Growing up in the family I was a part of was incredibly difficult. As a child, there was very much a core set of beliefs drilled into me, right from the get-go. Raised by my father, we didn’t talk about our emotions because we were boys. Anything aside from sports was frowned down on and it was a weight on my shoulders having to exist within that life. I was born and as I grew into a little boy, my life experiences helped shape the person I am today, which to be completely honest, is quite the opposite of those rules that were forced onto me. I was a very emotional kid, stemming from child abuse that was never addressed. I lived inside my own head and I felt EVERYTHING. The difficult part is that, because of my family, those emotions and feelings were reasons I was made to feel like there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I struggled with suicidal ideation long before I even knew how to spell suicidal ideation. I felt like I was such a weird human being, just because I FELT everything. I thought I was a failure for wanting to scream in sadness. It was such a painful experience, growing up.
When I was 8 years old, something very special happened, an event that really allowed me, as a child, to really understand something very profound: I was allowed to feel.
I spent so much of my childhood in video stores. Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably spent more time in the horror section of Major Video than I spent at my own home. They knew me by name, they knew which film I’d come in for on Tuesdays. It was my home away from home. There was a promotion that I took advantage of so often: five movies for five days, for five dollars. I’d grab my five films, rent them and spend my weekend in my room, living vicariously through the stories of Laurie Strode, Andy Barclay and other survivors. I still felt infinitely guilty for not being able to hide my emotions, because I was so tired of being called names by my father or brother, because I had a hard time keeping the appearance that I was a tough boy who loved sports and so on. I began to close myself off from my emotions because I was tired of being called homophobic slurs, just because I wasn’t able to put up a stone wall. During those times, I lived within those films, those characters. They were able to put everything into surviving, their will, their power and above all else, their emotions.
As I stood in the video store there one night, I was tasked with finding five films I wanted to spend my weekend with. I had rented the recently released HALLOWEEN 4 on VHS too many times to make my dad continue to allow me to rent it again, so I knew I’d have to branch out a bit. I grabbed mostly films I was already in love with. COBRA. INNERSPACE. PREDATOR. A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4. I needed a fifth film and I thought it would be great to get something I had never watched before. As I was walking around, I noticed a familiar name on the cover of a film, a name that at eight years old, I was already a massive fan of: John Carpenter. This film looked different than the films I was already a fan of. This wasn’t HALLOWEEN, THE FOG or THE THING. It looked welcoming, inviting. I knew I had to see it, so I grabbed a film that would change not only my life, but the way I looked at life in general: John Carpenter’s STARMAN.
Watching STARMAN for the first time, I found myself following the story of a woman deep in grief over the loss of her husband. I followed the story of an alien trying to get home while also learning what it was to be human. What TRULY makes us human beings. I sat there, eight years old, lost in introspection. I found myself feeling lost in the grief that Jenny Hayden was feeling. Just a couple of years earlier, my best friend had found his father’s fun and accidentally killed himself. I wasn’t able to cry for him then, but as I watched Jenny weep for her lost partner, I felt choked up, thinking of my friend. When I watched the deep conversations and life and what it is to be human, to FEEL, I felt myself somewhat having those same conversations with myself, even at such a young age. I began to think that maybe I wasn’t the odd one, that maybe my father and brother were the ones who were closing themselves off from actually living life and all of its complexities. An odd thing to think about at eight years old, but there I was, coming to terms with being ME, with feeling what I felt inside and allowing myself to FEEL for the first time.
There’s a scene in STARMAN, where a group of hunters (led by THE FINAL CHAPTER’s Jason Voorhees himself, Ted White) have a deer strapped to their car, having recently killed it for sport. Jeff Bridges’ alien character sees this and walks outside and up to the deer. He uses one of the few power marble-like stones he has left and heals the deer, bringing it back to life and allowing it to escape. It was at that moment, that my emotions hit me full on. Everything I had bottled up my entire young life to date, came to the surface. I felt love, true love and true humanity for the first time. I saw myself in Bridges’ character. For the first time, I felt like CARING wasn’t an alien thing, that feeling for others and yourself wasn’t alien. Being closed off from empathy was. It was such an important moment to me, to witness that scene, because it started an inner dialogue with myself that would go on to inform how I see life and how I try my best to see what others are going through.
I’m not perfect, I’ve been an asshole from time to time, but I do think that seeing the hope and beauty in life always beats living with cynicism and negativity leading your path. I believe that we are put on this earth, to live and enrich the lives of others, whether we do that via our art, our words or just our actions in general. We are here to make each other’s lives better, we are here to show each other what compassion and hope can be. I didn’t learn that lesson from school and I most certainly did not learn that lesson from a church or family member. I learned that lesson from John Carpenter’s STARMAN. While Carpenter is notorious for downplaying his contributions to cinema, I wouldn’t be the man I am today or have the passion for helping others I try to have, without experiencing that film, so John, if you ever find yourself reading this, thank you. It changed my life.
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