Believe it or not, the first time I saw The Terminator, nobody had ever heard of it. I remember I was like fifteen or sixteen years old and we lived in Banbury, a small town in England. We had one theatre in town. It had two screens. Films usually showed for a week or so, hits might stay for two. Once in a great while you might get a three week or four week run but it pretty much had to be huge, like Indiana Jones huge. Anyway, I’m walking by the theatre and I see a poster for this movie, The Terminator. It doesn’t look like a great film. It’s a painting of a man who’s half cyborg/half human. Now, as a long time comic and science fiction fan I’m thoroughly familiar with the concept of cyborgs. This is what I read on the poster: “In the year of darkness, 2029, the rulers of this planet devised the ultimate plan. They would reshape the Future by changing the Past. The plan required something that felt no pity. No pain. No fear. Something unstoppable. They created THE TERMINATOR.”

I’m a sixteen year old boy, I’m in.

I love those moments, those times when the act of seeing the movie is as much a part of experience, the part that stays in your memory, as the movie itself. The thing about having a love affair with movies is that you get to re-live the first kiss over and over again. It’s not déjà vu. It’s always different. The circumstances have always changed. You’re at always at a different place in your life. Throughout my movie going life there have always been those special times where the event is bigger than the movie, where the moment is more than the film. This doesn’t have to do – necessarily -- with the quality of the film. Many of my favorites, The Godfather, An American Werewolf in London, Do the Right Thing, The Incredibles…I’ve always loved them but the I don’t remember especially the event of seeing them. The movie was the only thing that survived in my consciousness. Other times, however, the movie was only the eye of the storm that surrounded it. The magic of the film seeped out into the surrounding milieu and informed it so that the event stayed lodged in my mind. Sometimes it was big, sometimes it was small.

For instance, I’ll always remember the first time I saw The Princess Bride for reasons that had nothing to do with the movie. When the movie came out I had less than no interest in seeing it. It was a “wild horses couldn’t drag me…” kind of situation. It led to a huge fight with my girlfriend. The Princess Bride was a hit, people were talking about it, she wanted to make it a dinner date type deal, I couldn’t think of one single reason why that movie would have the slightest interest for me. I can remember actual words that were spoken in that argument:

Something like that. So she drags me to this movie. I’m a complete baby about it. I’m doing everything but stomping around with my lip actually stuck out. I can’t even imagine that she could have had a good time up to that point. We get to the theatre and I’m sitting in my seat with my arms crossed fully focused on being miserable for the next hour and a half.

Of course, I loved it.

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Angela Mac   |67.142.161.xxx |2008-12-13 21:03:09 To be fair, movies are so much more accessible now. Twenty years ago, it was the theatre and whatever happened to be on VHS (remember being on waiting lists to be able to rent new releases?), then cineplexes, then more movie stations were added to cable, then dvd, more stations, dvds in your mailbox... though my appetite for film has remained consistent, movies are so much more frequently devoured these days. It ups the ante for a memorable experience to be, truly, remembered. I like the comparison to church. More than just finding bits of yourself along the way, a dvd case is what I open, turn to, often when the weight of the world presses in. Nice point, there.

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