(Above is my Deluxe VHS version that I bought 20 (?) years ago!!)

If you are not familiar with Matt he is a senior in high school about to 'leave the nest' to go to college--he is a smart, lucid writer and a pretty got it together teenager--his blog is at https://mybloggers.com/mattguru18/--I wish he would c & p his first 3 blogs from blogster to here.

Matt posted his essay for his English exam on his site about seeing Gone With The Wind for the first time--mostly negative!

My immediate reaction was: who does this whippersnapper kid (don't feel bad, Matt, I call AJ, Dale, Chris, Tom, James, etc., kids--at my age anyone under 50 is a kid!!! LOL) think he is?? How dare he defame a classic that I have watched innumerable times?? That is one of the most successful movies ever produced?? That won uncountable awards?? What does he know???

At it's premiere, December 15, 1939, over 1,000,000 people came to Georgia where for 3 days there were parades, celebrations and the most eagerly ever awaited film. It became an immediate worldwide critical and box office success--it went on to become a Hollywood legend and til this day is always listed in the 10 top films ever made.

And now a kid came along and was tearing it apart. I was furious--then I calmed down. I tried to imagine myself being 18 today and seeing it for the first time. The world has changed so much, as has film making, that even the 'burning of Atlanta' scene seems to be very tame. And the f word along with so many others have been used constantly in movies that a 'damn' is almost laughable. And, until Sidney Portier, most blacks were shown in demeaning roles with whites being so superior.

After calming down a bit I finally wrote a comment, very weakly defending one of my favorite movies--I came to understand that Matt doesn't realize that, st the time, Scarlett was a very strong woman, a surviver with a man or without one, which was a rarity in movies then--excellent at business and manipulating people--using her 'womanly wiles' to get what she wanted and she knew what she wanted. Yes, she was the stereotypical young, flighty Southern Belle--I compared her to a Paris Hilton of today who is a spoiled brat and craves attention (but then Scarlett didn't make a sex video!!! LOL)

All in all I appreciated seeing GWTW through Matt's eyes though I disagree with many of his conclusions--and, Matt, I plan to rewatch it tonight for the 100+ time!!!

PS Matt, you might be interested in the lore of why George Cukor was fired from GWTW--the first story was that Cukor was known as a 'Women's Director" and Gable felt he wouldn't be given the direction his important role needed. The other story is that when Gable first came to Hollywood he had hustled and that Cukor was one of his clients and that he had been to one of Cukor's infamous Sunday pool parties for the wealthier men in Hollywood and that featured available 'eye candy' for them.