I Love the Movies

So I've always loved the movies. There was a time when I saw every movie available to me at the local cinemas. I mean everything—even the schlock.

When I was ten, my four-year-old brother and I got kicked out of a Lassie flick because he went wild making choo choo train noises and knocking people’s popcorn out of their hands. I couldn’t see him to catch him but I could follow spectacular puffs of popcorn clouds as he went down the aisle. Management (cough) asked us to leave and the movie wasn’t even good. A pout spread over my face like a plague. A plague I was more than willing to pass along to my mom when she arrived to pick us up. I, sitting with my chin in my hands on the front steps of the Park Terrace, and Johnny behind me on the lawn chasing kids with a branch he’d ripped off the only tree in the courtyard. She let me ke

ep the change.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest broke my heart when I was 14. The film had come back for a second run. That’s what they used to do if a movie was popular…bring it back. The same year I saw Blazing Saddles (also brought back) and Ode to Billy Joe. Speaking of Billy Joe, boy, have I seen some crap. Somewhere in there was a whole couple of years of crap known as the Disaster Movie kicked off by the success of The Poseidon Adventure in 1972.

On alternate weekends with Dad, we and my stepmother and brothers saw all of them. The Towering Inferno with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. Earthquake with Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame. The absolute lowest point for disaster movies was Tidal Wave which tricked

us into going by sticking Lorne Green in the trailers with huge waves carrying buildings away. (If you insist on proof, look to your right--you zealots can buy the poster here).

Once we'd paid and were in our seats with popcorn, Tidal Wave turned out to be a P

hillipino film dubbed with English. The main character ran around

shouting hysterically and jumping behind buildings as if that would keep him safe from the fake waves. Lorne Green was the only actor whose words matched his lips. The disaster genre redeemed itself with Jaws in 1975, but it’s been downhill ever since.

I love science fiction, drama, romance, action, comedy, horror--The Descent kind, not the Saw kind. I remember my friend Debbie standing up and screaming right there in the theater when Linda Blair's head did a 360 in The Exorcist.

That's my movie-going goal: to be lost like Debbie. I want to be twisted right up into the film. I want to be surprised. I especially dislike being told what is going to happen next. I don’t even read reviews before I go to a movie for fear of learning too much. My mother knows this. I go to the movies with my mother a lot. No matter, Mom cannot help herself. She whispers “The uncle did it,” or “it’s the butcher,” or “he’s in the cellar”. She does not like it when I grimace and roll my eyes, but I ask you, how can I not?

So I read this article about a whacko who shot a father in the theater because his family was chatty during the movie. Holy cow! I bet that family wasn’t even talking about what was going to happen next. See Mom, you should embrace a little eye rolling.