Ronnie and Julie

I miss the way we were, Mr. Cruise.

When I was leaving Boston and packing up my entire life to move to DC (via 1300 Cecil B. Moore Avenue) I had to make some pretty difficult decisions about what to pack and what to get rid of (give away, sell, donate, etc.).  Priceless family heirlooms, presents from former students and gifts from boyfriends past have to go through the "is it worth my $400 a month storage unit to pack this thing that I have no use for and probably won't think about again after today" gauntlet.  Perhaps no decision was as difficult as the decision to get rid of my VHS collection.  I went back and forth on this for days and eventually decided that since I was giving away my old school TV with the built in VCR to a happy and loving home, I should give away the old video tapes with it.  It was hard, but I did it.  Most of the tapes were things that you can pretty easily get on DVD or Netflix streaming, like Tom Cruise's entire collection from the late eighties, or Good Will Hunting (Why did I own this on VHS? And why do I watch it so often?  The first answer is unclear. The second is because it's awesome.)  I also owned the 2-tape sets of Braveheart and Gone With The Wind.  There was a certain romance to having to switch the tape in the middle of these epic tales that I rather enjoyed, but it's not like I couldn't see Rhett and Scarlett in another form.

One tape, though, sticks out as one that is more difficult to find, and equally epic.  Ronnie and Julie, a 1997 Canadian made for TV movie starring a pre-Dawson's Joshua Jackson and Margot Finley (who must have been sleeping with Pacey at the time, because her only famous movie is D3: The Mighty Ducks, also starring a young Mr. Jackson).  It was a reinterpretation of Romeo and Juliet set against the backdrop of a local mayorial race and featuring a hockey-playing Romeo and a figure skating Juliet.  It was Romeo and Juliet meets The Cutting Edge meets First Daughter.  Only Canadian.  And made for TV.  In middle school, me and my friend Julia used to rush home from school everyday to try and catch the end of it playing on Showtime, just praying that it wouldn't start to snow and mess up the signal. (If you want to see the business end of a hissy fit you should just try to mess up me and Julia's TV reception when we're watching anything starring Joshua Jackson.  And, yes, I wrote that sentence in the present tense on purpose.)  In short, it was phenomenal.  It also just happened to have an incredible theme song, Something Happened to My Heart, that Jules and I tried to buy on CD, but seemingly wasn't released in a pre-iTunes world.

I thought giving it away meant that I wouldn't get the chance to ever see this masterpiece again, but some lovely soul has uploaded Ronnie and Julie in it's entirety on YouTube.  Thank God for the Internet.  Here's a short clip, for those who aren't sure they want to commit to the whole thing, but be forewarned, you're definitely going to wanna watch the whole thing.


xo kate