03/17/2006 - 2:29 a.m. | a defense of modern cinema

I had pretty much forgotten about this (strange considering how many times Kyle and I watched it), but oh lord that crazy old cunt at the end of Hitch! Wealthy dowager be all chokin' on some giant almond or olive or something, and that Southern belle all saves her life and all, but we in the audience know that old bitch ain't really chokin'! She and Hitch have had this plan the WHOLE TIME! You can by when she pulls up her opera glasses and winks at him that they were planning this all along, she and Hitch. Her inbred son, that redheaded Dixieland firecracker, a dance is how it starts, thinks Hitch and the old woman (played by Mimi Weddell), but tonight will end good for them. End of story. It is so, so good.

That is the best scene in any movie ever, when that old matriach winks, all wheels in motion and stuff, all "mission accomplished" but with like dignity and spunk. And opera glasses. She is so old but still has a righteous sense of fun she got from our modern black hero, the young Alex Hitchens. Hitch makes friends with all the old women, because he knows they have the connection and just the right amount of sass to get his crazy schemes working right.

It does not matter if it is at a wedding for another one of Hitchens' successful fix-ups. The man is never off the clock, all meeting in broom cupboards before the wedding ceremony. "Listen, Mimi Weddell. I know you have had some trouble getting your grandnephew to like women and things, and I know this freckled whatsit that got fucked by some second-rate Val Kilmer, but I have a feeling if you pretend to die on this buckeye or whatever [What is that object, by the way?] that shit is going to go RIGHT." And she smiles all big because she knows that he is so right about that.

She better not be dead by the time I am making movies.