Recently I was driving from my home to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. I live in the rural areas surrounding Winnipeg, about 15 minutes outside of the city limits, so I have a little bit of a drive before I reach any sign of civilization. On this drive, I noticed that I was the only person driving into the city. In fact, I couldn't see any cars in front of or behind me anywhere in the southbound lanes of the highway. The northbound lanes leading outside the city, however, had a long line of cars stretching to both ends of visibility.
Now, every time I witness this phenomenon, it makes me incredibly nervous. I'd never been able to figure out why, but from a pretty early age (probably seven) it always unsettled me. Now as a young adult, when I encounter the lonely lane I find myself frantically scanning the radio channels for news of some terrifying disaster that all in the city are fleeing, so as to ensure that I don't drive myself straight into the middle of it. I don't really have any logic to justify this paranoia, but it is present nevertheless. Any explanation always escaped me up until this last encounter, when the bizarre origin of the fear suddenly came to me.
A few hours before leaving for the pharmacy, I had flipped on the television to find that the movie Independence Day was playing on one of the twenty-four hour movie channels. I thought I'd turn it on, since I never miss the opportunity to see Will Smith's famous "Welcome to Earf" line. As I flicked on the channel, I saw the image of a massive traffic jam of cars trying to exit the city as the alien ship loomed over the Empire State Building. The lane going towards the city had only one vehicle, driven by Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch. Hirsch looks at the traffic jam and bemuses, "Everyone's trying to get out of New York, we're the only schmucks trying to get in."
As I reached for my radio dial a couple of hours later in the car, I stopped. It all made sense now. My parents had bought me Independence Day on VHS when it was released on home video in 1997. I spent a good chunk of my childhood watching it. I spent most of my childhood watching movies. I was always obsessed with them, and the ones I owned got heavy rotation when I couldn't convince my mom to drive me to the video store to rent Spaceballs or The Incredible Journey.
And it was only then, as I realized what a profound effect that a way-too-literal interpretation of Independence Day had on me, that I began to contemplate how the movies I'd seen as a kid have shaped me into the person I am today.
When I think back on my earliest memories, many of them are of movies. I have a handful of very early memories, from way younger than most people can remember. I remember the birth of my sister, at which time I would have been 21 months old. I also remember my 2nd birthday a few months later, when my dad took me to see Sesame Street Live at the old Winnipeg arena. I have some very vague memories of the Muppets on stage, but what I remember most vividly is the bathroom at the old arena, with the gross trough urinal. After that, my earliest memory is my first trip to the movie theater.
It wasn't much longer after the Muppets show, since I was still two years old. My mom took me to see a re-release of Pinocchio at the theater in Garden City Mall. I'm not sure if it was my first time seeing the movie; we had a massive collection of Disney films on VHS that grew incrementally from my birth until the age of about eight. Pinocchio may have been in that collection before I saw it in the theater, but the experience had a huge impact on me. I remember the sheer enormity of the images on screen. In that theater that now seems so tiny, the tiny two-year-old me looked up at the towering screen and marveled at its size without any conception of how much that experience would influence my life. I wasn't overwhelmed by the giant images on screen; I was absorbed by them. What was happening on screen seemed to be the only thing in the world. They weren't just entropic images in a room with chairs and people and popcorn and a sticky floor. Those extra things weren't even there. There was just the movie, and it was magic.
A year or so later, when my sister turned two, my mom took us to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the theater. The detail I remember most about that movie is how much it scared me. I remember Pinocchio being scary too. But when I look back on the movies I loved as a kid, especially in my first five years, the ones that have stuck with me and I still love today are the ones that scared the bejeesus out of me. A lot of those early Disney films are really horrifying. The little boys turning into donkeys in Pinocchio, the Queen ordering her huntsman to cut out Snow White's heart, the circus workers abusing the animals in Dumbo, and the cruel villains in The Rescuers are just a few examples of things that really made my stomach drop as a young child. Another big one was The Wizard of Oz. The movie has an otherworldly atmosphere, with the aged sepia and surreal Technicolor making the whole thing feel more like a dream then a movie. Plus, there are plenty of terrifying story points, like the Wicked Witch, the tornado, and the flying monkeys that really gave me goosebumps (and to be honest, still do).
Among the large collection of animated movies on VHS in my house, there was a small handful of live-action films that my parents had bought for themselves. The ones that I remember most vividly is Back to the Future. It is to this day my favourite movie of all time. We had the whole trilogy and I watched them endlessly. I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I would find a movie I liked and watch it over and over again, every day, for weeks. Back to the Future easily got played the most out of any of the tapes in the house. When I say I have seen BTTF at least a hundred times, it isn't an exaggeration. If anything, it's a low estimate. There were months long periods where I would watch it every day, and those periods were many. Since falling out of the habit of daily viewings (later than most, at around age 12), I've always made a point of watching all three at least once a year, along with Lawrence of Arabia.
To this day, I have the entire movie memorized. Not just dialogue, but shots, music cues, everything. I can tell you the exact moment in Earth Angel (the scene starts at 0:21) that Alan Silvestri's score kicks in and drowns out the band playing the song, and the exact moment that the song swells back up again, and Silvestri's score syncs up with the band and the two pieces become one, the strings lifting the music of The Starlighters and Marvin Berry's vocals to a beautiful and triumphant crescendo. It's my favourite piece of film scoring ever. I don't know if I've ever seen a more effective use of music in a scene, and as cheesy and cliche as this sounds, every time I hear it I feel a warmth and comfort in my heart that almost nothing else in life gives me. When they parodied the scene on Family Guy and Brian sang Earth Angel, I actually cried while watching it, simply because it made me realize my love for that movie, and that scene in particular.
I feel like BTTF really had a profound influence on who I am. I looked up to the characters in that movie. I see a lot of myself in George and Marty McFly. Both characters have a creative endeavour (writing or music) that they excel in, but both lack the self confidence to carry out their dreams to pursue their creativity. Both are neurotic and unsure of themselves. I also feel a weird affinity to Doc Brown. I looked up to him so much as a kid. He was so smart and I admired his intelligence. It made me want to be as smart as he was, and made me push hard to do well in school, and to try and read and learn as much as I possibly could.
Every time I see the film, I genuinely feel like I'm seeing a part of my soul depicted on screen. I've seen movies since then, especially in my adult life, that have made me feel this too. I remember viewings of Raging Bull, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and 2001: A Space Odyssey when I felt like the film I was watching was made especially for me. But no other film has persisted with me the way BTTF has. I've been watching it since I was born, and I only grow fonder of it as time grows on. Unlike so many movies I grew out of, BTTF gets better every time I watch it. So many other movies of that era seem dated. Their cheesy 80s synth soundtracks and teen romance feel contrived and untimely when experienced today. But Back to the Future is perfect. When Huey Lewis and the News come skipping onto the soundtrack, they absolutely belong there. When George and Lorraine kiss on the dance floor, it's real love.
I think it's for these reasons that film remains the most important creative force in my life. Even though I'm much more active in music, music is like a reflex to me. It's like breathing, I can't not do it. Even if I tried not to play music, I would instinctively pick up an instrument. But film is the rejuvenating art that constantly brings new thoughts and ideas and feelings into my life and inspires me to create. I thought I had discovered a new obsession in high school when I decided I wanted to go to film school after I graduated. But only now, in an incidental drive to the pharmacy, do I realize that film has always been the greatest source of happiness for me. And I hope it always will be.
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