Image via Wikipedia

Watching Movies with a Friend

As I was watching Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” a few days ago, I was thinking how much my friend Pat would have enjoyed the two greedy, disloyal, and weak peasants that are the central characters. I vaguely remember seeing this film in a small art theater in Sacramento with him in the late 70’s. Later I heard that George Lucas changed some of his approaches to the original Star Wars script after watching “The Hidden Fortress”. He decided to tell the story more from the perspective of two of the side characters, R2D2 and C3PO. They like Kurosawa’s characters provide comic relief, plot complications, and some assistance. But the main point I was wanting to make was that having someone to watch movies with who really gets what you get from them is something special. I don’t care what movies they are. They don’t have to be great movies. What matters is that when the movies over there is someone who understands what you liked about it and why, or that during the movie will lean over and whisper something only you  would understand, something that happened when you where young and stupid. I miss that. My friend Pat and I were young and stupid together and watched many great and not so great films. I hope that  we will do this again soon.