I saw a film on IFC last night which really got a hold of me. For reasons I won’t go into this film seemed scripted directly from parts of my life. I don’t mean I could relate to it, I mean the actual details of the film read like a historical accounting of a few years of my life.
Has this ever happened to anyone? How did you react (I ended up quite emotional over what I would otherwise probably considered a mediocre film)?
Not on this large of a scale, but ideas I have had and stories I have told have inexplicably shown up from another source. I always attribute it to the CIA’s thought satellites, constantly farming the US populace for gems that they can sell to the entertainment industry, thus funding their countless black ops.
Yes. It was like my own life was flashing before my eyes. Amazing.
There are a coupla details from my life in Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs. (Not too surprising there, since he was scribbling in his notebook when I related them to him.)
More disturbingly, &pi has long stretches of scenario (and dialogue,) that were very familiar to me and those around me. (I’m guessing this is because manic episodes tend to manifest similarly in geeks.)
The only difference is, I had cultish Buddhist folks following me around instead of Hasidim. Oh yeah, and I just gradually calmed down instead of giving myself a lobotomy with a power drill..
Just glanced at yesterday’s IFC schedule-- was the movie in question Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
Thank God No!
Although that did look like a hell of an adventure!
One of the short films in the first “Boys Life” was built around a scene that was shockingly close to something that happened to me.
It was the first story “Pool Days”. Justin, a teenaged pool lifeguard, strikes up a friendship with a gay swimmer. The swimmer offers Justin a ride home, but instead takes him to his house in order to seduce him. Justin (who is gay, but closeted) goes along with it, but panics and leaves in a huff. The scene was almost exactly like an incident that happened to me when I was 16, almost down to the same words exchanged! Except that I was a stockboy at a strip mall store, and the guy who tried to get at me worked in the store next door. I was absolutely floored while watching it.
Some of the characters in this anime bore a freakish resemblance (in personality) to my friends from high school. I got very attached to it, and watching the last film in the series was a very emotional ordeal for me.