Movie watching for me is always best when it's a shared, communal
activity. Sure, watching a movie all by your lonesome is a modern, practical
and sometimes necessary affair. Folks and friends always seem to be busy when
you want to watch one of your favorites, be it the eighteenth screening of Citizen Kane or a midnight showing of the Crawling
Eye. No matter, because with today’s technology you could be on a desert island
(hopefully with a large cache of dry cell batteries) and stream all
your personal favorites on your pad or cell device with no one else around to bother
you in your solitary pursuit. But thinking about it, how much fun would that
be, sitting there under a palm tree, squinting into your wee little screen and
missing out on all the thrills and joys of being shipwrecked? Why jack into a
flick on a tiny handheld device when you could be enjoying, instead, all those grand
floor to ceiling sunsets that Pacific Islanders swear by? Now that, baby, is
what Technicolor is all about!
Last night I finally got around to screening Alien with my
oldest. As I have related before he is now off at the university, learning all
there is to know about Media Studies. He knows how to wield a hand held camera
and his video editing skills are well known and highly desired in his post high school set. But, after a lifetime of
watching easy going film and animation he found himself floundering in the world
of what I would consider "real" film. He had his Disney, Burton, Miyazaki and Michael Bay conversations down pat but lacked
the polish and depth that a knowledge of Capra and Scorcese and Kurosawa might add to his party talk and student papers. I felt it was my fatherly duty to show him
the cinematic ropes, sort of like the way that other dads would show their kids to shoot
a gun or dive for pearls. Like my mother before me, I felt that sharing movies, transporting my kid through the world of film, would
be a ball, an eye opener and renewal in the fine art of watching and talking
about flicks in the company of a fellow enthusiast.
Aliens has been on our "must see" list for quite a while now.
We had it in the Halloween stack three years ago but Terminator, heavy, violent and
cultish, washed away any chance of our watching anything else that was even remotely
scary. But we worked up to this year, taking horror and suspense and sci-fi titles in
stride. Some films still have that undesired effect of having him lose precious
sleep but others, in their culturally significant way, needed to be seen, sleep
be damned. So we watched the Ridley Scott classic unspool in the dark of night, late enough to get the room to that level of optimal darkness, early enough to allow for supper out and an adequately large
helping of coconut cream pie afterwards.
Watching that movie together allowed for mutual jolts of haunted house
thrills, allowed for both of us to squeal like little girls when spooky things jumped
out of the shadows. But more than that what that time in front of the set allowed for was not only
a joint appreciation of the storytelling art displayed on the screen but also for the
continued telling of tales that our shared movie watching allowed for. Later on
he can look back and say, hey, remember when we watched that xyz flick and I’ll be
able to nod and acknowledge that moment when we did. Knowing that boy of mine and his
penchant for telling tales I am assured that those hours spent on our beat leather
couch perched in front of that old Panasonic of mine will not be in vain. Those
moments will live on, something to be shared later on as he unspools his
favorites to his kids in some faraway time and place. Somehow I know that he'll hark back and remember me, remember those hours of shared movie bliss.
Action!
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