Perhaps I did “An American in Paris” a disservice by watching it while taking dialaudid during a thunderstorm. I’m not sure that it would’ve made much more sense had I not been drowsy and occasionally hallucinating, though. The 1951 Best Picture winner is based on a George Gershwin composition. It seems to me that it would take a giant leap of the imagination to take a piece of music and extrapolate a movie from it, but I guess that’s why writer Alan Jay Lerner was a big-time award-winning screenwriter and I am a stay-at-home mom with a blog.

The story centers on a love triangle that’s almost a rectangle except that no one’s told poor wealthy Milo (Nina Foch, and is Milo a great name for a fiesty gal or what?) that starving artist Jerry (Gene Kelly) just isn’t that into her. He’s fallen for the doe-eyed Lise (Leslie Caron), who in turn is supposed to be marrying Henri the entertainer (Georges Guetary). And there’s also a concert pianist who’s never actually performed in a concert except for in that one wacky dream sequence that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a dialaudid hallucination.

I did enjoy Gene Kelly’s song-and-dance to “I Got Rhythm” with the little French waif brigade. I like that song, and it was a charming little number. Over all, though, the story seemed secondary to the music and dancing, which I guess makes sense considering the movie’s origins. But the final synopsis is: I didn’t love “An American in Paris,” and I don’t think I would’ve even on a normal, non-prescription-painkiller day.

My step-grandfather used to watch the TV version of “In the Heat of the Night,” so that’s what we watched when we were at their house when I was a kid. Well, that or NASCAR or the Grand Ol’ Opry. All three of them bored me to tears. This could explain my aversion to racing and country music as well as why I was never interested in watching the feature film “In the Heat of the Night.” It won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1967, though, which obligated me to watch it, as pursuant to the terms set forth in my Mighty List. So when Rockford had a long, late-night conference call and I discovered “In the Heat of the Night” was available “On Demand,” I figured it was meant to be.

Potentially spoilerish thoughts on the film and also tangential thoughts had whilst watching the film:

Is it just me, or do all the best movies start out with a pie-hoarding diner creep, a pervy patrol officer and some naked cola drinking? Or maybe that’s just this movie and all of David Lynch’s movies.

Off topic, I overheard an old-timer talking about drinking some dope today. And then they talked about how “that’s what people around here used to call Co-Cola, but now you can get in trouble for saying you’re going to buy some dope.” Every bit of which is true.

Rod Steiger may actually be the valedictorian of gum-chewing. Nobody chews gum like Steiger. Steiger won Best Actor for this movie. His gum should’ve won Supporting Actor.

“Shag Bag, Hounds & Harvey” — aka The Guy Running for the Arkansas State Line song — would totally be on my running playlist if I were a runner. The whole soundtrack is pretty great. “Foul Owl” would be right at home in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Virgil Tibbs. All business, all the time. The greenhouse scene is 110 percent boss.

I never knew where “They call me Mr. Tibbs” came from. Now I do.

I’d probably be supercrabby, too, if I had to work with Shagbag and the rest of the doofus corps.

I think I grew up in a wormhole. Except for the train station, my hometown looked pretty much just like Sparta, right down to the glass bottle Coke machines.

In conclusion, that was a good movie. I’m glad I stayed up to watch it.