Your life as a cineaste

Saw Apocalypse Now at about 16. i literally didnt know movies could be like that. so i started seeking that sort of thing, got interested in the "classics" and from then on im sure its pretty typical. (funnily, i dont even consider AN that great a movie anymore--maybe i watched it too much)

Jaws.

like ryan, i think apocalypse now was what did it: i was around the same age and

was totally sucked in by it: it seemed light-years more mesmerizing and fantastic and real than anything i'd ever seen before. now i can see the flaws in the film, but i have to admit it still works on me, as an experience, just as strongly as ever.

I think I'm not alone when I say that Star Wars was the movie that made me love movies. Saw it for the first time when I was eight or nine, and the word "obsession" would not even begin to describe it. If I remember correctly, there was a point when I had watched the entired trilogy everyday for two weeks straight.

Not long after, I saw a documentary on the making of Star Wars' special effects. This coincided with my introduction to computers, and so from then on, my sights were pretty much on making special effects a career.

The more I studied filmmaking, however, the more I became interested in acting and directing. I started writing screenplays and when I entered high school, I took a drama class. It was around this time when I started to realize that if I seriously wanted to get into making movies, I ought to start watching some movies other than Star Wars. This is when my real Cinephilia began.

At first, I was really into science fiction, and I eventually stumbled onto A Clockwork Orange. This introduced me to Kubrick, whose work really altered my perception of what filmmaking was all about. I was also highly influenced by Apocalypse Now. For a long time, I didn't entirely understand it, but the more I watched it, the more I was drawn into it, and even to this day, I consider Apocalypse Now to possibly be my personal favorite film of all time.

And the rest, as they say, was history....

Other milestones in my life as a cineaste:

Blade Runner (first turned me on to "artistic" films)
Psycho (taught me my first major lessons on film style)
Annie Hall (taught me how to write)
Taxi Driver (the first film I ever saw that had a major impact on me personally)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (my first foreign language film)
Citizen Kane (you know...)
Blue Velvet (left me speechless for twenty mintutes)
Pulp Fiction (also taught me how to write)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (the movie that made me love westerns)
The Bicycle Thief (my first foreign "art film")
8 1/2 (put a smile on my face for the rest of the day)
Dog Day Afternoon (sparked my Pacino obsession)
Rashomon (my introduction to Kurosawa, who has since become one of my favorite filmmakers)
M (so practically flawless, I wanted to cry)
Night of the Living Dead (it scared me, it made me think, the ultimate horror film)

And most recently...
Kill Bill vol. 1 (reminded me how fun movies can be)

The single most important event, perhaps, in my formative years was seeing in 8th grade an episode of "Night Flight" on the USA network (remember that show? great stuff!) which was devoted to cult films. It turned me on to David Lynch, This is Spinal Tap, and Eating Raoul and really got me excited about making non-mainstream discoveries.

Pierrot Le Fou without a doubt.

I'd have to say that my father's odd taste in what he purchased as far as VHS tapes is what started to separate me from passive watching. I mean, watching Emir Kusturica films side by side with the Marx Brothers, Doctor Zhivago, Fellini Satyricon, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Oliver Stone, Belle de Jour, Breaker Morant, Vincent Price films (I think I'd seen almost everything I could get my hands on before I finished third grade), The Exorcist, Harold and Maude, The Krays, Chinatown, etc. all by the age of ten will do that to you. The point is, once you've made forays into those sorts of things at an impressionable age, there's really no coming back.

In the middle of high school, I think I mentioned screenwriting as a possible career path to the career lady, who mentioned Kieslowki's trilogy. Me, being a snotty, precocious bum, rent it, unfazed by White but fall in love with Red. Now I went around saying I was into foreign art cinema, when in fact until Dreamlife of Angels, I hadn't watched anything else from France. Of course I try out more KK, but nothing else really takes aside from about 5 episodes of the Dekalog.

I shamble around with foreign/art flicks and remain on the whole cold to what I see until finding ILX, whose simultaneous populism and obscurism shame me into realizing that I was never the film geek I professed to being, and in a way I give up on film.

That is until the GRIPPING TOUR-DE-FORCE

(cont.)(haha submitted a wee early)
LEGALLY BLONDE alerted me to the magnificence waiting to be found in popcorn flicks.

Anyway, I still consider myself a neophyte, especially in comparison to the rest of yall.

Major points on the curve:

1967 or '68 / My first movie: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which I saw at the drive-in. I was about four years old. My mom put her hand over my eyes during the unsuitable parts. Needless to say, I hardly remember seeing any of it. I have never watched it since.

1974 / My first movie in a movie theater: Young Frankenstein at the grand Tennessee Theatre, complete with short subject and a "mighty Wurlitzer" organ recital beforehand. Both inspired me and ruined me forever.

1976-1979 / After my parents divorced, my dad and I went to the movies together, in retrospect probably because there was no talking required. We went to the movies A LOT.

1982 / Intro to Film, University of Georgia: The Great Train Robbery, Battleship Potemkin, Persona, Andrei Rubilev, and The Marriage of Maria Braun, just to name a few. In retrospect, I think maybe the prof was trying to make our heads explode.

1992 / Convincing my editor at the time that what the alt-weekly I was working for really needed was a video review column, thereby taking my obsession semi-pro.

Wizard of Oz

Poltergeist

Jubilee

Wild At Heart

Trust

Rear Window

Emak Bakia

Ariel

Heat

The Enigma Of Kasper Hauser

George Washington

Charlie's Angels:Full Throttle

That's pretty accurate considering how drunk I was when I posted it.

Night On Earth should be in there after Trust.

And maybe Tirez Sur Le Pianiste after Emak Bakia.

Bugsy Malone - Fantastic Planet - The Man Who Knew Too Much - Jumping Jack Flash - Monkey Business - The Shop Around the Corner - "Press Gang" - Quick Change - The Conversation - The Last Detail - Rocco and His Brothers - Sweet Smell of Success - Ace in The Hole - "The West Wing"

Oh, and "The Palm Beach Story"

it was the one-two punch of Evil Dead 2 and After hours.

... that sealed the deal.

Rear Window left me literally white-knuckled the first time I saw it, around age 14. I was hooked on Hitch for a long time after that, and slowly learned to appreciate headier stuff like Vertigo, but nothing has ever topped that first viewing of Rear Window for suspense. No movie by anyone ever. Not even Jaws.

Apocalypse Now kicked my ass pretty hard, too. It's a guy thing. (Mostly... it was on TV yesterday, and my girlfriend said incredulously, "How can they show this without letterboxing?" I fell in love with her all over again.)

Woody Allen was and is huge with me. Question: is Manhattan better than Annie Hall? I think it might be.

And then there's Bergman. Ah, Bergman. Persona was a revelation. Cries and Whispers is one of the most truly disturbing movies I've ever seen. And on, and on.

For what seems like a very long time now, this has been my most indispensable movie guide. Thanks, Unca Rog.