The product of an odd night, in which I slept from 7:30 pm to 4:56 am, with a waking period between 2 and 3, when I worked through ideas swirling in my head, demanding to be explored, plus sexual arousal that needed satisfying before I could drop back to sleep, slipping into wonderful dreams, about movies (who knows why; I was aiming for a fresh edition of one of my favorite affectionate sex stories, but that’s not what I got), until I woke feeling happy and refreshed — but had to assemble notes on the movie stuff, so it’s 6:30 and I just got to my morning vitals (which are dramatically good) and now really really need breakfast, before I can tell you about the movies.
9:45 am today. On dreams and half-waking thought. When I got up around 1 am for my hourly whizz, I reached out to retrieve the pad and pencil I keep by the bed. Because I’d been having a vivid dream in which the key to a solution of many linguistic puzzles was revealed to me. But then I recalled that such dream revelations are invariably senseless crap, and so it was in this case: retroflex variants of the voiceless stop t are not the answer to any question plaguing me. I whizzed and quickly returned to sleep.
At 2, though, I came out of sleep slowly. Lay in bed in relaxed half-waking thought, entertaining one idea after another. Actual ideas, not dream nuttiness. Ideas about the gigantic-cylinder posting I’ve been working on for several days (I need to check out sources on muscle relaxants), and about the story of my life (which led me to recover an anecdote about the linguist Gene Nida). This half-waking state is a lot like the idea-generating state facilitated by a warm shower. (I have a considerable inventory of states of consciousness; half-waking is one of my favorites.)
But once I’m into half-waking, I’m not getting back to sleep for a while. If it’s still the middle of the night, the thing to do is get up, get some water to drink, and do small useful tasks at the computer. For about an hour, when sleep will call again.
It did, and I fell into end-of-the night sleep, REM sleep, with vivid — and in this case, quite satisfying — dreams. Which happened to be about movies. The details went up in smoke, but the topic stayed with me when I rose around 5 am and went through basic morning rituals, then took the movie topic to my worktable, where I started making lists, and checking names and dates on my computer. When these were done, I took my morning vitals (which were splendid!), went off to get breakfast, and returned to the computer at 9:45. An hour later, I’m writing this posting.
The movie lists. There are three, all ordered chronologically.
The main list is Arnold’s Favorites: movies that have given me pleasure, that I have watched repeatedly (five or more times), and that I recommend enthusiastically to others. This is a personal thing, as idiosyncratic as the topics I post about on this blog; probably no one else would favor these 14 movies.
The second list is of those Greatest Movies of All Time that I have viewed. Now, there’s a ton of acknowledged-great movies I have never seen, or (in a few cases), have started to watch but couldn’t stick with. I am not a cinéaste and not a film critic, just a guy who’s seen a lot of movies in a long life; please do not twit me about my boorishness and pig-ignorance.
The third list began life as Movies for the Day the Dog Died (to soothe my Columbus household on that unhappy occasion), but should be seen as something like Movies to Chase Grief Away. Again, these work for me; many comedy movies do not (to be therapeutic for me, a movie has to be either good-hearted or extremely silly).
My Favorites (the main list)
The Gay Divorcee (1934), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Fanny and Alexander (1982) (several versions, all of them very long, all remarkable), Mel Brooks’s To Be or Not To Be (1983), Tampopo (1985), The Lost Boys (1987), The Birdcage (1996), Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute(2006)
Greatest Movies of All Time that I’ve viewed
Citizen Kane (1941), Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948), Vertigo (1958), Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (1959), À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960), La ciocara (Two Women) (1960) (though I’m not sure I could bear to watch it again)
Movies to Chase My Grief Away
Duck Soup (1933), A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), Desk Set (1957), And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), Foul Play (1978), The In-Laws (1979), Airplane! (1980), A Fish Called Wanda (1988), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) — plus, from the main list, Some Like It Hot, Rocky Horror, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, To Be or Not To Be, The Birdcage
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