FINAL SCENE

It’s time. The final scene. One of the most important things in a film. A great ending can make a movie. Look at Pulp Fiction, or Silence of the Lambs, or—and I can’t believe I’m going to say this—Say Anything.

I was so hoping this story would have a Hollywood ending—all sappy and sweet, wrapped in a nice big red bow.

Just the way Riley likes ’em

But it wasn’t meant to be. I guess I jumped the shark after all.

I still think about Riley every day. Sometimes I catch myself ready to call her after I see an awesome film or learn something cool in class. Then I remember that I don’t even have her number anymore.

How’s that for a happy ending?

There are so many great last lines in the movies. So many we could use here.

I could take Scarlett O’Hara’s last line in Gone with the Wind: “I’ll go home, and I’ll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!” A few word changes and it would be perfect for the end of our story.

Or we could end with a meeting between me and Riley and steal from another classic, Casablanca, where Bogart says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Yeah, what I wouldn’t do to be friends with Rye again.

But more apropos would be a dark ending. Something like the ending in Sunset Boulevard: “You see, this is my life. It always will be! There’s nothing else. Just us, and the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark. All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Forget it.

Here’s the real shit: I no longer care about modeling my life after a film. For so long, I wished I could edit out all the bad stuff that happened. But I’m not so sure anymore. That time in my life was a big part of me—of who I was and what I was.

And Rye? Well, she’ll never be gone. Not completely. After all, she’s my childhood, my history, my home.

Yeah, my life is no movie. Who are we kidding? But just for grins, this would be my closing scene: A college freshman in an edit suite at Columbia going over the footage for a documentary.

The film I’m working on has taken on a life of its own, without me directing it. A piece about … love.

Sort of a tribute to Riley.

I shuttle through interviews of people talking about love. Gay love. Straight love. Romantic love. Platonic love. You get the idea.

And as you listen to the people talk, it’s clear.

Love is simple and complicated and easy and hard. People do great and terrible things all in the name of it. Love, to use a cliché, makes the world go round.

But mostly, love is honest. It has to be.

And that, my friends, is a wrap.

Cue the music … roll the credits.