Last summer, my boyfriend Matt, and I went to see A Prairie Home Companion. I had always loved Garrison Keillor’s simple Midwestern sarcasm from NPR on Sunday mornings and figured the all-star cast would keep our attention. Within twenty minutes, Matt and I turned to each other and decided to slip into the next theater that was playing, You, Me and Dupree. We walked in just in time for the scene when Kate Hudson catches Owen Wilson masturbating and I remember how good it felt, with Matt and me sitting on the floor in the back of the crowded theater, in hysterics over Wilson’s constant ability to crack our shit up. Until that moment, the laughter had stopped, because Matt’s depression had taken its place.
I think Wilson is as good as it gets when it comes to the cute and funny comedic hero. He did it for me in The Royal Tenenbaums, allowing many of us to laugh at our own families’ bouts with divorce, manipulation, and substance abuse. Then again, with his mystical speak while smoking hash in his love den before a three-way and his strut down the catwalk, both in Zoolander. Before that, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, which will always be two of my all-time favorite comedies. But in wake of Wilson’s attempt to take his own life this week, I’m left to ponder why it takes a celebrity for people to talk about what is really happening out there in life.
Wilson has done some of his greatest work to date, many would agree, and he’s slated to release more films with his brilliant buddy, Wes Anderson. But we question why, with his obvious talent and success, would he slit his wrists and take some pills? (And, oh, how people want those details.) I wondered the same thing while I watched Matt design his most treasured timberframe design on AutoCAD last summer. It was an arched roof with highly complicated joinery and beams that required intricate engineering. The house was an extension of the dream he said he wanted to build for us someday, but we had stopped looking for land when his anger took over our afternoons. A month after we laughed at Owen Wilson on the big screen, Matt was slitting his own wrists, telling me it was an accident, that his chisel had slipped. And since it seemed logical, I believed him. I was also completely scared to death, in over my head, encouraging him to get help as long as I could remember, and living in a culture that didn’t hold a place for confusion such as this.
