There are screening experiences that stick with you for years, decades, and, sometimes, the rest of your life. There's the first time you see that defining favorite movie that doesn't degrade in enjoyment as you age. There's your first movie out with a date. There's the first time you see something really memorable once you're out in the world on your own, away from home (whatever that means to you). I had a pair of these for the same movie a couple of weeks apart. The movie in question was Toy Story 3.
The act of leaving home is what prompts the existence of the third (and presumed to be final) Toy Story feature. Andy is going to college. The toys face an uncertain future. There's a tremendous adventure to be had, finding out where Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the gang go from here. More than once, characters look at one another as if they may never see each other again.
Staying outside spoiler territory, I can only mention that there is a moment of profound dread and potential tragedy in Toy Story 3. It's cited as one of the most wrenching moments in Pixar history by friends, reviewers, commenters, and frankly, anyone who has seen it. Whether a parent wondering if it's "too scary" for their child or a grown man who chokes up at the mere recollection, it is the moment upon which the film hinges. The entire series thus far lays down all the chips its won over the last fifteen years. Pixar bets the house on these inanimate objects that have their own little world, and the box office returns have shown it to have been a shrewd move indeed.
A few weeks ago, I was racing to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum IMAX (whew, what a name!) to catch an advance screening of Toy Story 3 with my wife. I answered a call from my mom just after I took the exit off of the highway. She asked me if I was driving, and I told her, "yes, why?" She told me that there was news about my brother and that she didn't want me to be driving when she told me. Whenever someone tells you this, you immediately know that the "news" is not that they won the lottery, or a new TV, or a private jet. This is especially clear when you can hear your mother's voice audibly trembling. He'd had what we thought was whooping cough or bronchitis for weeks. I told her to just tell me.
Thus, I found out that my brother had a lump the size of a grapefruit in his chest just minutes before arriving to see Toy Story 3. At the time, we didn't know it was cancerous, or a rare and hard-to-treat germ cell tumor, or that it had spread to his lungs and his bones. What we did know was that it could not possibly be good that it had gone untreated for weeks and weeks. The only "benefit" of these kinds of revelations (this one, at least) is a heightened sense of general clarity.
We parked, I told my wife what my mother had told me, and I exhaled more deeply than I had in a long time, as if trying to drive the last molecules of air from my lungs. It had probably been since one of my best friends died of brain cancer early the year before.
The walk that followed was like a music-backed montage in a Hollywood movie.
We walked down the street to the theatre in silence. We got in line behind a bunch of people we didn't know. I saw a friend ahead of us. I sent an obnoxious, sarcastic text. We waved, and I said something or another. He couldn't hear me, I couldn't hear him. He motioned that we'd chat inside (or later), or something. The line moved a few times. We were right near the door, and the Ju-ly Texas heat was positively baking us through our clothes.
I looked up to the gargantuan Toy Story 3 banner on the face of the building.
I looked up past it, to the sky and some scattered, wispy cloud cover. My mind drifted to the lyrics of "Being Alive" from Stephen Sondheim's Company. I thought about how tragic it is that most people read Bobby as merely longing for romantic companionship. Sondheim has never been that simple. He's howling out his loneliness, driving it out into the open air. He feels alone in the universe. I drifted again, thinking about "Alone in the Universe", a song in a musical called Seussical, which combines a bunch of Seuss stories and is more moving and philosopical than the marketing slugline would suggest. When you hear two Dr. Seuss characters singing about feeling alone in the universe, it's like the first time you read one of Charles Schulz's more raw, human-truth-exposing Peanuts cartoons. "Children's entertainment" blows your hair back and makes you think ponder existence itself.
The line moved again, and my mind flew away from musicals.
Just as we got inside the door, I spotted another friend talking and playing with his young son in the line for popcorn. I have few truly close friends, and he has become as close to an older brother as I've ever had. I stood transfixed, watching him with his kid. I felt the world slow down. I my throat being pulled on, as if from deeper down than where my heart rest in my chest. I felt the indistinguishable contraction of the tendons that make us cry. He lifted his son gently by rubbery little kid arms, all the way up into a full-on bear hug. My "older brother" tickled his son's ears with a whisper.
Waiting in a line for cholesterol-covered snacks is boring and hated in general, but it's an opportunity to create memorable joy in the life of a kid, an adult, anyone.
It's one of those hopelessly mundane things, heightened to mythic levels when you look back on it. At this little guy's age, playing with toys (or are they playing with you?) cannot be better than the love and attention of a parent.
We walked inside to an auditorium filled with more children than adults. Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles introduced the film briefly and politely asked the children to be as quiet as possible during the movie. The movie rolled, and save a few odd moments of 3D (due to where I was seated), it looked, sounded, and felt bigger than life. Late in the picture, at a crucial moment, Buzz Lightyear's chin moves ever so slightly. When we got to that instant, my eyes had already started watering and welling. That storyboarded, animated, and programmed moment broke the dam.
Weeks passed. Nights went by without sleep. Time passed quicker than ever, but at once, every minute of every day felt like forever when in the moment.
My wife and I recently spent a few days with my mom, my dad, and my brother when he had his chemotherapy port installed. My mother and I have relied on Iron Man analogies to explain what the port is to him in terms he understands. In case you haven't read other articles I've written about my family, I should mention here that he's autistic. It also helps to know that my father is unable to speak intelligibly and is wheelchair-bound from a stroke he suffered in late 2008. My brother knows that he feels rotten and is very sick, but he doesn't comprehend or know how grave things are. Nor is he aware of the very low survival statistic they've given him.
We left the hospital so late and so exhausted that there was no way we could drive back that evening. This presented the opportunity to take my brother and my mom to see Toy Story 3, which he had been asking about since the trailers hit. He's loved the series ever since he got and promptly wore out his first VHS tape of Toy Story.
The pivotal one scene I describe above prompted me to tell my mom to hold off taking him until I could be with them.
We overpaid for our "IMAX" 3D tickets and got there for the earliest show possible. There was lots of child noise, as this was a weekday morning "crybaby" screening, which suited my brother's tendency to talk often and not so quietly. I'm generally monk-like with my devotion to the "no one talks in church" standards of moviegoing, but that all goes out the window when I'm with him.
One of my favorite additions that he made to the soundtrack was in the opening, when Rex appears and he exclaimed "Look out! It's a Tyrannosaurus Rex!!!". The second was when they say Lotso-Huggin-Bear "smells like strawberries". He asked me, "Does he smell like strawberries? Mmm! I like strawberries.". My brother absolutely loves fresh strawberries.
The moment I dreaded, the climax of the movie, finally arrived. His brow furrowed and he became very agitated and said "[They're] not gonna DIE. Nope--!"...but then something else happened and he dropped it.
To him, everyone lives forever and has everything they could ever want. He knows in his heart that someday, all the mean people will disappear, too. He insists on holding out hope that eventually, those dreams will come true.
He really enjoyed the movie tremendously. He kept making comments about the big opening sequence while we stood by the aisle railing, watching the credits. He asked me "when do we get the bear? What's his name?". I told him "Lotso. We'll try to get one soon. We have to pay for your medicine first." "Okay, deal." he said.
He put his arm around my shoulder, unprompted. I asked if he liked the movie. He said "Yes, he did". He often refers to himself using third-person pronouns.
In public, most people treat his "improper" nature and behavior as the human embodiment of a third-world country. They look at him like Frankenstein's Monster, which some parents did as they exited the theater that day.
I asked him if it was better than another CG animated movie he'd seen recently. His response? "I like Toy Story 3, it's good. When do we get the toys?" I asked if he wanted to see the other movie again. He said, "When do we get the Toy Story 3 Blu-ray and DVD Combo Pack?"
When he loves something, he really loves it.
I cherish Toy Story 3 thanks to the specific circumstances of these two viewings, and I'm fine with that. I disagree with anyone who insists that critics or anyone swear off all emotion and personal attachment when evaluating a film. What are we supposed to be, Vulcans? Personalized reactions like mine are the reason we go to see movies in the first place. For me, the movies have always been a dreamlike escape that (ideally) finds ways to touch you at the core. Pixar doesn't need to patent their process for that. It seems that these days, they're the only ones who actually start and end with that goal in mind.