Last night, I had tickets to see a favorite singer/songwriter at a favorite club in San Francisco. But my daughter, who was supposed to be coming with me, was doing an excellent impression of a chipmunk (see previous post) and not up for it.
I thought about going alone. I also tried to cajole various single friends into coming with me. Come on, it’s Blanco White! He’s 27 and sexy and a fabulous singer! At Cafe du Nord! But nobody was available, and although I think of myself as resilient and strong enough to drive into the city alone on a Saturday night to go to a gig, it turns out I’m not.
So I went to the movies. I tried to get the same friends to come to the movies with me, but they had all the same excuses about why they couldn’t go to Blanco White. Lame. So I decided I was definitely strong and resilient enough to go to a movie on my own. I’ve done it tons of times and usually I love it. Sitting in the dark, feeling mysterious, trying to block out the stench of popcorn and not check my phone too frequently to see if anyone is texting me.
I had a hard time deciding between Bohemian Rhapsody and Can You Ever Forgive Me, but decided that the former should really be seen with someone so I would have good company singing along, and someone to share my favorite Queen memories with afterwards. So Melissa McCarthy it was. CYEFM had the added bonus of Richard E. Grant. And it was in the fabulous art deco Rafael Theater, really the only venue suitable for viewing a Richard E. Grant movie.
I’d seen the trailer, so I knew this movie had the potential to be really quite depressing, but I’m talented at ignoring red flags, and it was about a writer who lived in New York City and did I mention it had Richard E. Grant, so I committed myself to it with touching optimism. Even when I drove by the theater looking for parking and saw the length of the ticket line and nearly just turned around and drove home.
It started out great. Melissa spends the first scene quaffing whisky on the job and getting fired for telling her boss (inadvertently, it must be said) to F off.
But no more spoilers.
Except the cat thing. Sorry about that. Slipped out.
But as the movie progressed, Melissa proved to be a failed writer (not many of those about, huh) who couldn’t pay her rent or get help for her sick cat (this is all in the trailer). Plus in one scene she actually mentions that she is 51. MY AGE! This rankled with me for two reasons. 1) Melissa doesn’t look nearly 51. Her skin. Way too smooth. She even sort of choked on saying 51, as though her acting talents temporarily deserted her cos hey, she’s only 48 (I googled it just now). And 2) I’m 51, and I actually look my age, especially in the mornings. There’s a third reason, involving my stalled writing career, but I don’t have time to go into that now.
The important thing to know about Melissa McCarthy in this movie is that although she develops a completely wonderful and very funny relationship with Richard E., which really could have saved the movie if she had appeared to enjoy it more, she sort of spirals downward throughout the entire thing. I’ve seen too many spiralling down movies lately. I need some spiralling up movies.
In fairness, she may well have spiralled up at the end of Can You Ever Forgive Me. I don’t know, because I left. At minute 90. It was a tough decision, having invested two hours of my life in getting to this movie and sitting through it. But her cat died (did I mention that?) and it was all just too much for me. I stood up in that crouchy way you stand up when you are leaving a movie in the middle, and hyperaware that it was just me standing up, and not me and my date, or me and a friend, giggling together about how we were leaving a Melissa McCarthy movie because it was just too depressing.
I walked to my car in the nearby parking garage, and I reflected on the fact that the best thing about my evening was that parking is for some unknown reason free in San Rafael on Saturday nights. Maybe the reason for this is to give some glimmer of joy to 51-year-old single women whose writing careers are spiralling in a direction we won’t examine too closely and who have just left depressing movies that they went to on their own on a Saturday night. I don’t know. But I’m thinking of calling someone on the San Rafael town council to find out.
I have a feeling that I just ended this post on a sort of down note, and that’s really not my style. I like to give a little uplift at the last second, so people don’t come away from reading my blog thinking jeez, if this woman writes another post about dying people I’m unsubscribing. So I’ve been trying to come up with the so-called Uplift Ending. And here it is: when I got home I texted some of those same friends who had turned down a night on the town with me, and I let them know what a good thing it was they had said No to the downward-spiral experience. And in the process, I cracked myself up, because I like to laugh at my own jokes. And I got some very funny responses in return, which also cracked me up. So on balance, I got more laughs than tears from the experience. And that, to me, is a good Saturday night
Blanco missed out!!!
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