Super 8 and Some Movie Therapy

by Patrick Bromley This has been a rough week and I'm looking for help. "I know bad things happen. Bad things happen. But you can s...

by Patrick Bromley

This has been a rough week and I'm looking for help.

"I know bad things happen. Bad things happen. But you can still live. You can still live."

So, this week. I know I'm not speaking for only myself when I say it has been a difficult one. Many of us are feeling hurt and disappointed after the 2016 presidential election, and it's not necessarily because the candidate we supported didn't win. I have supported losing candidates as many times as I have winning ones and it didn't feel like this. The hurt is because of the person that received the majority of electoral college (not popular) votes and will be taking office in January. You may like Donald Trump. You may have voted for him. That is your right. It is my right to say that he is the worst candidate and very possibly the worst human being to be nominated for president in my lifetime, because George Wallace predates me. And now I live in a country in which millions of people either don't mind the truly heinous shit the man has said and done and stands for or they outright support it. My faith in most things feels completely broken.

It's hard to get up the energy or the excitement to talk about movies when we all feel like this.

So I'm going to talk about something that I haven't talked about publicly at all. In fact, it's not something I've even talked about privately with anyone outside of my doctor and my wife. I have suffered from depression for what I suspect is many years; again, I can remember sitting on a set of stairs at my grandmother's on my sixth or seventh birthday and weeping uncontrollably because I hadn't accomplished anything in the last year and because I was a year closer to dying. The actual clinical diagnosis has only been for a while. I'm getting treatment for it and every fucking day is a struggle, some less so and some more so.

This isn't a case of me feeling sorry for myself, either. I know that I have a good life. I have the best wife whom I'm crazy in love with. We have a great marriage. I have awesome kids who are like a little present every day. We have a house. We have jobs. I have family and friends who I love dearly. I have this place and all of you. But the reason that depression is such a motherfuck is because it doesn't care about any of that. Look at this way: I'm also diabetic, but diabetes doesn't give a shit if I had a good day and I'm happy in my marriage and all that. It's still going to attack my body. Depression is like that. Just because things are going fairly well for me one day doesn't mean it's not going to make me want to kill myself that same night. I know many people reading this (including my very good friend Adam Riske, whose openness on the subject I have always admired) experience the same thing, so I am not a snowflake.

But I have kept it a secret, because I know that there is still a stigma attached to the subject -- people who talk about depression are just dramatic or looking for attention. I don't want to be a burden to anyone, so I don't talk about it. There are people close to me who I think about telling from time to time and then I realize they have their stuff to worry about and I don't want to put it on anyone else. But I also don't want to be guilty of playing to the stigma, which I'm doing if I continue to treat it as a dirty secret. And then this week happened and I got tired of suffering silently. Many of us need to lean on one another more than ever before, and I can't get help or be of help to anyone else if I'm not being honest with myself or others.

I hate writing this. I'm not one to talk about myself a whole bunch. One of the reasons I like hosting our podcast is because it gives me a chance to talk with my friends about something other than me or my life. But I got so low this week (to be fair, it was even before the election on Tuesday) that the only thing that brought me back was some of the friends who reached out. Doug. Rob DiCristino. Amy Coppage. Josh Pearlman (a prince). Heath Holland sent Erika and me a note that may have singlehandedly brought be back from the brink. And while the majority of days I see social media as being a mostly poisonous place where everyone can be anonymously shitty and divisive, it was a respite around election time. Everyone I'm connected with was expressing the same things I was feeling, only more hopeful and optimistic. And while it doesn't have the power to cure this particular depressive episode, it does make me want to at least try to fight it off. I got messages that said that our site and our community has helped people through difficult times, and that it would be something that these same people would turn to for help now. I don't take that lightly. It means more than I can ever express, actually. Thank you for that.

Which brings me back to movies and to Super 8. I have been laid up with back pain since the morning of the election, trying to find movies to take my mind off of everything. It's always worked in the past. Back in the '90s, when I had more time and fewer responsibilities, I would disappear into a dark theater for 12-15 hours at a time during an especially difficult day. But this time, nothing was helping. And the thought of trying to actually write about any movie -- be it The Love Witch (so good) or Don't Fuck in the Woods (you're fine) or The Frontier (still haven't seen it) -- seemed totally impossible. It all felt hopeless. I felt hopeless.

And then I thought of that quote from Super 8 and seized on it, and for the first time it felt like I wanted to watch and write about something. Like a lot of my favorite movies of recent years, be it Cloud Atlas or this year's Beyond the Gates, it is a movie about healing -- sometimes too explicitly so. I get it. It's not a subtle movie. I know that people have major problems with Super 8, whether it's writer/director JJ Abrams' slavish attempt to recreate an '80s Spielberg/Amblin film or his overreliance on lens flares or an alien monster that shows up in the second half and throws off the balance of what is already a very good coming of age movie about some kids trying to make a horror movie. I can't begrudge anyone their issues with the film, even if I don't agree with them. I love Super 8. I have loved it since I saw it opening weekend. It was my favorite movie of 2011. I continue to love it every time I see, and rewatching it tonight when I'm at one of the lowest points I can remember made me appreciate it in a whole new way. It is medicine for my heartbreak.

I'm sure a big reason I'm finding solace in Super 8 is because its naked appeal to my sense of nostalgia is comforting, even though that's a big part of why people attacked it when it was first released (and for some reason, many of these same people are jizzing all over Stranger Things because memory is a fickle thing). But I don't just love Super 8 because it reminds me of the movies I used to watch as a kid. I love it because it reminds me of what it was like to be a kid. Joe Lamb was me. His friends were my friends. We spent our weekends shooting little homemade horror movies and comedies. We might disagree because we liked the same girl (though, unlike Alice Dainard, the girl in my story never liked me back). I know what it feels like to care so much about something so small and weird like monster movies when the rest of the universe is saying I should be going to baseball camp.

Super 8 is also a movie about finding respite in movies when the world around you is falling apart. Joe Lamb's mother has just died. His father doesn't understand him and makes no real attempt at having a relationship. He disappears into movies and models and monsters. Most of us can relate. It's why we're here, reading a movie site and trying to connect to one another at a time that feels so scary and hopeless. Like Joe Lamb bringing his friends together to survive and hopefully defeat the alien monster -- even picking up new friends like Alice and the stoned kid who works at the PhotoMat -- we have all assembled here or on Twitter or on Facebook or anywhere you find community and we're trying to survive together. It's not just this election, either. It's every day. Life can be hard. The world can kick your ass more often than not. But we have each other and we have movies. That, to me, has always been one of the great messages of Super 8. How can I possibly not love it?

There's a great scene in the movie -- one of many -- in which Alice Dainard sneaks into Joe's room and they watch some Super 8 footage of Joe's late mother. Forget just how absolutely wonderful the young actors' performances are. Forget how lovely and delicate Abrams is in the way he directs the scene. Those are reasons the scene is always great. There's a particular moment that stood out on this viewing, though, in which Alice, now in tears as she reveals that her father was supposed to be working the shift on which Joe's mom died at the factory, says that she knows he wishes it was him and that sometimes she does, too. Joe's immediate response is "Don't say that." There is such sincerity, such decency in those three words. After a year and half of absolutely poisonous rhetoric, it felt revelatory. Joe could easily blame Alice's dad for what happened to his mom. Part of us always wants to find a scapegoat to help ease our own pain, because it's easier to feel angry than it is to hurt. I heard so much of that during the election. I have heard a lot of it since the results, too. Joe doesn't do that. He takes the high road. Him, a 13-year old kid.

I won't make the case that Super 8 works as a 1-1 metaphor for this assfuck of an election, even if it does tell the story of a "kid" who longs for the presence of a "female figure" and who feels like he's misunderstood in his own "home" and then there is an enormous nomination explosion signaling the arrival of giant monster, who begins stomping around and destroying everything in its path and eating people and instilling fear in everyone until the "kid" finally accepts that he must let go of the hope that his female figure isn't coming to save him and gives the speech quoted above: "I know bad things happen. Bad things happen. But you can still live. You can still live." I mean, you can maybe read it as a metaphor but it's not like it's all that accurate.

Or maybe that monster is like depression. It shows up out of nowhere, tearing your whole world up and leaving you confused and scared and the only way to face it is to say "I know bad things happen, but you can still live." When Joe watches the alien fly away in the movie's final moments and lets go of his mom's locket as Michael Giacchino's score (one of my favorites ever written) swells, there are no words for how deeply I am affected. I cry every single time. I'm crying right now as I write this, though I'm not sure if it's because I'm remembering the scene or if I'm just terrified of letting go and putting all of this out there into the world. I'm scared that I can't take it back. I'm scared that it's going to change the way everyone looks at me or thinks about me. Or maybe it's because this has been such a difficult week and the uncertainty and disappointment at being on the wrong side of history that weights on us all is breaking me down once more. Maybe it's just late.

If you're rejoicing this week because your vision for the country is now closer to being realized, hey, good for you. But if you're like me and you're crushed over how we got to this point where we are so divided and one side doesn't even recognize the other and scared about what tomorrow will bring (and the day after that, and the day after that), at least know that we have movies and we have each other. I can't promise that "we'll get through this" or "it's all going to be ok," because that's just not how I feel right now. What I can promise is that we can try to get through it the way I've had to learn how to get through everything: one day at a time. One movie at a time. If all of us at F This Movie! can do anything to lighten your load, to entertain you or make you laugh, to give you a community of like-minded movie lovers or just distract you for an hour, we will do our best to do it. One day at a time. One movie at a time.

Thanks for reading this, not just today but any day you're here with us. I know bad things happen, but you can still live. We have each other and we have movies.