Lemondrop

The Crying Wife is a hilarious site created by a guy named Parker to document the fact that his wife, Hollie, will cry at almost any movie. We know what you're thinking -- a lot of people cry at movies.

But the film doesn't even have to be sad for Hollie to break down in tears -- the site has featured her blubbering at the ridiculous apocalyptic action movie "2010," the Will Ferrell comedy "Elf" and, yes, "Back to the Future Part III." It sounds mean-spirited, but she's actually on board -- as Parker mentions in the site FAQ, in addition to being able to cry at the drop of a hat, she can also laugh at herself.

We asked both husband and wife to step away from the Kleenex and answer a few questions for us -- then we all confessed which movies make us cry.

Lemondrop: Was there some kind of formative childhood trauma that makes your wife cry? Some kind of "Turner and Hooch" moment, maybe?
Parker: Most people ask that, and I understand why. Seeing someone cry the way she does would suggest that she's being hit by some repressed trauma from her childhood. Though that would be interesting, it's simply not the case. Hollie is nothing more than an extreme empathetic movie watcher. Her experiences with movies are on a whole other level than most people. She becomes attached to the characters and intertwined in the story. She forms this emotional connection with characters like Darth Vader and Marty McFly that I can't even comprehend.

Do other things make her cry hysterically? Weddings? Animal births? Majestic sunsets?
I'll be careful to answer this one because I don't want people to get the wrong idea. The answer is both yes and no. I'll start with the "no" first. No, Hollie doesn't cry hysterically after things like sunsets or a speck of dirt on a plate that looks like a heart. Again, her tears are from empathy.

For the "yes" part of the answer, yes, things other than movies will make Hollie cry. She cries when she watches a marriage proposal on YouTube because she is so happy for the newly engaged couple. She cried while watching Pam and Jim's wedding on "The Office." However, she doesn't cry if she's at the actual wedding. Just like when she's in the movie theaters, there's too many people around, so she's too distracted to cry.

Is there a movie where your wife surprised you by not crying?
Nope! If she doesn't cry after a movie (which happens), it makes sense. For example, we just watched "Where the Wild Things Are." A lot of people suggested it on our site, so we figured we'd give it a try. Neither of us have seen it before, and I was told that it was a tearjerker. I hate to say it, but we both thought the movie was horrible.

What's the saddest movie she's ever seen?
"Marley & Me" for sure. In fact, if you look at all of our videos so far, "Marley & Me" is actually the only sad movie that we watched. All the other videos caused her to cry tears of happiness for the characters. (I'm, of course, leaving out "Dawn of the Dead" and "2012" because those are completely different reactions.) I, for one, can't even remember if Marley was a boy or a girl, which shows how much I don't get into movies like she does. One thing I'd like to point out is that people seem to be missing the point of these videos.

Hmmm! We were still mystified at "2012," but Parker summed it all up for us: "Crying after movies is nothing to be amazed at. We get hundreds of emails a day from people who say that they're movie criers too ... Personally, I'd rather see a girl cry over Spock than over Jack from 'Titanic.' That's what makes it funny. It just seems like a lot of people are missing the point."

Well, we thought that was sweet. So we asked Lemondrop staff and contributors which movies made them cry.

Erin Scottberg, community editor: "Until recently, the only time I cried in a movie is when an animal gets hurt. The ending of 'Homeward Bound' gets me every time -- even though I know Shadow comes home, the waterworks just start flowing and can't be shut off."

Julieanne Smolinski, story editor: "I have the opposite problem. After literally being born with blocked tear ducts (SYMBOLIC), I just can't really cry all that much. Like, I'm sure if you hit me in the crotch with a board or told me that Jon Hamm had lost his genitals in a mill accident, I'd mist over, but in general, movies don't really get to me."

CJ Arabia, columnist: "'The Color Purple' always tears the ass out of me, as does any movie involving a hurt or dying animal."

Nicole Sia, contributor: "So this is straight-up cinema snob of me, but the end of the Swedish film 'Let the Right One In' gets me. Best vampire love story every told. SHUT UP, 'TWILIGHT.' Oh, and the fact that they're remaking an English version starring the little sister from '(500) Days of Summer'? Yeah, that makes me cry a little bit too."

[Redacted] Guy, columnist: "I don't know how old I was when I saw it, but when Artax died in that quicksand during 'The Neverending Story,' I felt confusion and terror. The coolest horse ever horribly suffocating in a sucking mouth of mud and sand? I was hysterical."

Teresa Wu, contributor: "'Armageddon.' I would never leave Bruce Willis to die. "

Emily Gordon, contributor: "I cannot take the final half-hour of Peter Jackson's 'King Kong.' Once Kong comes to New York, it's nothing but heartbreak and misery and anger and ice skating, and I just bawl like a baby. Somehow it combines breakups, being wrongfully persecuted and animal torture, and I cry at any of those three things."

Meredith Rodkey, contributor: "There's a very, very subtle moment in 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' that makes me cry if I so much as think about it -- it's when Jim Carrey first goes to the office to have his memories erased. There's another man in the waiting room who's holding a dog's collar. I completely empathize with the idea of being so brokenhearted over a pet's death that you'd want to have the memories erased -- it kills me. KILLS me. And now I'm sitting here at my desk crying because I let myself think about it."

Carrie Sloan, editor in chief: "If a pixelated animal is sad, hurt or in danger, I'm a total wreck. You name it -- 'Bambi,' 'Finding Nemo,' 'Up' -- I always cry harder than all the sticky 5-year-olds next to me. Especially in that scene in 'Up,' when the rainbow bird, Kevin, who turns out to be a girl, hurts its leg and hobbles back to its babies."

Paula Kashtan, contributor: "'Can't Hardly Wait.' It's so quietly tragic."


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