A woman e-mailed me today to chide me for giving away the whole story of the newest “Die Hard” film, and I had to laugh at the comment, and then at myself.
Bad guys do bad things, stuff blows up, Bruce Willis saves everyone. Oops, sorry, did it again.
But I know what she means. I didn’t watch the recent American Film Institute update of the 100 greatest films ever made for the very reason that they spoiled the fun of movies for me when they first presented this list on CBS a decade ago.
Care to know what Rosebud means? Guess who Ilsa goes off with at the end of “Casablanca.” No, don’t bother. The AFI can tell you.
Over the course of three hours in 1997, the AFI showed clips of the top 100 and proceeded to give away key plot points and the endings to many of the classics. I was beside myself.
I’m always so jealous when someone tells me they’ve never seen “The Bridge on the River Kwai” or “On the Waterfront,” thinking of my own experience at seeing these masterpieces the first time around, and wondering what it would be like to see them again, with no knowledge of what’s to come.
Then there’s the thought that perhaps someone decides that, thanks to the AFI, they know what happens in these old films, so why bother checking them out. Again, beside myself.
I couldn’t contain my boyhood excitement at the conclusion of “Rocky” in 1976. Would it have been the same if someone had told me that the Italian Stallion…
Forget it. I’m not going there.
Again, I didn’t see the AFI presentation this time around, but I can only hope they didn’t tell you anything about Bruce Willis and his film “The Sixth Sense” or other major spoilers.
Note to the AFI: Just intimate that Rosebud is a symbol of one man’s lost innocence and let people figure out what that means. The result will something we call an epiphany, which still occasionally happens at the cinema.
