Sunday, May 20, 2007

Together at Last

My column for next week is about movie-making, inspired by the made-for-TV movie shot on our street ten days ago. I didn’t see many movies when I was a kid because we lived a distance from the theater. At college I discovered that I was nearly the only girl there who hadn’t seen The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t see Fantasia either, and Bill was happy I could at last see it because he had been so influenced by it when he was a boy.

I never caught the movie bug even when I lived where I could see them more handily. When my granddaughter or my daughter came home, we would have a film festival of video tapes, and at least once go to the theater, but that was about the extent of my movie-going.

A number of things have happened in the last year to make me more interested. My daughter has been in several movies and TV shows. When Bill came home from the hospital, my son bought us a TV and DVD player and installed them in the living room. Up to then the TV had been relegated to the basement. About the same time, our cable network added a classic movie channel to its lineup. The kids gave Bill DVD’s for his birthday, and we have been renting them as well. Am I right in thinking that TV stations are playing more movies? Watching movies is great for keeping our minds off our troubles. Over in Anecdotal Evidence, Patrick quoted Theodore Dalrymple on art and transience, and I used that quote in my column to note that videos and DVD’s have made movies less transient. I find it strange that an art form so universal and so influential has nearly passed me by, but I am glad that at last I have had a chance to participate in it.

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

I saw nothing but Disney as a child, and found movies in college. I've seen way too many, but so has D. We love our Netflix, since it is about the only way for us to find the movies we have not already seen.

Anonymous said...

The right kind of movie is a great distraction. I love the old ones - Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, that kind of thing. Evidently fate has been saving movies up for you, for just such an occasion as this.

Peter said...

Actually, technology has made a lot of things less transient--I found a photograph of my very first typewriter, a Berwin Gold index typewriter, in a photo on the internet...

And the public library has a re-issued version of the original War of the Worlds Classic Comic (remember those?). I was startled to see how lurid the colouration was--I don't remember it being that way when I was a young teen.