Paris, Texas

The Belcourt was playing Paris, Texas. We went because Chris is in it and I wanted to see my husband walking around the world as a child.

I went into the theatre thinking I’d spend the film waiting for the moment when my eight-year-old husband would run down the steps of his elementary school in Burbank. Instead, I spent the film falling in love with every single thing about the film. It is perfect. It is gorgeous and heartbreaking. It is the best film of all time.

And then there was Chris, so small, smiling and full of life, running down the stairs with all the other kids whose parents signed the film waiver, including his best friend at the time and for a long time into the future, Josh, who died much too young on a chaotic Los Angeles night. My child husband, his thick glasses and 1980s striped shirt/tight pants combo, running right at the camera, coming for me from forty years in the past, running really fast because he had something to show me: a film that would break my heart in the best way.