Decide to be in a good mood

On Sunday I was exhausted, getting sick again, and I'd just come home from saying goodbye to my best friend who'd just come to town for three days before returning home (half way across the world). I was feeling kind of lousy and then I did something I've never done before. I watched the special edition DVD commentary on Say Anything.

It's not that I'm opposed to commentary tracks, in fact I love them and usually listen to them immediately upon buying a DVD. It's also not like I dislike Cameron Crowe, John Cusack or Ione Skye. Cameron Crowe is one of my favorite writer/directors and John Cusack one of my favorite actors. I've always found them both to have interesting things to say in interviews or on other commentary tracks I've listened to, and imagined the same to be true of Ione Skye though I haven't seen her interviewed much.

I can only explain not listening to this commentary before because it's possibly my favorite movie. I love this movie so much that at some point I lent it to someone and had to buy a second copy before I got it back from them because I watch it that often. So, when I put it in, even if I think that this will be the time I watch it with the commentary track on I always end up just watching the movie.

This time though, I decided to watch with it with the commentary track on and I discovered something great. The movie is ostensibly about an isolated genius girl who finds a love that helps her see the world in a way she never allowed herself to before, but beneath the surface this is a movie about the revolutionary power of optimism.

The character of Lloyd Dobler was always written as an optimist but originally Crowe had written him as a somewhat blind optimist. John Cusack didn't want to play that part. He said he'd only play the part if the character was fully aware. He wanted Lloyd to know full well that the world can sometimes be an awful place and that sometimes horrible things happen to good people, but to chose optimism anyway. They talk about this element of the story repeatedly, but two instances stood out in particular.

The first was in scene that I'm fond of quoting where Lloyd is talking to his sister about the crap she's had to deal with. He tells her that he's not her dead beat ex that left her a single mother, and he's not their parents who left him with her either. He ends the speech by saying, "how hard is it to just decide to be in a good mood and then be in a good mood", and it's one of my top five favorite movie lines ever. Of course the answer is that it is sometimes unbelievably hard, which Lloyd seems to realize, and yet he still does it.

Crowe said in the commentary that when they were shooting it he kept asking Cusack to deliver it more cheerfully, and Cusack said he'd try it that way, but that he wanted to do some takes his own way, which Crowe let him do and ended up using the more somber takes in the final cut. The end result is a character that sees everything, he sees all the bad that life has to offer (absent parents, dead beat dads, etc) and still believes in the good.

The second instance in the commentary that stood out was at the very end. In the scene where Lloyd visits Diane's dad in prison to deliver a letter to him from his daughter. Mr. Court insults Lloyd in every way he possibly can before Lloyd has a chance to give him the letter, but he does give it to him. As he's reading the letter Mr. Court is upset because it seems so angry, he opines that it must get better and Lloyd tells him to skip to the end, that it does get better "if it's the version that's signed 'I still can't help loving you'". When it turns out that it isn't that version Mr. Court is dismayed but Lloyd says, "Just knowing that a version like that exists, knowing that just for a minute she felt that and wrote 'I can't help loving you'. That has to be worth something". In the commentary John Cusack calls that line "optimism as a revolutionary act".

Lloyd sees the world as it is, he sees the good and the bad, he just chooses to focus on the good and that is revolutionary. One of the other things that they discuss on the commentary is the fact that women are constantly lamenting that they can't find a man like Lloyd. I suppose that means one who will love them unconditionally and see loving them as the primary focus of his life and I get that desire, I do, but for me I think the goal has always been more to be like Lloyd myself than to find a guy like him.

You may notice that one of the quotes in the header here is something Lloyd said in Say Anything about not knowing what he wanted to do. It's no secret that I, like Lloyd, am somewhat aimless. I take comfort, like he does, in the fact that while "I don't know, at least I know that I don't know". I identify with Lloyd Dobler. In the end of the commentary Cameron Crowe relates an incident that happened in a bar the first time someone recognized John Cusack and asked if he was Lloyd. Cusack replied, "on my better days, yes I am" and Cameron Crowe later used the line (in Almost Famous). I too like to think, on my better days, I am Lloyd Dobler (so to speak). I like to think that I too can use my optimism as a revolutionary act.

If faith is a choice and optimism is a type of faith then I choose optimism. So, even though I'm still sick, and this is the twelfth or thirteenth time in as many months that I've been sick, I'm going decide to be in a good mood and then be in a good mood.