Maybe Growing Up is Realizing Wes Anderson is Full of Shit

Ooh la la, amirite?

I saw Rushmore in the theatre with a friend who is no longer my friend. Nothing “happened” with us. In fact, a few years after we saw Rushmore together, I was best man at his wedding. He moved to Minnesota and we just gradually stopped talking. That’s what happened: nothing. And now there’s nothing.

Interestingly, the best man at my wedding (spoiler alert: I’m divorced) and I don’t talk anymore either. But “something” happened there, and now there’s nothing. Maybe you shouldn’t be best man at someone’s wedding. Consider yourself warned by a competent authority.

I remember tears streaming down my cheeks at the final scene in Rushmore, as “Ooh La La” by The Faces plays, all jangly and strummy and satisfactorily, as everybody is appropriately paired up and dancing, like at the end of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. Not too long after I saw Rushmore (I was eighteen when it premiered, so, we don’t expect too much from eighteen year olds, do we?) I had an appointment with my allergist. After blowing into the peak flow meter, he and I would frequently talk about family, religion, movies — this was the days before managed care limited physicians to spending 2.2 minutes with each patient. I remember getting into a rather heated argument with him about Rushmore, particularly the final scene — he excoriated me for liking it…