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March 24, 2008

Stages of a Cinephile: Jeff

Monkeys, Monsters, Teens & Taxis

By Jeff

Well, this is my life: Sitting and staring for hours (!) days (!!) years (!!!) in front of screens small and large. Fairly boilerplate collection of references here, I imagine, for others of my generation. Am I the resident geriatric on the Lucid staff? Why, I remember walking twenty miles, barefoot in the snow, with a nickel in my pocket, to see blah blah blah

1971 – 1977

*First film I have any memories of at all is 2001: A Space Odyssey... obviously not seen in a theater, though where? Perhaps a showing on PBS? I wonder… and I wonder, too, if my memories of Planet of the Apes confuse and contend with the "Dawn of Man" intro to Kubrick's film? Years later the shame I feel at this possibility is crushing.

*Other early favorites seen on television include Laurel & Hardy's The Music Box, several indistinguishable Abbott & Costello flicks, The Little Rascals and Our Gang shorts, the Hope & Crosby "Road" pictures, all the Universal monster movies and anything and everything with dinosaurs. Fragmentary recollections of various man-in-jungle films which may or may not be Southern Comfort, Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now.

*First film I remember seeing in a theater: Star Wars, 1977. It seems like I actually saw it 1977 times that summer.

*While sleeping over at my grandparents' house with a cousin, we watch Mario Bava's Black Sunday on a local TV channel's "Saturday Night Thriller" program and it was the first time a film scared me so much I had to leave the lights on when going to bed - she warned us not to watch it - and we only saw the first 15 minutes!

1978 – 1982

*Five years of my life consumed entirely by Star Wars and its sequels (as well as the many cinematic and televised knock-offs like Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, The Black Hole, V, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Alien, etc.) and everything produced by Lucas and Spielberg. Now realize I often knew no difference between the two men's work; to me they were one and the same. Tried to persuade my fourth-grade classmates that The Empire Strikes Back was better than Star Wars. I credit (blame?) Lucas (and the plethora of "how it was done" articles documenting the creation of the three SW films) with the notion that films are made by, like, real people, and hence a career as an artist is possible, or at least worth pursuing. Boy, would I be disappointed with the next thirty years of my life.

*Uncle takes me to see Raiders of the Lost Ark, the face-melting climax of which implants itself in my nightmares for years to come.

*Best friend sees Alien (and many other R-rated films) in the theater and regales me with all the lurid details. I would not see Ridley Scott's overrated film until its appearance on HBO some time later at my other grandparent's house, very late at night. Grandmother watches it with me (!) and makes snide remarks about Ripley's underwear scene at end, which embarrasses me. Film terrifies me and the midnight walk home by myself (a whole three blocks!) is among the most frightening moments of my child hood. Yes, I led a sheltered life.

*I remember being very aware of Blade Runner, but not actually seeing the film until the first "director's cut" re-release in the early 1990s. Not very impressed with the film, but it did prompt my lifelong interest in Philip K. Dick, for which I’m thankful.

1983 – 1989

*Same uncle who took me to see Raiders shows me An American Werewolf in London while I spend a few days at his house. I recognize that Jenny Agutter (who I previously knew from Logan's Run) is in the film and one of my dirtiest and most enduring cinematic crushes is cemented. Subsequently show my mother Werewolf and she scolds me, saying film is much too "old" for me to have seen. Oh well, Ms. Agutter can ruin me any time she wants.

*My adolescence - which seems to have coincided with the nadir of 20th century "teen culture" - is inaugurated and punctuated with viewings of The Goonies, Teen Wolf, Back to the Future, Red Dawn, Wargames, Footloose, etc. Nothing but the best, obviously.

*See a few John Hughes films and find they don't jive at all with my then miserable high-school experience. In his films, the nerds and outsiders not only have friends, but they often hook up with jocks or preps of the opposite sex, and everyone seems to gain certain "understandings" about life. Watching these films again recently, they exert a strangely nostalgic pull, despite my disdain for their phoniness.

*First movie seen on a date with a girl: Poltergeist 2. Her choice.

*Culmination of my teen film-going experience - and all of 80s cinema? - summed up in two words: Die Hard.

1990 - 1993

*Begin art school where my fellow students seem thoughtlessly enamored of David Lynch, Spike Lee, Ollie Stone, the Coen Bros, et al. To be thoughtlessly contrary, I deride their tastes and avoid the work of these directors for years... when I finally see their "oeuvres" I find my distaste of Coen, Coen, Lee and Stone justified, but discover in Lynch one of the great American film artists of the last 25 years. I’m glad I waited, because I think his work somehow means more to me than it otherwise would have. Or maybe he's fulla shit - it's hard to tell sometimes.

*After a full day drawing nudes at school and a full night answering phones at work, I get home at 2AM, collapse on the couch, turn on the TV and see Taxi Driver for the first time, edited for broadcast and with the sound turned all the way down while my mother sleeps in next room. After Star Wars, this is my most formative film viewing experience. A week later it is shown again - this time I watch it with sound. A week after that I buy a cheap EP speed VHS ("Good Times Video") of the film at K Mart, which I own for the next 15 years and watch so frequently that the cassette's sound, appropriately, perhaps fatedly, fades to nearly nothing. In hindsight, my extreme identification with Travis Bickle is both embarrassing and frightening - it’s okay, though, becuase I’m no longer IN A HELL, LIKE THE REST OF YOU!

1994 – 1999

*Apartment with free cable TV - including movie channels - tests the limits of my viewing schedule and eye strain. I record an average of twenty films a week and am able to view many classic and plenty of craptacular films this way, particularly old noirs and dramas.

*Somehow stumble upon a copy of Tarkovsky's Solaris at the public library which completely alters my consciousness and initiates a new phase in movie appreciation which leads to the works of Godard, Bresson, Ozu, etc. In other words, all the boring, pretentious stuff I love so dearly. Thanks a lot, Andrei.

*Purchase several VHS from Facets Video via mail-order - most notably Badlands, which I recall someone or other calling one of the most perfect American films ever made - a statement I agree with to this day. I also acquire Days of Heaven and just as I begin to appreciate the legend of Malick's 20-year absence, I discover he's making a new film! I hadn’t been so excited anticipating a film since The Empire Strikes Back. See The Thin Red Line in theater four times upon its initial release. The second time it was completely out of focus. Comments from an acquaintance I saw it with: "It definitely could’ve been shorter." (*sigh*) Comments overheard from obvious WW2 veteran exiting the theater: "I thought it was pretty good, except for the swearing."

*See Saving Private Ryan with ex-Navy Dad and Army-bound brother in a theater packed tighter than an Omaha Beach landing craft. Not really a Spielberg fan by that point, I remember being impressed with the first 20 minutes, and how it utterly silenced the audience, and thinking yes, this will show these fuckers... only to find the rest of the film among the worst, most reprehensibly awful propagandistic tripe Senior Spielbergo has ever done. I walk out of the theater ashamed.

*Cartoonist and film expert Steve Bissette, in a Comics Journal interview, blames Star Wars for making movie combat "fun" again, and depersonalized like a video game, for an entire generation of children who almost gleefully go off to fight the first Gulf War as young men 15 years later (and still, to this day, obviously). Can't say I disagree with him.

*Best friend takes me to see Pulp Fiction after I’ve stayed up two days straight working the night shift. I like it, though it confuses me, perhaps due to exhaustion. I find the strange half-sunlight at the end of the film, as Jules and Vincent exit the diner, strangely melancholic, even now. Still think Jackie brown is his best film by a mile. Think Kill Bill and Death Proof nearly unwatchable. Don’t care about Reservoir Dogs at all, one way or the other.

1999 – 2003

*Move to Seattle affords many opportunities to see untold numbers of films at great local theaters (Grand Illusion having my favorite programming) as well as the Seattle Public Library's astonishing media collection. Strangely, I never rent a single film from Scarecrow Video despite living within walking distance. Four distinct film-going memories from that time: #1: Seeing Tarkovsky's Stalker with new girlfriend and seven other people at Consolidated Works art gallery, and having the projector stop about a dozen times throughout the film - making a very meditative film somehow much more suspenseful. Still, a wonderful experience and one of the best dates I ever had with someone I really love. #2: Seeing The Thin Red Line in repertoire at the Egyptian Theater in Capital Hill, with that same girlfriend and an obviously appreciative sold-out audience. Silence and murmured sobbing at film’s end. #3: Sans Soleil and La Jetee at Grand Illusion. #4: Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera at Grand Illusion – WTF? Biggest regret: Not seeing Barry Lyndon at Cinerama a few weeks after 9/11.

*Finally see Salo thanks to the University of Washington library. Good times!

2004-2007

*Move to small town and somehow con myself into a job at an independent video store, where I am quickly dissuaded of any notions I might’ve once had of such a place being full of chummy, goofball camaraderie among exploitation-film-loving weirdos... I guess the 80s heyday of mom & pop video stores (and comic shops and record stores and arcades) as neighborhood hubs of quirky, secretive knowledge has been supplanted by internet fandom obssessing over endless, useless minutia and a parade of droning adults asking for the latest episodes of Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. Fuck you, Zach Braff.

Last Week

*Fired unceremoniously from video store job for protesting the acquisition of yet another Dane Cook "comedy"... so now that I've got all this free time it's going to be nothing but porn, ALL THE TIME.

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