Snapshots

Yesterday I felt really happy and in love all day. We met for lunch and when I saw him waiting outside the restaurant, I started running toward him. He was laughing, reaching out his arms to catch me, and he looked so handsome. It was a wonderful moment. I can't imagine growing out of stuff like running to meet him, or holding hands, or tickle fights. It seems like most grown-ups do, but maybe we won't.

Dancing at my friend's wedding was a good moment too. If I ever make a movie, I want the first scene to be a high school-age couple sitting on a wall with lots of other people watching fireworks burst over a lake. The subtitle will be something like July 1972, in italics that fade away after a few seconds, very nostalgic, like they're remembering the ecstatic beginnings of their relationship. The movie could chronicle what's happened to them since. Or, it doesn't have to. Mainly I just want to shoot that first scene. Anyway, so if I make a second movie, I want the opening scene to be slow-motion dancing to "Jump Around". It should be zoomed in and blurry and so slowed-down at first that it's not clear what it is - and no sound to start with. Gradually the colors compose themselves into the shapes of people, and you realize they're jumping in place, and the music fades in, slowed-down and unrecognizable. All the time, the names of the principal actors are appearing over the scene. As the camera reels (a little drunkenly) over the people, who are lit up from behind, it should pause for a few quick in-focus shots of people's faces, hair flying up, laughing. Mainly the face of one guy who is going to be the central character (or at least central to the girl who is the narrator, who is dancing with him and is besotted with him). His hair flies up and he smiles at the camera, and you realize you are looking through her eyes, and in the same moment the visuals speed up to normal speed, and the music comes in loud and normal speed - "So get out your seats and jump around! Jump around!" Similar theme to the first movie, I guess. Still, lots of film-makers make essentially the same movie over and over. John Irving writes the same book over and over. It's what they want to say, their contribution to the world. So that would be mine - the incredible beauty and sort of tearjerky happiness that exists in a relationship snapshot.