Things I Used to Love: Good Will Hunting

My VHS shelf. I'm not sure why I still have a shelf full of VHS tapes, as my only VCR is attached to a 13-inch TV that's currently taking up space in storage, but I guess I'm just not ready to part with them yet.

Continuing with this month's theme, today I'd like to talk about another movie that really shaped my romantic views: Good Will Hunting. On its surface, it doesn't really seem like a love story, but it gave me some ideas of what love could look like.

Good Will Hunting follows Will (Matt Damon at his all-time cutest, IMO), a 20-year-old who spent his youth bouncing around the foster-care system and now leads a rough-and-tumble life in South Boston while working as a janitor at MIT. He meets Skylar (Minnie Driver) while out and about one night, and the two begin dating. Other than that, he hangs out with his boys (Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck and Cole Hauser) and occasionally causes some trouble. After getting into a fight, part of his sentence includes meeting with a therapist (Robin Williams) to work on his emotional state. Oh, also, he's a genius with a photographic memory and he can solve crazy-hard math problems, which impresses an MIT professor.

Will and Skylar were kind of my ideal couple: their rapport seems so natural and effortless. They enjoy each other and make jokes, but it doesn't feel overly cutesy. They fight, but they seem like equals, not like rom-coms where the girl is a bitch so the guy gets mad, or the guy looks at another girl so the girl gets mad. And Skylar seems classy, but not stuffy. When Will says, "I was hoping to get good-night laid," she takes it in stride and doesn't huff off like he's offended her delicate sensibilities. This was the kind of girl I wanted to be: smart and classy, but able to hang with the boys and be crude right along with them. In some ways, I think I've accomplished this, but I don't think I'm as classy. Having a British accent like Minnie Driver would probably help.

Good Will Hunting came out in 1997, and I think my first viewing was a year or two after that. I loved it from the get-go, although I now realize how much of it went over my head as a naive teen (example: Skylar tells Will's friends a seriously filthy joke that I totally did not get until later in life). This was also the first time I saw Robin Williams in a serious role, which was quite a switch from Jack and Hook, but I think he knocked it out of the park. The film even won a few Oscars –  Best Supporting Actor for Williams and Best Original Screenplay for Damon and Affleck (at the ripe old ages of 27 and 25!) and was nominated for several more.

Without going into detail, I think the film ties everything up nicely without being too cheesy or over-the-top dramatic. It's definitely worth a watch, even if you're not into the rom-com aspect of it. It's a little hard to find in terms of streaming content, but you can buy the DVD on Amazon for $5. And since it's something you'll watch over and over, that's a pretty sound investment.

Things I Used to Love: 10 Things I Hate About You

Since it's February, and Valentine's Day is right around the corner, I thought I'd do some topical Things I Used to Love. So this month, I'll be focusing on movies, books, etc. that shaped my romantic ideals or otherwise influenced my thoughts on love and relationships. First up: 10 Things I Hate About You.

The teen rom-com was released in 1999, during my freshman year of high school. It's loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, and focuses on two sisters who aren't allowed to date. The younger sister, Bianca (played by Larisa Oleynik, aka Alex Mack), wants to date, while older sister Kat (Julia Stiles) couldn't be less interested. Seeing this, their father decides that Bianca will be allowed to date when Kat does. So she hatches a plan with Cameron (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to find someone who will take Kat out. They settle on Patrick (Heath Ledger), but he needs some convincing, so Joey (Andrew Keegan, remember him?), who is also interested in Bianca, agrees to pay him on a per-date basis.

In case you weren't a teenage girl at the turn of the century and thus haven't seen it, I won't spoil the ending for you. But let's just say that Kat and Patrick develop an interesting love/hate relationship. As a teen, I pretty much thought that was the hottest thing ever. The idea that you could be screaming in someone's face and making out with them a minute later? So sexy. As a result, I developed a crush on a boy I constantly argued with, and fantasized that he would one day press me against the lockers and initiate a steamy make-out session. Sadly, said make-out sesh never occurred.

The movie shaped my life in other ways, too. I knew I wanted to go out of state for college, and one I considered was the University of Washington, where the movie was filmed (the campus looks gorgeous!). I also really identified with Kat, as I fancied myself an alterna-girl with some pent-up rage. I admired her ballsy-ness, even if I rarely imitated it in my own life. She was always true to herself, and that was something I struggled with when I was younger.

This movie was also my introduction to the late, great Heath Ledger and a short-haired JGL (after he rocked the shoulder-length locks on 3rd Rock from the Sun), and they were both adorable in completely different ways. The supporting cast is great, as well: Alison Janney is the kooky guidance counselor, and David Krumholtz is Cameron's dorky friend Michael. Also, QUOTES! The movie is full of random tidbits I say to this day, like:

"The shit hath hitteth the fan ... ith." - Michael (a nod to its Shakespearean roots)

"Remove head from sphincter, then drive!" - Kat 

"Bogey's party is just a lame excuse for all the idiots at our school to drink beer and rub up against each other in hopes of distracting themselves from the pathetic emptiness of their meaningless, consumer-driven lives." - Kat

 "And I'm back in the game!" - Cameron (also the title of my very first post on this blog)

10 Things I Hate About You was made into a short-lived TV series on ABC Family in 2009. I watched it (as I am compelled to watch all of their original shows at least once; it's a sickness), and it wasn't bad, but it didn't really have the same tone as the movie. Or maybe it just didn't resonate with me since I wasn't 14 (and their target audience) anymore. But the movie will always have a special place in my heart.

TBT: Things I Used to Love

I'm a little obsessed with Throwback Thursday posts on Instagram and Twitter. I love seeing photos of people from before I knew them (or celebrities, before they were famous), or remembering that time in my life, if I knew the person then. It's just fun, ya know?

So I wanted to tweak that concept a little bit and apply it to my blog. Since I blog (or plan to blog, at this point) about things I love, I thought Throwback Thursdays would be a good way to talk about things I used to love, back in the day. Which is not to say I no longer love these things, but maybe I've outgrown them, or they're not really around anymore, etc. So my love for them has mellowed, let's say.

I thought I'd go way back for this first post, to the early/mid '90s. Every Sunday, I'd stake out a place in the living room around 11:45 in preparation for my favorite show: Ghostwriter. No, not Ghost Rider, the comic book/stellar Nicholas Cage movie, but GhostWRITER. This show was about a ghost who helped a group of teens solve mysteries/crimes by re-arranging letters on signs, sheets of paper, etc. to give them clues. And I LIVED for the show (nerd alert!). Check out the amazing opening credits and tell me it doesn't look awesome:

Good stuff, right there. Sadly, it was pulled from the schedule in my pre-teen years, and I was devastated (nerd alert, again!). It was the first in a long list of brilliant but cancelled TV shows I would go on to watch.  But thanks to the glory of YouTube, I can revisit this masterpiece whenever I so choose. And now, so can you! You can thank me later.