OK film fans, tonight as I was cleaning the kitchen, and yes my life is THAT fabulous, I felt a wave of nostalgia overtake me as I looked upon 2 signs I have that once adorned my grandmother's kitchen. It reminded me of a simpler time, as all time is when you're very young, standing next to her as she would prepare sumptuous meals and otherworldly baked goods, for both family and friends.
There are a countless films in the nostalgia sub-genre, but perhaps my favorite is about a time before I was even born. My Favorite Year is a comedic, heartfelt gaze back at the Golden Age of television from the eyes of an insider. Directed, in a surprisingly artistic turn by Richard Benjamin, who wasn't much of an actor and even less of a director, is a loving tribute to Sid Caesar's 'Your Show of Shows', the inventive staff that brought it together each week and a homage to 30's and 40's adventure star Errol Flynn.
Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker), based in part on the young Mel Brooks, is a young star writer on the staff who suffers from an unrequited love for fellow staffer K.C. Downing (Jessica Harper). When his favorite swashbuckling film star Alan Swann (the legendary Peter O'Toole) is set to host, Benjy is assigned the formidable task of chaperoning him to ensure his arrival to work in a coherent fashion. But Benjy's admiration gets the best of him and soon he is Swann's sidekick for his drunken, womanizing adventures. Swann is also the source of one of my favorite lines to come out of film. But thanks to some sage words of wisdom from the legendary swordsman, Benjy is able to finally make the right moves to charm K.C.
The whole film has a sweet, loving charm to it that makes you wish you could spend more time with these characters in their cutting edge 50's lifestyle. There are so many things here to admire, the care with which the story is told and the presentation of the life of stars and staff alike in the new medium of television. Made in 1982, it can be added to a long list of films that shine a light back to a time when things were simpler, kinder and warmer.
I have a book my grandmother used when she taught English, "A Collection of Readings for Writers", from 1955. It's broken into sections on Plays, Poetry, Criticism etc. and my favorite section, Problems and Points of View, contains articles like "The Luxury of Integrity", "The Idea of Progress" and "The Truth about Race". The issues found in these articles closely resemble the issue we still have today, even if our clothes, music and cars have little in common.
Ultimately, nostalgia should be confined to culture, which changes with each passing generation. We should never confuse it with our humanity, because in several thousand years of recorded history our human nature has changed in small steps, not leaps and bounds, and changes in our culture far outweigh changes in humanity during the last 50 to 100 years. Regardless of the era you pine for, hatred, racism, sexism and a separation of classes existed. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
As much as I love this film, and I think I loved it even more when I was younger and less experienced, it has started to take on a different tone for me. I'm now getting closer to an age when I know that soon, I'll look back to a time when I was around Benjy's stage in life, and feel nostalgic. But as I said before, nostalgia can easily be misplaced and misconstrued. Every generation bemoans the same things and feels a sense of loss at the disappearance of what they knew from their younger days. This has always been and probably always will be a rite of passage.
And for those of you who might wonder, my grandmother's sign, which to her was more than just a motto and for me represents a moment frozen in time, is as follows: "Home, where each lives for the other and all live for God." Long live nostalgia...
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