I recently rewatched Pleasantville for the first time in many years. And it may just be me, but it still holds up.

I love this part at the end:

Tobey’s line was one of the first movie quotes I latched onto when I was young.

At the time, I had been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to say in my graduation speech. I knew everyone expected me to be funny. And when I heard that line, I had an epiphany: I didn’t have to be funny. I didn’t have to be anything.

Naturally, I wove that quote into my speech. And over the years that followed, it became one of my core beliefs. Life is what you make it, not what anyone else expects of you.

I guess it’s funny for me, of all people, to say that expectations don’t matter… A lifelong perfectionist who’s now recovering from a long bout of social anxiety.

BUT I’m a work in progress. And sometimes I just need to rewatch a 30-year-old movie to remind myself of that.

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BONUS: here are 5 other platitudes from movies/tv that live rent-free in my head:

• “You are what you love, not what loves you.”
• “Sometimes when you win, you lose.” (and the inverse)
• “To the monsters, we’re the monsters.”
• “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
• “Home is where you make it.”

current mood: cinematic

current music: modest mouse – lampshades on fire