Ever since I could remember, I loved movies and television. I would watch whatever I could get my tiny fingers on as a child. Most of the time, I owed my pop culture knowledge to my father who introduced me to a lot of the stuff that circulated around his time or that he liked in general.
I was young in the early 2000s, when movies were being rented like teens nowadays are sending snap chats. You either knew your stuff when it came to film and television or you didn't and lived in the dark. My father raised me on The Brady Bunch, All In The Family, and The Simpsons.
My most fond memory growing up was when my grandfather would come over the house on Tuesday nights and we'd set in from it the television, ready to watch an old re-run of something they liked. I always loved when they'd pick an All In The Family. But I also favored nights when they selected a good episode of Johnny Carson, though I didn't understand most of the satire at the time.
It was considered a treat to stay up late with my parents and catch episodes of Saturday Night Live as well, something my father loved as a kid and low key taught me to appreciate. Again, the adult content went so far over my head by I took it as a cue to laugh from my elders.
My father and I had our favorite movies too. Most of the time, he'd let me choose what I wanted...that meant that he would be stuck watching Grease about 95% of the time. But we both always agreed on classics like Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory (don't get me started with that pretentiousJohnny Depp crap, we are talking about the good old fashioned Gene Wilder original) and I'd always tag along with him when he watched his personal favorite of all time...Jaws. Yes, I was taught to fear the water early on in life.
However, I took the lead at a young age. I have very vivid memories of watching my father cook supper in the kitchen and meticulously eyeing the time like a mother bird watches her babies. I was counting down the time until Blockbuster closed. That's right. Only about 75% of you readers will know what I'm talking about. You see, when I was a kid, there was a Netflix! But you had to mail in your options for movies and they would mail them to you. It was so much different.
We didn't have Amazon Prime or Hulu. Just the good video store down the road with different varieties stemming from classics like The Rocky Horror Picture Show to modern films at the time like He's Just Not That Into You (remember when 2007 was a time to be alive and a field of rom coma was sprouted?)
I would always end up tugging on my dads pant leg and begging him to take me to blockbuster before they closed up for the night. By my recollection, it was 9 pm on weekdays and 10 pm on week nights. We even had the membership cards. To this day I feel bad because I had so many late fees.
Not a day goes by when I don't look back to these incidences with film and television at a young age. I love to believe that this is where my passion for the idea of screenwriting was really born. I can't thank myself for that because I didn't necessarily get myself interested in this first.
I thank my dad. Thank you for always letting me pick the movie, thank you for introducing me to the things that you did, thank you for letting me rent Pretty Woman as my first R rated film, and most of all thank you for always paying my obscene late fees.
