A night owl since childhood, movies have given me a place to go when everyone else is asleep.
Film has been an important influence for me as far back as I can remember. It became an obsession from very early on – at age 5 or 6 – when the local t.v. network would sometimes play movies featuring a particular actor every day of the week, and my sister and I would watch “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “Hans Christian Anderson” every single night during the Danny Kaye weeks, completely enthralled. By 8, I was a full-blown movie maniac, into Hammer Studio’s horror films and the MGM classics -especially the ones with Gene Kelly… and pretty much anything I could catch on late night tv. Then at 10, I went through a Paul Newman/Al Pacino movie phase followed by an obsession with The Godfather. After going to a screening of Apocalypse Now at the Cinerama Dome with my dad when I was 14, it was all over…complete movie euphoria, and has been like that ever since. Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night are some of my many “favorite” films – but I love so many of them, it’s ridiculous to limit them to a few “favorites.”

I live in Los Angeles, teach English to foreign students at a language school. My other passions are music, books, and food. I’ve been vegetarian for more than half my life, and a vegan for the last several years. Coffee is not only my drink of choice, it is what enables me to function as a normal person during normal hours. (As with many of the night owls among you, I keep vampire hours at the expense of my health and job punctuality…)

I own over 1000 dvds, which is probably not that many compared to most people in this forum, but budget concerns keep me from buying more. My Criterion dvd collection is sadly lacking – only about 50, several of which are nice box sets though. Because of the limited funds, I choose each one with a lot of thought and deliberation – it’s painful at times. Some were given to me as gifts from my movie angel sister. I didn’t expect to write so much in this section – I’m not usually a very open person on the internet, but maybe here I feel I’m among friends. I’m so happy and relieved to have found this place to commune with other crazy film lovers.