Poppy-Fields Movies: The Couch Of Fame
6/5/17: Your objection to The Firm not being on the PFM Couch Of Fame…is sustained!
What is a poppy-fields movie?
I first mentioned the concept in a very old piece from the “Tomato Nation? It’s a web journal” days, but I don’t remember when I started pairing it with the poppy fields from The Wizard of Oz. In any case: it’s a film you can’t not watch when it comes on, whether it’s cycling through on HBO or cut up in a hundred pieces on Sunday-afternoon basic cable. You know what happens. You could recite what happens from memory. Sometimes, the memory isn’t even that good, because a poppy-fields movie doesn’t rely on quality to becalm you, one boot laced up and the other resting patiently on its side, as you get ready to go out or sit down for a TV break between chores.
What does it rely on? Familiarity, partly; a handful of performances in The Godfather get worse with each viewing, but it’s a worse I can sing along with. Length helps too, at least for me — many of the films on my all-time poppy-fields list clock in at three hours with commercials. Often there’s a moment or scene at the end that I have some Pavlovian need to rewatch, some victory or reunion that gives me a thrill. Sometimes it’s straight-ahead quotable fun. Sometimes it’s all of those things. Sometimes I own it on DVD/iTunes and I STILL can’t pry myself away from a 3 PM showing on TBS.
So, let’s review the criteria so far:
- lengthy
- familiar/frequent
- classic/award-winner
- “Greetings, Professor Falken” (big payoff/long-shot victory a la WarGames)
- “Wanna have a catch?” (Pavlovian tear-jerk; anything with dads opens the ducts for this guy)
- quote-fest
- I’d add caper-ish or -adjacent camaraderie to my personal list
- “forget you, melon farmer” (you own it, but will still watch it chopped up with ads/bunged up with fake curse words)
Rarely will a movie score on all of those. It does seem like you need at least three to land a cushion on the PFM Couch Of Fame, but it’s no guarantee; Gone With The Wind is endless, rerun frequently, won awards, and owns the AFI top-quotes list — and I find it unbearable.
The Couch Of Fame so far:
A Few Good Men, 9/16/14 (Lis and Esther)
A League Of Their Own, 4/3/17 (Megan, Trip, and Ron)
Almost Famous, 11/9/17 (Greg, Sean, and John)
Apollo 13, 11/23/14 (Heather)
Back To The Future, 9/9/14 (NJ)
Clueless, 9/28/14 (Jody)
Diner, 4/24/14 (SDB)
The Fifth Element, 6/13/14 (Kat)
The Firm, 6/5/17 (Duchess Kat)
Forrest Gump, 3/6/17 (Alan Swann)
The Fugitive, 8/25/14 (Bill)
Grosse Pointe Blank, 1/23/15 (Rayvyn)
The Hunt For Red October, 5/6/14 (Craig)
Jaws, 10/28/14 (Kristin)
The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1/26/17 (Charlie)
The Magnificent Seven, 5/23/14 (Jan)
The Matrix, 4/24/15 (Crabcakes)
Pretty Woman, 7/20/15 (Crabcakes)
The Princess Bride, 12/9/15 (Meri, Elizabeth, Felis, and Myndi)
Sex & The City, 7/17/14 (SDB)
The Shawshank Redemption, 3/7/15 (E. and Kate)
The Silence Of The Lambs, 8/28/15 (KR)
Working Girl, 9/23/16 (Stephanie)
To nominate your own PFM, email bunting at tomatonation dot com with a rundown of the criteria and your argument for why it deserves a cushion. You can win stuff!
Tags: A League Of Their Own Almost Famous Apollo 13 Back To The Future Clueless daddy issues Diner Field Of Dreams Forrest Gump free crap Gone With The Wind Grosse Pointe Blank movies Ocean's 11 Ocean's 13 poppy-fields movies Pretty Woman quotations Sex & The City The Fifth Element The Firm The Fugitive The Godfather The Hunt For Red October The Long Kiss Goodnight The Magnificent Seven The Matrix The Shawshank Redemption The Silence Of The Lambs The Wizard Of Oz WarGames Working Girl
Not an award-winner, except possibly at sleepovers, but: “Better Off Dead”. Ditto for “Raising Arizona”. “Ahhh…love heeyum SO MUUUUCH…” “Ah know ya do, honey.”
Anything with Sean Bean. For real. I will stop, doesn’t matter if I’m in labor, and watch.
Can I throw in the Sandra Bullock thriller “The Net” with Jeremy “Budget-Pierce-Brosnan” Northam? It runs nearly two hours, is nearly as perennial as “While You Were Sleeping” and “Speed” (the Sandra Bullock ’90s trifecta), and has the best woman-in-trouble plot since “Single White Female.” Sandra Bullock’s Angela Bennett takes on a group of cyber-terrorists in 199-freaking-5 lead by a maniacal Bill Gates analog. And wins. And like every movie about computers in the ’90s, there’s so much dramatic watching-loading-bars-fill-up action! Gotta wait for that progress bar to get to 100%! “C’mon, c’mon!”
Tear-jerk moment: anything involving Angela with her piano-teaching, Alzheimer’s patient mother.
Caperish moment: anything involving Angela with her ex-lover and ex-psychiatrist Alan Champion, played by a not yet discredited Dennis Miller.
Lots of good ones here. Some others: Reversal of Fortune, Broadcast News, Breakfast Club (Eat my socks!) and Working Girl.
One factor I also consider is “nap-ability,” which is the ability to doze off, wake up, and know exactly where you are in the movie.”Citizen Kane” is definitely on my list because of a high nap-ability factor. Quotes: “Rosebud”,”I thought it might be fun to run a newspaper.”, “Sing Sing, Geddes!”
The other big factor? Swayze-ness. Dirty Dancing, Roadhouse, Point Break, The Outsiders, Youngblood, Donnie Darko, To Wong Foo: A high Patrick Swayze score will keep my attention indefinitely.
Oh man. Every time there’s a late-years Harry Potter on ABC Family, I seem to end up watching it. I could probably recite Order of the Phoenix by this point, but I will still watch it to the finish if it’s on.
I also find myself sitting down and watching Sleepless in Seattle, or Sense & Sensibility when it’s on.
Love Actually, Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles
A Few Good Men, Dirty Dancing and Raiders of the Lost Ark. That widdle monkey! Karen Allen’s “Oh no you don’t have to keep it here just because of MEEEE!” as it attacks her hair! Melting faces! That ending!
Aannnnd I just realized that I replied twice here and have mentioned AFGM and DD twice. Still standing by Raiders, though.
Sense and Sensibility, definitely.
“Mrs. Robert Ferrars?”
::wibble::
And I’ve never been able to pass by Raiders.