My Top 5: Movies That Give Me The Danny Gut

Mrs. Film Geek proudly announces, when the opportunity for the topic comes up, that she dated one single guy from the beginning of her dating years all the way through 12th grade. Danny, her high school sweetheart, was an athlete and a pretty popular guy from what I can gather. There are a lot of pictures of him in her high school yearbook, which reads more like an "Ode To Danny" than it does a class memorial.

Yep, I can understand how his down vest and Bay City Roller hairstyle really rocked the chicks back in the day. He had it going on.

Except for the smarts. I once had a couple of beers and a conversation with him. I swear to god, I talked to that guy for 45 minutes, and barely understood a word he said between the heavy swigs of beer, oddly-timed belly laughter and the mumbles.

As I understand the story, Danny called an end to the relationship during the senior trip, or soon after graduation, or during some other milestone event. Regardless of when it happened, the result of the break-up was several weeks of The Danny Gut.

You've had it. That nauseous, I-cant-stop-thinking-of-you and can't-eat-with-this-lump-in-my-stomach feeling we all have when we suffer emotional pain.

Although The Danny Gut originated back in 1984, the name for the condition stuck. Ask Mrs. Film Geek or any of her friends from high school how they feel when upset or recovering from the flu, and "I got the Danny Gut" is a likely answer.

Man, that's a legacy.

And in honor of it, here is My Top 5: Movies That Give Me The Danny Gut:

Glengarry Glen Ross: "Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers. "

What a movie! Watching a desperate Shelley Levene (played by Jack Lemmon) try to maintain some sense of dignity while recognizing his career and livelihood is over was an incredible experience. I already had great respect for Lemmon's huge body of great work but his performance in this flick topped anything he had ever done. I couldn't get the dialogue out of my head for days.

Requiem For A Dream: Dream was jam-packed with disturbing imagery and dialogue. Addiction--to anything, as this movie points out--isn't emotionally healthy and will often have pervasive and long-lasting consequences. One of the final scenes, of Marion hugging a bag of heroin she degraded herself to obtain, is one of the saddest scenes I've seen in movies.

Natural Born Killers: The current torture porn trend might make Natural Born Killers seem a bit tame if it was released today. But in '94 I felt like I was being held captive and forced to go along for the ride with Woody and Juliette. Whether I was repulsed by them (which I was at times) or invested in them (which occurred as well) I couldn't turn away during the scenes of violence.

And that disturbed me even more than the movie.

Boogie Nights: This movie brilliantly demonstrates how a lifestyle of excess can cause personal and professional devastation. Most of the characters in Boogie Nights were desperate for emotional and artistic stability, but incapable of achieving or maintaining it. The scene where Eddie, played by Mark Wahlberg, snorts cocaine for the first time is incredibly disturbing, particularly when you recognize that he did it simply to be accepted. As he raises from the mirror and wipes his nose, he asks something like: "Did I look cool doing that."

Chills, still.

Death Of A Salesman: The poster-flick for despair and hopelessness, Death Of A Salesman demonstrates how each of our lives can turn out if we allow ourselves to become irrelevant. Watching Willy Lowman believe his own delusions is riveting, as well as incredibly disturbing.