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#1
02-07-2007, 07:49 AM
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Most impactful cinema moment
I was watching The Empire Strikes Back last night with the kids and I had an incredibly strong memory of the first time I saw this film and how it changed me.
Spring 1980 - Suburban Northern Virginia I was 10 years old and already a rabid Star Wars fan. I had known the second film was coming for months, but when the opening weekend grew closer I realized I wasn't going to get to see it on opening day. My folks were planning on taking to visit some friends in Raleigh that weekend - OH NO!!! As I was panicking I get a birthday invitation. My neighbor John D**** was having an Empire Strikes Back birthday party...on a Thursday night...to see the sneak preview...in Downtown Washington D.C... the night before the film opened wide!!!! I was in heaven until dad said "you aren't going out late on a school night, and especially not into the city." D.C. was the murder capital of the U.S.A. at that point and my folks were waaay paranoid (and rather racist at that) they claimed it was for my own good. I was crushed. After many tears and two days of deep depression, my mother finally convinces my dad to let me go. The night is amazing. I'd been into the city plenty to visit the memorials or the Smithsonian, but never at night, and never without my parents. We get to the theater - six ten year-olds with a divorced mom watching over us - and the ushers hand out Empire Strikes Back programs (I still have mine - even if it is a little ratty.) We're bugging out, it has concept art and character bios...And then the film starts. It's dark, there's so much more menace than in the previous installment. It's like Star Wars is growing up with me. Degobah is creepy, Han gets frozen - :eek: Totally didn't see that coming. And then the words that broke my brain I AM YOUR FATHER no...no way...it's a trick, a lie, anything but the truth...it can't be! I had never been so deeply enthralled in a film, so completely in awe of a cinematic experience. We walk out of the theater in a daze, like we'd experienced a prepubescent equivilent of a whole body orgasm. And then Return of the Jedi comes out three years later and the films stopped growing up with me. In fact the've grown more childish and simplistic with each installment. But that moment - amazing. The next closest approximation was seeing Pulp Fiction on opening night - the needle in the heart...you could feel the entire audience being sucked into the screen. How about you guys? Anyone else have a transformative cinema event?
__________________
"Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies." Earl of Chesterfield "A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." Francis Bacon 
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#2
02-07-2007, 09:25 AM
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I still remember seeing "The Land Unknown" on TV in the early 70's. I was VERY small. Maybe four years old? A helicopter is flying through an arctic region shrouded in heavy fog, trying to find its way home. While the occupants discuss what they're going to do, a pterosaur, as big as the helicopter, swoops out of the fog. No warning whatsoever. This is a moment of total, jaw-dropping shock and I clearly remember my reaction.
Completely out of left feld. The pterosaur flies out of the fog, squawks, accidentally bumps into the helicopter and damages it. The helicopter is forced to land on a mysterious island, and suddenly we're in a dinosaur movie. For years it was just a memory of that scene and a couple of others and I had no idea what the film was called. Then I finally saw it again around '95. Ah, THAT was the film!
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************************ Friend....gooooood! 
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#3
02-07-2007, 09:26 AM
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Oddly enough, Jedi was a similar experience for me as Empire was for rod.
It wasnt opening night, but i was 7 so that wasnt really a consideration back then. We lived in Indiana, and i had been dying to see it. By that point i had seen the first two several times (An advantage of growing up on military bases was that you sometimes got to see movies that had been out for years in the theater) and was dying to find out what happened to Han. When i saw Empire the first time, i think it was the very first time i had ever seena movie where at the end i thought "There is going to be another one, there has to be". I had already seen adds for toys, we had the dixie cups in the bathroom for when we brushed our teeth. i had even seen a little bit of behind the scenes stuff on Entertainment tonight or somethign like that. My parents got my sister and I in the car and drove out to Peru, whihc was about 20 minutes away. We got dinner at mcdonalds, then ended up in a crappy looking theater parking lot. We waited for a while, then my parents got us out of the car and told us we were going to see a movie. Now i have been a movie buff ever since i saw my first (For your Eyes only, at a drive in, but that is another story), so i was excited anyway. The theater was a little scary, the ticvket booth had a bullet hole in the window if that is any indicator, but we got our tickets and went in. They never made a peep about what we were going to see, but once that music started up, i godamn near jumped out of my skin. the next 2 hours were nothing but lightsabres, dogfights and Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini. That night always stuck with me, and i get those same goose bumps when i go to a theater to this day. My reaction was quite a bit less excited by the end of the last movie i saw in a theater (Doom....)
__________________
Some misguided people decided I was funny enough to pay. See if they're right: http://www.cracked.com/members/Vodstok/ (I tweet pretty hardcore, too)
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#4
02-07-2007, 01:03 PM
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Quote:
You really need to go to the cinema!!!!!!!!
__________________
"Little, vicious minds abound with anger and revenge, and are incapable of feeling the pleasure of forgiving their enemies." Earl of Chesterfield "A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." Francis Bacon
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#5
02-07-2007, 01:06 PM
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Quote:
__________________
Some misguided people decided I was funny enough to pay. See if they're right: http://www.cracked.com/members/Vodstok/ (I tweet pretty hardcore, too)
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#6
02-07-2007, 01:07 PM
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This actually ties into a conversation in a different topic. Mine is very recent: Children of Men. The climactic scene; the 7 Minute Shot, the long walk, up until that one explosion. It's the only time I've ever been close to tears during a movie when it wasn't from something being really depressing.
__________________
 ===  WATCH MY MOVIES(UPDATED: 5/7/08, "No Exit") RING OF HONOR: BEST WRESTLING IN THE WORLD  TOO GOOD FOR THE HDC BATTLE ROYALE
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#7
02-07-2007, 02:41 PM
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It was 1984, and I was six. I knew we were going to see a movie called Dune, but that's all. Pizza with mum, dad, my brother, and his friend (both of whom are named Josh).
I sat in that theatre entranced by that film. Of course I couldn't possibly take all of it in at that time in my life. However, I got a good deal of what was going on, and man was it cool for me. The whole idea of these worlds, these women who use this terrible voice, the character Paul and who he was, the relationship between his mum and his dad (she was his concubine, because that's what she was supposed to be, but he was gonna marry her, but died first, right?). I guess for a six year old kid... It just blew my mind.
__________________
By the time you're twenty-five they will say you've gone and blown it. By the time you're thirty-five I must confide you will have blown them all
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#9
02-07-2007, 04:02 PM
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The final fifteen minutes of the Godfather are simply devastating. Watching Michael change from a warm-hearted vet who just wants to do what's right by his family into a cold-blooded monster is one of the more chilling experiences I've had watching a film. This was the film that turned me into an avid cinephile.
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And no matter what I say I cannot resist or betray it. No one could do so because there is no one here. There is only this body, this shadow, this darkness.
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