Seeing moments like this on the big screen for the first time was amazing!
Much like Andrew, I enjoy movies as escapist entertainment. I had a very sheltered childhood and didn’t get to watch a lot of movies. We did not have a TV in our house, and I was never allowed to go to movie theaters. (This has bemused many of my friends, especially because I don’t associate popcorn, or food in general, with watching movies). As an adult, I’ve had to catch up on a lot of pop culture references that I just didn’t understand (for instance, I was an adult before I had seen a Disney animated movie and I still haven’t seen all of them). I also often don’t have the nostalgic love for poorly made, cult classic movies and shows.
I’m a little more demanding about consistency and plot than many moviegoers, which drives my movie loving friends a little crazy. However, there ARE cinematic influences on my life. Here are a few of them.
- Disney’s Treasure Island –this was one of the earliest movies that my siblings and I saw. I was probably around nine or ten. We reenacted the movie many times in our backyard, using a large cardboard box as a ship. Our favorite character was Ben Gunn because of a goofy line, “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese–toasted, mostly.” We were too young (and not British enough) to know what toasted cheese was, of course.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer—if my mother only knew how many days I would ask to go down the block to spend the afternoon with my friend Alex and her dog… but we were really watching Buffy. That was the beginning of my love of Joss Whedon, although I didn’t know who he was at the time.
- Pollyanna—this movie was influential not because of its content, but because in my house every movie was compared to it. It was actually a very perky, overly bright movie about a little girl who was good all the time. We kids were supposed to look up to Pollyanna as an example, but she was mostly just annoying.
- NOT The Wizard of Oz—I put this movie in here because it was NOT actually an influence on me. This was my mother’s favorite movie when she was a child, and she made the fatal mistake of introducing it to her children when they were teenagers. Of course, we make snarky comments about how cheesy the movie was, which frustrated her quite a bit.
- The Lord of the Rings—these were the first movies that I properly “geeked out” about. The Fellowship of the Ring came out when I was fifteen years old. By this time, even we had the internet, so I was able to follow the process and development of the movies with intense anticipation. I will never forget sitting for over an hour waiting for our 54k dialup to load the official trailer so that we could watch it in all its glory.
- Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith—was the first movie I ever saw in a real movie theater. I was nineteen years old, and was living on my own. A friend of mine found out that I had never actually been to the cinema and dragged me along. I enjoyed the experience but thought (and still think) that it was far too loud.
Those are just a few of the movies and TV shows that have had some profound influence on my life. Mine are more like milestones of development, but even so, they each mark a significant piece of my life. What movies have influenced you? Let me know in the comments! -t
Therefore I Geek 