The Fisher King

This man.

The one on the right.

He stars in the only film that ever comes to mind when someone asks me to name my favorite movie. It's Terry Gilliam's 1991 fable, The Fisher King. In it, he plays an emotionally distant radio shock jock, a self-absorbed jerk who ultimately finds redemption through the care shown to him by a homeless paranoid schizophrenic, played by Robin Williams, a sweet-natured soul whose circuits have been fried by tragedy, and whom the shock jock eventually feels compelled to protect, grasping that their fates are finally and eternally entwined.

The Fisher King is a love story. It's about being wounded in different ways and the power we have to heal one another. Every time I watch that movie, I am enthralled.

And last night, as Jeff Bridges was interviewed by the rather haughty Piers Morgan on CNN, I remembered why I can't turn away when he's onscreen, Bridges I mean, not the Brit. He's so authentic and humble, so aware of the graces that have eased his life, so devoid of false modesty. Even when asked that cliche of a question, "Was winning the Oscar the highlight of your life?" Bridges was pitch perfect. "Well, watching my children being born beat that," he said. Of course it did. And when Morgan pressed, asking, "Well, the highlight of your professional life," Bridges replied, "Not really, that would be the work. The highlight is doing the work." He said it gently, allowing his interviewer to save face, but he didn't get drawn in by the easy answer.

But what really, really slayed me was when he talked about his marriage of 36 years, to a townie he met while making a movie in Montana. He had been terrified of marriage. He shared that his wife hates when he says this, but he had thought of marriage as one step towards death, because now you were with the woman you would be with for the rest of your life, there would be no one else until death. Well. That sounds like a man who knew how to make a commitment. And then, when Morgan asked him the secret of his great marriage despite the Hollywood celebrity machine, Bridges got this goofy aw shucks look on his face and he mumbled shyly through his shaggy beard that that he was more in love with his wife now than ever. And then he said:

“It’s like that question, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. In marriage, what that means is when those tight times happen, when you feel, Oh, shit, this is terrible, I’m outta here, that's when you have to lean into it, you take it as an opportunity to learn more about each other, get closer, and enlarge your love. Then that precious feeling kind of pulls you together and encourages you in the next tough time.”

Lean into it, he said.

This man.