08-029
The Godfather had dinner with us again last night. He’s been showing up on a regular basis for the past month, and frankly, I’m getting a little tired of him yet I can’t ask him to leave. Ever since my husband bought The Godfather trilogy on DVD that movie has been playing so often that I feel like an extra in the film. Anytime, day or night, there’s always the possibility of confronting one of the Corleones.
Just yesterday I woke up in the middle of the night and Tim wasn’t in bed. I ran downstairs to look for him and before my bare feet even hit the bottom step, I heard the hauntingly familiar theme from The Godfather.
“Tim, it’s 3am.”
“Shhh. Michael is trying to get the Godfather out of his hospital room before someone kills him.”
I knew about Tim’s Godfather obsession before we were married. In fact, I sometimes think one of the reasons he married me was so that he could become part of my Sicilian family. This might explain why he keeps asking my Uncle Mario what else he did for a living besides run a dry cleaning store.
I’ve come to know all of Tim’s viewpoints on the Godfather movies. He goes into great detail about the betrayal of Luca Brasi, and how Sonny Corleone needed to be more focused. It amazes me that Tim knows and feels so much empathy for this fictional family, yet he can’t remember his only sister’s birthday.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t appreciate The Godfather, it’s just that I’d like to see someone not completely covered in blood flicker across the television screen once in a while. And Tim’s not the only one with a movie obsession.
I’m also intrigued by fans of Gone With the Wind. I mean, it’s one thing to find some mindless enjoyment for 90 minutes, but it’s quite another to devote four hours to a film that not only depicts a bloody war, but 98% of the stars die tragically without a happy ending. And the most successful survival tactic that Scarlett O’Hara comes up with is to make a fancy new dress out of window treatments.
Speaking of long movies, I know that The Wizard of Oz is considered a masterpiece, but after a few drinks I still see those flying monkeys. To me, Dorothy would have been safer waiting out the tornado in a Kansas trailer park. I have a friend who actually loves this movie so much she has asked to be buried with the DVD.
I guess I’m just going to have to learn to accept the fact that the Corleones are here to stay. I wonder if I can talk Francis Ford Coppola into making Godfather IV where the entire family is wiped out in an olive oil factory explosion. Now, I just have to figure out how to make him an offer he can’t refuse.