My parents were young. I was their first child, the kid with whom they could tinker and screw up because they would go on to have chances with others. In my baby book under "First Movie," the word Vampirella appears in my mother's measured handwriting. This bit of movie trivia tells me nothing (and yet, everything) about this set of new parents. One) I have yet to discover a film of that title from the time period. So I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate information. So the question becomes, "Were you paying attention?" Is my birthday really the third of May? Is my whole life built on lies? Two) my mom might have half-heartedly accompanied my dad to any British, lesbionic, vampyre, bloody, tittie flick of the early 70s. Months later, she may have jotted down this particular title because it sounded about right. And then there's three) baby's first film was a porno.
Knowing mom, my vote is for our second option. Any way you look at it, it's pretty...well, it's pretty much a great many things: tacky, hilarious, inappropriate--because, frankly, no matter the subject matter, we can be certain it was no Disney film. It's most assuredly super-fucking-radtastic, considering the grindhouse/genre geek film-sploitationeer I've ended up becoming. These days mom says I have weird or, "artsy-fartsy" taste in film. Mostly because I wouldn't watch Grown Ups. Not if Adam Sandler himself invited me over for foot rubs and a private screening held high atop the Hollywood hills in a hot tub filled with strawberry rhubarb ice cream. Also, I have not now, nor will I ever, find the need to pour into my eyes anything adapted from a dying kid/cancer/going off to war novel by tearjerkoff authors such as Nicholas Sparks. I do not watch, what I've noticed women of the mid-west regularly classifying as, "cute shows." Those features that focus on shiny-faced children. Or whimsy. Or talking animals. Or Colin Firth. Or a combo plate featuring any of the listed ingredients.
And while I do enjoy my fair share of subtitled features, and documentaries about livestock and popular fonts, as well as the occasional Lars von Trier vehicle for his full-tilt pretentiousness--that is about as artsy, and as fartsy, as I get. I still regard popcorn as manna. Something post-fetal occurs within me as the lights of a theatre dim. I am at my most comfortable when the disc in the DVD player is a horror picture. Or an old western. Or a straight up gumshod Dana Andrewsy noir. In fact the cheaper a film was to make, the more likely I am to find it a masterpiece. For this I blame mom, dad and the lesbian vampires of the cinematic underworld.
I become very irritated when I overhear parents say, "Oh, we could never let Tyler watch something with lots of sexy-sex in it, but we'll take the most violent film on the shelf. Boys will be boys, ya know." That seems like highly ineffective parenting. As a kid, dad took me to the movies a lot. Between 1975-1988, I'm pretty certain I saw most main-stream motion pictures in the theatre. Off the top of my head: Jaws, Conan the Barbarian, First Blood, Angel Heart, Brubaker, An Officer and a Gentleman and Bad Boys. And I can never remember him NOT engaging my questions, fostering conversation, or explaining the moral of a "story," while listening, thoughtfully to what I had to say about what we had just seen. Film is an interactive medium, (though, ssshhhh....not during) as is parenting. It's simply not enough to jump up, dust the popcorn remnants off, and be on your merry way. Movies create opportunity--opportunity to help your children understand the world around them, as well as the world we don't see. The one in their little heads.
On numerous occasions I have stated that when it comes to movies I'm basically a 9-year-old boy. And though I am neither of those things--the sentiment is nevertheless true. Self-diagnosing this DSM-4 defying pseudo-psychological condition was fairly easy. It didn't even require therapy, remote viewing, or an iso-tank. The mystery can be solved by acknowledging the fact that I was raised in a theatre. Not Catskills-born-to-Vaudevillians-birthed-in-a-steamer-trunk-theatrically-raised, but I was blessed with a set of happy-film-going parents who passed that love to me both through nature and nurture.
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