Thread by @aHeartOfGould

So I saw ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD and it fucked me up on levels I was not aware that I had, and I am really struggling and emotional in my response to it. I don't normally write about myself when writing about movies. BUT. (MILDEST OF SPOILERS TO COME)

For the last two years I've been grappling with and mostly losing out to an overwhelming despair at my feelings of uselessness, and how time and talent I've squandered by doing nothing. I feel like I have one thing I do well (writing), and have really done nothing with it.

And from that has sprung an overwhelming need to feel useful, to feel my being here isn't just an accretion of days that blur together, but it's worth something. To hope that with the one limited skill I have, I can do something meaningful with it, and matter.

Just for one fucking moment in my life, I want to use the one thing I have that's worth a damn to feel useful. Just once.

Instead, I sit at a joyless day job, selling chunks of my life away, as my time narrows and I do less and less with myself. (I know this is not unique!)

And so today I watched a movie about two men who each have a particular skill set, skill sets that they have abused and neglected.

At one point, a child actor tells Di Caprio's Rick Dalton that the goal of any actor is "to achieve 100% effectiveness. Which is impossible." But the goal is to try. To do your best.

She asks him what he's reading, and he tells her it's a western about a cowboy who was hot shit in his 20s, but now in his late 30s (my age!), he's injured and old and feeling more and more useless with every day. Then Dalton breaks down into uncontrollable tears (and so did I).

And without going too deep into spoiler territory, there is a moment in which two fuckup losers are able to use their unique skills to do One Good Thing. To matter, and rediscover a usefulness. To be driven to attempt 100%.

And watching this was like a spiritual vivisection.

Anymore, when something's funny, I don't laugh. When something's sad, I can't cry.

But after this film I bawled like a baby, parked in my car in the parking structure, watching the palm trees of Hollywood sway in the wind.

I so desperately hope that it isn't too late for me. That I can use whatever limited skills I have to do something useful. To matter, if just for one moment. I want that so much it's all I think about, and the only thing that gets me out of bed.

And ONCE UPON A TIME captures that feeling in all its insecurity and hypocritical privilege and deathwish self-loathing, but also its innate humanity and sadness and beauty. And it tore me apart in a way I probably needed.

And the moment (and its aftermath) in which characters are able to finally use their gifts in a meaningful way? However over the top and cinematic it may have been, it was such a metaphor for what we all so desperately want.

To take from our own heads what we know is special or unique about us and finally USE it for something. To bring it out into the world. To be useful. Even if it only leads to a neighborly conversation. That's something special.

And so is ONCE UPON A TIME...IN HOLLYWOOD.