Deborah Heller ’07 knows a lot about movies. She knows who was in a movie (and not just the main characters), when it was made and most importantly she has a strong opinion about a film’s success or failure. Deborah works at an old movie theater near her home in Seattle, and she is also in MacCinema and you can thank her for getting “Velvet Goldmine” a few weeks ago.

So when considering who to interview for the arts section of this superb publication, Deborah quickly came to mind. She also lives down the hall, which is helpful. I had thought of a few things I wanted to ask her, but I was really just hoping that our conversation would lead somewhere interesting. And while more or less what happened, part of the interest was generated by a very unexpected third party, who we will discuss in due course.

Deborah and I started off by talking about “Stand By Me,” a classic coming of age movie. This film, which hails from 1986, explores the friendship of four very different boys as they grapple to understand how they fit into an unfair world. The film is humorous, touching and quite good. Deborah first saw it in seventh grade and it was pretty much love at first sight. Her love extended to the entire movie but centers on River Phoenix. She did some research about this Phoenix and discovered that he was dead. Though Phoenix tragically died of a drug overdose, Deborah’s love for him persists. She has watched all of Phoenix’s films, and has seen “Stand By Me” at least 20 times.

“Stand By Me” is an experience which, time and time again calls up a particular mood—a mixture of nostalgia, joy and that excitement of the familiar and spectacular. Deborah says that she likes movies that make her happy. This feeling does not have to come solely from the plot. Rather it often stems from the memories associated with the times in her life when she watched the film. Deborah’s whole family enjoys “Stand By Me” and it has become a part of their shared experiences.

Deborah and I both will shamelessly watch movies over and over again, with, of course, the proper time intervals between viewings. We may do so to experience this special mood, or may be its because we are lame and like to watch things over and over again. This line of thought led us to a discussion of movies that we appreciated as children. For Deborah these are mainly musicals. This revelation was followed by an embarrassing period of time spent trying to remember the lyrics to various songs from “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

“You know that one where there is the person that has become a doll (or maybe the other way around)?”

“Yeah, how does that go?”

Moving on, other favorites include “Annie,” “Bye, Bye Birdie” and “Marry Poppins.” We continued to gush about these movies and to sing whatever we could remember from them—be glad you were not there. Deborah worried that she would be a very strange thirty-year-old renting “The Muppet Movie” repeatedly. She maintains that she likes some mature movies but concedes that her favorites tend to be ones with which she formed an early connection. Deborah has an unparalleled respect for nostalgia that I admire. There is something about the familiar that is wonderful and generally underrated. Often our favorite times during movie viewing are not those thrilling moments of suspense but those quiet moments of reassurance. We look for the moment when a character that we know so well says something that, while we knew he was going to say, hits close to home.

At this point in the conversation there was a very loud and unexpected knock on Deborah’s door. We quickly said ‘come in’ at which point my roommate, Julia, came bounding into the room to deliver the hair-raising news that there was a mouse in our room!

While this may not relate directly to “Stand By Me,” it is worth noting nonetheless. He (or she) is the surprising third party to which I alluded earlier. I saw him dart under my bed. We went to get re-enforcements and we searched for a long time, but we couldn’t find him again. Maybe he left. Or maybe not. This could be a movie in and of itself. But, as this mouse has taught us, sometimes thrills aren’t always that great.