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I’m watching Willy Wonka and the Choclate Factory, not the creepy Johnny Depp version, but the original. The classic. The best. Everytime I watch it I’m amazed by how great it is, even though it really shouldn’t be a surprise. It consistently rocks the shit over the many years I’ve been watching it.

I can remember going to the Frankston City Council Library, in their original building, all hidden from view and feeling underground, and borrowing every Roald Dahl book I could get my hands on. Now it just seems quaint that I actually went to the library to borrow books. Kids these days seem to have everything at their finger tips, and even with all that books don’t usually seem to rate as anything that they would want.

Every week my mum would go to the library to get new books to read, she always read with a voracious appetite. I was young and just followed suit, and still do. I guess that’s why a lot of kids don’t seem to read now, their parents certainly don’t. It’s a shame. I used to love going to the library. The smell of old books still takes me back, I love second hand books. I will admit that I do prefer to buy books than buy them, but that’s just because I’m a pack rat at heart. I can remember walking through all the library rows and just thumbing through as many books as possible. The best part was, any of them could be mine, not like in a store where I couldn’t afford any of them.

Watching Wonka takes me back to those sort of memories from my childhood. Gene Wilder puts in a performance that is absolutely perfect. That’s why the new version didn’t work, because the most interesting character by far, the movie-eponymous Wonka, was done far better the first time. He’s friendly, and creepy, and scary, and amazing and interesting. He’s vague and protected and a complete mastermind.

The script, by Dahl himself, is fantastic, but from such wonderful source material how could you go wrong. It has all the elements that a kid’s flick should. The movie just IS childhood in my mind.

But how did the movie ruin my life?

Two words, one name. Veruca Salt.

There’s something that just gets me about that petulant whining girl. Even Wonka likes her at the start, “she’s a girl who knows what she wants.” When a girl acts like that it completely kills me, but it can’t be serious. Is that weird? A girl pretending to be so rude and needy just strikes me as cute, but if she doesn’t switch it off eventually and just be nice then it might be too much. Veruca Salt set the bar for what I looked for in a female, and I don’t know why. She’s rude and annoying and you would never want to live with her, or more, but that behaviour still gets me.

That’s why Wonka ruined my life. Veruca Salt.
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I’m out of town for the next two weeks. Hopefully I’ll be doing lots of writing on two different ideas and also working on my Fate proposal. Two weeks away from kids, work and any form of pressure, except that which I put on myself to write every day.

I love holidays. Love ‘em.

Posted on September 24th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: Writing, life, movies