Cinemania

When did I become a cinemaniac? I was 12 in 1975 and that seems a decent starting point. I received a black and white TV set from my paternal grandfather [a cinematic figure in his own right - for another day] upon his abrupt demise.

By that time, the tantalizing allure of a device that would receive 2 New York City channels [no cable stations in my home] in black and white was too much to resist: WOR and WPIX showed films from the Golden Age of Hollywood and I was such a willing adherent.

My best friend Tom Johnson and I learned how to carefully become ill according to the schedule of afternoon films and also taught ourselves to record them from the TV set and replay them again and again until we memorized the scripts...

I cannot recall the whole repertoire, but I still know what we truly mastered: All About Eve, Double Indemnity, Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard, everything Fred and Ginger did at RKO, the Bowery Boys, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, Some Like It Hot, Rebecca, Streetcar Named Desire, The Wizard of Oz, The Red Shoes, and so on and so on.

The same went for movie theatres. The year Jaws premiered I learned from a local projectionist how to change reels and screen a feature. I thought that is what I would I do for a living. A great inside view of everything! THEN I saw 3 films with fashion photographers and thought that was IT! Funny Face, The Eyes of Laura Mars and Mahogany sealed my fate...or not.

Tom and I also taped and memorized new films then: Cabaret, The Way We Were, The Goodbye Girl, Saturday Night Fever, The Deep, All the President's Men, etc.

Where are all of those recordings now? They were scattered to the winds when Tom passed away of AIDS-related complex when he was 33 in 1996.

I am going to attempt to create a cinema canon to demo my devotion. Here it is!