“It’s not about what you love; it’s about how you love it. So there’s going to be a thing in your life that you love. I don’t know what it’s going to be. It might be sports or science or reading or telling stories — it doesn’t matter what it is. The way you love that thing and how you find other people who love it the way you do is what makes being a nerd awesome ... Some of us love completely different things. But we all love those things so much that we travel thousands of miles — which is probably easy for you, but we’re still using fossil fuels, so it’s difficult — to be around people who love the things that we love the way that we love them. That’s why being a nerd is awesome. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that thing that you love is a thing that you can’t love.”
Artists are inspired by the artists that came before them, and inspire other artists in turn. When George Lucas saw Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, it inspired him to create Star Wars. When Patrick Read Johnson saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, it inspired him to use his father’s 8mm movie camera to create his own movies. And then in March or April of 1977, their stories intersected in a way that changed Patrick’s life forever.
Forty years later, Johnson brings us 5-25-77, a coming-of-age story about his experiences that he wrote and directed. He began working on it, appropriately enough, in 2001, and was able to show a rough cut of it in 2007 to celebrate Star Wars’ 30th anniversary, but it took him another decade to complete the project. The final result has proven to be more than worth the wait.
Patrick (Freaks and Geeks alum John Francis Daley) is a nerdy kid living in a time that was not kind to nerdy kids. In 1977, his mother Janet (Colleen Camp) calls Herb Lightman (the always perfect Austin Pendleton) to tell him about her son’s love of and gift for making movies, and Pendleton agrees that if Patrick can get to LA, he will arrange a meeting with Douglas Trumbull (Michael Pawlak), whose effects work on 2001 were what inspired Patrick to pick up his camera.
While touring Trumbull’s production studio, Patrick becomes the first person to see Star Wars that hasn’t worked on it. Then he returns home, and has to decide whether he will stay in rural Illinois or leave home for Hollywood.
Once scene that particularly resonated with me was the one when Patrick nerds the hell out in front of a group of his classmates, giving a summary of everything that happens in Star Wars, complete with sound effects and gestures acting out what the characters did. After he finishes, one of them asks him “What are you on?” Watching this unfold reminded me of how I used to do that (before my family got a VCR, my parents would ask me to watch shows they had to miss so I could do this for them), and of how, when I chose the wrong audience for it, I’d just get blank stares or sarcastic remarks. We’ve all had our moments when we love something so much that we want to show somebody why. And if you’ve ever read the comments on, well, anything really, you’ve seen that we’ve all had somebody who will bypass merely not sharing your appreciation and instead just take shots at you.
But there will also be people who get it, and get you, and even if they don’t end up loving the thing that you love they will at least understand that it brought you joy, and be happy about the fact that you’re happy about something.
There’s so much more in 5-25-77 that I could tell you about – a shot of one of Patrick’s eyes while he watches a plane taking off from the local airport which conveys his sense of wonder in the way the plane’s lights are reflected in his pupil is a perfect moment of beauty, for example – but you deserve the same chance to discover them by watching them happen that I got.
5-25-77 is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year. If at all possible go with a friend, like I did, because if you enjoy it half as much as I did then you’ll want to have somebody to nerd the hell out with over it afterward.
And in closing, I’d like to give thanks to some of the people who inspired me:
Siskel and Ebert, who gave me my first lessons in how to give a movie the review that it deserves.
Lindsay Ellis, whose video The Smurfette Principle introduced me to the world of internet critics like the ones here at Goggular
And Toby Mobias, the guy who runs the site, ‘and who once asked me whether I had ever considered writing reviews.
Next week I’ll share another of Love’s Lost Labors with you, as I nerd the hell out about one of the best movies of 2016 that you most likely missed. But in the meantime go see 5-25-77.
Snakebitcat also used to be the remote control for his family’s TV before his parents finally bought a set that came with one. Good times.
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