Soundtrack to a Montage

Audrey and I agree -- the best part of a movie is the montage. The part where so many things are happening that they are just shoved together and flash in front of you to the tune of the best song on the soundtrack. The funniest parts of a comedy, the sweetest parts of a love story, the part of the action film where the “plan comes together”. I love montages. I watched a movie a week ago and still have the montage song stuck in my head.

“Do you want to know
If everything glittering
Will turn into the gold
I see in your hair
I feel it could be there
Somehow, tonight…” -Peter Salett

Which is actually kind of nice because I was starting to think that every song was more and more depressing. Sad songs have existed since the beginning of time, but lately, they have stung more than they used to.

It was starting to seem like every song had some kind of pain behind it. Songs I’ve heard all my life. Songs that have always seemed sad are even more so. I’ve been disappointed before, broken hearted, but I finally feel that thing that artists and song writers are trying to describe to the people who don’t understand it. That hollow, empty, hopeless feeling like you are missing a body part and you know you won’t get it back, so you just have to press on and pretend you don’t need it. You have to tell yourself that you will find something just as good, but different, and that will be ok. You’ll live; you’ll just be changed forever.

I realized the other day, when playing Peter Salett through my head for the umpteenth time, that my last relationship was all montage. We had the build up while we got to know each other over email, and then - montage. We spent time together laughing, holding hands, telling each other things we don’t tell anyone else, he did every possible romantic thing, we fell asleep talking to each other because we couldn’t say goodnight or goodbye, he made me a soundtrack for our montage and we listened to it together and parts of it made me cry. But no relationship can survive on montage alone. After every montage comes the conflict. In most movies, something will happen to remove the conflict and one of the players will make some grand display of affection, put everything on the line, and miraculously, the other will still feel the same way, and they live happily ever after. But like Angelina said in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, “Happy endings are for stories that haven't finished yet.”

“And do you want to find
Something worth saving
The change would do me right
Cause I've been just waiting
And hesitating
With this heart of mine” -PS

By now the boy would have realized that this is worth saving and he would have made that grand gesture. But that’s assuming that this is the one great montage in my movie. I’m hoping there will be more than one. That this, if it can’t be a happily ever after, can be a happy subplot -- a character builder that makes the story more interesting.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a movie that has an amazing montage where the characters don’t end up together, but it has a happy ending. If anyone out there can think of one, please let me know. And don’t say My Best Friend’s Wedding. That is not a happy ending. It is a good ending, it is the right ending, but Julia Roberts still ends up alone, and that’s not what I want my ending to be.