Among the Hollands, it is known that Doug likes movies, so one Sunday each month I’m invited to join a few of the family — my brother Clay, our shared friend Leon, and sometimes a Special Guest Holland — for major motion picture entertainment. It has to be a “major motion picture,” because Clay and Leon don’t enjoy “Doug’s weird movies.”

At my suggestion, we once watched a recent but low-budget zombiefest called The Battery. I loved it and thought they’d like it, because the two non-zombie characters are teammates on a college baseball team, and Clay and Leon both love baseball and like zombie movies. But Clay said, “I wanted it to be a baseball movie, but the two survivors only played catch once,” and Leon said, “I like zombie movies, but this one was too talky-talky.” They’re both Christians, so they were also offended by the swearing, and the masturbation scene.

On another disappointing Sunday, I’d suggested an old noir classic, The Naked City. Through any Sunday Movie, my family offers an almost non-stop play-by-play, and for this one there were repeated wisecracks complaining that characters weren’t naked. “Hey, that guy’s wearing pants,” followed a few minutes later by, “That lady isn’t naked,” etc. The first crack was funny, the second less so, and by the two-dozenth it wasn’t funny at all.

The Naked City is very good, but it’s more a mental drama than a film of fist fights and car chases. Leon gave up after 45 minutes, saying, “Nothing’s happening in this movie, they just talky-talk.” Clay spent the first half of the show scrolling through his phone messages, and then fell asleep. That wasn’t his critical assessment of the movie, though; he has narcolepsy, and often falls asleep during a movie or ball game. Hasn’t yet fallen asleep while driving, because he puts extra effort into staying awake behind the wheel. Just another reason I prefer taking the bus to and from these monthly shindigs.

Movies made this century have a very high suck quotient, so I’ve vetoed such suggestions as High School Musical, The Life of Pi, Sully, and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. Yes, Clay wanted to see the third movie in the Twilight saga, “because I heard it’s the best,” though he hadn’t seen the first or second Twilight movies.

We’ve been doing Sunday Movies for years, and it’s usually blockbuster hits from the 1970s to the 1990s — Airport and Ghostbusters and The Great Escape and such. We’ve seen all the obvious choices, some of them twice, and somebody had suggested Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, but I advised against it.

I’ve seen it half a dozen times and it’s a fine flick, one of Hitchcock’s best, but it’s old enough that Clay will want to talk about the cars in the movie, and Leon will complain that the men all wear suits. I was certain that their assessment would be, “Needs more action, less talky talk.” It was either North by Northwest or some gawdawful Leonardo DiCaprio flick, though, so Hitchcock it was.

We met at Leon’s house, and what I’d expected is what happened. It’s what happens at every Sunday Movie with the fam. It was so expected and ordinary, I could’ve cheated and written this page the day before, instead of a few days after.

I arrived five minutes early. My brother Dick and his almost-English-free wife Young-sook were there, though nobody’d expected them. Dick loves being the surprise at any gathering, so he never lets anyone know he’s coming.

My other brother Clay, who’d arranged the day’s events, was an hour and fifteen minutes late, which left Leon and Dick and I plenty of time to chat about nothing much. “No politics or religion” has always been the rule, but with Trump being Trump, even Leon is willing to talk about how much he hates him. Dick loves Trump & the Republicans, so Leon & I ganged up on him, which was fun but, of course, fruitless. It’s not possible to talk a true-believer out of their true belief.

When Clay arrived, he came bearing deli sandwiches for three, now to be split among the five of us. He’d ordered a roast beef sandwich with extra pickles and no jalapeno for me, and a roast beef with extra jalapeno but no pickles for himself. I don’t know why — he hadn’t asked what I’d want, and I’ve never expressed any opinion about roast beef, pickles, or jalapenos. After a few bites I informed Clay that my 2/3 sandwich was heavy-jalapeno but pickle-free. He said his was heavy-pickle but jalapeno-free, so we switched sandwiches.

Then came the traditional hunt for the movie, as always happens. Clay logged in to Hulu and Amazon Prime and whatever HBO calls itself these days, looking for North by Northwest. It took twenty minutes to find it, and Clay paid $3.99. Last time, I’d brought our movie on a thumb drive to skip this rigmarole, but we’d discovered that Leon’s device lacks a USB port.

Only two hours after our ‘scheduled’ showtime, the movie started. “Why is it so green?” was Leon’s first comment. Indeed, North by Northwest‘s opening credits are green. They’re by legendary credits-maker Saul Bass, with the actors’ and technicians’ names laid over a green grid that ingeniously melts to become the United Nations Secretariat Building, in New York City. For one of the most imaginative credits sequences ever filmed, Clay’s assessment was, “It looks like a dumb game show.”

Then he and Dick talked about game shows for a few minutes, as the movie introduced Roger Thornhill, played by Cary Grant — though in all his running commentary during the show, until falling asleep, Clay thought it was Gary Cooper.

At an upscale bar, Thornhill signals for a bellhop as the name George Caplin is being paged. Seeing this, some shady characters mistakenly decide that Thornhill must be Caplin. This sets the film’s entire plot into motion, but Clay, Dick, and Leon all missed it. They were still chatting about Password and What’s My Line.

“Hey, that’s the guy from A Star is Born,” said Dick, meaning James Mason, “and that’s the guy from Mission: Impossible,” said Leon, meaning Martin Landau. From this followed a few minutes about their other famous roles, until Clay came back to the day’s movie to wonder, “Why do they think Gary Cooper is George Caplin when he keeps telling them he’s Roger Thornhill?”

When Cary Grant, not Gary Cooper, insists he’s Thornhill, not Caplin, the bad guys hold him down and pour a bottle of bourbon down his throat, to get him involuntarily drunk. Then they set him loose, driving a car on a mountain pass, assuming he’ll wreck the car and be killed.

Clay asked, “When did he get drunk?” and Leon wondered, “Did we miss something?” Surprisingly, Young-sook was the un-confused one, and explained in broken English, “They make him drink-drink.” Maybe she’d seen the movie before, like me, or maybe she’d simply paid attention.

Then Clay and Dick talked about the old cars in the movie, and Leon wondered why all the men in the movie wear suits, even while relaxing at home. “I’m relaxing at home right now, and not wearing a suit.”

Changing the subject, Clay asked, “Isn’t Hitchcock always in his movies? We should be watching for Hitchcock.” Those of us who were watching had already seen Hitch on screen, during the opening credits and before the movie’s first line of dialogue. When I said as much, Clay disagreed, said there’s no way he would’ve missed seeing Hitchcock, so he re-started the move and we watched the opening credits again. Yup, there’s Alfred Hitchcock, missing the bus, which seemed like symbolism for the whole afternoon.

Fast-forwarding back to where we’d been, Clay overshot, costing a couple of minutes from the story. I decided it wasn’t worth saying anything, and Dick immediately recognized another actor on the screen. “That’s the boss from Get Smart,” he said, and Clay added, “and he also played Darren’s boss on Bewitched.” Edward Platt certainly did not play Darren’s boss on Bewitched, but now the conversation was about Get Smart and Bewitched, and correcting the mistake would’ve only added to the ruckus, so I let Platt have the part.

Adding to the ruckus was impossible, anyway. As usually happens on Sunday Movies, the noise was perpetual. We Hollands are not savages — at a movie theater we’d observe silence as a societal rule, but in someone’s living room we’re under the more relaxed rules of watching the telly. There were a hundred wisecracks, and a few of the funny ones were mine. I can’t claim purity.

If you’ve seen North by Northwest, you remember Eva Marie Saint as Eve Kendall, the mysterious blonde bombshell. Dick and Leon remembered her from Moonlighting, and said what a shame it is about Bruce Willis’s health, and what’s Cybil Shepherd up to these days?

“She’s dead,” Clay insisted. Not to my knowledge, but I said nothing, and moments later Clay started to snore.

Not much later, Dick said of Eve Kendall, “Wait, is she a good guy, or is she a bad guy now?” To the movie’s credit, Ms Kendall’s character is both good and bad, like most people, but unlike most people in the movies. I said so, but regretted it, as it led to ten minutes of conversation between Dick and Leon about movie/TV characters who started bad but became good, or who started good but became bad.

Dick has always been musically inclined — he plays the trumpet, leads his church choir, etc — and when the movie was over, he announced that Bernard Herrmann’s score was dull and repetitive. To me it’s sometimes thrilling, sometimes subtle, and adds greatly to the movie’s appeal. Young-sook liked the music too, and hummed the main theme over Dick’s criticism.

Clay woke up, and hit ‘play’ to start the movie again, trying to find the part where he’d fallen asleep. “It was just after Gary Cooper got arrested at the auction.” He wanted to see how the movie ends, but when he found where he’d fallen asleep and hit play, he was asleep again in ten minutes. I fast-forwarded to the movie’s final scene atop Mount Rushmore, woke Clay to see it, and he never knew he’d missed anything.

When it ended a second time, Leon pronounced North by Northwest “OK, but too complicated.”

“It’s not particularly complicated,” I said. “It has a few twists, but they’re easy to follow, for anyone who’s… you know… watching the movie.”

That’s the thing about our Sunday Movies. They’re on Sundays once a month, and there’s a movie, but nobody’s really watching.

7/2/2025

itsdougholland.com
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