How Two Hit Movies From the '90s Changed My Life
Every once in awhile, I’ll have an idea for a piece I’d really like to see come to life. I’ll conjure up a pitch, send it to publications I think are a good fit, and see what happens. Sometimes I get lucky and the stars align, like this piece I wrote for Vice earlier this year. But more often than not, I get a rejection—or worse: complete radio silence—from editors (I hear “no” a lot in my line of work).
But lemons can be turned into lemonade, like this blog post from earlier this year: a failed pitch turned into content just for me. When I believe in something and really want to see it come to life, I’ll write it anyway. What I create for others in my business is fundamentally different from what I write for fun: it’s a bit of a dichotomy, and I like both for different reasons. (So what does this have to do with the title of this post? Well…)
25 years ago in late December of 1994, my mom and I went to see a movie together at the cinema in the mall close to our neighborhood in the Houston suburbs. It was an outing just for us, without my dad and brother along, and we were there to see Little Women, a movie in which the guys had zero interest. Once we got to the theater, we looked up at the marquee and saw another movie we also wanted to see: a movie my brother would have been so upset if we saw it without him. We’d intended on a girls’ day with a traditionally “girly” movie, but we made a snap decision to pivot and see a different flick, and it changed my life forever.
Dumb and Dumber was an instant classic: endlessly quotable and hilarious, it spoke to my then-13-year-old soul in a way I wasn’t fully prepared for. The slapstick humor; the outrageous gags and physical comedy that Jim Carrey made himself famous for in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective earlier that year… it was all just so perfect and amazing, and I couldn’t get enough.
I’ve since watched both Little Women and Dumb and Dumber more times than I can reasonably keep track of, and I love both movies for different reasons. I refer to Little Women as ‘mac and cheese for the eyes’: it’s a go-to, wholesome comfort movie that’s beautiful to watch and remains an all-time favorite. In, heh, stark contrast, Dumb and Dumber is a movie that never won’t make me bust a gut: between the ridiculous characters and gross-out humor (the toilet scene… ‘nuff said), it’s a flick that always puts me in a better mood.
Seeing both of these films as a teenager helped me recognize that I’m a dichotomy: I like some girly things (hello, clotheshorse) but I’ve always considered myself somewhat of a tomboy. I started playing drums and percussion in the sixth grade and I’ve loved video games for as long as I can remember (I bought myself one of these last year and it’s about the best thing ever). I can be a total goofball like Harry and Lloyd, and a strong, creative, independent woman like the March sisters.
These movies are more than just nostalgia for me: they’re milestones in my journey of embracing who I am. Things we create can have a larger effect that we might think, which is why I write things like this that I believe in and want to see in the world. I’m embracing the dichotomy: a boyish girl, writing for work and play, and loving it.
(The image for this post is a snapshot of the small DVD collection at my house. Can you guess which are mine and which belong to my husband?)