I was once on a music mailing list--there was this really cool woman there who said that she'd never date anyone who didn't think that Rushmore was one of the best movies ever made.

I sort of agree with her. Well, I would have agreed with her a few years ago, now the movie doesn't mean quite as much to me. (I still think it's great, though.)

ETA: I think what has really changed is that in the past I used to think if people I met didn't like certain books, music, movies that had had a big impact on me, then they weren't people I could relate to, but over the past few years I've come to think that that's bullshit.

Maybe I should give Rushmore another chance. Just so, you know, that I can get laid.

Maybe I should give Rushmore another chance. Just so, you know, that I can get laid.

It's the underlying melancholy. Gets (some of) us every time.

Maybe I should give Rushmore another chance. Just so, you know, that I can get laid.

I've been wanting to. Both the former, and the latter, though not always as part of a causative argument.

It's the underlying melancholy. Gets (some of) us every time.

This is why people love Lost in Translation too, isn't it? Maybe I like my melancholy more overlying.

See, I can get into melancholy underlying things....

I was under the impression that Rushmore was loved so much because people think the kid character is cool....

This is why people love Lost in Translation too, isn't it?

Oh god, yes!

Must. Own. DVD....

I like Rushmore because the kid takes dorky fannishness (or, that's not the right word, but dork into-it-ness, where "it" may be anything) to embarrassing, destructive, achieving heights. He is his own worst enemy, that's the sad part, but he's also wonderfully generative.

(Also, knows way more about 1970s film than he should, although seeing a preadolescent boy play a cop dressed up as a nun ( Scarface ) is pretty fricken hilarious.)

I watch Rushmore and think, in 10 years, that kid will be a grownup worth knowing. But I'm not sure I want to know him while he's a teenager.

Everyone I've met who didn't like Rushmore, didn't like Max. I've never thought of him as cool, exactly, (he's not popular at school, he's not that bright, he's more than a little obsessive, and throughout most of the movie he's falling apart), but he lives life at this sort of heightened pitch.

I think the key to understanding Max is realizing that he's never gotten over his mother's death, he's a lower middle class kid going to a rich prep school, he's only 15 and pretty immature, and he doesn't believe in doing anything half-assed.

Everyone I've met who didn't like Rushmore, didn't like Max.

I don't think I disliked Max. The movie just didn't do anything for me. I didn't see what the big deal was. I have yet to see Royal Tenenbaums or Bottle Rocket.

But like I said, it's one of those movies I've been meaning to give a second chance to because I'm wondering what everyone else sees in it. Lost will get one too some day, I guess.

I'm in the "Hated Max, Hated Rushmore" camp. It just seemed like a certain kind of male fantasy set to film, and I think it's extremely overrated.

I did like The Royal Tennenbaums, however.

Is First Knight the Gere/Connery/Julia Ormond thing? It was extremely unintentionally funny.