Smoggywood Words

i have a strange relationship with the Before films.

I saw Before Sunrise in the last week of my first year at uni. I had been doing communications, a hodgepodge mickey mouse course that i transferred from to a Film Production course to actually make films. i went alone, to the local independent cinema, at the start of the 1995 heatwave. i had tatty blue jeans, black converse, a grey tee-shirt and the pre-requisite 90s goatee. it amused me that i was wearing what Hawke wore in the film.

But the film!! it changed my life. We weren’t being taught about anything like this sort of cinema at uni, i remember coming out thinking “that was the film I always wanted to make - where nothing as such happens.”
I was 19, leaving teens, approaching 20s, about to start a course I hoped would be the gateway to my career.

       9 years later i was approaching my 30s and, frankly, nothing had gone as i had planned or hoped. by 2004 i was still trying to make films, but a combination of health issues, finances, technology and the kind of films i wanted to make had curtailed me.

  I had tickets to see Midnight, but was at a friend’s 21st birthday meal before hand, so I was in my suit. I went to the theatre afterwards and lo and behold, Hawke was wearing a charcoal suit and white shirt - almost identical to mine. 

Sunset was devastating. It crucified me. the hopes and yes, the follies, of youth, still daring to flower and remind you to try, despite all, that the world has piled onto you. 

   Another 9 years has passed, and I am sailing with alarming monotony away from 30s, and I am film making - if not the revolutionary iconoclast my 19 yr old self would have hoped. And another Before film comes. I am anxiously excited about seeing what Rick, Julie and Ethan have come up with, what they have articulated about life, love and ageing.

I also have a pale denim shirt, and black jeans. 
alas not a Julie Delpy.