Cru Jones Society

The Monday Confessional is where we convene at the beginning of each week to share our experiences, unburden our souls, and give the CJS Regulars a turn in getting their voices heard by the world. This week’s prompt allowed us to share that special part of ourselves that cries due to the goings on of characters that are almost always fictional. We asked you: What movie makes (or made) you cry? Many of our readers didn’t fear the emotion and let us have it. CJS Staff lets the waterworks go first, and the regulars shed their tears after. Then we’ll give you next week’s decidedly less sob-worthy question. Grab a box of tissues, and let’s dig in.

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E Dagger: I wear my emotions on my sleeve. You can pretty much guess how I’m feeling at any given moment using a minimal amount of brainpower (Exhibit A: E Dagger Pissface). But when it comes to movies, surprisingly I don’t tear up all that often. So many movies are engineered just to provoke this response from its audience that when utilizing such a transparent ploy, I usually find myself pissed off rendering the desired effect impossible for me. I’ll give a nod to Titanic though because even though I could see the tear-jerking moment coming down Main St. like a parade of elephants, it’s such a supremely crafted movie, I could help but get a little misty when Kate Winslet’s big butt says goodbye to Leonardo DiCaprio in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean while floating on that big door. Goddamn James Cameron.

That’s why I was so angry at the end of The Green Mile. This is a movie engineered solely for the purpose of turning on the waterworks, and because it made me sob (seriously, sob – right there in the theater with everyone else and everything), I’ve never watched it again. I love its director Frank Darabont, love Tom Hanks, and especially love supporting actor David Morse, but why would I want to put myself through that again? Jesus, how exhausting.

On a more personal note, there’s one scene in kids’ movie Paulie that got me real good the first few times I watched it. For those of you who don’t remember, Paulie is the story of a talking parrot who helps a little girl overcome her stuttering problem only to have her iron-hearted father send him away when the bird gets wrongfully blamed for an accident involving the little girl falling off the roof. The scene sees Paulie clinging to the back of his cage in the backseat of a car as the little girl chases after it down the street screaming “Don’t leave me, Paulie!” because her only friend is leaving forever. When I was a kid, my mom had allergy problems and her doctor (who we later learned was a complete quack) advised us to get rid of our pet parrot Vito who was my best friend. When he told us this, I cried my eyes out for days and couldn’t cope with the thought of losing my best friend forever. Seeing this sweet little girl have to go through that too brought all those memories flooding back and I couldn’t handle it. Thankfully, they’re reunited in the end, in the case of my story, we got a second opinion and found out the first guy was full of shit. All’s well that ends well, I guess.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up one last time the time I watched Garden State. This was also the last time I ever smoked pot, and after watching Zach Braff’s beautiful movie, I may or may not have exclaimed with tears in my eyes and a brain addled by pot, “You can never go home again!” Needless to say, I haven’t smoked pot since nor have I journeyed back to this flick. I’m too terrified of another embarrassing emotional outburst like this to repay a visit to either.

Lee S. Hart: A few hours after writing about how I would kick the crap out of Fred Durst I watched a movie and little did I know at the start it would be the one I would end up writing about for this week.

The most recent movie that made me cry was Marley & Me. The thing about it was my friend said I would cry and I just sort of wrote her off. Then watching the movie I could see where it was going. So I thought I would be able to prepare myself and I act like I was 26 and heartless. But then I got to the end and I could not stop the tears and I did my best impression of number 4.

Before this movie the one that always comes to mind as one that made me cry was Mrs. Doubtfire. I know this may seem like an odd movie to cause tears, and I do hate to admit it made me cry. But there is a scene at the end where Robin Williams is on his TV show and he is talking directly to his children, and not just a Carol Burnett ear tug, but actually talking to them and this dialog about how he will always love them yadda yadda yadda. This got to me because I watched it shortly after my parents divorced and my dad moved out. It was really just a case of timing. I’m sure, or at least I hope, this movie wouldn’t make me cry today, unless it’s because I realize I have nothing better to do with my life than watch Mrs. Doubtfire again.

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Hart isn’t the only one choking up at Marley & Me and we can’t help but wonder why people willingly subjected themselves to this movie. It’s a story about a dog, and dogs always die. Have you people never seen Turner & Hooch? Of course, Marley & Me made $143 million, so maybe we don’t know anything. People love to cry about dogs apparently… including two CJS Regulars below.

Deuce: I’ll start this off on a mostly pathetic note and then move on.

I got teary eyed during Deep Impact. There I said it. Maybe I was tired when I watched the movie or maybe I had just fought with my parents or something, but the scene when they’re in the traffic jam and the kid’s parents tell him he has to leave on the motorcycle and take his little sibling along with him while they stay and wait for imminent death in a tidal wave, it got to me. There. Done with that. Moving on.

One recent movie actually made me ball like a little girl who just watched her pony eat her kitten while both were getting crushed by a locomotive. That movie was Marley & Me. What’s sad about this is that I knew what was going to happen in the story. I had seen Mrs. Deuce cry when she was reading the end of the book so it wasn’t a surprise. I guess that’s the point, though, it wasn’t a surprise. The movie just did such a good job of conveying that real relationship between a dog and his family and how close and amazing that can be and how great it can make you feel. Since it did such a good job of portraying this it just broke me down in spite of the fact I knew the end was sad. I tried to hug my own dog afterwards and he just looked at me as if to say, “What the heck’s your deal? Why don’t you quit trying to hug me and just give me a treat dammit.”  I don’t regret the fact that I cried and I am sure happy that Trey is way too young to remember seeing his dad ball like that. “I did my best!”

Augie.Maestas: This is easy. Marley & Me. I have watched this a couple of times already, and each time at the very end, I have teared up. There is just something that clicks in your head of a past pet that when it passes away, a piece of you goes with it. I have two that I can relate with. One, when my hamster Frank a.k.a. Petey died. It was a very sad moment as I had this hamster for 4 years. I let him crawl around all over the place and we had a good time. He was so cute in his ball rolling around the front room. I miss that guy. And of course, the family dog, Bear, who we had for 16 years. He was a good dog, fun to play with. He would follow me around when I mowed the lawn. He would chase birds, flies, everything. He would wrestle with you when he wanted to play and fake bite you to let you know, he is the Alpha. Never broke skin though. He was there when we were lonely and there to protect us when someone was messing with the house. But then he got old and his hips were going out. It was just time for him. I miss him a lot. Marley & Me makes me remember the good times and how much I miss those two. I have not met a person who has not cried to this movie.

 

Lady E: For the longest time I never really cried at movies. It would take movies like Beaches or Stepmom to make me cry. Everything else I just dismissed as formulaic and/or unreal. That is until E made me watch SLC Punk.

I always get angry at people over the age of 18 dressing in their punk and/or Goth uniform. Crazy tattoos, facial piercings, Mohawks, etc. I am sorry but unless you are in a successful band (but really, even they don’t wear the uniform!) or plan on working at Hot Topic for the rest of your life, you need to Grow Up, and join the real world. De Certeau is right, the best way to destroy the system is from within it, and these posing assholes would know this if they were actually as smart as they like to think they are.

So this is my thought process going into the movie, and these characters are just proving my point the entire way through it. For me, one of two things had to happen to the two main characters, either they had to grow the eff up, or die. So here is indignant Lady E watching this movie, and (SPOILER) when one of the characters does die, I LOSE IT. I knew the formula, I knew this was going to happen. But to watch a friend find his best friend dead was one of the most heart wrenching things I have ever seen. Shit, I am tearing up as I am writing about this! I cried through the funeral, and through the end when the main character grows up. I think that this movie is one of the best coming of age stories out there. We have all had events in our lives that we can look back on and say, “This is the moment I grew up,” and while they are all different, they are all relate-able, and they all hurt and sucked. SLC Punk does such a great job of encapsulating these emotions and feelings, that it is now the movie that I turn to when I need a good cry.

Brad H: The most recent experience where I can remember shedding tears during a movie was during the first few minutes of Up, during the montage that takes us through Carl and Ellie’s adult life and the disappointments they encounter that keep them from achieving their dream of traveling the world and then again when Carl passes the explorer badge to Russell. It’s something you could feel the audience respond to with no one vocalizing their empathy.

Now does “crying out your penis” count? Cuz I’ve got some recommendations for that too…

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Crying out your penis? That sounds like way more fun! Which reminds us… here comes Halloween!

Every year it seems women go over the top in trying to out-slut themselves, and we personally couldn’t be happier about that. With that in mind, we’re putting our question to you in the spirit of both sluttiness and non-sluttiness alike. We want you to share your answers to this question: What was your best Halloween costume of all-time? Did you slut it up to the delight of everyone at the bar last year? Did you rock that Power Ranger outfit like no one else in 2^nd grade? Will you wear that Heath Ledger-styled Joker outfit again even though it’s already woefully dated? Give us your best!

We want to know more about all our readers. So don’t hold back. If you haven’t confessed, or it’s been awhile, or even if you did it last week, we want to hear from you. Don’t be shy and send us your response, along with your posting name to staff@crujonessociety.com and we’ll put them up next week.

Dagger & Hart