Sometimes it's better not to know the story

I'm a big fan of Turner Classic Movies, American Movie Classics and older movies in general. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy seeing movies on the big screen in the darkened theater while I eat popcorn and drink a Coke. But we often don't get to see anything except new movies in the theater. Here's the link to my previous rant about that. The good thing about TCM and AMC is that you get to see some classic movies you wouldn't get to see without renting them. And, of course, to rent a movie, you have to know about the movie. How else are you going to see a new (to you) movie unless someone else tells you about it or plays it for you?

I love it when you happen to tune into a movie near its beginning and it is so fascinating that it grabs you right away and you just can't turn it off. This has happened many times but one of my better experiences was around 1980 or 1981 (yes, this was before TCM and AMC - or at least before I had access to them). I was sharing a house with two other people but they were out at the time. I was flipping through the channels and came on an old, black and white movie. I missed the opening credits but it started with a view of space with stars and galaxies showing. Then, a couple of the galaxies started flashing and voices came from them. They were discussing someone who was in trouble and they were going to send someone to help him. Yes, I'd just tuned into the beginning of It's a Wonderful Life. The idea of this just fascinated me and I watched the rest of the movie. My housemates came back in the middle of the movie and recognized it right away. They couldn't believe that I'd never seen it before. But I was spellbound and couldn't move until it was over. Speaking of Spellbound, that was another movie I saw this way. It didn't make as big an impression on me because I knew it was an Alfred Hitchcock movie so I, sort of, knew what to expect. I know I enjoyed it more, though, because I didn't know what it was about or how it ended.

Another time, about two years ago after I was married and we had both of our children, my wife had to go into the hospital for an operation and had to stay overnight. While it wasn't a serious problem, there could be a lot of pain involved and she didn't look very comfortable when we left her. Our daughter had to be in bed early but our son, who is six years older (he was nine years old at the time), seemed to be disturbed about his mother being uncomfortable and he really missed her. This was the first time he had been away from her overnight. So, I let him sleep with me but we were both restless and decided to watch TV in bed. We were watching TCM and a cartoon was coming on so I thought it was OK for him to watch it. It started out with a really silly song with strange images during the opening credits and we almost turned it off but once the story started, we got caught up in it. The animation was completely different than anything we'd seen before and there wasn't much action. A father and his two young daughters were moving into a house in the country (rural Japan) and it just drew us in as they opened up the house, saw each room and discovered the house was full of "soot sprites". Why was this family moving? Where was the children's mother? Were the soot sprites going to cause problems? The movie was My Neighbor Totoro and I am sure I would have never rented it if I had just read the plot summary. My son and I stayed up too late that night but we couldn't help ourselves. We had to know how it all worked out. And, the movie had two sub-plots that were appealing to us. One because we have and love our cats and the other sub-plot was similar to our situation and it had a special meaning for us that it wouldn't have at a different time in our lives.

Another time, my wife and I were flipping through the channels and came on an old, black and white movie that grabbed us. It turned out to be a murder mystery which really lends itself to being "discovered" in this manner. We missed the opening credits and the first few scenes but we saw a fellow being accused of murdering his wife. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against him and he is quickly convicted. All his friends abandon him (who wants to be associated with the murderer?) except his secretary. His only alibi is that he spent the time of the murder with another woman. But he never got her name and knew nothing about her. It's up to his secretary to find the Phantom Lady. We had to know: Why was the secretary so loyal? Was the accused murderer as loyal to his secretary? Would she find the "lady" in time? Would it make any difference? This was another case of, "would I rent this if I had only read a short plot description?" I don't think so. We just happened to bump into it when we had some time to watch it. I don't think I would have watched it alone. It was just the right circumstances with just the right company.

Sometimes it is just better to not know what you are getting into. This also helps with some engineering projects. If I'd have known ahead of time how difficult some of the things I've worked on would be, I would have never started them. Or the company would have never allowed me to work on them. But the projects ended up getting done and were well worth the time and trouble. But if someone would have written a short plot summary for me, I would have never spent the time! Maybe I could write more about this some day.