Best Movie Line Ever

I’ve seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show a few times over the years, but a couple of weeks ago we watched it again with the kids.

Some of their friends had already seen it in elementary school – I thought that was pushing it. When the kids were little about the only things they were allowed to watch were PBS and the Food Network. But by the time they reached middle school, they’d come across more objectionable things on prime time TV. I don’t even want to know what they’ve Googled at friends’ houses.

Anyway, I was glad we decided to watch it, because it contains my new favorite movie line. Besides being hilarious as always, it’s proved to be useful, too.

About three quarters of the way through the movie, after committing murder and mayhem and turning a good portion of the remaining cast into stone, the deviant Dr. Frank N. Furter pauses, mugs for the camera, and pouts, “It’s not easy having a good time.”

It’s impossible for us to picture Tim Curry sporting lipstick and uttering that line, and not laugh. That quote has dispelled family arguments. It’s averted a few adolescent meltdowns. It’s become my silent mantra. I think of it while fighting my way past the herd around the buffalo wing samples at Costco. I mutter it when being forced to pick dog hair out of the clogged vacuum cleaner hose because company is coming. With the holiday season coming up, I just know it’s going to come in handy.

I’m sure the magic will eventually wear off, but until then I plan to get all the mileage I can out of that line. Because, you know, it’s not easy having a good time.

Is there a famous movie line that’s worked for you?

Zombie Mob Scene

Warning: A little fake blood and gore ahead...

A couple of independent filmmakers in our area are making a low budget zombie movie called Tales of a Fifth Grade Zombie Slayer. They plan to submit the short film to film festivals, and hope to develop it into a feature length film. For one scene they needed as many kid zombie extras as they could round up. My two kids and a couple of their friends joined in the fun.

The line to be zombified began forming at 7:00am. The director set up canopies in the back yard, and about half a dozen makeup artists got to work transforming neighborhood children into the pintsized undead. First kids got an airbrushing of a nice ghoulish grey, and from there they progressed to further stages of decomposition.

All this took place on what may have been the hottest day of the summer so far. More than 50 kids turned out for the scene. While they waited, they crowded together in the shade to keep their syrup-based flesh wounds from sliding off in the sun. When filming began six hours later, they were all looking pretty wilted…and probably felt perfectly in character. Fortunately the crew provided snacks and soft drinks to keep the zombies’ spirits up.

Zombie cheers!

Zombie stares...

Zombie knuckle bump.

And watching all those kids waiting around for the big scene brought my favorite image of the day...

Zombie satire: a whole line of zombie children slumped over their video games.

On-A-Manna Who?

We just watched the movie Short Circuit, one my husband and son have wanted to see. My daughter, at fourteen, is at an age where a campy 80’s robot movie is the perfect target for snarky comments. With every wisecrack we had to warn her not to spoil it for everyone else. But she did make one comment that struck me.

There’s a scene where the robot Number 5 is parachuting from a bridge and he yells, “Wheeeeee!”

Then right away my daughter snapped, “Robots do not use onomatopoeia.”

Something about that comment surprised me. Never mind the fact that even though the robot was using facial expression and following butterflies, the thing that bugged her the most was that he said wheeeee. What really impressed me was how effortlessly she recalled the word onomatopoeia.

I can appreciate reading and using examples of some cool literary devices, but the names don’t exactly roll off my tongue. I can’t remember them without first saying something like, “You know, whaddya call it…whaddya call it…that thing where the word sounds like the sound?”

Then of course I got distracted wondering whether the expression wheeeeee actually is an example of onomatopoeia. Is it meant to indicate the sound of wind rushing past our ears when we’re enjoying something like swinging, or parachuting off a bridge…wheeeeeeeee! (Of course, if we weren’t enjoying it we’d probably yell something more like aaaaaaaaaagghhh!) Or is it just an expression of emotion that only counts as onomatopoeia once we try to spell out the sound in writing?

So you can see the kind of thing that occupies my brain. At least I don’t spend time thinking up cute alliterative animal names like Wilhelmina Wombat or Sammy Slug. Oops, I just did.