The first movie I remember seeing was Bambi, probably when I was about four years old. We went swimming that day, and there was a thunderstorm, and the mental image the day conjures is me standing in the baby pool with nobody else around. I have no idea if the memory is accurate.
When I was nine or so, I saw a movie on HBO at a neighbor’s house. It was slow, had strange music, dealt with a picnic at some desert locale, and haunted me for years. In college, an English and film professor described the scariest movie he’d ever seen. It sounded awfully familiar. My roommate at the time recalled seeing the same movie as a child in a hotel room in Scotland. So we began a long journey to find a video copy of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.
In 1999, the person I’d just started dating commented in an e-mail that every time she read the Stephen King essay about baseball, she knew what it felt like to be one of those little leaguers, even though she (at the time) knew little of baseball and less of little league. I was struck immediately: It’s not how I felt in little league.
I love Jeff Bridges. I love Tim Robbins. I love them equally, and (my gut tells me) in about the same way. We are a ménage à trios, even if they don’t know it yet.
My favorite movies, starting with Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, Errol Morris’ Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, Atom Egoyan’s Calendar, Christopher Nolan’s Memento, and Marleen Gorris’ Antonia’s Line.