Mother's Day, Birthday, And Influences From My Mother

This comes two days after Mother's Day, but it also happens to be my mother's birthday today.  A very special happy birthday shoutout to her from her favourite son.  Many times on the podcast that I co-host, The Movie Breakdown, I have made reference to the movie influences my dad is responsible for.  To be honest, I did watch a lot of movies with him.  He would set the VCR to record movies on Saturday nights, usually being Abbot and Costello, Vincent Price, or the swashbuckling effort of Sinbad the pirate.  As a teenager, we would have movie festivals, and it was during one such event that I saw my first Monty Python movies.

Much more subtle, yet still ever present, is the role that my mother played in influencing my tastes.  Alastair Sim may be most well known as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, bringing a brash and uncaring presence to the screen, doing justice to one of story telling's most famous character arcs.  I never would have pictured him in a comedy.  That changed when my mother introduced me to The Belles of St. Trinians, a 1954 comedy where Sims plays both a school headmistress and her brother.

I don't remember as much of the film as i would like, but I know that I enjoyed it a lot, getting a lot of laughs out of Sims' dual performance.  This wasn't the only comedy of classic age that my mother brought into my life.  I got exposed to Some Like it Hot, which was my first look at Jack Lemmon.  I would meet up with Lemmon again in Grumpy Old Men, this time finding out about Walter Matthau.  The two showed incredible comedic presence, and I could easily understand why my mother enjoyed these talents so much.

There are wonderful memories of hearing my mother laugh uncontrollably while watching movies.  She will laugh when something's funny, but a certain type of hilarity is needed to really bring the giggles.  I don't think I will ever forget watching Home Alone and What About Bob with her.  The laughter that we shared in those moments was transformative, memories that force a wonderful grin on my face.

There is also something that my mother said around the time of Home Alone that has stuck with me.  When critics gave the movie poor ratings, my mother's response was 'what do the critics know?'  You may think that because I critique movies on blog and podcast form that I would take offence to a statement that took value away from trying to seriously analyze what makes a movie good.  But, ultimately, she made a point that is one of the most straightforward and true statements that could be made.

Honestly, who cares about what the critics are saying?  It doesn't matter.  I learned from my mother that you can enjoy something for what it is, and that it is okay to do that.  Critiquing a film is fine and all, but it is the personal experience of the viewer that matters most.  That's what really counts.  A critic just tries to act as a guide, and sometimes they can't grab the very things that will make viewers respond positively.  I try to set out reasons for why I like or dislike a film, but what matters is how you see it.  Honestly, that is seriously all that matters in the larger scheme of things.

From teaching me lessons about just enjoying movies, my mother also set me up for enjoying female centric material.  If there are simple things you need to know about my mother, its that she is bravely independent, proud to be a woman, proud of her accomplishments in male driven fields, and determination that woman are equal to men.  It is sad, but even in this 'enlightened' period, women still aren't on par with men in many aspects.  Look at top corporate structures.  Look at the tech industry.  Look at movies.

Now, these aren't movies, but they played a huge part in what I would call my feminist nature.  Every single week, we, as a family, would watch Murder, She Wrote.  Angela Lansbury walking around with a death curse that affects people around her, spending more time solving crimes than she does writing about them, which is odd because she is supposed to be a prolific author.  Anywho, I really enjoyed the Jessica Fletcher character.  Most of the times she had to deal with male sherifs, a lot of them brushing her aside for most of the episode until she had her easy to predict 'ah hah!' moment.  She, I suppose like my mother, was a woman in a man's world, just doing her thing.  And I loved it.

Also, there was The Golden Girls.  My mother showed me through this show that woman could be just as funny as men (we also watched Designing Women which did the same thing).  Really, this was a show with a top notch cast.  Rue McClanahan was the vivacious one.  Bea Arthur was down to earth, and, if I recall properly, a tad sarcastic.  Estelle Getty was the 'shoot from the hip' mother of Arthur.  And then we have Betty White, the criminally funny Rose, who always had a story about her time in St Olaf.  I didn't know this, but according to Wikipedia, this show is only one of three sitcoms  ever to have four talents earning an Emmy award.  It was deserved.  These woman throw away convention as to what a single woman in their later years would be like.  They were funny, they still had active sex lives (something that truly seemed groundbreaking for a show depicting older women), and they shared life together.

Yes, these are only two shows, but the groundwork that they laid has lasted through my entire life.  Sex didn't matter in making a story work.  That was what was proven.  I believe it with all of my heart, and I am continually dismayed every year when statistics of female participation in cinema come out.  It is wrong.  It is grossly wrong.  There is a chance that the #MeToo and Time's Up movements will begin to change things, but honestly I shed a tear over how unlikely it is that it will happen soon enough.

Of the top 100 grossing movies of 2017, only 8% were directed by women.  Ten percent of films had female writers.  A measly two fucking percent are cinematographers (I will be honest, this issue does make me unapologetically swear).  Twenty four percent of producers were females.  Women represented 14% of editors.  These numbers are not good.  While there have been better years, the numbers aren't much different since the turn of the century.  Movies with female protagonists was 24%, down four percent from 2016.

Something happened last year, though.  Something that could actually cause some change if the studio executives are paying close enough attention.  The top three grossing domestic movies all had a female lead.  This is definitive proof that the larger audience will accept not having male leads, and that it can be profitable for studios.

Even though I spent more time watching movies with my father, the influences of my mother are huge.  Three of my favourite protagonists of all time are female.  Ellen Ripley in Alien, Sarah Connor in Terminator, and Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street.  You could easily throw onto that list more recent entries like Rey from the recent Star Wars movies and Emily Blunt's Rita, from Edge of Tomorrow.

I love my mother a lot.  The support that she has shown me over the years is something that would take a full book to detail.  Growing up she taught me that equality matters.  Not just with gender, but with race and religion.  So, to celebrate my mother's birthday and Mother's Day, I say a huge 'thank you' to her.  You didn't just raise me, you shaped me.  And I am eternally thankful for that.