Film Class - July 7, 2011

Thursday evening and I'm going to film class. I'm an adjunct professor of English, and this summer - for 8 weeks - I'm teaching a history of film course which starts at 8:05PM. And it run until 10:35PM. I'm a morning person; this was not my first choice of a teaching assignment, but it's film, and I love film.

I grew up in the era of television. Maybe I should say that TV and I grew up together, and in the early years of television, there were a lot of old movies on. I got lost in the films of Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. I was a child who loved to sing, so watching young people on the television who could sing gave me something to shoot for. How I wanted to respond when Mickey suggested to Judy, "Hey, let's put on a show!"

My parents were lean on funds, but once a week, they would put me in the back seat and go to the drive-in. I loved the playground before the films started and the fact that my mother would sneak me pieces from her giant Hershey bar during the films. But what I loved most were the movies. I never slept in the back seat - just lay back and silently watched the films. I was a bit scared during "Dial M for Murder," my first Hitchcock film, and I had to learn to sing "Tammy's in Love" after I heard Debbie Reynolds sing it on screen. I was mesmerized by the airplanes in "Twelve O'Clock High." But the moment I remember most was seeing Cary Grant's anguished face when he sees the wheelchair at the end of "An Affair to Remember." It's still my favorite movie moment.

I've grown up watching film. It transports me to romantic places, exposes me to experiences I'll never have, teaches me things I didn't know through the documentarian's lens. The movie theater is the one place where the phone doesn't ring, where the world stays away. And now, I get to share just a bit of what I love so much with the students in my class.