"IMITATION OF LIFE"

Have you ever been sitting down with a bag of popcorn watching a movie and felt as though someone had been peaking through your blinds and decided to make a movie about your life? I believe that at some point we all have experienced this. I will admit that John Singleton is one of my favorite African American directors, so it should come as no surprise that "Baby Boy" is on my list of favorites. As many times as I have watched the movie it wasn't until recently that I felt the need to close my blinds because I just knew someone was watching me. It was spine tingling watching the interaction between the main characters because it was like deja vu. A scene from a movie I'd seen before but in fact it was no movie at all. It was a story line from my life. However life, my life is no movie at all, in fact it is very real and unscripted. At times I wish I could yell cut and re-shoot a certain scene or re-cast a certain character.
It is times like those I have to laugh because I always say, "If I were a character in a Tyler Perry film I'd be happy by the end". But if the saying is true, "the world is all a stage" then shouldn't we have the power to write and re-write as we please? There may be no yelling cut and re-shooting a scene but we surely have the power to re-cast characters at our discretion. We may watch a movie that reminds of a situation, sometimes watching a certain scene makes us cry because it's like watching yourself go through a bad time. Then there are those scenes that make us laugh because we have done the exact same thing or reacted the same way. So when you stop and take a long hard look at life it really already is a stage play or a scene from a movie. This is due largely in part to the fact that we are the directors, the writers and actors the way the movie ends is in our hands.

~B~