Some guy in a monkey suit was the big thrill of King Kong. No, not the Peter Jackson one, which I didn't go see this weekend. The 1978 Jeff Bridges version I watched as a child was on AMC last week. Thanks to DVR, I snatched to watch at my own pace.

Why in the world I thought at four or five that this was such an incredible movie, I don't know. I remember having Kong toys and shirts and staying up for Kong and Godzilla marathons. It was this spectacle of attempting to reach for something bigger - I tell myself now.

What really got me watching it now was Kong's climb up the World Trade Center. It feels like forever we've been mourning the bombing of the WTO; so, the occasional glance on Friends kind of tugs at the heart strings. Here was something more, something from my childhood that finally put those towers in perspective.

An image of safety and home to this big monkey also represented a time of innocence and power from my childhood. Now, that image is suppose to represent something else, which I still haven't figured out yet. Terror? Death? Insecurity? I've got plenty of images for those, I don't need the towers for that.

So, here were the towers in a context that I had forgotten. Having meaning which I didn't remember at first. Movies deal in those kinds of memories all the time. It's part of that reason I give my dad when he asks why would you watch a movie again. Maybe this time, it will mean something different or maybe it mean exactly the same.

When things change, it becomes so important to have something to go back to. Something that's stable if only a celluloid flicker in the dark.

j.brown