My Life On The Big Screen
spencer proctor
22 magnum
Audrey Hepburn once said, “Everything I learned, I learned from the movies.” Outside of the usual knowledge about life and the world our parents normally teach us, my life was shaped by the movies. I see movies, I re-watch old movies, I study the art of movies, I read about upcoming movies, and constantly, to a fault and annoyance of my peers, talk about movies. As far back as I can remember, I have loved watching and especially going to the movies. I love the popcorn, the seats, and the people in them and on the screen, though you never talk or communicate with either. The movie theater is a place that means a lot to me. With a reason or not, I still go because it is what my family and I do. We see everything from the blockbusters to the unheard-of indies. Films bring us together and keep us separate from the world outside by engulfing us in the joy and thrill of the movies. In my life I have seen more films than I can count. I have seen films that changed America and those that shaped it, from Jimmy Stewart in a wheelchair to Leslie Nielsen’s distaste of the name Shirley. I take my seat to watch the singing and dancing popcorn inform me about the lobby as I eat handfuls of the stuff while simultaneously trying not to imagine what the butter actually is. I walk into the theater with my popcorn and try and find the perfect seat, one near the aisle, off to the side, with nobody in front, so I can prop up my feet. Then what I look for, when they switch the reel from previews to the main feature, is my world to go dark, and it is just me and the only thing that matters, the film. The experience might seem to be a lonely experience, but for me, it is more than just myself and a screen. It is the director, all those who sat right where I am, and the emotions that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman created in me and all the other moviegoers who will “Always have Paris.” My father started my love of movies when he took me to see the Iron Giant at a young age. This was the first movie I ever saw in theaters. From then on he fueled my love of movies by showing me all the films that he loved throughout his life. One of these is Raiders of the Lost Ark. I saw it for the first time in the early 2000’s, and I immediately fell in love with Indy and the cinema. That was the first film I loved, and since then it has remained one of my favorite movies of all time. It changed the way I think, feel, and act. It is a masterpiece that continues to amaze me to this day. I love the theater because I cannot get distracted. It is just me and all the other people with the shared interest of movies. Some of the most influential people to me have sat in the seats of huge dark rooms and thought about movies. People like Roger Ebert and Alfred Hitchcock, people who loved movies more than most people they met.