, did I mention he’s rich?” And she’s an idiot. Off my list.
“Broadcast News:” When I first saw this, someone said, “Judy, that’s you!” I thought they meant the news producer played by Holly Hunter, but no, they meant the sidekick, played by the charming (and of course beautiful) Joan Cusack.
Indeed, my job was a bit like hers, running things at the last split-second to the control room.
She had to leap over a baby and under a pulled-out file-cabinet drawer. For me, it was dodging pedestrians along 58th Street and then down 9th Avenue, all the way to the studio building on 55th.
I also remember a scene strikingly like the one in the film, where Holly Hunter is still editing a piece when Cusack screams at her, “It’s my responsibility to tell the control room and New York that we won’t be ready!”
We were always ready, but one time came too close for comfort. The MacNeil/Lehrer Report had taken us all to French Quebec to report on the separatist movement, and something went longer than expected. All of a sudden, the director was asking the tape operator how many seconds it took a 30-minute tape to rewind, because he needed to start the top of the show off one tape while we finished editing the other!
We made it, of course. Just like in the movies!
“Working Girl:” On my second try, my family watched with me. My son has never known a world with such all-pervasive sexism as in this movie…so I guess we’ve made progress. And now he believes me — some — about how things used to be.
My favorite moment, then and now, comes when Melanie Griffiths’ character, trying to look professional, is asked, “Coffee?”
She reflexively jumps up, saying “Sure, where is it?” only to be told, “No, we’re getting it. How would you like it?”
She gets the guy — and the window office…and when that music returns at the end, I am nothing but happy, for her..and for us. Now that’s a great movie.
With profound thanks to Port Washington’s Public Library and staff. Coming Soon: Part Two!
