Enfants du cinema

While eating breakfast with Emily and Gus, a squirrel walks across the kitchen floor. The squirrel stops right in front of me and looks up. We lock eyes and, seeing the look of resignation on my face, he knows he’s now the man of the house. But then, perhaps taking pity on me, he turns around and jumps out the window.

The incident lasts a minute, but it feels like days. Rather than offering opiates to the dying, we should offer them squirrels. A squirrel in the house will make whatever amount of time you have left on Earth feel infinitely longer.

Later, Emily and I arrive with Gus at the Cry Baby Matinee, a local movie screening for parents and their babies. It’s one of the few places we can go where a screaming baby is socially acceptable and we want to take full advantage. “I’ve always wanted to stand at the front of the movie screen and say a few words before the film starts,” I tell Emily as we get seated.

“What would you even say?” she asks.

“I’d speak of my love of cinema. The only person I know who loves movies more than I do is my friend Tucker. As the theatre lights are lowered, he always cries out with glee, ' I love you, movies.' One time he did it while out on a date and the woman he was with thought he’d said, ' I love you, Julie.' The woman’s name was Julie. The rest of the evening didn’t go very well.”

The New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael considered watching movies a sacred vocation and would say before the movie began, let us pray. I pray there isn’t too much crying at the Cry Baby Matinee, but there is. It’s like being in an amphitheatre of exploding car alarms. But it also feels like Gus is among his people, a race of beings who share his customs and rituals. Namely, screaming, yelling and crying. At least the crying makes it permissible to offer film commentary wit hout fear of disturbing anyone. “This movie is terrible,” I say to Emily.

It’s probably be tter t hat t he movie isn’t very good because this way, we don’t have to concern ourselves about missing half the dialogue due to the crying. And that it’s Gus’s first movie, our first movie all together as a family – a squirreless family – makes it feel like one of the best I’ve ever seen.