Family Friday – watching movies with Billy

19 Jul 2013

It’s no secret that I love movies.

My son also learned to love movies at an early age. One time when he was barely three years old, he had just finished watching something on TV, and we poked around the guide for something to watch for a few more minutes. I found The Fugitive, edited for TV. We had missed about twenty minutes, but we only planned to watch a few minutes, so I left it on. We didn’t watch a lot of TV in those days, but we were just looking for something for a bit of entertainment while waiting for Terri to get home. Billy watched for a couple of minutes and it was clear he was really interested in the story. I got up from the couch after a few minutes and asked him if he wanted me to put something else on. He said no, so I went about my business.

When Terri got home a while later, Billy was still sitting there in front of the TV, apparently very engrossed in the story. He told his mom about this “doctor guy” – Richard – and how everybody thought he killed his wife, but he didn’t. We were amused, but we assumed he’d lose interest eventually.

We were wrong – and it’s been hard to distract him from a movie ever since.

He’s a film student at Tisch now, and we estimate he has seen at least 1400 films.

As we were planning what movies we might watch while we were together this summer, two ideas came to us.

Re-watch Pulp Fiction
Watch all of the first five Fast & Furious films at home in one day, and finish with Furious 6 in the theater.

Number one was a no-brainer, We didn’t do that until just a few days before he returned to NYC, but we were very glad we did. The film is better every time you watch it.

Number two was something we had talked about for a while, but kept putting off. Neither one of us cares for these kinds of films normally. I very much enjoy fast cars, I love a mindless action film from time to time, and don’t mind young attractive women running around in hot pants, but I’m not a big fan of all the “street” stuff – the macho standoffs and such.

That’s why we had not seen any of the films in full. I had seen a few minutes of the opening to the first, and decided not to continue watching it. I had seen perhaps the first 30 minutes of Tokyo Drift, and it seemed interesting enough to me that I think I chose to stop watching so I could watch the first two – which, of course, now I realize was not necessary in the least.