I like to say that I got a late start when it comes to watching movies.
The Early Years
Growing up in the 1970s, movies weren’t nearly as available as they are today. If you wanted to watch a movie, you only had a couple of options. Either you had to convince your family to go see a movie … or you had to wait for it to be broadcast on network television.
Yes, Cable TV was a thing – but at the time it was a luxury that not many families could afford at the time. There also weren’t all that many cable TV channels to choose from – and the really good ones were so expensive that even if you could afford a cable box, adding something like HBO was just too much.
Similarly – VCRs were a thing, too … however that came with added complications. Video Rental stores started appearing, but chances are the nearest store was too far away. It was hard to convince your parents to make that journey twice – once to pick up the movie, then again, a day or two later to return it. And, God Forbid, if you forgot to rewind the tape before you took it back, additional fees would need to be paid.
Mostly, though, people would just use their VCR to record something on television or convert old home movies to VHS so they could be watched a little easier.
Your other choice was to wait and see what came on Network television. Most often, it was one of those movies they would show year after year, without fail. They weren’t bad movies, by any means, and sitting down every summer to watch The Wizard of Oz … or, A Christmas Carol to get ready for the holiday season … or It’s A Wonderful Life around New Years.
Sometimes, especially in the summer months, they would broadcast movies that had been in theaters the year before – even if they had been highly edited. They said it because of time – they had to shrink a movie to fit into a two-hour timeslot – but you knew they were also removing the R-Rated stuff or anything that could offend people.
Occasionally, these movies seemed to be edited by people who knew what they were doing, but not always. It was often clear that another actor had recorded a “replacement line” should there be profanity in a scene that was too important to cut … Other times a scene might end in the middle middle of a sentence as if the fimmakers were thought we were too stupid to realize what had
Let’s just say that looking back, things got a little weird.
The 80’s
Cinema evolved a bit in the 1980s – which was probably the natural progression of things. With it came new ideas, like the Summer Blockbuster – big, thrilling movies, the kind of thing they hoped everyone would want to see.
If you were the one kid in school who hadn’t seen “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” you would wish you were dead. You also had all the Indiana Jones movies, which the teachers would try to capitalize on, focusing parts or entire lessons on things that were in the movie. I could understand the reasons behind studying the history of the Nazis, for example – but did she really need to do an entire lesson on cultures that eat monkey brains? (To this day, I still wonder how many carnivores she turned into vegetarians that day…)
My family had some pretty strict rules on what movies I was allowed to watch, and which ones were forbidden. Mostly, this all came down to its MPAA rating, but for a short time, even that wasn’t good enough.
PG movies back then could (and sometimes did) show things like brief flashes of nudity, and terrifying situations, especially for children. Movies like Poltergeist were terrifying, even by today’s standards. In fact, that movie, among others, is why the PG-13 classification were created in the first place. (And even then, there are a lot of us who are still convinced that one should have gotten an R Rating.)
My Teen Years
After becoming a teenager, I started watching a lot more movies than I ever had. A large part of this was that there wasn’t much else to do. On Friday night, everyone (and I mean everyone) hung out at the mall. We’d meet our friends outside J.C. Penny, then hang out for a bit, just walking around, not usually buying anything. At some point, a visit to The Food Court was in order, for dinner or a snack. A slice of Pizza or a jumbo pretzel was a perfectly acceptable meal.
Malls also had movie theaters, so that was often part of the itinerary as well. Of course, you had to tell your folks what movie you were going to see, they’d look up what time it started, and what time it let out. They would pick you up exactly 3 minutes after the credits started to roll, and if you weren’t outside waiting for them when they got there, you just might be grounded for a week.
Parents would also quiz you on the movie, too – even though they probably hadn’t seen it, or knew anyone who had. They’d ask you who was in it … what you thought about something they’d heard was in the movie … and you’d better have the right answer. (Or, the answer they wanted to hear.)
Even though movies like Dirty Dancing was rated PG-13, my folks had an absolute fit when my brother went to see it. First off, the name – “Dirty” … why would anyone want to see a “dirty” movie.
Then they discovered that part of the plot of the film deals with “abortion” and everyone we knew seemed to have lost their collective minds.
Enter: Adulthood
When I became an adult, my attitude toward movies kind of changed.
I started seeing movies as being more of a luxury than any kind of meaningful use of time.
Some of that was inspired by my dating life.
When I would first start dating someone, the subject of “what to do on our first date” would always come up – and they would always suggest that we go to a movie. While this did seem to be a popular choice, I … kind of hated hte idea. For me, it was more of an anti-date activity.
When you’re dating someone, you’re trying to get to know them, start experiencing what life is like with them … so, on a first date … you’re going to sit in a dark room for a couple hours and ignore each other? How does this make sense.
Oh, people would say, you get to talk about the movie afterwords. This, I discovered, was true – however these conversations rarely lasted longer than a couple of minutes and … that was it.
In the weeks (maybe months, maybe years) that followed, you would become painfully aware of which part of the film your date happened to enjoy the most, as they would quote it at any and all convenient opportunities. It’d be funny for a short time, but not nearly as long as your date thought it was.
Imagine, if you will, you sit down to dinner with your date, over a year after the two of you had watched one of the Crocodile Dundee movies. You’re in a fancy steakhouse, but the server forgets to bring steak knives, so you have to ask for them. It’s no big deal – they don’t want to leave certain kinds of knives on every table and will only bring them out if required – it happens. Restaurant servers aren’t perfect, and she fixed the situation as soon as we asked.
However, as soon as one is placed in front of your date, he picks up the butter knife and says, “You call this a knife?” then places it down where it was to pick up the steak knife, “This… is a knife.” And then proceeds to laugh like a maniacal madman while every table starts staring at you …
It’s not hard to figure out why we stopped dating shortly after that…
And yes, the movie was at least 10 years old when that event happened.
The Movie That Changed … Everything
One day, I had to see a movie in the theaters – my job depended on it.
I was working for a local (weakly) newspaper-magazine when the lady who wrote all the movie reviews went on extended leave after having a baby. That left us other writers to fill the void. We kind of took turns. So, when mine came around, I was somewhere between excited and terrified. Whatever, I was going to make the best of it.
The film I had to go and see was called Jurassic Park. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. I was asked to go to an early matinee showing the day it opened, so that I could go back and someone could help me write the review.
Before I continue, let me remind you of one important historical fact of 1993. There appeared to be a well-enforced federal law that stated that all children of a certain age had to fall in love with a certain purple dinosaur named Barney. They were forced to learn the words to all the songs he’d sing, as well as the choreography that went along with it. Every child had to own Barney Backpacks, Barney T-shirts, Barney Shoes, Barney Lunch Boxes, Barney Hats, Barney Plush Toys, Barney DVDs, Barney Snacks, Barney Toothbrushes, Barney blankets for their beds … let’s just say that any place where you might logically find a child, you would also find … a certain purple dinosaur.
Enter, Stage Left, Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the same dude who had produced child-friendly movies like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial or more recently Hook. (I think we forgot he was also the guy who brought us not-exactly child-friendly films like Jaws.) For months before the film was released, it was discussed on nearly every television channel to some degree. Moviegoers were promised the most accurate-looking dinosaur movie ever made. They discussed the real science behind the events of the story. Looking back, it was all pure marketing genius – I just think they should have given a bigger warning in the “this movie may cause nightmares” department.
When I arrived for the early afternoon matinee, the first thing I noticed was the number of humans with a single digit age. As I would learn in just over an hour, the movie’s PG-13 rating meant the theater couldn’t say or do anything – besides, all those children were accompanied by someone who at least resembled an adult.
The movie started innocently enough, even though halfway through the opening credits a little girl several rows ahead of me screamed “When do we see the dinosaurs?” The mom (I assume) hushed the child, probably telling her it would be soon.
Several long minutes later, we got our first hint that something was wrong. The scary music starts, we are led to believe that a dinosaur got loose. And then it happens.
A man decides that a good place to hide from a dinosaur is in a flimsy outhouse, which said dino easily blasts through with his head.
“Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” A small child screams. “Why is Barney eating that man?”
And in that instant, two hundred or so small children learned what the letters PTSD stand for.
Needless to say, I did not get to watch Jurassic Park that day as that screen was shortly closed as theater managers began asking people if they wanted a refund or a complimentary ticket to a later showing. (By the time they got to me, the next few showings were already sold out and there was no way for me to see the movie before I had to meet the guy who would help me write my review.
I can now say after all this time that we totally cheated on the movie review. We summarized what professional critics like Siskel and Ebert had, commenting a little on the technical advancements from recent news reports, but also stating in no uncertain terms that one should not even think about allowing their five-year-old child to see it.
And … it worked. My first movie review was a success.
It also forced me to look at movies a bit differently. Before then, I never thought about how movies were made. I knew people show up to movie sets, stand in front of a camera to do and say things – but beyond that – that’s just the magic of Hollywood. What else could it be? Puppetry and Computer Effects? (Seriously, it took me two minutes just to download a grainy image about the size of a postage stamp on my computer with my 24k bit modem – how much work could computers really do?
Really, I should have known better. For over a year at that point I had been working as a cameraman and assistant reporter for a TV news program that aired on Public Access (rebroadcast later on PBS) which led to doing a variety of jobs during PBS telethons and even doing fake commercials for a Public Access sketch comedy show. But, in my defense, I was still learning a lot about the industry.
The DVD Revolution
It wasn’t terribly long after the Jurassic Park incident that I got my first DVD player and started watching movies. I had fallen in love with them (well, some of them) and couldn’t get enough. My wallet was getting too thin from all the movie tickets I was buying until I made an astonishing discovery…
Instead of paying $15 (plus popcorn and drink) just to watch a movie once – I could spend $5-10 on a used DVD that I could watch as often as I felt like it.
Video Rental Stores would often get many copies of new release movies which they would keep in stock for a month or two. After that, they’d sell those disks (often at Bargin Bin prices) to make room for new stock.
You bet your sweet bippy I took advantage of that.
This gave me the opportunity to study movies, apply what I was learning from television production, I could talk with people who knew way more about movies than I did. All this gave me such a better understanding of what movies were trying to say and how they try to say it.
After Blu-Ray was introduced, I started buying them as well. Then 4k Blu-Ray movies came out, and I just had to buy a whole new television. So, when someone came out with an 8K television, all I could do was roll my eyes – surely, they couldn’t think any sane person would ever pay THAT much for a shiny box…
Where I’m At Today
I still love movies and I still watch a lot of them. I still collect a lot of Blu-Rays, most of which I buy used, or otherwise on sale. Sadly, only a small portion of the old DVDs I collected survived the move to Ohio but now I am focusing mainly on Blu-Ray.
How I watch movies depends on my mood. Sometimes, I just want to be entertained by a movie. I’ll watch it, have fun, and try not to think too hard about how this scene was shot or how that effect was pulled off.
Other times, I want to know everything about the movie – so I will analyze the thing, maybe listen to the DVD commentary, or do some research.
I’ve found that sometimes, doing a deep dive helps me appreciate a movie better. But, honestly I can’t say this for all films. After all, it’s kind of hard to have deep philosophical discussion with myself over something like Hot Tub Time Machine.
