the hills are alive...

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17 December 2004 @ 11:55 pm

Somehow discussion of The Sound of Music came up recently, and I hadn't seen it in twenty years, so I bought it on tape today, on a whim. What a wonderful movie. I think it's one of those you have to see when you're a kid, otherwise it's probably like how I feel about West Side Story or The Wicker Man, which is, uh, yeah, nice and all, but what's the big deal? I think my pysche was deeply shaped by the Nazis and the nuns and the Alps and the romance. Maybe you don't think of cheery singing and children when you think of me, but somewhere there is a layer of sugar-plum musical in my soul.

Soon, on SciFi: Puppet Master Vs. Demonic Toys. Ah, so many great movies.

Because I can relate almost anything to Spike, I was about five minutes in, with Julie Andrews trilling in the meadows, when I remembered someone who'd screencapped Spike's crypt mentioning that among his LPs was the soundtrack to Sound of Music. Which at the time was just hilarious, but now...when I was watching, for a few minutes I had a different slant on Spike than I've had before. I was seeing him in a movie theater, watching motion pictures in color for the first time, and I was thinking how amazing it would be if you were a vampire, doomed to live in darkness, and along came this medium, film, that could capture the daylight world and blow it up to gigantic proportions and project it onto a screen. It would be amazing to see the world lit by sunshine and be right there in it, almost--mountains and trees and sky. And I can just see it affecting him, giving him all these nostalgic, romanticized visions of the sunlit world that he could never inhabit again, until one day everything was all bundled up in Buffy. Everything brilliant and golden and out of his reach.

So you're this dead shell of a person, and you see all these projections of life that you're not living, because you're sitting in the darkness, stuck watching something you can't join--I think I must identify with that.

19 comments | Leave a comment

19 comments —

( 19 comments — Leave a comment )

runpunkrun on December 18th, 2004 08:10 am (UTC)

There was a moment in the "Interview with the Vampire" movie where Louis is in a movie theater, watching a sunrise for the first time in decades. Louis and pre-vamp Spike would have gotten along wonderfully.

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eliade on December 18th, 2004 08:16 am (UTC)

I read it, like, years and years ago, so it might have sunk into the muck of my subconscious. *g* I'd reread it, but...er, yeah. Maybe some day, when Tom Cruise has dwindled from my own inner movie screen.

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rahirah on December 18th, 2004 05:59 pm (UTC)

Well, at least until Louis killed him and then angsted about it for ten pages. >:)

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kita0610 on December 18th, 2004 08:12 am (UTC)

You ever read Rice- before she went insane, I mean? There's a whole riff on Lestat in the second book I think, and him discovering sunrise in movies and watching it over and over again. Shit. Maybe it's Armand. Ah well. One of them. It's cool.

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kita0610 on December 18th, 2004 08:13 am (UTC)

Oops. will read comments before posting next time. *g*

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eliade on December 18th, 2004 08:17 am (UTC)

"Before she went insane." Was there a before?

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kita0610 on December 18th, 2004 08:18 am (UTC)

Well, grant me a continuum of sanity in any case. Least she still used editors.

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eliade on December 18th, 2004 08:24 am (UTC)

I imagine her sitting now in a room decked out entirely in purple velvet, with the windows draped shut, and rings glittering in abundance on her fingers, cats twining around her legs, while she dictates her stories to slender, shaved man-children who kneel breathlessly at her feet.

Come to think, that's not a bad life.

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ex_dovil323 on December 18th, 2004 08:28 am (UTC)

See, Spike used to tell Dru that was the reason why he saw the Sound of Music 53 times, but really it was because after Angelus left he tore the curtains down and made wimples with them and used to run about the hills futiely calling for Angelus and trying to entice him out. And then Darla would find him collapsed and weeping on a hillside somewhere and would have to carry him home and tuck him into bed and sing him songs about kittens and brown paper packages until his crying let off and he went off to sleep.

So really the movie has a lot of personal meaning for Spike which is why he always used to sit in the backrow so he could weep into his popcorn unseen as he mouthed along to the words.

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eliade on December 18th, 2004 08:30 am (UTC)

And I thought it was just his unwholesome crush on Julie Andrews. Hmm.

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yonmei on December 18th, 2004 08:48 am (UTC)

You have seen

daegaer's slash version, The Sound of Omens? Because if not, oh, you must.

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destina on December 18th, 2004 09:27 am (UTC)

Maybe you don't think of cheery singing and children when you think of me, but somewhere there is a layer of sugar-plum musical in my soul.

I think you should adopt sugar-plums as your theme fruit. They are adaptable, you see. Sometimes they are the pretty sparkly kind, and sometimes they are the arsenic-tinged dark and bloody kind. :)

And now, I shall stop spamming you with unanswerable comments. *drifts quietly away*

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tabaqui on December 18th, 2004 06:22 pm (UTC)

'The Wicker Man' has a huge cult following but it's also one of the few films that gets some pagan stuff actually RIGHT. Of course, a lot of it is WRONG, but all the stuff with maypoles and fertility and sex and virgins and etc....

*ahem*

Anyway. Also? Where they filmed it, Plockton? Is where they also filmed 'Hamish MacBeth', a lovely Scottish tv show with Robert Carlyle as the hash-smoking police officer of the town of Lochdubh. Very fun and funny and you can see the bar where the officer from Wicker Man stayed, and other landmarks if you watch 'Hamish'.
:)
*excuse my trivia*

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trepkos on December 18th, 2004 12:17 pm (UTC)

"And I can just see it affecting him, giving him all these nostalgic, romanticized visions of the sunlit world that he could never inhabit again, until one day everything was all bundled up in Buffy. Everything brilliant and golden and out of his reach."

Aw. We love Spike. If only he knew.

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entrenous88 on December 18th, 2004 12:37 pm (UTC)

It's such a melancholy, lovely picture you've sketched. I don't care if Rice has done it already, because I'd much rather read your take.

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laurashapiro on December 18th, 2004 03:47 pm (UTC)

I think we *all* identify with that.

Profound observation, pet. Thank you for writing it out for us.

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tabaqui on December 18th, 2004 06:24 pm (UTC)

How odd.
I was just thinking last night how amazing movies - especially color movies - would have been for Spike and for Dru. And i was thinking i needed to do some research about who put out the first color movie and where and figure out where they were at the time so i could add it to Spike's memories at some point.

I love your take on that - and wow, why didn't they have the Brood King sitting and watching movies and angsting?
Heee.

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nzlaura on December 18th, 2004 10:18 pm (UTC)

Thanks so much for sharing this... you have this amazing gift of grabbing on to little moments that other people might not notice and showing how beautiful they can be.

Or maybe Spike lives in your brain. *g*

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tehomet on December 18th, 2004 10:26 pm (UTC)

Wow. I never thought of it like that before.

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