I have known my best friend since we were 2 years old. We have managed to convince most people in our lives at some point or another that we are related, either as cousins or sisters. Our time spent together often ends in playful shoving matches. We both bounced around schools so often that by our junior year of high school, we hadn’t shared a class since the first grade. Yet, throughout the 10-year interim, the “best friend” label stuck.
When reflecting on how our unshakeable bond has lasted so long while so many other things have changed — boys coming and going, short distances becoming long — I’ve realized how important our love of sitting on a couch and pressing play on a movie is to our bond. Watching made-up characters play out made-up events has been an essential constant throughout our lives and friendship.
As children, we spent hours flipping through her DVD sleeves, arguing over which Barbie movie to finally slide into the player. One night, I was unable to fall asleep and decided I wanted to leave our sleepover. She cried because she didn’t want me to go. Her parents calmed us down by letting us stay up until almost 2 a.m. — an unfathomable and electric time of night for two 8-year-olds — to watch “Mirror, Mirror,” an insane Snow White remake that ends in a Bollywood-inspired dance montage, and from that point on, a staple in our friendship.
This habit of ours continued. During the summer of 2020, we watched the Hunger Games series in my backyard, projecting Panem onto my old bedsheets and stacking piles of assorted snacks on top of the plastic laundry baskets we used for tables. We faced the global pandemic and sticky, mosquito-infested summer nights together, remote in hand and eyes glued to the screen. We had nothing to talk about besides the hazy, dimly lit figures in front of us, and we didn’t want it any other way. At this point, we had been seeing each other only a couple of times a year. We didn’t know much about each other’s friends, school or day-to-day lives. Despite this, we were always able to laugh through a movie together. Whatever we put on, we’d find a way to make fun of it, fawn over its characters and relate to its message.
I will admit that when junior year rolled around and we saw each other daily, the movie-watching kicked into overdrive. Instead of a survival tactic, these movie nights became our lifeblood. They were our currency, an ongoing gift exchange between the two of us. We watched all ten of the Star Wars movies at my insistence (even though she fell asleep during Episode IV three times), and I watched all of “Game of Thrones” at hers. She got my reaction to the Red Wedding and I witnessed her reaction to the Luke and Leia sibling reveal. She showed me “Pretty Woman” and I introduced her to “When Harry Met Sally…,” as well as many, many more.
Through every movie, we laugh. We are the talkative and obnoxious people in the theater. Our combined ability to turn anything and everything into a comedic bit is exhilarating and intoxicating. Maybe this is taboo to write for an Arts piece but … we care nothing for the quality of the movies, the screenwriting or the direction. We have no regard for movies as an art form. Don’t get me wrong; we love movies, but primarily as a vessel for the conversations they spark between us, the countless inside jokes and the sounding board they provide for our relationship.
Once again at separate schools, movies are more important to us now than ever. When I see a TikTok about something from our shared catalog of favorites, I send it to her and she does the same for me. We’ve branched out to TV shows, and she’s started watching “Succession,” of which I love hearing her opinions. We are both eagerly awaiting season two of “The House of the Dragon.” We’re also currently brainstorming characters we can dress up as for our Halloween costumes next year. And when I visited her at college last semester, sure, we hugged and caught up, but we also put on a movie.
Movies have kept me and my best friend close. When there was nothing to say, no window into each other’s lives; the stories we shared made a door that we could run through, no pleasantry or small talk necessary. The ability we have to joke about absolutely anything as long as there are characters and a plot is part of why I love her so much. Beyond our undeniable comedic chemistry, movies are a large part of why we have been able to stay close for so many years. I owe my love of movies to her, and to movies, I owe my love of her.
Daily Arts Contributor Cora Rolfes can be reached at corolfes@umich.edu.