I read an article the other day saying that the movie Antoine Fisher had inspired a lot of male viewers to cry. I didn’t catch Antoine Fisher in the theater, so I can’t comment directly on that; fact is, I’ve hardly been to the movies at all in the past 6 years. I used to patronize the box office a lot, but after a while the films started blurring together on me. After reading the reviews of Antoine Fisher, however, I regret that I missed it. It sounds as though it would have met my heightened criteria for paying $10 or more for two hours of visual entertainment in a darkened chamber.

Back when I did get out to the flicks a lot, I don’t ever recall being driven to tears. The article on the Fisher film said that Field of Dreams was also considered a “guy cry”. I didn’t know that. It didn’t have that effect on me. (I guess that I’m just not tuned into baseball mysticism). And I suspect that even though Antoine Fisher would have been an edifying experience for me, I would have left the theater dry-eyed.

I’m not saying that as a brag. I don’t consider myself to be a “tough guy”. Actually, I think of myself as a highly sensitive fellow. Maybe even too sensitive and emotionally vulnerable at times. But there’s something about crying that I find rather irresponsible. I’m not saying that people should deny their emotions and the power that they have over our lives. I willingly admit that I express many emotions throughout the course of a day, some rather sublime, some very childish, most quite ordinary.

But the act of crying seems so self-indulgent to me, so inwardly focused. I personally prefer an emotive expression that can be shared in public without overwhelming everyone. One of my favorite emotional stylings can be seen on the CBS series “The Guardian”. Simon Baker is generally a wooden actor, but when he has to share some bad news with one of his pro bono clients, he does a great job of lowering his eyes, looking down at the floor and pursing his lips in a regretful fashion. Baker does that “sorry, but I just don’t know what to say here” look so incredibly well.

The article said that the emotional hot button that Antoine Fisher pushes with men is the subject of paternal relationships. If I recall correctly, Antoine Fisher himself never knew his father, who was shot and killed before Antoine was born (the Fisher story is quite real, and is in many ways even more interesting than the movie; Fisher fought his way out of a low-income, high-crime urban ghetto into a responsible job as a guard at a West Coast movie studio; he wrote up his life story while on lookout, and got it into the hands of the right people after learning that they passed by his guard booth every day). In the film, Fisher goes through some intense therapy scenes with a US Navy shrink played by Denzel Washington (who also directed the film). Obviously, a lot of the intensity focuses on Fisher’s lost father.

I myself have some unsettled issues about my own father, who died when I was in college. Looking back, I wonder sometimes if we could have settled the things that seperated us back then and moved on towards a closer relationship as I progressed through my 20s and 30s. On the night that he died, I told him in the intensive care unit that I loved him, something that I had never said to him before. Did I really feel what you might call “love” for him at that point, and did he share that emotion? He looked rather confused and distressed when I said it, as if he knew that he was in big trouble if I was saying something like that! It wasn’t quite what you’d call a Hollywood moment. But then again, at least it said that I would have liked us to have gotten along better, had we been given the time.

But to be honest, I don’t feel much need to shed any more tears over it. What happened happened; I said about as much as I could have given the circumstances. I learned from it, and I think that’s about what my father would have wanted. He was the kind of guy who, after you did something wrong, was more interested in knowing if you had learned your lesson, than wanting to whip your behind in retribution. His emphasis on practical learning is probably an important foundation of my own “eternal student” life philosophy.

But hey, I agree that there are times for emotional intensity. I’ll admit that I have cried a small handful of times during my adult life. But it was mainly at night. Thus, I strongly agree with the lyrics of that Gerry and the Pacemakers tune from the mid-60s: “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”. (Or the end of a movie, for that matter.)