Elephants and Movies

Elephant Fact #2: Despite the size of their ears, an elephant’s hearing is poor.

Let’s talk movies.

I’m gonna ‘fess up right here and now—I am a fan, and what a fan I am. Some people can tell you the name, composer and album artist of a song by hearing the first few notes—but give me a line from a movie and I can tell you its title, actors, sometimes director-- and if I’m in a particularly good mood, the total sum of divorces held by the cast.

Alright, I might be exaggerating slightly. After all, I once confused a screenshot of Hostel with Silence of the Lambs—wear a different sweater, for crying out loud!—but that’s beside the point; movies have been a tremendous influence on my life as it is now, to the extent that half of my conversations with my parents (who are bigger movie buffs than I am) consist of nothing but movie references.

Me: Hey, Mom, gonna clean my room now.

Mom: Go ahead. Make my day.

 Certain movies have marked certain periods in my life, so here’s a brief (very brief) rundown.

1.    Beauty and the Beast

Good old Disney. Can’t go wrong with him.

If you’ve lived under a rock your whole life and haven’t seen this movie, I’ll summarize it: monster imprisons girl’s father for trespassing, girl gives up her freedom to set said father free, Stockholm Syndrome abounds and girl falls in love with monster, eventually releasing him from his curse with true love’s kiss.

I was born in Philippines. Until I was five, my parents and I had lived with my grandmother, my two aunts and my uncle in a house that was admittedly bigger than most; it was made of grey brick and was fronted by an imposing, wrought-iron gate. It was also surrounded with plants; my grandmother’s greatest pasttime was her gardening.

When we lived there, my parents forbade me to learn the language, Tagalog. They wanted me to speak English fluently and kids who learned both English and Tagalog at the same time had a nasty habit of speaking ‘Taglish’—a mix of both. Although it didn’t bother me as much back then, now I feel I am less sympathetic to their understandable but hindering reasons for this—mainly because most of my Filipino relatives think I have no personality at our ‘gatherings’. Please, gurl.

But because my parents were limited English-speakers back then, they showered me with a load of American movies and books to compensate, with Disney being one of my favorites. I must have watched The Lion King, Mulan, The Little Mermaid about a dozen times each…not Snow White though, because let’s face it: that is some creepy shit. Beauty and the Beast—a movie about a gorgeous girl who loves to read books (i.e., me) was my favorite. That movie did not just represent my childhood, it is my childhood, dammit.

To this day though, despite having lived in Australia for roughly ten years, I still haven’t lost the American accent I received as a result of all of this.  Mary = merry = marry.

2.  The Exorcist

It wasn’t just cartoons I watched.

The Exorcist, a wonderful flick about a young girl who gets possessed by the Devil, somehow spewing pea soup all over Jason Miller-as-Father Karras in the process. It’s often referred to as “the greatest horror film of all time” (Contactmusic.com, 2008) and was a film my aunt (the younger one) thought would be a great idea to show to her four-year old  niece on dark and stormy night.

Coincidentally, I did not sleep that night. Odd.

However, that first taste of the horror genre proved to be the start of a very long and very painful (for others) addiction. It’s something that my Dad and I have in common, so it’s always with him that I watch the movies or play those crazy survival horror games on our Playstation. My mother say’s we’re morbid, but I don’t really think that that’s the case. We just like watching people die. J

3.   Harry Potter

Oh jeez. Oh holy cow.

If you know me in real life…the reason why Harry Potter is on this list wouldn’t even have to be explained.

When I was five, my family and I left Philippines for Fiji because of my father’s job (a doctor). We lived in Suva for about  a year, during which I went to a couple of Fijian schools. Entertainment was limited—we didn’t have cable TV, video games or a proper computer. Bitch, please. We, the schoolkids, entertained ourselves with games whose names I can’t remember—one of them involved taking out the blue bottom from the inside of soda bottle caps, tossing a bunch of them on the desk and slamming our hands on them to see how high they’d jump, or if they’d flip over. I was such a boss at that.

Fiji was great, but holy cow the centipedes in that place. Yeeesh.

Moving on, I remember one time my parents and I were walking down the street and we passed this bookstore with some of the newest releases on display. My mom stopped in front of the window, peered in and said to me, “That looks like a good book.”

I stepped beside her.

“That looks stupid,” I said, making a face as I saw the book’s cover. “Why is he on a broomstick?”

“I think he’s a wizard.”

I scoffed, “A wizard? Please. I’m way too old for that.”

And then we left to get ice cream.

Months later, a certain movie starring three then-unknown child actors burst onto the screen, leaving hundreds of crazed fans in its wake…

4.   The Waterboy

This film stars Adam Sandler as 31 year-old Bobby Boucher, a waterboy from the Louisiana swamps with a hidden talent for tackling football stars. He’s like Forrest Gump’s younger, creepier brother.

By no means is it an outstanding film—it’s #@$!%ing funny and has a lotta heart, like all of Sandler’s stuff—but I thought I’d include it on this list because it was one of the first movies I watched when I first got to Australia-land, on our teeny, tiny black and white television with the antenna that spanned the entire length of my outstretched arms.

Also, because of its iconic quote, “Foosball is the devil!”

Sound familiar?

5.  Drunken Master

One of the older Jackie Chan movies—dubbed over its original Chinese in English. Jackie Chan, after bringing disgrace to his father, is sent to live with a drunken kung fu master as punishment. Awesomeness abounds.

Although this movie is ridiculously funny, it doesn’t really mark anything in my life—except my abrupt realization that martial arts was like, kick-ass.

When I was seven or eight, my parents signed me up for tae kwon do lessons at the local PCYC in Redcliffe. The night of my first lesson, I stepped into the room to see a vast gathering of people dressed in these weird, white pyjamas, all of varying ages. Feeling out of place in my t-shirt with a picture of talking strawberries on it and my pink pyjamas (literally, pyjamas), I shuffled in self consciously and sort of just stood in the center of the room until the teacher came in.

Then, without any warning, everyone began to kick and punch in unison, making these ridiculous sounding grunts the whole while. Bewildered, I tried to copy what they were doing but ended up accidentally slapping the woman next to me, again and again and again…

After a while, I simply gave up and watched them do all their fancy schmancy stuff from the sidelines.

When the hour was up and my parents arrived to pick me up, I made them buy me a candy jawbreaker and told them that I was never doing tae kwon do again.

Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so good. I got my black belt two years ago.

I can’t be bothered to write anymore at the moment. I have IOC, EE and fanfiction to think about, but there’s a lot of other movies that I know I missed—maybe I’ll address this topic again in future.

For now, here’s a special mention to some of the movies I missed: Edward Scissorhands, Final Destination, Interview With the Vampire, Superman, Rocky, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, Primal Fear, The Sixth Sense, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Fight Club, Braveheart, Pulp Fiction, Sunset Boulevard, Die Hard…

Yipee ki-yay, mother@#$%^ers!

The Unlucky Elephant