The first yes, the other two . . . . you’re on your own my friend.
Dad:
“Why do you always watch movies in French? I thought you hated the French!”
“Why do you always watch British movies? I thought you hated the Brits!”
“Who’s that guy you like? Steve Carell?”
“Who’s that guy you like? Seth Rogen?”
He just makes stuff up. I’ve never talked about Steve Carell or Seth Rogen. I’ve never said I hated the French or the Brits.
Okay, maybe film and fashion, but speeding? Like I said, I don’t think I’ve really gone over about eighty (max), unless, perhaps, I was trying to pass someone, and I had to speed up. Then again, if you love to speed, then speed away! Just don’t get pulled over.
Savvy
I don’t know if my family really thinks about it at all. My father engages the idea and is interested in film as well but I think sometimes when I recommend a film for them to watch or when I sit down with them there’s a bit of a disconnect between what they’re seeing and what I’m seeing in the film.
They see me as a person who doesn’t do anything during the day except watching movies. In other words, they see me as a complete failure :)
Sam, sounds like crap, if you ask me. Maybe he’s just trying to get to know you in an odd, roundabout way. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to watch the movies you’ve got. If it’s the former, that’s not so bad, but if it’s the latter, look out.
I understand completely Aaron. A lot of people do not give movies their full, undivided attention that they deserve.
Savvy
My wife is actually pretty good about my film obsession. I still think back on the time I brought home The Three Colours Trilogy. She still says “Blue” is one of the most beautiful films she’s ever seen. No fear of subtitles, but she is a little wary of old Hollywood films. She loved “Jules Et Jim” and “Fanny & Alexander”. She hated “Seven Samurai”. She basically has said that she doesn’t like it when I present it as a homework assignment (Aren’t all us film geeks the same? You HAVE to watch this!!!) so now I’m just glad when she’s interested. We watched “The Conversation” on TCM the other night, and she was riveted.
My dad began my film obsession, though he’s an old school guy. He took me to see a Chaplin film retorspective when I was six or seven, showed me “Casablanca” for the first time, and went with me to a B-Movie festival when I was 13. We saw a double feature of “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers” and “The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies”.
My mom has never seen Star Wars. Star. Wars. I don’t even know how that’s possible in this day and age. Surely you just absordb it through cultural osmosis. she thinks my obsession is a little silly, but she always asks me what films I like, and she goes to see them, and we talk about it.
All in all, they’re pretty awesome.
Both my parents back me up, my father more so. We see eye to eye on a lot of cultural things. My brother is a bit more sceptical but he can indulge me every now and then.
They mock me about it.
I get the occasional loving joke from my family, but most of my friends don’t understand at all. They don’t usually say anything about it, but my old roommates gave me hell for watching Fassbinder movies in the living room.
My dad and I watch together. He doesn’t have a film degree or anything, but he’s brilliant and tasteful and patient. If he can find the time out of his schedule when I’m home for the holidays, we’re going to tackle Satantango. I’m so excited.
My grandfather was a huge movie buff. He had two rooms in his house (his bedroom and his den) where the only things on the walls were shelves and shelves of VHS tapes of his favorite ‘40s and ’50s Hollywood movies. He passed away in 1997 and I can just think about how proud of me he’d be, knowing that I love cinema almost as much as he did. I think if he knew I was buying all these obscure, great films that I’ve found out about through Criterion, he’d be proud.
My parents on the other hand…well, let’s just say they’re more ‘commecrial’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but my dad made me feel like it was torture to have him sit through even “The Third Man”. Everytime I tell them I got another French movie, they can’t figure it out….but at least they think it’s better than me buying more Star Wars stuff…(and I complain about them liking commercial Hollywood films too much…)
“I remember my mother weeping with despair when . . . I announced my intentions of making a film. It was as if I’d said: ‘Mother, I want to join the circus and be a clown.’ A family friend, a lawyer, had to be enlisted to convince that there was a lot of money to be made in films. . . . . (My mother allowed herself to be persuaded, but she never saw the film she’d financed.)”
Luis Bunuel, My Last Sigh, p 33.
Support, yes, but sometimes excessive familial encouragement is not a good thing.
My Last Sigh is a wonderful book. While leafing through it looking for this quote, I found the following other lines that are worth considering—one is a question (unanswered, rhetorical), the other a warning.
The following question was asked of Bunuel, when he was an assistant, by his boss, Jean Epstein: “How can an insignificant asshole like you dare to talk that way about a great director!” (p. 90)
The warning:
“Watch out for the ballerinas . . . . They’re young, they’re innocent, they earn next to nothing, and at least one of them always winds up pregnant.” p. 119.
My Mom and Stepdad don’t exactly understand. They like more commercial fare (mercifully they know absolute crap when they see it though). My mom asks me how I can watch the same movie over and over again, and if she knew how much money I was spending on films she’d probably die. My stepdad’s tastes are on the better side of commercial. They both tolerate my obsession anyway.
My dad and stepmom absolutely support me. While they like some good, some not so good films (again, mostly commercial), the love to watch any movie that I really enjoy. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was, after I watched “Ran” with them, when my Dad sat up and said “You know…that was kind of about everything.”
My sister loves classic Hollywood, she doesn’t do foreign or art film, but her taste is pretty good and we watch movies together all the time.
My friends are mostly split into two camps. Those who just call my taste pretentious and refuse to hear out anything I have to say about films, and those who are interested in art film but don’t really seek them out for themselves. Usually I bring films to them.
My situation’s pretty nice, I’d say.
Everybody loves good cinema in my family. My aunt just the other day commented favorably on my dvd collection hehe.. my Grandad has appeared in a few quality British films over the last 50 years or so (bit parts mainly) and my brother is just started out in the wonderful world of directing music videos. I’m single so when I’m not working I spend my free time on my art and watching films. Ah it’s a good life.
I’m the only one in my family that enjoys watching movies.
I hate it when there’s a good movie on tv and my mom just changes the chanel or says something
like : Oh that’s boring!
So I go upstairs to do what I love .
Some of my friends are like me though, and I love to have discussions about a film , so I’m not all alone.
The only person I’ve ever talked to about it is my mother, which has been within the last month. Though I don’t think I’ll ever forget that fantastic first conversation.
What do you spend your time on up in your room?
I’m focused and I’m on a mission.
To do what?
Become a filmmaker.
Oh, you want to be a filmmaker? That’s nice.
Yep.
You know you might be interested in Nine that’s coming out soon.
I love Daniel Day-Lewis but I don’t like musicals.
Well you know it’s based on Fellini’s 8 1/2, I could pay for you to go see it.
Everybody is full of surprises.
My family is supportive. My parents know I like film, but they don’t understand how passionate I am about it. They have only been to a movie theater twice in their lives. My older sisters enjoy watching movies with me. They constantly thank me for introducing them to certain films and for helping them improve their taste in films. My sisters and I plan movie dates for the weekend. My younger sister, who is 3 years younger than me, is just as obsessed with film as I am. She is my movie watching buddy. I know she is always up for watching a film, no matter how early or late it is. We discovered our passion for film together when we were really young. This is our story.
My dad actually ignited my passion for film. When I was 7, he started taking my younger sister ( who was 4 at the time) and I to our local movie rental place a block away from my house. We used to walk over every Friday. He would rent one movie for each of us. Since we could only choose one film to take home, my sister and I became extremely selective. My dad chose bad action flicks. He is in love with Chuck Norris, Steven Segal, and bad Mexican action movies. Luckily for us, he never made us watch any of the films he chose with him. Anyways… This became a tradition for us. Every Friday we went and rented movies. Of course, we watched all of the children movies As I got older, my taste began to mature. At 12 years old I started browsing at the drama, horror, romance sections. Then I started renting films that were Oscar winners. I began to distinguish the good movies from the bad ones. Then I delved into the foreign/ classics/ and independent section and fell completely in love. Soon instead of renting one film every Friday, we rented 3, then 7, then 10. My sister and I went on a movie watching rampage for the next 8 years.
I should probably admit that I never went to a movie theater until i was about 11 years old. I had a big family, (4 sisters), so we couldn’t afford to go to the movies often. So that is why we resorted to renting films. It saddens me that local movie rental places are going out of business because of Netflix. Movie rental places were a big part of my childhood and my film discovery process. I’ll miss them dearly, when they’re gone.
My late father was a film director and producer, my son is a director and my daughter an actress. I think that answers the question.
My mother got me started on movies. She worked at a movie theater and would take me and my sisters to the last show plus we could go into any theater without having to pay, so I loved movies early on as I got older my mom who had an 8th grade education began to explain the movies to us, art, music she opened up a whole world for all of us, and now I’m 59 and my wife and kids know how much I love watching movies and they also enjoy them and are interested in them. Not as much as I , but it’s there also.
My mother and father like films, so they have no problem. They support it, and generally they will watch what I watch, or at least be interested. My sister goes through plenty of movies but our tastes don’t line up. She has pretty mainstream taste for a 22 year old woman, which is fine. She is usually open to watch stuff with me. My cat gets bored and sleeps in front of the speakers during most movies.
Since I was born a deformed child I lived in the basement of my parent’s house. My family never came down to the basement except for the best three birthdays of my life. I love watching through the cracks in the floor boards to see my family go through everyday life. Every night my dad placed all the left overs on a plate along with some bread and placed it atop of the stairs. Every other couple of weeks he would talk to me but i could never go near the stairs because they were lit. Staying in the darkness my dad would try and educate me about the world outside. But then he got a new job but to replace him he gave an old black and white tv which I got working. Every week he would give me a new movie to watch when he came home. Eventually I got a computer that I put together and I get to enjoy the world just like everyone else. I just hope somewhere a girl can find love in me and look past my two noses, two eyes, and my footface. sadly, my dad grew too old to go and get movies so now I just watch movies online. My father had an excellent taste in films before the incident.
My family thinks I’m crazy and should see a therapist. I don’t care.
I am an outcast, I am a Computer engineer, but I dont like that much this profession, I want to be a filmmaker, obviously nobody in my family support this idea. I love cinema a lot, many people have said why I didn’t study something related to cinema. I am a contradiction because of that, I do things that I don’t want to do.
Think about 2 OR 3 THINGS ABOUT HER by Jean Luc Godard, the girls prostitutes themselves because of money and they don’t want to do it, and that’s the general idea of capitalism, and my life.
My sisters think I am a crazy, and they dont care what I watch or what I learn from watching those arthouse movies, they just ignore me. But not just my sisters ignore me, in the pragmatic society where I live (Mexico) everyone just ignore artistic pretensions.
I’m the only child, married, father of two girls, and …
when you love movies, then those who loves you are going to support you.
My dad supported my film school endeavors (and my continuation of that-attending London Film School in the fall)..BUT he wants me to be the next James Cameron…. X_X
or anytime I am making films he says it would be better if Will Smith was in it.
These may be trite jokes, but really my dad supports my love of cinema to the point of future B.O. returns….
I am going to try and show him Ozu, Godard, Wong Kar-Wai, Renoir this spring to show him that cinema can be something other than explosions!
My parents are supportive of my film school stuff. They just wish I’d spend more time doing “other things.” But they understand.
My boyfriend, on the other hand, is kind of a skeeze. He makes fun of my film collection constantly. But whenever I force him to watch a film, he loves it. His favorite movie is the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes Romeo + Juliet. Gay.
But one time I showed him Jeanne Dielman as kind of a prank because I figured he’d hate it or fall asleep but afterwards he loved it.
Don’t it go to show you never know?
My family and most of my friends are very supportive of my passion for film. My parents let me live in their basement while I finish film school. I find that I often have to sensor my film conversations at a certain point, otherwise I exhaust the topic for most people. But I cherish the moments when I get into a really great conversation with someone about a film who is willing and genuinely interested to talk about film on an analytical level.
My mom just watches movies to fill the time, but does like good classics. My dad grew up on a farm, so he dosnt really like “wasting time.” My sisters are so so on movies in general. My two brother-in-laws like a good movie but dont really have the time to watch many (They both have several kids and they are more". My friends say I hate all movies because I didnt like Transformers 2 and dont rave about “classics” of our youth like Goonies (It was fun and entertaining, but I see no need in owning it when I can casually watch it on tv at almost any time).
In my defense, I have challenged my friends to show me any movie I have suggested that they didnt find at least entertaining and they cant find a single one. I go out of my way to watch movies with friends that I think they would like, but I still get maligned as hating movies.
Nancarrow
**When will people understand that film, speeding, & fashion is LIFE?!?!