My Love Affair with Jeff Bridges

I've had an ongoing love affair with Jeff Bridges for 35 years. We are the same age; we grew up together. I've been in the dark with him for hours at a time. I've looked deep into his eyes, reached out to comfort him when he's been in emotional and physical pain, and watched him tenderly as he's slept, even sometimes when it's been the hitchy slumber of a drunk. I've kept him in my heart for all these years.

Okay, so it's been a one-sided love affair. No, I've never met him. Never written to him. Never texted him. Never e-mailed him. Never tried. When we grew up together, it was at the same time but not in the same place. When I was in the dark with him, it was in a movie theater with him up on the screen and me in my seat. When I reached out to him, it was in my mind directed toward characters he was playing, not in reality. But it's been a love affair nevertheless, because I admire, respect and adore him. And, every man I've ever been married to (one) or seriously dated (uh, more than one) has known that I'd be faithful to them but had a free pass for Jeff Bridges, just in case.

Jeff Bridges is tall and a bit beefy (my kind of man!), naturally sexy, and amazingly talented both as an actor and a musician. He can play the piano and guitar -- well, too! -- and can carry a tune with that low, gravelly voice better than a lot of so-called real singers. Plus, in every interview with him I've ever seen, he's been patient, kind, humble, and has touted his great love of his wife of several decades, Sue. How rare are those qualities all together in a celebrity?!

My love affair with Jeff Bridges started in 1975, when he starred in the movie Hearts of the West. As Lewis Tater, a naive young writer who goes West to seek his fortune and bumbles into becoming a short-lived movie star, he was hilarious and endearing, and he captured my heart immediately. The rest of the world basically ignored him. It took absolutely forever for it to go to video and to this day, Hearts of the West is not available on DVD or Blu-ray.

I have not seen all of Jeff Bridges' movies. I mean good grief, there are about 70 of them! But while other people first remember him in The Last Picture Show in 1971 with Cybill Shepherd or TRON in 1982, and I thought he was cute and sexy in Hearts of the West, his amazing acting ability first hit me like a Mack truck in 1992 in American Heart. In that, he played a just-out-of-prison ne'er do well whose teenage son (Edward Furlong) shows up for him to take care of, which is the last thing he wants. Though he has since played many great and diverse roles, I think his characterization of Bad Blake in the new film Crazy Heart was the epitome of a showcase for his talent, range and, yes, heart. Close-ups are a study in effective subtlety; he is bravely naked in his expressions and mannerisms, which give his character depth and dimension.

Jeff Bridges can play dirty, grody, out-of-it characters better than nearly anyone I know. Sometimes in those roles he gets cleaned up later, sometimes he doesn't. I like him better all showered and shaved, but I admire him more when he's playing it rough.

There are so many really good roles that he has played. What a filmography! I want to catch up to see more of them. Currently my two favorite Jeff Bridges movies are:
1) 1989's The Fabulous Baker Boys with his brother Beau and Michelle Pfeiffer. The Bridges boys portraying the Baker boys, with all of their fantastic piano playing, blew me away. They really played all of those songs, even though it was Dave Grusin on the the soundtrack. My favorite line as I remember it is when Michelle's character says to Jeff's character, "Women need a reason; men just need a place."
2) Crazy Heart, his most recent role for which he's finally getting long overdue recognition from his peers. I'm hoping he snags the Oscar for that role. I immediately ordered the soundtrack, the deluxe version with seven extra songs, and am amazed at and impressed with the songs sung and played by him, Colin Farrell (how unlikely a star country-singer!) and Ryan Bingham, who wrote the Oscar-nominated song from the movie, "The Weary Kind." I like so many of the songs -- here's one of my favorites:



I don't love him in all of the ones I've seen. I admit, his role in The Fisher King didn't do much for me, or his portrayal of "The Dude" in The Big Lebowski, even though many people consider them wonderful, quirky movies. And when he was puking his guts out in Crazy Heart with his greasy hair plastered against his head, he was downright disgusting. He's just not appealing to me like that. But you know what they say: We like someone because; we love someone although. I love ya, Jeff, and all of your personas.

Target #8 and Love Potion #9

Earlier this week, my neighbor and co-conspirator Cathy and I were chatting with one of the two fabulous high school kids we're mentors for in our Knowledge To Go mentoring program at a local high school. We asked him what he was going to do this summer. He said he might get a job. He's 16. Good for him!

So of course she and I got to reminiscing about our first jobs. My very first job at 16 was as a cashier in the ticket booth at the Valley Drive-In Theater in Denver. It was in Southeast Denver on E. Evans and S. Monaco, as I recall, which wasn't yet a thru street. The Valley Drive-In is looooong gone now. That was quite a summer. That job was a movie lover's dream. I got to see all of the movies in the Wolfberg Theaters chain for free all summer. (Scroll down to the comments section when you click on the link.) I pretty much only went to the movies at my own drive-in, and that was after my shift was over. In those days, the drive-ins replayed the first movie after the second movie ran. Ah, double features. And a cartoon first. A long lost mem'ry.

My manager, Dave M. (I'll not use his last name to protect the guilty) was just 24, which seemed very old to me at the time. Well, very mature, at least. Ha! He loved to catch kids who sneaked in by hiding in the trunk. He was always suspicious of a car with just one person in it, and, sure enough, he caught many by just nailing the one-person cars.

He also loved to catch lovers in the act. One of my fellow high-schoolers would come to the drive-in nearly every Saturday night with her boyfriend, and Dave was laying for her (so to speak). Finally one night, he struck it rich. He caught them -- he told me he wanted to tell the guy to move over so he could take a turn -- and hauled them into the office and gave them a serious talking to. He knew he wasn't going to turn them in to the police -- he just wanted to scare them. He really got a charge out of doing that. Dave also drove me around in his red Mustang and showed me where the used condoms were on the ground -- I'd never seen a condom, new or used -- and he'd lament if he hadn't caught the wearers. I don't know if he was some kind of a pedophile or just a horny 24-year-old. I certainly didn't think about it at the time, innocent and wide-eyed as I was. (I didn't share anything in this paragraph with my high school mentee.)

The next summer, between high school graduation and the start of my freshman year of college, I worked at Target. I was a "floater," someone who filled in for people who were on vacation or out sick or worked in departments that were short-handed. I worked in nearly every department in the store that summer and got to know where everything was. Men's was probably the most fun department, even though many more women shopped in Men's than men. Wigs was the worst department because it was so dead. Working at Target that summer was fun. I flirted with one of the stock boys, who was also there for the summer before starting college. His name was Lanny, as I recall. He flirted back, but we never progressed beyond that.

Target had really cheapo clothes back then, so I didn't stock up. It's come a long way.... I go to my neighborhood Target quite a bit, though still not for clothes.

A friend of mine accused me of making it up that I worked at Target back then, since she insisted that there were no Targets back in those oooooold days. Well, I knew I did work at a real, genuine Target (same distinctive logo all these years). I ran into a construction exec from Target shortly after that and told him what my friend had said. He said that store, on Colorado Boulevard in Denver, was Target Store #8. So there, Michele!

Oops...I just remembered what my very first job was. I was probably around 9 or 10, 11 at the most. I sent away for Parchment Charm All-Occasion Cards and sold them door-to-door in the neighborhood. In those days, you could do that, even if you were just 10. I was not good at sales then. I think my pitch was something like, "You wouldn't want to buy some Parchment Charm All-Occasion Cards, would you?" Aaaaargh!

By the time I sold Avon door-to-door at the Coronado Club singles apartment complex in Denver when I was 21, I had a little better sales pitch. I consistently sold a whole bunch of Wild Country men's after shave and cologne (which, amazingly, they still sell) but just a handful of other products, and my district manager wanted to know why. It was quite simple. I really liked Wild Country -- I thought of it as Love Potion #9 -- and the guys in the complex figured, "If it has that effect on her...I'll try it." Sales -- and life -- were so simple then. But no, I wouldn't want to go back to that era. I'll take now.

United 93 -- The Nightmare, The Heroes, The Movie

I knew I had to see "United 93." I was living and working in New York City when our country's soul got punched in the gut on 9/11. (No year is necessary -- we all know.) Despite living in the West all but the last 18 years of my life and considering myself a blood-deep Westerner, on 9/11 and in the three or so months following, my bond with "the City" got permanently deeper and stronger. We all felt the same grim connection with Washington, D.C. -- a good friend of mine worked in the Pentagon at the time and had run out into the parking lot when the plane hit -- and with Pennsylvania.

Knowing what "United 93" was, I had to go when I was in a quiet, strong and centered enough mood to handle it. Today, I decided, was the day. Well, technically yesterday, since it's after midnight. No "DaVinci Code" or "X-Men" for me. The film has left a few more theaters each week since its release, replaced by the real or hoped-for blockbusters du jour. I had to drive 30 miles to see it the one time today that the theater showed it, 9:00 p.m.

I got there early and when I entered the room, theater 14, it was empty. I chose a prime seat in the center and sat quietly. I felt like I was waiting for a funeral to begin.

The room started to fill and I was surprised at how many young couples came. I wouldn't think of "United 93" as much of a date movie. Everyone was quiet, almost reverent, until a pack of about a dozen youngsters came. Well, older teens or younger 20's ages. They were laughing and teasing and boistrous. One girl in particular had an especially annoying nervous giggle, which seemed incessant. I found myself tensing up and wanted to stand, turn around and yell, "Shut the fuck up! Don't you know what kind of movie this is going to be?!" But I didn't. I just sat tensely, very irritated. They carried on throughout the previews and I was getting pissed. But then "United 93" started, and to their credit, I never heard another peep out of them.

The movie affected everyone in the theater, certainly including me. I sat there with my body tense and wanting to back away, just like I feel in the dentist's chair, and I kept having to tell myself to relax, just like I do in the dentist's chair, and it didn't help, just like it doesn't in the dentist's chair.

Sniffles could be heard as soon as the real-life television footage of the second plane hitting the north tower (or was it the south?) came on as the air traffic controllers in the movie watched, frozen with their mouths open in disbelief. It's controversial whether real footage of that horrific event should have been used in a commercial movie, but this felt very much like a sensitive depiction of what happened that day and the real footage seemed totally appropriate to me. Since I'd been watching the Today show that morning on the NBC station in Manhattan when local broadcaster Jane Hansen broke in with the news, I saw that second plane hit "live" and when it came on in the movie, my heart pounded, my breath drew in and my eyes let go of the tears I didn't know were there. Not one soul in the theater moved a muscle.

I'd heard that "United 93" wasn't exploitative, and I agree. Writer/director Paul Greengrass' understated tone made it much more dramatic for real than movies that try to make the drama more dramatic with over-the-top dialog or hit-you-over-the-head music. The people on the plane in the movie were the people who were on the real fated plane, played by professional but not particularly recognizable actors (which would have been too distracting -- good move!) and they were wearing approximately what the real people were wearing and doing approximately what the real people did as far as they could determine after speaking with surviving family members. That is admirable and will make this movie endure and be meaningful for a long time.

It surprised me that so much of the movie centered on the air traffic controllers in several states and the military, what they knew when, how they found out, how confusing it all was with little or conflicting information and what they tried to do about it. It made for a much more interesting and palatable film rather than staying in the plane the whole time. In the credits (which people actually stayed for afterward), several of those air and military officials played themselves -- very impressive.

The terrorists in the movie were depicted not exactly sympathetically but relatively humanely, especially the leader. This very serious man was shown praying and calling someone to say he loved them just before he boarded the plane. He was clearly following his convictions, as have hundreds of instigators and leaders of brutal wars for centuries.

We all know how it ends so I won't give anything away by saying that the movie goes to black before the plane slams into the ground. The words across the screen afterward tell some interesting facts, the saddest being that the military folks responsible for sending the fighter jets to intercept the planes didn't find out that United's flight 93 had been hijacked until four minutes after it crashed. My God.

I cried what Oprah Winfrey calls the ugly cry for several minutes. Not a sob or a weep but a silent, streaming-tears cry. And I wasn't alone. I think that's why so many people stayed to watch the credits, because they didn't want to walk out yet. It was a disturbing film, difficult to watch but riveting and fascinating. I watched most of it with my gut churning. But I'm glad I saw it and if you're brave enough, I recommend that you go see it too.

Reveling in the Oscars

Watching the Academy Awards is one of the highlights of the year for a movie nut like me. I don't always see all of the movies that are nominated, and in fact I think it was last year that I had only seen one of the Best Picture nominees. This year, however, I "crammed" and saw nearly all of them. I have to say, this year the movies overall were really excellent, each in its own way. I didn't think any "filler" movies were nominated just to round out the minimum number, in any of the major categories.

This year's 78th Annual Academy Awards tonight seemed so uncharacteristically *adult* compared to earlier years. Nobody acted badly or wore bizarre clothes (Lara Flynn Boyle's tutu a few years ago comes to mind). Nobody streaked across the stage or jumped on top of seats on the way to accept their award. The clothes and jewelry everybody wore were tasteful and elegant. Even irreverent host Jon Stewart's humor was more maturely political and less Hollywood than usual. (I will refrain from commenting that possibly much of his humor was over some shallow Hollywood types' heads. That would be prejudicial and unfair.)

Most of the expected people won, including Philip Seymour Hoffman (for "Capote") and Reese Witherspoon (for "Walk the Line"), and "Crash" and "Brokeback Mountain" also did well, as expected. However, how does it happen that the Best Director (Ang Lee, for "Brokeback Mountain") didn't direct the Best Picture ("Crash")? That happens a lot, actually, and it is strange unless you figure that the Academy structures it so that different people vote for the two awards. The acceptance speeches were appropriate and gracious and nobody forgot to thank their spouse...though I think Ang Lee thanked nearly everyone in his movie and his family except his two stars, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. If he thanked them, I missed it.

Probably the most bizarre moments were when star and legend Lauren Bacall was attempting to read the intro to the tribute to film noir and kept stopping and stumbling. No glasses? Teleprompter malfunction? Adult onset dyslexia? Worse? It was hard to watch this elegant, classy, smart woman have such trouble getting through her brief script.

Absolutely the shock -- and delight -- of the evening was when the Best Song award was announced. Presenter Queen Latifah could barely believe it herself and let out a squeal when she saw "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from the movie "Hustle & Flow" on the card. The winners were like little kids who'd been let into the adult party and who could help but be thrilled for them? Can you imagine that song title now being forever on the list of Academy Award-winning Best Songs? Ha! It's worth it almost just for that! I like the song a lot, and I'm not prone to appreciating rap.

Speaking of "Hustle & Flow," I thought Terrence Howard was amazing in that movie. Philip Seymour Hoffman got all the pre-Oscar hype. (Yes, he was fabulous as Truman Capote.) David Strathairn, who played Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night, and Good Luck," also got mentioned quite a bit. (Sad that that excellent movie got nuthin', not even one Oscar. Director George Clooney got the Supporting Actor award for his role in "Syriana" but I bet he'd rather have the recognition for his own movie.) The fact that Terrence Howard, who played DJay, a pimp with a dream, got zero hype or mention by the critics as one who should win, was an unforgivable oversight. DJay was very, very outside his own persona as much as Aileen Wuornos in "Monster" was outside the norm for Charlize Theron, and she won the Best Actress Oscar for that role two years ago.

Tomorrow the entertainment shows on TV and the tabloids and People magazines of the world will be filled with deadly-dreary post mortems of what actors did what to whom or didn't do what for whom, and, worse, what they were all wearing and who looked stunning and who looked dreadful. Sorry, but my attitude about all of that is...who the hell cares?!?!