Every movie lover has traditions. Some happen every year. Some happen every weekend. Some sneak up on you without you realizing they've become traditions at all.
Growing up, my brothers, our close family friends, and I always went to a movie on Christmas evening after the hubbub of the day was over. We'd usually head to the dollar theater and save the rest of our newfound Christmas money for more important things. Christmas night always felt like a freebie... no responsibilities, obligations or demands.
One Christmas, we were all standing in line outside at the mall waiting to buy our movie tickets when we realized the couple in front of us was none other than Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neal. This wasn't the Grove in Los Angeles, this was a suburban Houston mall. Evidently she was visiting her parents, who lived nearby, and was just there, standing among the masses. She was every bit as beautiful as the posters I'd seen a thousand times and truly a tiny human with fabulous teeth.
I have absolutely no idea what movie we watched that night, but I will never forget going to it.
Other movie traditions happened at home.
Where I grew up, The Sound of Music aired on television every Easter. My parents had seen it on their honeymoon, so naturally we'd watch it every year - over two nights with a million commercials. To this day, I find myself craving a watch in the spring and still like to revisit my favorites when their season rolls around.
Christmas means Meet Me in St. Louis, White Christmas, and, yet another rewatch of The Long Kiss Goodnight. Halloween calls for House of Wax and The Haunting. Memorial Day usually turns into a war movie marathon. I can happily watch William Holden build that bridge over the River Kwai until the day I die.
I didn't learn to love movies from my family... we were a sports family. Golf, baseball, football, basketball, bowling... underwater basketweaving. If it was on television, someone was watching it.
But when I was in high school, we started renting a movie every weekend. We rotated who got to choose, and when it was my mom's turn, we knew we were in for a treat. My darling mother, bless her soul, is not pop culture savvy. At all. She'd heard of things, but never quite knew what they were.
This meant we'd end up renting the movie that was almost the blockbuster....
- Airport '79 instead of Airport '77.
- Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles instead of the original.
- Convoy instead of The Cannonball Run.
- Saturday the 14th...
SOOOOOOO close. Looking back, I honestly think that's where my love of wonderfully bad movies began.
In more recent years, it's become a bit of a tradition to seek out classic films on the big screen. There's something truly magical about seeing a movie you've watched ten times suddenly become brand new because it's forty feet wide.
The first time I saw Casablanca in a theater was probably the tenth time I'd seen it. Suddenly I noticed details I'd never seen before. The romance felt deeper. The dialogue landed differently. The tension became tangible. People laughed, cheered and left smiling.
If the feeling of rediscovering a favorite movie on the big screen were a drug... I'd be that addict with absolutely no regrets.
Traditions change. No more VHS rentals. No more Easter broadcasts with commercial breaks. But I still watch A Christmas Story every year. I'm still a Kickstarter supporter of the latest Mystery Science Theater 3000 project because bad movies are better when they're shared. And I'll happily drive across town to catch the next classic movie screening.
What are your movie traditions? I'd love to hear them.
Movies featured in this article
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The Sound of Music
- Meet Me in St. Louis
- White Christmas
- The Long Kiss Goodnight
- A Christmas Story
- House of Wax
- The Haunting
- The Bridge on the River Kwai
- Casablanca
- Mystery Science Theater 3000
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