Alainiversary!

Today is my one year Alainiversary! On October 17th, 2015, I fell down an Alain Delon rabbit hole and I've been watching his movies as if they were air and I couldn't breathe without them ever since.

About a week ago I received this signed photo in the mail. I could have fainted. I actually sat down right where I was standing, my eyes so fixed on the writing that someone would have had to physically move my head to get me to stop looking at it.  

To Kate. 
KISS.

I don't know how to say this. I just... this means a lot to me. I don't care if it sounds silly or sad, but for some of us celebrity crushes are kind of all we have. I celebrate mine, and I embrace them. They make me goofy-grin happy! They are benchmarks in my life. There were my Sinatra years, my Bogarde years, and now my Delon years.

I enjoy the hunt, that desperate search to find every last movie they ever made. I like scouring ebay for weird memorabilia (favorite Sinatra find: a McDonalds lapel pin that says "Fry me to the moon", favorite Bogarde find: a comic book with an illustrated [and highly embellished] biography, favorite Delon find: Japanese fan magazines and an 81" poster for Any Number Can Win.) I like watching and rewatching the movies over and over again until I can close my eyes at night and play them on the black velvet underside of my eyelids*.

And I enjoy celebrating their anniversaries. Sinatra started on February 14th, 2000 when I was making a Valentine's Day mixtape for my parents (always the coolest kid around, it's nothing new) and Bogarde started on August 10, 2009 during TCM's Summer Under the Stars. I had seen Alain Delon before in Once a Thief and The Yellow Rolls Royce but it didn't *hit me* until I watched The Girl on a Motorcycle last October. It's not even really his film, it's 95% Marianne Faithfull, but his few scenes sealed my fate. Hook, line, and sinker, for a whole year.

Looking back on this little cinematic love affair, I can't believe how many Alain Delon related opportunities came up this year. Last December I got to see Purple Noon at The Film Forum. In February the Film Society at Lincoln Center showed an original print of La Piscine. In July The Film Forum showed a few Delon films, but the only one I was able to see was Deux Hommes dans la Ville. The reason I couldn't see the other ones? I was in Paris, where I got to see Le Samourai at Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé! And while I was there I also managed to pick up an Alain Delon coffee table book at a little DVD shop, along with some movies that were missing from my collection.

And then finally, my autograph. What beautiful timing. An Alainiversary present from the man himself! ;)


*paraphrasing Nabokov here