An Open Thread About Money in Movies

Photo by Connor Limbocker on Unsplash.

The Cut has a column called “I Think About This a Lot,” and this week’s installment features “Eleven writers on the sexiest pop-culture moments that have stayed with them over the years.”

The list includes the piano scene in Pretty Woman, which I had actually forgotten about — because the one part of Pretty Woman that stuck with me over the years was, of course, the shopping montage.

So I thought today’s Open Thread could be about those pop-culture moments that taught us how money worked, or imprinted on our young selves the same way that, say, watching Titanic made me dream of a boyfriend who would take me dancing, draw me naked, and then have sex with me in a car. (Surprisingly, Titanic isn’t on The Cut’s list — which feels like a huge oversight.)

Here are a few that come to mind, for me:

• Kevin McCallister ordering his own pizza in Home Alone (which, when I was finally old enough to do it, turned out to be just as amazing as I thought it would be as a child)
• Sara Crewe finding the fourpence on the ground, buying buns, and then giving all but one to a person who is hungrier than she is in A Little Princess (this taught me that good people don’t keep things for themselves, which is one of those lessons you have to both learn and unlearn at various stages of your life)
• Frances Mayes impulsively buying a home and then ordering around a bunch of contractors in Under the Tuscan Sun (okay, I didn’t watch this until I was an adult, but it still imprinted on me as something I very much wanted to do in the future, also note the progression from “buying a pizza that’s just for you” and “buying a home that’s just for you”)

I’ll leave the rest of the Open Thread for y’all.

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