They should give awards for this

Last night I had a dream that someone stole my phone, PDA (I know, I still have one that's not also a phone!), and wallet from my backpack when I was at school. The first thing I thought of when I woke up was the scene in The Goodbye Girl when Marsha Mason's character has her purse snatched, drops her groceries, and kneels on the ground in tears to pick up a box of spaghetti that's scattered across the street.

That image made a strong impression on me as a child when I saw the movie at the theater with my parents. I felt it at the time, and my remembering it upon waking today after my dream suggests that that moment was the first time I connected with someone else's feeling of violation and loss after being robbed.

Every year they hand out the Oscars for the previous year's movies. How cool would it be if they also gave out awards for the movies from thirty years ago? Certain movies have an affect on people that isn't immediately obvious. And there are movies that would never win "best" in any category considered by the Academy but, in the end, have more of an impact on the culture than anyone might have anticipated.

There are also movies that simply contain an indelible image that forever symbolizes a feeling for a person. 1977 was an amazing year in film: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Smokey and the Bandit, Annie Hall, Saturday Night Fever, The Goodbye Girl... (not to mention my own guilty pleasures like The Kentucky Fried Movie and Fun with Dick and Jane). Star Wars would seem like a shoo-in for my personal favorite. And it probably is. But I'd have to say that that scene with Marsha Mason picking up the spaghetti is probably the one that touched my soul most deeply, and someone should get a statuette for that.