Abre Los Ojos (Open Your Eyes)

Cameron Crowe is one of the more deserving of media darlings. I'll spare you the backstory, just watch the autobiographical Almost Famous. His movies are always more satisfying than the five movies that I watch before or after. Each one is special, even the smash hit from whence he got the money, Jerry Maguire. His other Tom Cruise movie, Vanilla Sky, offers one of the great opening eight minutes in recent memory. Keep in mind that Crowe intended this movie to be one non-stop pop culture allusion from beginning to end.

This is just a cursory list of things Crowe has crammed into the first eight minutes that make it both great and OnceWereBachelorean:

1. New York City from a God's eye view;
2. Central Park;
3. The Dakota;
4. Bachelor Pad;
5. Penelope Cruise's voice in her native tongue;
6. Audrey Hepburn, from Sabrina (and therefore a hint of Humphrey Bogart);
7. Disappearing plasma screen;
8. Mahogany wainscoting;
9. A Bout de Souffle poster;
10. IWC Schaffhausen Spitfire Mk XV pilot watch on leather with deployant buckle;
11. Smashed Gibson SG under glass (could be Pete Townshend's);
12. Ferrari 250 Granturismo Omologato;
13. Times Square, completely empty (I say again: Times Square, completely empty);
14. The mother of all anxiety attacks, amidst the most amazing billboards west of Tokyo (there's a panoply of relevant images that flash at this point, but I'm not going to try);
15. Repeat;
16. Cameron Diaz under the covers;
17. 1967 Ford Mustang 390GT (trust me, I can tell from the V8 burble);
18. R.E.M.; and
19. Cameron Diaz dancing to R.E.M. in leather pants.

It doesn't stop at minute eight, and the whole movie is worth multiple viewings. Just ignore the critics and the box office. And ignore that Tom Cruise is in it.

What I Wore Twenty Years Ago

What I wore twenty years ago was a pair of Duck Head chinos from Britches Great Outdoors, a Brooks Brothers oxford button down shirt over a turtleneck, no socks, and L.L. Bean footwear, either leather bluchers or dirty bucks. I would hold my pants up with a braided leather belt from Jos. Banks; a belt which I still have but which is now unusable because of both condition and size. If the weather was inclement, I'd wear a Bean Baxter State Parka with a tear in the back from when Rich Matic and I went tumbling through a plate glass door in front of New South Dining Hall. This uniform would work for me for about three and a half seasons in D.C. If it was sunny -- in fact, daylight was the real prerequisite, not brightness -- I'd wear a pair of gold Ray Ban aviator sunglasses, but not the kind that Tom Cruise wore in Top Gun. They were more like the glasses Dennis Quaid wore in the "who's the best pilot you ever saw" scene in the Right Stuff, my all time favorite movie.

Ah yes, the Right Stuff, an incredible movie based on an equally incredible book by chronicler of zeitgeist Tom Wolfe. A movie that was meant to be a western with pilots instead of cowboys. Take stock of the Mercury Seven, portrayed with stylized verisimilitude by Scott Glenn (Alan Sheppard), Ed Harris (John Glenn), Fred Ward (Gus Grissom), and Quaid (Gordo Cooper, the best pilot you ever saw). Throw playwright Sam Shepard in as fastest man alive Chuck Yeager, for good measure. These were men who had public personae thrust upon them, when in fact all most of them (save John Glenn and his twerpy sidekick, Scott Carpenter) wanted to do was to navigate the holy coordinates of the fighter jock: flying and drinking and drinking and driving and screwing. How can you do that when you're expected to be Buck Rogers?