By David Raether
Ernest Hemingway’s 1933 book, Winner Take Nothing, features one of my favorite short stories of all time: The Gambler, The Nun, and the Radio. Set in a small Catholic hospital in western Montana, it tells the story of three people: a Mexican gambler who has been shot, a deeply faithful nun, and an ill writer named Mr. Frazer. Frazer lies in his bed all day, listening to the radio. A discussion starts about how religion is “the opium of the poor.” For those of you at home who were philosophy majors, you’ll recognize that as a variation on Karl Marx’s theory that religion is “the opiate of the masses.”
Mr. Frazer posits that religion had been replaced by the radio as the new opium of the masses. I suppose by the time I came along, television had become the opium of the masses.
And now, the internet has become the opium of the masses.
Now, the reason I mention this has nothing to do with religion, opium, or the masses. Each of those is meritorious in its own way. I relate this story because the radio station Mr. Frazer was listening to in that small hospital in some God-forsaken part of western Montana was WCCO out of Minneapolis. It is one of those 50,000-watt clear channel stations that can be heard at a great distance. I know this because I grew up listening to it. And when I lived in a village in New Hampshire in the 1980s on clear nights—usually in the fall or winter—I could pick it up.
One of the most listened-to features on WCCO was snow day cancellation announcements. Schools and organizations would call in to have their particular activity officially announced as canceled. They were listed alphabetically, and the list was updated regularly.
“Edina Public Schools. All schools are closed today, although hockey practice is still on.”
“Elim Lutheran Church choir practice is canceled for tonight.”
“Hopkins Public Schools will have a late start. All students should report by 11:00 am.”
And on and on.
On a snowy morning, my siblings and I would lean into the radio and cross our fingers and pray and make all sorts of invocations that when they got to the R’s, we would hear this:
“Robbinsdale Public Schools. All schools are closed today.”
YES!! SNOW DAY!!
An unexpected gift from the gods of childhood. A day off. Freedom.
What would we do? Go sliding, play hockey, watch TV and eat soup made by our embittered mothers whose nice quiet day alone had been punctured and deflated by a horde of kids tromping out and into the house, wet from snow and making a general mess.
Well, we’re all adults now, and there are no more Snow Days in our lives. Unless…
Here is my proposal for all of you. Sometime, in the dead of winter in January, declare a Grown-Up Snow Day for yourself. Don’t go to work, don’t turn on the internet and work from home. Just let the work you were supposed to do that day go untouched. You can get to it tomorrow.
Ask yourself this: Is anyone going to die if you don’t punch in on the clock today? No, they’re not. All will be as it was yesterday—when you left work, all stressed out about all the work you have to face tomorrow.
My mother used to call this a Mental Health Day. She would call in sick from her job as the assistant to the head of the Minneapolis Public Library, a hornet’s nest of controversy and stress (if you listened to her). She would stay home and watch TV and vacuum the living room. It was her way of relaxing. Never mind that it drove everyone else crazy; it relaxed her. She’d call her sister, and they’d get into a marathon conversation and occasionally go over and see Mrs. Kleinman and maybe have a little gin on the rocks with Esther in the afternoon before coming home and making dinner.
The great thing about a Grown-Up Snow Day is that you don’t have to live in a snowy climate. You could declare a Grown-Up Snow Day for yourself, even if you live in San Diego or Miami. So go ahead, make your plans, talk to your sister, maybe have a gin on the rocks with your neighbor, and then settle in and watch any of these movies. I’ve selected them from across a variety of genres.
Here are my picks for your queue.
This anti-feminist fairy tale is inexplicably popular with any number of feminist women I know. For whatever reason, this movie is awfully irresistible. Julia Roberts is a prostitute in Hollywood who ends up with the wealthy but terribly lonely businessman Richard Gere after a chance encounter. He ends up hiring her to pose as his girlfriend at a series of business events, and things kind of snowball from there. You know, the premise is still risibly preposterous to me. But somehow, it works as a romantic comedy.
Garry Marshall directed this classic, whose long career in television included Mork and Mindy, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and The Odd Couple, among many others. The man knew how to make a comedy script work on the screen. The screenplay was by J.F. Lawton, who also wrote a couple of Steven Seagal’s Under Siege movies. I once complained about this movie to my European mother-in-law, who told me I was petit bourgeoisie for being troubled by the premise. I guess the difficulty I have in totally dismissing the film altogether is this simple question: what’s wrong with a happy ending? Nothing. And maybe you need one right now. Maybe we all do.
This is, quite simply, a comedy masterpiece—the greatest screwball comedy ever made, even. Howard Hawks directs Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in this hilarious masterpiece about a paleontologist, a missing clavicle bone on a T-Rex, and a socialite with a pet leopard named Baby. Hijinks ensue, as we used to say in the comedy writing room when someone had a great story idea.
Hepburn is just breathtakingly beautiful in this movie, and her costumes are spectacular. They were created by Howard Greer, the ne plus ultra of costume designers during the golden age of Hollywood. The screenplay is by Hawks and Hagar Wilde. (The two also collaborated on another Cary Grant movie, I Was a Male War Bride (1949). If you’re looking for a film to drive away what the British poet John Donne once called “dull care,” this is the one for you. It’s just a hilarious delight from start to finish.
It’s probably been a while since most of you watched a Western. Well, if so, it’s time to break that streak and watch this film, which is widely considered the greatest Western of them all. In fact, many critics consider it among the greatest films ever made.
John Wayne plays an embittered and racist middle-aged Civil War veteran who embarks on a search through the West for his niece (Natalie Wood), who has been kidnapped by Comanches. Many viewers will be astonished to see John Wayne in a role other than the hero on the side of good. He brilliantly portrays a lonely, racist, malignant character. Martin Scorsese calls him “a poet of hate.”
The screenplay is by Frank Nugent, who also wrote Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and Mister Roberts (1955), among many others. Directed by John Ford, this is a great movie, and if you’ve never seen it, now is the time. Plus, it was shot in VistaVision, so the film has an epic scale to it that matches the scenery of the American West.
This may actually be the perfect movie for your Grown-Up Snow Day. Bette Davis and Paul Henreid play star-crossed lovers in one of the best tearjerkers of all time.
Davis is Charlotte, the repressed and emotionally scarred woman who lives with her emotionally abusive mother. She is pressed to go on a sea cruise, where she blossoms with happiness and a newfound sense of freedom. While on the cruise, she meets a handsome man, Jerry (Henreid), who is traveling with friends on the cruise. He’s perfect, kind, loving, affectionate… and, oops! Married. Now, granted, it’s an unhappy marriage, but he’s still married and committed to it.
This is a melodrama of the highest order. Go ahead, make some soup, stay in your pajamas, put on your bathrobe, and grab a box of Kleenex. This movie will transport you to a different time and place. And remember, it’s okay to sob.
Sure, there are plenty of movie musicals you could choose for your Grown-Up Snow Day, but few of them are livelier or more energizing than this one. So many great songs: Rock Island (Ya Gotta Know the Territory), Trouble (Right Here in River City), Goodnight My Someone, Pick a Little (Talk a Little), Gary Indiana, Marian the Librarian, and, of course, the showstopper: Seventy-Six Trombones. Meredith Wilson wrote the music and lyrics and co-wrote the book with Franklin Lacey.
If your life has been a bit overwhelming lately—too many problems, not enough clear paths out of them—then this very well may be the perfect movie for you. At the center of it all is Robert Preston as Professor Harold Hill, an old-fashioned conman who ends up falling for his own con and actually delivering on what he has been selling. The cast also includes Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Hermoine Gingold, and a young actor named Ronny Howard, who grew up to be American film titan Ron Howard.
This movie is corny and naive and—well, maybe that’s the point. It’s about an America that not only is long gone but may never have actually existed. Who cares when you’ve got seventy-six trombones in the big parade? If this movie does nothing else, it will cheer you up.
How about a coming-of-age movie for your snow day? These are always great pictures. Titles such as Lady Bird (2017), Adventureland (2009), Love & Basketball (2000), or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1988) are prime examples—and all quite different from each other. This film, however, stands above them all. Already considered one of the best films of the 21st century, it won three Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), and Best Adapted Screenplay for the film’s director, Barry Jenkins. Deeply moving and gripping to watch, the film tells the coming-of-age of a Black boy living in a drug-infested neighborhood in Miami.
These are the kinds of lives whose stories don’t often get told. Divided into three parts, it focuses on a boy named Chiron as he grows up in this challenging setting while coming to terms with his culture and sexuality. Three different actors play Chiron: Alex Hibbert plays the child Chiron, Ashton Sanders plays teenage Chiron, and Trevante Rhodes plays adult Chiron.
The film was not widely seen when it was in its initial release, but has grown in popularity since. It’s easy to see why. The story is compelling, heartbreaking, and inspiring. You won't regret watching it.
This is Warren Beatty’s glorious epic about John Reed, the early 20th-century journalist and author who famously covered the Russian Revolution and produced the book Ten Days That Shook the World. Beatty worked on this picture for years and years, filming interviews with contemporaries of Reed and his long-time partner, Lousie Bryant (Diane Keaton).
This is a tragic tale that has a Doctor Zhivago (1965) feeling to it as well. In addition to the sweeping tale of the Reed and the Russian Revolution, it’s also an intimate story of the love affair between Reed and Bryant and her love affair with the playwright Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson). This is one of those big movies about real people they don’t seem to make anymore, and it is certainly worth an afternoon of your time. In other words, the perfect movie to get immersed in during a Grown-Up Snow Day.
David Raether is a veteran TV writer and essayist. He worked for 12 years as a television sitcom writer/producer, including a 111-episode run on the ground-breaking ABC comedy “Roseanne.” His essays have been published by Salon.com, The Times of London, and Longforms.org, and have been lauded by The Atlantic Magazine and the BBC World Service. His memoir, Homeless: A Picaresque Memoir from Our Times, is awaiting publication.