The Oscars: who cares?

BFFs fall in love...yeah, not so much.

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Though arguably the best year for movies stateside since I-don't-know-when, the Oscar Awards set to honor the highest achievements (according to Academy voters) of 2007, hold absolutely zero interest for me this year.  And it's not even largely because the build-up to the Academy Awards has been diminished this year by the (recently resolved) WGA strike.  I thought I was like everyone else, and it was.  But when I actually gave it some thought yesterday, wondering if I would call my friend Devon and see if she'd be interested in watching the show together this evening, I realized I didn't care because the last year at the movies - in spite of their excellence or ambition - has been complicated for me.  Who did I see those movies with?  What did we each think of them?  I can remember the conversations. The ones I saw by myself are tinged with the sadness of having had to go alone because we were unable to go together.  The memory of willing myself to go see a film I knew I'd probably enjoy on its own merits, when all I wanted to do was sit in darkened movie house beside my friend and get lost in the world on the screen beside him.  Feel the warmth radiating off of him when he didn't shift further away in his chair.  Fight the incessant desire to reach for his hand, knowing that just the graze of my knee against his caused him to flinch away.  And then trying to allow myself to be reabsorbed in the picture, stay focused on the screen instead of being intensely conscious of the person sitting next to me.  All of it was part of the pleasure of the movies.   Pleasure because of the stupid hope that he might one day reach for me in the dark or hold me closer or longer when we said good-bye afterward.

And it never mattered what we saw -- only, of course, it always seemed so special to be able to experience a truly

passion, raw and repressed

good film for the first time together -- it just mattered to be with him and that he cared to know my reaction afterwards and that, little by little, over the years, I thought I learned to limn the shape of his mind by the light  of images flickering on a screen and when he'd try out his ideas on me first before he committed them to writing that was for everyone else, for anyone.  Tracking how his opinions evolved from our conversation to the ones he wrote down.  Sometimes seeing my own reactions having exerted some influence on his - the way his take would sometimes shape my own.  The fact that I was the only one - perhaps even including him - who could see these things.

This year, the Oscars have nothing to do  with how I remember the movies that will be getting awards or that will have been robbed of their statuettes.  Much less the ones that weren't nominated and never even given a chance.

Never given a chancers don't get invited to the festivities. He's made it clear that I'm not invited and not to be given a chance.