I sandwiched my 30th high school reunion between two viewings of Rocket
Science at the Uptown Theater this month. I dug it so much I might see it a
third time before it leaves.

I also bought the soundtrack, which I’m listening to at the moment, mashed up with a mix I made for the high school reunion party, which was held in the basement of Nye’s Polonaise Room, which Esquire magazine named “best bar in America” a while back. That it was this night, as it is every Wednesday night, when Molly Maher and Her Disbelievers regularly kick the shit out of their Americana-blues and help the rest of us lick the pus out of our American-Idol is-this-over-yet-can-we-change-the-channel-already? wounds.

Anyway. Rocket Science is one of those tales of eternal youth outsiderdom that I will always stop for—a kissing cousin to Garden State; Harold and Maude; Saved!; Election; Quadrophenia; Wonder Boys; Rushmore; SLC PUNK; etc. As I watched it for the second time with my wife on the eve of our 21^st wedding anniversary Wednesday night, I was still trying to figure out why I fell so hard for it. Here’s what I came up with:

1. “I Love The Unknown” (by Clem Snide’s alter-ego Eef Barzelay) is the best musical ending to a movie since the pining-but-living-with-it swan song of Once, or since Aimee Mann pled, at the end of Magnolia, “Could you save me/ from the ranks/ of the freaks/ who suspect they could never love anyone?”
   
   

2. Its life lesson can be summed up by Leonard Cohen: “The older you get, the lonelier you become and the deeper the love you need. Which means that this hero that you’re trying to maintain as the central figure in the drama of your life—this hero is not enjoying the life of a hero. You’re exerting this tremendous maintenance to keep this heroic stance available to you, and the hero is suffering defeat after defeat. Finally, one day you say, `Let him die—I can’t invest anymore in this heroic position.’ From there you live your life as if it’s real—as if you have to make decisions even though you have absolutely no guarantee of the consequences.”

3. It may be the quintessential loner story, but it at its very large heart Rocket Science is about the universal redemptive experience of getting hurt and healed all in the same lifetime, i.e. what Maude tells Harold: “A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an `L.’ Give me an `I.’ Give me a `V.’ Give me an `E.’ L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.”

If you’re like me, you will find yourself rooting for the stuttering protagonist Hal Hefner (played elegantly and with great island-of-misfit-toys empathy by newcomer Reece Daniel Thompson) as he gets his heart splattered up against the New Jersey Turnpike by a smart (ouch), pretty (ouch) girl, but lives to tell. And even though I saw my 16-year-old and 48-year-old self in him, I also related to every one of the characters. All the flawed, fitful souls. Even the quasi-jerks, the parents.

At my reunion, I watched the wife of an old classmate tap her toe hard to Macy Gray’s ode to gone-but-not-forgotten love “I Try.” I watched as formerly young men and women flirted with each other, fell down drunk, asked questions, leaned in for answers, and avoided going much deeper. I watched them catch up, and catch their breath as their parents take their last breaths and their children breath down their necks. Everybody seemed happy to be there, glad to be alive, and tired. We talked about the ones who couldn’t make it, and the ones we wished could have made it.

Around midnight, I did what I often did at high school dances—sat by myself and listened to the music and watched the whole scene, which reminded me of something a critic for The Rocky Mountain News wrote about J.R. Moehringer’s wonderful coming-of-age-in-a-pub memoir The Tender Bar: “A good memoir is a survivor’s tale, the story of a person who has faced obstacles and made it through well enough to tell it. Moehringer’s memoir, better than most, illuminates the fact that every life is a survivor’s tale—we made it this far, didn’t we?”

What’s more, everyone is, to some degree, a loner. Especially in high school. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Your hormones are in overdrive, you’ve got a taste of freedom for the first time, you’re scared shitless, and you’re trying to sort yourself out. The people you meet in high school go with you on the journey, until death do you part.

But it doesn’t end there. Outside the movie theater, the big high school is still run by the cool kids, the bullies, the power-hungry. Not the ones everyone liked, but the ones everyone feared. The mean girls are still mean, the bullies are still looking for ways to fuck with those weaker than them, the cliques are still impenetrable, the clueless are still clueless, and if you’re at all thoughtful, sensitive, or searching, you will have it rough and you must get tough or go under and there is no guarantee that it will all be alright in the end.

Lucky for us, there’s movies.

“Have you ever felt like you could burn the world down?,” asks the smart beautiful girl Ginny (Anna Kendrick) at one point in Rocket Science, to which Hal Hefner replies, “Every day.”

Ginny, the Gatling gun debate queen, looks speechless and, for the first time, flustered. She pulls back and stares at the phone in recognition of true connection and soul-matery, but in the end, she can’t handle the intensity of it, the loss of freedom, the hassle of love, the promise of something truly mystical, and so she runs away from him and into the arms of someone more confident, beautiful, and accomplished.

All Hal Hefner knows is that she has stopped talking to him, and that, more than anything, is what breaks his heart and ultimately helps him find his voice: Rocket Science is Catcher In The Ryespace with a happy (not pat) ending. He tells her off and walks away from her, grinning from ear to ear and still loving her and looking out a window as Barzelay sings, “I love the unknown, I love the unknown, I love the unknown.”

Don't we all?