About a month ago I finished reading Patton Oswalt’s Silver Screen Fiend, his short memoir of his years being addicted to film. I recommend it both to the cinephiles of the world and to anybody who has a love for any sort of hobby or niche subject. I think it’s pretty universal in that regard. It doesn’t have to be movies, it can be any passion that has consumed you upon being introduced to it, for better or for worse.
This post isn’t about the book, though, it’s more about where the book took me. In one of the appendices, Oswalt includes a list of his 100 favorite movie moments. Inspired by it, I decided to give it a go myself, and over a few days I came up with about 100 movie moments that I felt really moved me. Some were silly (M. Emmet Walsh shooting the oil cans in The Jerk with Steve Martin yelling “He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans!” for example) and some serious (M. Emmet Walsh staring at built up condensation at the end of Blood Simple).
But after completing the list, I think the most interesting connection would be just how many moments contain characters either singing or dancing.
Now, to tell the truth, a lot of the examples are from musicals, so it’s expected that there be at least some song and dance, but a lot of the movies are not musicals. Local Hero, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Blue Velvet, Harold and Maude, Night of the Hunter, Casablanca, Young Frankenstein, Forgetting Sarah Marshall… these aren’t musicals, but certainly have moments that are.
Here’s what I think: music is intoxicatingly charming. That’s not really a big whoop, people listen to music all the time.
But it’s a big step to make your own music, especially when you don’t really know how, and especially when it’s in front of other people.
Singing, at least in my experience, can be a pretty terrifying thing for a person to do. There’s no instrument to blame if things go wrong, it’s just you. It’s like the fear of public speaking but doubled.
So when a character does it, especially when they don’t do it well, it is intoxicatingly charming. It really feels very freeing and it’s often impossible not to fall in love with the characters right then and there. They’ve opened their soul to you in a medium that all about voyeuristically invading people’s lives and so you fall in love.
Same can be said for dance. It’s just you and your body, there are no tools really (maybe tap shoes), and when a person really goes at it (think Napoleon Dynamite) it’s impossible not to smile.
So, really, I love moments when a character truly shows who they are. When they are carefree and they sing as loud as they can and dance like mad. I love these moments because all they are doing is proving that it’s ok to be you.
To sing and dance even if you think you can’t, because you probably, very likely, most definitely can.