In Defense of A Cult Classic [One of Us! One of Us!]

This morning the horoscope that greeted me on my iGoogle homepage told me I was "fighting a rising tide of resentment." O RLY?

While it's true, I'm slogging my way through a cold by mixing coffee with the prescription baby speed I got during my last near-death experience (I'm currently typing this post with one hand while hanging from the heating vent above my cube... weeeeee!). AAAAnd to add insult to injury, I'm nursing a nasty paper cut on my left thumb from an unpaid bill in my purse. Damn you bill for being so humorously apropos in your pain-giving.

But as annoying as my own health maladies are, a few rough waves do not add up to a rising tide of resentment. That was until I read an article on Bostonist trash-talking one of my favorite movies of all time: Harold & Maude.

Apparently, The Brattle is hosting a 6-day lead up to Valentines Day by featuring a bunch of romantic movies. And this is the horrific treatment Harold & Maude was subjected to:

"Best Screening to Attend in a Hearse. Don't take a new lover to see Harold and Maude (screening Friday) unless he or she is sullen and aged 18-20. The rest of us find Hal Ashby's 1971 dark comedy prohibitively depressing, even if Cat Stevens does want us to Sing Out."

Did I mention one of the side-effects of these magic decongestant pills is fantastic irritability? Yeah, I forgot when I took one this morning too.

So what did my horoscope suggest I do with my "wave of resentment"? "Share your unspoken dilemma with a trustworthy friend or send your deepest secrets in an email to yourself and then ritually delete it to release the unresolved tension."

If that isn't a call to blogging-arms, I don't know what is.

So screw you Harold & Maude haters! It's a great movie! Not only because it is scored by one of my all-time favorite musicians, Cat Stevens, but because it's f*in hilarious. And so romantic. And for those freaked out by the huge age gap, you don't know what love is!!! (Haha, OK, so maybe that's the angry pills talking.)

But seriously, anyone coming out of that movie thinking it was "prohibitively depressing" was not paying attention. True Harold is faking his suicide left and right all over that movie (suicide=hilarious), but the whole point of the movie is that his relationship with Maude teaches him how to stop being so fucking emo and just live. (And if you were really paying attention, you'd notice the subtle scene where you see Maude's got a concentration camp number tattooed on her arm, which is never discussed but adds this intense higher layer to her joie-de-vivre personality.)

So. There.

/rant

Whew! That was fun. For those of you who have no clue what I'm ranting about, here's the 2nd trailer released for the movie back in 1971:

And for those in the Cambridge area this Friday night (I'm sadly out of town), you should definitely drag your S.O./friends/small dogs in purses, to check it out on the big screen.