When I was a boy down in south Texas I learned to love the movies. The fancy Rialto Theater, where you took your Friday Night Date if you could get one, was the only air conditioned spot in town. For me, the Rialto was more than a destination. I was one of those youths with long, long thoughts. Motion pictures offered me another dimension to my life. Yes, I read and I wrote, even then. Movies were something else. In US Navy boot camp in San Diego – my first shore leave I saw three different motion pictures. At the University I’d slip off for an afternoon and let my mind vegetate in a theater.
I don’t go to movies today; it’s too much trouble, and besides, you can see them all on TV at home in your pajamas. I’m a writer and I read, of course, but not often in the evenings. I can watch The Lord of the Rings over and over. The Bourne flicks. Old ones on American Movie Classics. That’s my favorite way to unwind in the evenings.
Does that make me a traitor to the published word? I don’t think so. What I read, what I write, those are movies playing in my mind. It’s all of one piece, reading, seeing, dreaming.
Yes, I know, TV viewing is supposed to have low value, like bad daytime TV. Years ago, when I worked at Oak Ridge National Lab, a big TV set in the living room was considered low status. And high status was when you met visitors at the door and announced, “The TV is broken.”
Dac Crossley
March 10, 2016
“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.
For kids: ten cents for the ticket plus two cents luxury tax would get you into the Orpheum Theater in Galesburg. At Kresge's that dime would buy a fancy bottle of 'April in Paris' perfume or a bottle of nail polish. Same tax! What to do??
Posted by: Chris | March 12, 2016 at 02:02 PM
The best would be having your book made into a movie.
Posted by: Janice Pulliam | March 11, 2016 at 11:59 PM