Schooled by the Cinema
Flipping the narrative on how movies ruined my soul
Issue #29
Welcome to Part 1 of this 3-part series on how a childhood saturated with movies has influenced who I am today.
You could say I had a cinematic childhood. When my dad wasn’t watching football on the weekend, we went to the movies. If we didn’t go to the movie theater, we rented movies from Blockbuster. I can close my eyes even now and imagine myself back in the overly bright aisles of the video store, combing the limited supply of movies for just the right one. Or, if it was a lazy night, we stayed home and flipped through the cable channels until my Dad found an Eddie Murphy or Bill Murray flick to watch.
When it came to movie choices my Dad didn’t discriminate based on the quality of the film (or lack thereof). He was an enthusiastic audience member whether it was Police Academy 5, James Bond (the Roger Moore era) or The Shawshank Redemption. He also watched movies without a thought to whether the content was appropriate for his kids. He took me to see Die Hard at age eleven and Silence of the Lambs when I was fourteen.
This could easily become a piece all about how my Dad failed to protect my young impressionable soul but my Dad wasn’t my only source for movies. I can’t remember who took me to see Dirty Dancing in the theater when I was ten or let me watch it the subsequent seventeen times that I saw it (I kept a record at the time). I watched Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom at a neighbor’s 5th grade birthday party and the Friday the 13th horror movies at a family friend’s house. Another family friend dressed me up and took me to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A good portion of these movies fed the fear and confusion that already lived in my adolescent heart and if I could, I would erase some of the images seared in my brain at too early an age.
For most of my adult life I’ve been convinced that my early exposure to violence and sensuality through movies stole part of my innocence away. In many ways, it’s true. It’s left me pretty angry that the older people around me didn’t do a better job of protecting my young soul. But as with most true stories, I've realized lately that this narrative of my life has to be more nuanced than that. How do I know? Because I’m forty-six years old and I still love movies.
Taking another look back at my childhood, it’s still obvious that the people around me could have done a better job deciding when and how much to open the floodgates. But it’s also true that because my exposure to films was limitless, movies became part of my education. Maybe I wasn’t able to discern content until I was much older but by watching both terrible films and soon-to-be classics, I learned the rhythm of good storytelling. I figured out which actors could disappear into their roles. I teethed on everything from Airplane (“Don’t call me, Shirley”) to Dead Poets Society and while doing so, I was unconsciously learning the difference between mediocrity and excellence.
Since I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, Steven Spielberg’s golden age, I was schooled by movies like Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, The Goonies, and Hook. Some of my tutors were acting greats still in the prime (or at least the twilight) of their career, like Robert De Niro, Daniel Day-Lewis, Morgan Freeman and upcoming young actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.
The (Movie) Plot Thickens
Was it all this movie-watching that gave me the itch to enter the world of performance myself? After my first school play in the fifth grade, I moved onto middle school drama classes and eventually I transferred to a Magnet Arts High School where I majored in theater. Five days a week I dove into character and scene study analysis, I built sets and assisted the director for our local Shakespeare in the Park. The taste for excellence that I’d been slowly absorbing from the movies provided the perfect foundation for my theater education. And my theater education made me feel connected to the craft of filmmaking that I’d admired my whole life.
While studying theater, I got a job at the local movie theater. After the last showing ended for the night, the managers would screen the new movies for the employees. On a weeknight, that screening would start close to midnight and on the weekends it might be two in the morning. Sweaty and steeped in the odor of popcorn that never washed out of my polyester uniform, I continued to feast on a wide palette that included Schindler's List and Pulp Fiction. Working at the theater also meant that I could spend my break watching movies. Reality Bites was a favorite of mine. I'd grab a cup of soft serve and spend a little extra time with Ethan Hawke and Winona Ryder.
Other movies I remember from that time, though I’ve lost track of whether I saw them in the theater or on a couch, include Legends of the Fall, In the Name of the Father, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Shadowlands, Benny and Joon, and Rainman. I know it makes me sound old but I have to say it – I don’t think they make movies like they used to. Or, at least, not nearly as often.
The nuanced narrative of being raised by the movies is that they influenced me in both negative and positive ways. Some of those early movies left a scar that will never completely go away. But I’m also thankful that through my vast exposure to films, I gained a second language as a child and as an adolescent. I learned the language of story and the power of living inside of one, if only for a few hours. Movies continue to influence my life now as I share them with my own kids.
Thanks for loving movies, Dad, even if your enthusiasm didn’t always provide the best compass. And thank you to the rest of the Hollywood Greats who taught me, and continue to teach me, to discern excellence and reach for it in all that I do.
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Words to Consider
”Films are subjective — what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies.”
-Christopher Nolan
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Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee