TRADITIONS

On November 5th, I went to LFC’s home for our 13th Halloween Bash. As you can imagine, it’s a long story. I’ll try to be brief.

I met LFC in junior high. We both were in the same class and we have been friends ever since. When we got to High school, we ended up in different classes. He made some friends; I made others so at the end it was an interesting mix of people. More or less, most of us liked movies, so in 1994, the whole gang gather up at my house to see the Academy Awards ceremony that year. Pulp fiction lost that year. Forest Gump won the gold and little did we know we started a yearly tradition. Latter that year, for Halloween, we decided to do a Bash with a particular twist: Guys would dress up as Dolls and vice versa. It was a defining moment for some of us, but at the end, we picked up the annual gathering.

Ever since 1994, more or less, the same group of friends has reunited on these two occasions for these events. The organizers and the keepers of the tradition are LFC, El Vale and I. We have been on each and every one of these celebration, with the exception of Oscars 99. Instead of going to Our Gala, I went to the Timbiriche reunion Concert. Timbiriche was a big part of my history when I was young, so I had to choose. And I come clean with it; it was a very hard decision. Up to this day, every time I mention this, LFC and El Vale state this slip to me. However, For Halloween 2000 they got back at me. They changed the day of the date, from Saturday to Friday, without telling me. There are other three friends who, more or less have been in most of these reunions: Bergman, Criminal and Alfran. Besides these six, others have come and gone, but at the end, the basic group remains.

As everything, these two annual reunions have evolved. At The Oscars’ Gala we stopped betting on the winners. In Halloween, we changed it from a party to a Horror movie marathon, but the spirit remains there. Two times a year, that group of not so young fellas comes together to celebrate two things: Cinema and the fact that we found each other.

This year, the Halloween party was the least attended ever, but at the same time, one of the most intimate and rewarding for me. We had to do it after Halloween, because of LFC’s work. At the end, only El Vale, Bergman and I arrived. It seemed like we went to the basic, only the true film lovers were there. The three of them have shown interest in moviemaking. Me too, but that’s another story. There was a sense of untold camaraderie between us, a sense of shared experiences. Nothing of this was spoken, but I sure felt it, and, although I was the first to leave, I left uplifted for being part of it.

An interesting thing happened during dinner. The routine is and has been like this since the beginning: we always eat pizza. I call to order it, LFC pays for it and we all eat it. When we were eating, we started talking of the movies we have seen recently, the movies we missed, the movies we’re interested in. They started talking about all of this and when I hear them say “we have to choose what to see” it hit me. Time has past. We’re no longer the kids who asked their parents for permission and a ride to go to a friend’s house on school night or to host a party. We no longer have the time to see everything we want to see, even if it was bad. We no longer have the stamina or the time to see three movies on one day, every weekend, as we used to. We have work, friends and social responsibilities outside this circle, and more and more these keep us from this special place we made for us. Life has catch up with us.

This is in no way a sad thing, just an observation. I mean, I always kept this world in a very special place. By this I mean cinema and the special bond share with these two guys. So special for me that I always thought I wanted to do movies too, as LFC and EL Vale wants. Finally I realize that my path is in another field, but still, I keep this special place for this world.


I feel very proud of being part of this experience, I feel is bigger than us, and that’s wonderful. We have kept this going on for 13 years; we have made a history, something to look forward next year, for the rest of our life. Call me a romantic, a softie, but for me, it’s a big thing. I wonder for how longer we will do this. As we were leaving the theater after “Marie Antoinette” I saw El Vale and LFC walking towards the exit, and I wonder if, twenty years from now, when we are fifty, will we? Will we go to the movies on Sunday? I hope we do. Not every Sunday, of course, but the Sundays we do, I hope we do it in the same spirit.