What Makes Women Happy?
I've been married for forty five years and I've concluded that watching women watch movies, provides one of the few clues to what really makes her tick.
Watching my wife prepare for movie night, I've learned that there are four things essential to a good evening. Air popped popcorn, some completely unattractive, but comfortable, "pajama look a like", a box of Kleenex and any movie that will make her cry.
Women like movies with the word, "Wedding" in the title, like - "The Wedding Singer", "The Wedding Planner", "The Wedding Crasher", "My Best Friends Wedding", "Muriels Wedding", "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" or "Four weddings and a Funeral". I think Hollywood could introduce "The Blob marries the Slob" and women would make it a blockbuster.
Crying movies will however, out perform wedding movies for most women. Find a women who hasn't watched " An Affair to Remember" or "The Notebook" ten times. Thats because women like movies that make them cry. It makes them happy. Women even go to the movies together so they can all cry together and wallow in collective happiness. They look at each other crying and start crying all over again and then they start laughing hysterically at each other crying. Then they tell us that we don't understand them!
Guys don't cry at movies unless the concession stand is closed. Guys like "guy" movies. Tear jerkers like, "Brave Heart", "Rocky one through five" or "Rambo one through four". Guys think a romantic comedy is "An Evening at Porky's".
Women like to watch movies with other women. They even watch movies on mute. As soon as the movie starts, they begin multiple conversations, pausing only to cry at the prescribed and necessary intervals. They know what happens before it happens. They know it's going to make them cry and they don't care.
" Oh, I love this part, give me the Kleenex!"
My wife can cry with a mouthful of popcorn, a fist full of tissue and talk to twenty seven other women without even having to swallow. If there isn't anyone to cry with, she will watch the movie with my daughter in Chicago, or her mother in L.A. via cell phone, where they all cry on the Verizon family plan.
There isn't any sense in trying to watch a movie with her either. There isn't a husband on this planet that looks as good as the guy in a chick flick. She's looks at you, looks at him and starts crying all over again. Talk about perfect! He couldn't say anything wrong if it was scripted. He even smells delicious. .
The guy in her movie can order wine in any language. He speaks fluent everything and can make love in every one of them. He has all the money in the world and he plays the piano like Beethoven. He's so perfect that even God wants to know where he came from.
That's why men like guy movies. In a good western like "Unforgiven", the guy doesn't bathe for a year, he has three teeth in his mouth, sleeps with his horse, has cow dung embedded in his boots and some vixen is chasing him all over the western plains! She doesn't ever talk and she thinks cuddling is something cows do.
In a chick flix, the guy showers every twenty minutes with the door open. When I do that, she starts crying and closes the door. In a chick flix, the guys never think about sex. They just like to talk, because women like to talk and these movies are made for women. Women have authentic conversations with the guy in the movie because they actually believe that the guy in the movie is talking directly to them.
In a guy movie, the women don't have lines, they don't talk because there isn't any time for talk. The guys been gone for three years, comes home for fifteen minutes and then has to go off and fight another war or get cigarettes. He has fifteen arrows embedded in his back, a hatchet lodged in his head and she doesn't ask him a single question!
That's the thing about movies that are made for women. Everybody talks. They all get together and talk during the movie and then the movie talks backs back to them. Then they all cry together and everybody is happy!
Obviously, movies illustrate how men and women differ in their concepts of love and romance. Our preferences in movies only depict the glaring futility of Hollywood to make films that bring us together.
Last week, I stopped showering and grew a one week scruff. I bought a horse to sleep with. I got boots and walked through all the horse dung I could find. I put an old wooden tub in the living room, filled it with water, got a bottle of good whiskey and lit up a cigar. I pulled my hat down over my brow and in my best Clint Eastwood pose, I sunk down into the tub and waited for her to come home.
When she got home she just started laughing. Obviously there are still too many teeth in my mouth!
It has become painfully clear to me, through this failed effort, that women think westerns are comedies. Its o.k. though. She's laughed so hard that she started crying. That means she's happy. Unfortunately, she was in a hurry and had to leave.
"Where are you going?" I asked her in grave disappointment.
"I'm meeting the girls at the theater" she said. "The blob marries the slob just came out!"
