Ryan McNeil
This past weekend, Matt Singer’s Criticwire question revolved around films we watched when we were young. I didn’t get my answer submitted in time thanks to a busy few days (BACK TO THE FUTURE would have been my response), but the question got me thinking about a longer post.
For starters, when I was a child I really didn’t watch a wide array of movies. Before I turned ten, most of what I watched was animated. Besides the typical Walt Disney classics, the only titles that stick out are E.T., THE WIZARD OF OZ, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, and a curious bit of exposure to THE TERMINATOR. Some of this lack of exposure comes from being the eldest child and not having any older siblings to expose me to such things (though my cousins came through every now and again). Another part of it came from my parents, who enjoyed watching movies, but seldom took my brother and I out to see any – except for those aforementioned Disney Classics.
None of this struck me as strange at the time – I was too busy playing sports (badly), reading, riding my bike, and watching TV shows to notice what I was missing out on movie-wise. My schoolmates would remind me from time to time. Sometimes they’d crack jokes at the sort of childish things my parents still showed me, sometimes they couldn’t believe how disinterested I was in the slasher movies that were so popular at the time. I’ll avoid a whole other tangent and just say that my schoolmates were assholes.
But back to what I did watch, the titles got choice between the ages of ten and thirteen. It’s around then I first saw films like THE UNTOUCHABLES, FERRIS BEULLER’S DAY OFF, ALIEN, JAWS, PLATOON, FIELD OF DREAMS, BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, MISSISSIPPI BURNING, TOP GUN, TERMINATOR 2, and BULL DURHAM – all of ’em on glorious low-resolution VHS. It would have been nice to have soaked some of those in on a big screen, but I got the gist.
Many of these titles were procured from the video store, but many were also recorded from broadcast TV (commercials and all). Who needed a parent or older sibling to take me to a movie when CITY TV would air great movies night after night every weekend? Better yet – they put on the films my parents wouldn’t have chosen…and they put them on relatively uncensored. It was these broadcast, captured on recordable tapes that sometimes lost beginnings, lost endings, or got taped over, that served as the beginning of my film literacy. They may not have been the best way to first watch these titles, but they did the trick. They still weren’t what my schoolmates were watching – they were better.
I would eventually start going to the theatre – I even started talking my parents into going! Even then, it would take a while before the really great films would call to me. Much of those first few excursions were dedicated towards relatively forgettable titles like BACKDRAFT, BATMAN RETURNS, and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.
Still, there will always be a soft spot in my heart for those movies taped from TV.
It was a way to see movies that my parents wouldn’t choose (sometimes for good reason), and a way to start shaping my own movie taste. It wasn’t anything close to what children now have available to them thanks to Netflix, on-demand, and hundreds of channels on TV…and in a way I think that helped. Had I been given the flood of options that are available now, I might have held close to those lousy comedies, or for all I know, even watched those family friendly titles even longer. By having a few channels act as a film programmer, my hand was forced and my eyes were opened.
My taste was formed not just by what I was watching, but by how I was watching it.
How’s about you? What do you remember about the way you first watched film?
My first memories are a mix of seeing movies in the theater and on VHS during the early days of that format. We wore out the Star Wars tapes, and I can’t even imagine how many times we watched the original at home.
In theaters, I can’t say for sure what’s the first, but I do have clear memories of seeing Star Trek II, The Empire Strikes Back, and E.T. around that time. We sometimes saw them second run, and movies used to stay in theaters for a really long time. So it’s hard to say where it really began. Along with these, I also saw my share of Disney films in re-releases. My parents were really into those movies and the theme parks, and that’s been passed along to me.
Oh man, I forgot about the way tapes would wear out! Especially those flicks I used to record off TV…wasn’t bad enough that I’d accidentally record over them…use those tapes a few times and certain spots would just go to hell!
I remember us having a Beta tape player and a handful of movies like the 80’s Alice in Wonderland TV miniseries, obscure animated movie The Mouse and his Child, and the Last Unicorn. I also remember going to the theater almost weekly with my sitter or friends or parents where we would see all the kiddie schlock at the time like the Air up There, Rookie of the Year, Ladybugs, The Big Green, Little Big League, the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and of course my sitter was a big Star Wars & Star Trek fan so we went to see Star Trek VI in theaters. I imagine there were also some other good movies mixed in, but my memory about that kind of stuff is pretty terrible.
You might have been shown the bad stuff – but in the end, you turned out alright wouldn’t you say?
Great post, Ryan.
My family went the Betamax route initially (yes, we were those people) and so my earliest memories of movies were watching and re-watching the orignal “Star Wars” trilogy and seeing “Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Captain Blood” over and over because my mom was a massive Errol Flynn/Olivia de Havilland fan. I’ve always felt the earnest, romantic, old fashioned feel of those films colored my cinematic outlook forevermore in many ways.
I’ve never been that into Disney or animation and I think it’s because I didn’t watch much of it even when I was a kid. My parents showed me old black & whites taped off TV instead.
I sorta wish my parents showed me more of what they were into. For instance, knowing how much my folks were *both* fans of THE GREAT ESCAPE makes me wonder how that never got put on one rainy afternoon. (Ditto THE DIRTY DOZEN).
I will never stop telling my childhood cinema story.
I lived in a country where Schindler’s List was temporarily banned because it showed naked women. A country with weird censorship laws where “Men in Black” was a PG-13 while “Titanic” was a G-7, in one of the rare cases when the censors chose to limit children’s exposure to violence as opposed to sex. So everyone watched “Titanic.” After that, TV channels wanted to feed off of “Titanic’s” success and air anything that Leo and Kate were in. And one of the minor channels aired “Heavenly Creatures,” an art movie about spoilers, lesbian murderers.
We also had HBO, so as much as I was exposed to “Sex and the City” I was exposed to “Se7en” too.
And of course I watched Disney and “Star Wars” because the child abuse I experienced was not that extensive.
And the flip side of that is growing up here where CITY TV would show films after 11pm that had all manner of sex and violence in it. For instance, my realization that Canadian channels could show nudity was when I was flipping channels late one night and happened upon a scene in PRIVATE SCHOOL where Phoebe Cates rides a horse topless…
There is ANOTHER Phoebe Cates topless movie? Even as a gay man I acknowledge how lucky Kevin Kline is.
Also my first CityTV racy moment was Brad Pitt scratching himself while he was just wearing underwear. And speaking of Brad Pitt, FIGHT CLUB’s only flaw was that Brad Pitt was naked and the camera didn’t tilt down.
Oligarchy aside, Canada is the best country on earth.
Well sure, but the camera never tilts down anyway. Pretty sure City used to show full-frontal too. I seem to remember getting duped into a few films with Parental Discretion warnings about nudity, only to find out that it was male nudity.
Like most kids, my experience going to the movies began with my parents taking me semi-regularly to Disney/Family films. One of the first non-Disney movies I remember seeing theatrically was Ghostbusters 2, whiich I actually found quite scary at the time (I was 7).
In the late 1980s/early 1990s my family got our first VCR. With the exception of the first purchase (Tim Burton’s Batman) the majority of the VHS tapes we got were family films (in the giant clamshell boxes) with other types of films being regularly rented.
I fully blossomed as a film lover when I turned 13 and started walking over to one my two neighborhood cinemas, which played most of the major releases. The first big film I saw on my own was Batman Forever in 1995, which I was REALLY excited to see.
It only grew from there.
I remember that “events” always precipitated watching a movie – things like birthday parties, or some kind of thing when the grown-ups were drinking wine, and the kids were upstairs in the attic, or going to the Drive In. That might have something to do with how I’ve always felt that a movie was something to get excited about. I also remember though, that the more interesting movies were the ones I would see at my friend’s house when I was little – things like Lord of the Rings, Blade Runner, Goldfinger… I needed to step out of my usual paradigm to experience something other than the typical kind of fare you were describing.
Back to what I was saying about ‘event based movie watching’ – I worry that I might be watering down the experience for my kids – in that I try to give them every opportunity to experience a “family movie night” but we don’t really make the experience sacred in any way – or maybe my adulthood keeps me from seeing it that way. Whatever the case, I hope I can enkindle some of the same reverence for film that I managed to find myself.
Holy Hannah – The Cynic Speaks!!
You’re right to point out how movies have become a commodity, which takes away much of the “event” feeling. When children can watch these tales play out on their parents’ iPhones, how jacked-up about them can we expect them to get? It reminds me of the way TV took away some of filmgoing’s lustre…but in many ways this is worse.
So – how *do* we keep moviegoing special for another generation?
I think the best place to start is to invest in a projector of any kind – something where you can spray a film all over the wall. We had a “fake” drive-in themed birthday for our daughter that was staged on our back lawn – that got some attention. The only way to preserve “event-type watching” is to stage it – label things as “family movie night” or as “cartoon afternoon” or something can create strong associations… And as I’ve mentioned before, stacking multiple couches on stilts behind one another is a very special way to transform the usual viewing space!
I completely identify with not developing your movie taste until being able to go to the theatre yourself. My parents and sister were never really into film, so I had to grab what I could from my uncle or see stuff at friends’ houses. In that way, I am a little jealous of the kids who grow up with everything available to stream immediately, but then again the limited options made me appreciate the great stuff that much more.
I do wonder what might have been if I’d had friends that cared more when I was younger. When I became a teenager, many of the new friends I made pointed towards new and old films that got past me – the way friends are supposed to do.
(Note to self, remember to thank the girl who first showed me GOODFELLAS)
Every now and again I’d go to the video store (that we now own…how strange life can turn out) and get a video out, and that video would almost definitely be horse related. Those were rare occasions. We also used to go to the cinemas (when it was still open) every now and again too. Otherwise, everything would be taped off the TV. Then again, I was never that big on movies back in the day.
Even though I have my beloved blu ray player and recorder, I miss my VHS recording days quite a bit.
There was something a bit more special when you had to do the digging yourself, wasn’t there?
PS – I will never *not* get a smile when you use the term “back in the day”
I love that you’re reminiscing about movies taped from TV. That was such a unique era to do that kind of thing, an era that will never return. But it’s so, so great to look back on it and remember that… well, it actually happened, in all of its wavy, grainy glory.
IIRC, Edgar Wright has a similar story about recording things off of one of the channels in the UK that would run movies late at night. And then he’d edit similar sequences into his own video. Here’s one he did for guns in film:
http://www.edgarwrighthere.com/2011/04/04/gun-fetish-1993/
I’m already curious what the next generation will reminisce about where their viewing habits are concerned…