Braveheart

I have a Braveheart poster somewhere. Once, in need of motivation, I took a Sharpie and wrote, "Thanks for all the screenwriting tips. Mel Gibson." I hung the poster on my bedroom wall.

Friends used to come over and comment on the autograph. "You met Mel Gibson? Wait...you gave him writing tips?" I tried, but I could never keep a straight face.

Mel's fake autograph and personalized note are funnier now than then, because Mel didn't actually get a screenwriting credit until The Passion of the Christ, which came nearly a decade after I signed the poster, and I assure you, had nothing to do with me.

As a badge of honor and an assertion of my own manly, emotional fortitude, I used to keep a list of only five movies that made me cry. Yes, only five. Braveheart was on the list. I had a sixth, E.T., which also made me cry, but I don't count that one; I was 6 years old when I saw E.T. in the theater, and that's not fair.

[I bawled my eyes out on the car ride home from E.T.. I mean, cry-until-you-hurt crying. I was 6 and I still remember that hurt.]

Thing is, Braveheart never made me cry that much. Sure, I shed a tear when he cries out "Freedom!" while the torturer disembowels him. But I don't have to lean forward in my seat to sob out the lump or something. I can't explain everything.

Last year, I married an English woman. Occasionally, England's bloody history comes up, especially with regard to films like this, but no more than America's, and I have plenty of those films on DVD too.

We hail from countries with dark pasts, but I think we'd be the same people regardless of where we were born, and I like to think we would've found each other anyway. We'd probably still cry at the same movies, and I'd be the guy with the fake autographed Braveheart poster, and she'd be the woman who wouldn't let me hang it in the house.