Grosse Pointe Blank

"I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?"

Grosse Pointe Blank is one of my all-time favorite films, and I assure you that's not faint praise from a guy who owns 600ish DVDs. I love this film in a way I can't explain without incurring a substantial amount of paperwork.

But before I get to that, a moment of disclosure: I'm trying something a little different tonight. I come to you from my boss's basement, where he has a giant projection screen and a fancy schmancy sound system. I haven't seen Grosse Pointe Blank on a screen this big since...well...

I saw this film in a theater in 1997 in Muncie, Indiana, on a date with my Second Ever Serious Girlfriend, a girl I flipped for, who broke my heart in half, won me over again, and then we just didn't work out, and then we sort of tried again, years later, and that didn't work either.

We both loved the film the first time, and every subsequent time we watched on glorious VHS, and really, to this day. We let the film wash over us like a big wave of Gen-X goodness, which is what I hear from quite a few people around my age. What can I say? Grosse Pointe Blank spoke to us, captured the ennui of the '90s or something, validating our view of the world and of ourselves.

I don't remember laughing much at the film the first time, though. I was too young, at 22, to enjoy a good dark comedy in the way I do now, after so many viewings (100?) and 14 years. Now, after much more life experience, I understand the anxieties of rekindling old relationships, of returning to your hometown after years of growth and change, and dear lord, the high school reunion.

I actually thought my high school reunion would be like Grosse Pointe Blank, except I never really dated much then. A few blips on the radar but no real flames. My class didn't have a 10-year reunion, so I spent 10 years wondering, and then another 5 before we finally got our acts (and ourselves) together.

I'd never really paid attention to the Violent Femmes, or The Specials, or The Clash, or any of those great songs that comprised not one, but two solid soundtrack CDs, until I caught this film. Hearing this soundtrack was sort of like walking into a great independent record shop for the first time on a day when the employees were just on fire. Although I didn't understand all the humor of the film when I was 22, I still had the presence of mind to pick up both soundtrack CDs and hang on to them ever since.

Only with time can you really see how much a film has influenced you. Sure, I knew immediately when certain lines stuck in my lexicon, but I didn't realize until years later how much this film influenced my writing, my taste in music, and really, my world view. I tend to write quirky little scenes with characters who see the world with a self-awareness and wry sensibility like the characters here. Actually, that's pretty much Generation X.

This film is Generation X's Harold & Maude. You get a dark comedy about a character who has a bizarre connection to death, featuring a compelling but messed up main character who has an unlikely romance, set to a kickass soundtrack.

But you also get a film that captures a generation's sensibility, sort of a mile marker for where we were then, all the while sort of hinting at where we were going...or maybe hinting at the fact that we had no idea where we were going and we were just trying to survive the world and not get any on us.