Like I said, our teacher was a nut (I actually think we did Wind Beneath My Wings too, but my sister was constantly renting Beaches at the time, so I did know where it was from). And yes, I do remember as a kid a bunch of us found it beyond bizarre to be singing (and singing rather poorly--like an out of tune funeral march to some karaoke track) things like that some say love is like a razor that leaves the soul to bleed.
FYI, that razor/bleeding soul image was the inspiration for the entire song according to an interview I read recently. (Maybe it's linked above.) McBroom says she heard a song on the radio with that image in it and the entire lyric to "The Rose" popped into her head.
For those who care, the song preceded the movie and Bette Midler had to intervene personally to get them to use it on the soundtrack.
Eric, I'm meditating on the line "It's the heart afraid of breaking/That never learns to dance" and working to forgive you.
Back to my conversation with Robbie, which I've been thinking about since we first posted on the subject of THE ROSE.
I think the movie is about the conflict between the oversized emotions and painful vulnerability we demand from certain performers (usually women: Garland, Joplin, even Midler herself in her youth) on stage and the fact that those very same qualities make those women impossible to live with in real life. Judy Garland wasn't an iconic entertainer DESPITE being bi-polar; she was an icon in part BECAUSE she was bi-polar (and absurdly talented).
And the fearlessness with which Midler spilled her guts "on stage" and "off" (in the world of the film) is not only what makes it a great performance to me, but what elevates the film above the usual musical-biography of a talented singer. (The Judy Davis "Garland" mini-series accomplished much the same thing, IMO.)
Does that make THE ROSE one of the great films of all time? Well, no, because it's largely a mono-drama. But I hope you'll give it another look someday.
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