At The Movies!

AT the Movies!

I have spent a great portion of my life watching flicks. I can recall times where my father took us to the cheap shows. It was at the crappy theatre of the town. I like to think that’s where all the movie reels from the expensive theatre would end up. It would have the new movies weeks after they have already been viewed at the newer theaters for dirt-cheap. One of the earliest movies, I can remember is Jurassic Park. It had to be around 1993, the year Jurassic Park came out, and I wasn’t even 10 years of age then. We really wanted to see it and our father took us. The filmstrip ended up burning in the reel and we had a pass to see another showing of JP at a later time. I do remember seeing Fantasia and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well. With a Father, who worked over nights, would fall asleep during these showings and we would have to constantly keep waking him up so we would not get into too much trouble for the loud snoring.

When I got a bit older, I started to build my own collection. Someone gave me a gift of a DVD player. I bought Gone In 60 seconds with Nicholas Cage, Broken Arrow with John Travolta and the cartoon movie, Shrek. I have seen all those movies a hundred plus times since I couldn’t afford new movies. I would only buy movies that I really wanted to see again. I hardly bought stuff that I haven’t seen unless I was familiar with the director or actors involved. I eventually ended up with a wall of movies that would surprise anybody who came over. Around that time, I would also make it a weekend ritual to go the movies and catch cheap matinees. For a movie that came out on Friday for ten plus bucks a ticket, I would catch it the very next morning for four bucks or less. Even if I have seen everything I wanted to see at the show, I would watch something I haven’t seen, even if I didn’t know what to expect.

I eventually got to a point where I had given up, and sold majority of my collection. The people I sold my collection to, ran a movie resale shop. They constantly repeated the joke, “With this much, we can open a new shop”. I guess it was an addiction. In a world where movie streaming is king, I try not to spend so much on movies. I do hope to get my daughter into the entertainment of motion pictures. I even started off her collection by collecting every cartoon Disney movie made. I even had this movie podcast as well with my brother, called MuvCast where we would talk about flicks we have seen or information about flicks.