I have had an interest in quality film for more than 40 years, going back to my college days. I began to pursue this interest very actively in 1999, when I realized the large number of great films available on cable channels such as Turner Classic Movies and the Independent Film Channel. I used the software program Cinemania to generate a list of films that had been top-rated by either Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin, or CineBooks, and exported the list to my word processor.

This was the beginning of my Four-Star Films Wish List. At the time, it had about 950 titles. It has since grown to about 1,600 titles. Whenever I acquire a title, I check it off.

I began by learning to program my VCR and capture titles from the cable film channels. Later I began to add commercial VHS cassettes. For the past several years, I have been converting the collection to DVDs. Currently I have about 1,900 titles in my collection. About 1,200 of them are on my four-star list. The remainder are films that are not quite of four-star quality but ones that I just happen to like.