Yesterday’s Guardian post about a dude who tried to retrace the steps of Aron Ralston (you probably know him as Heath Ledger James Franco in 127 Hours) and wound up with a broken leg struck a nerve with me. Apparently the guy wanted to go on the same route traveled by the now-famed hiker Ralston, who had to cut off his arm after being trapped by a boulder. This idiot who broke his leg, a 64-year old North Carolina native, said he was inspired by the film 127 Hours. What a moron! Hey, asshole, we are not the people we see in movies!
Of course, that doesn’t stop us from trying to be. I’m sure all of us, at one point or another, have made a pilgrimage to a location based on the fact that we saw it in a movie. Maybe you were a nerd who never got laid in high school and felt a deep spiritual connection with Devil’s Tower. And you watched Close Encounters Of The Third Kind every night and maybe jerked off to Richard Dreyfuss if that’s your thing. But then when you had the means and the time you actually WENT to Devil’s Tower. Because…why not? It was like you were the guy in the movie you watched fifty times!
See? We’ve all done it. Even I’ve done it. In fact I do it more than I should probably admit. Like, for example…
• Bonaventure Cemetery / Clary’s Cafe (Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil) – I have an excuse, my mom has a house in Savannah, Georgia. Both times I’ve visited she has taken me to different sights featured in the movie. Even though Bonaventure is a destination for anyone who visits the city, Clary’s is a little more…local I guess. So when I had the option of eating there or somewhere else for my last breakfast in town, I chose Clary’s, perhaps just to say I’ve eaten there. It could have been worse — I could have re-watched the film to try and determine what John Cusack’s character was having for breakfast when he ate there, and then ordered that dish. That would have been more like retracing the steps of a movie character through a dangerous canyon.
• “Waterloo” (Bill And Ted’s Excellent Adventure) – I went to San Dimas High School (their football field isn’t much to look at), I tried to find the gas station where Rufus meets them with the time machine (there’s a Circle K in San Dimas but the actual gas station is in Arizona), and I went to the water park in San Dimas. But that’s not where they filmed the “Waterloo” water park scene for the movie. If you set the movie in a town with a water park, why would you need to film a water park scene in a different city!? It doesn’t make any sense. Then again, I’m not a film producer so what the fuck do I know? Well…nothing, apparently.
• The Convenience Store From Clerks – You can’t grow up in New Jersey and come of age when Kevin Smith was making good movies and NOT try to track down all the filming locations for his various movies. The best-publicized and most-famous of which was the convenience store from Clerks. It wasn’t that impressive in person. In fact, the whole experience was about as exciting as the time I was already eating at some boring Mexican restaurant on the west side and I just happened to find out from the owner of the joint that a scene from Jerry McGuire was filmed there. This was my reaction: “….”
• Quick Stop (Happiness) – Much like the Savannah filming locations, the Livingston, NJ locations where Todd Solondz filmed scenes from Happiness, Storytelling and Welcome To The Doll House were incidental visitations. It wasn’t like I had to plan a trip around finding places that appeared in his movies. I just had to get really stoned and say, “I could use some Twinkies right now” and I’d wind up at the Quick Stop where Dylan Baker’s character masturbates to a Tiger Beat or whatever the fuck that little boy teeny bopper magazine was. Although I didn’t seek it out, I would always bring out-of-town friends or girlfriends to the Quick Stop when I gave them driving tours of my hometown. In fact, if you’re ever around Livingston when I am you should let me take you on a nostalgia tour. I’ll show you all the stops where I used to get handjobs in middle school and high school, some places where I threw up, and all the filming locations from Solondz movies. It’ll be the best 3 hour tour of your life. Trust me.
