Welcome to Flicks from '96, where I will use the keyboard I'm tapping on right now to talk about movies release in the year 1996 (A.D., before you jokers start thinkin' I have a time machine). By this, the second sentence of my introduction, you've surely asked yourself the question in the title. Why am I talking about 1996? It's not a particularly revered year of film and it's 22 years ago. It seems pretty random. Trust me though, I have a reason.
I was 14 years old as 1996 began, and I needed something new in my life. My family was in the process of declaring bankruptcy and losing the family farm that I had grown up on. Up until that point I assumed the farm would be my life, the same way it had been my father's life and his father's life before that.
Don't read this as a sad story; looking back I can see that everyone involved turned out a little better over time after we left the farm that fall. My family has always been resilient, and I was happy to have more time for sports and video games. Done is done and fun is fun, as they say...I was ready for some fun.
It was around this time that movies - which had always been a part of my life, but mostly as a distraction - took on a greater importance to me. The more I looked into the movies that were available to me, thanks to our satellite dish, rare trips to the Hastings store in a nearby town and even rarer trips to the movie theater, the more I developed a craving to know more about movies and the people in them. This manifested itself in a few ways:
Which brings us to today, where my happy feeling about the movies of 1996 lives on. I wanted to get back to writing and I wanted to keep it brief and casual, and I can't think of a more comfortable topic that would help me achieve those goals. So stay tuned to Flicks from '96, and let's see just what the hell was going on back then that turned me into such a passionate movieweirdo nerd zealot fan.
* - The only movie from this box I can remember that I didn't mention above was Just Cause, a forgettable thriller starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne that I want to remember fondly despite my brain's insistence I shouldn't. And yes, I realize that this list of films makes it clear my tastes hadn't matured yet. Don't worry - they still haven't.
** - I was not.
*** - I was always Team Ebert. Sorry, Gene. You lost me on The Rock and Escape from L.A. Roger didn't.
I was 14 years old as 1996 began, and I needed something new in my life. My family was in the process of declaring bankruptcy and losing the family farm that I had grown up on. Up until that point I assumed the farm would be my life, the same way it had been my father's life and his father's life before that.
Don't read this as a sad story; looking back I can see that everyone involved turned out a little better over time after we left the farm that fall. My family has always been resilient, and I was happy to have more time for sports and video games. Done is done and fun is fun, as they say...I was ready for some fun.
- When I did have spending money, videos became my favorite collectors item. That summer I joined one of those mail order VHS clubs, enticed by the promise of a big box of movies for a penny each. This was the seed from which my VHS collection, and eventual DVD collection began to grow. The first box included recent hits from the previous years like Seven, Copycat,and The Shawshank Redemption, my first Scorsese film (Goodfellas), and a couple of lesser regarded comedies: Major Payne and Bio-Dome.*
- When I was able to convince my parents to spend their money I pushed hard for renting movies, especially digging myself in to the pay per view options that were available via that satellite dish. When I didn't have money to order a movie...I watched the channel that showed the trailers of all the movies that were available instead. HBO was there too, and that gave me a lot of chances to catch up with movies I had missed that connected with some of my favorites from that year. For example, I can't tell you how many times I watched Milk Money just because Ed Harris was in The Rock and not because Melanie Griffith was sexy as hell, nope nuh uh, not me. I was a totally pure 14/15 year old boy, I promise.**
- As I began to recognize the faces of actors and the names of directors, I also managed to buy myself a couple of those film encyclopedia type books that nerds like me had to turn to in the time before IMDB. Leonard Maltin's Video Guide was memorized by the end of the year, and a couple of other books that fit my interests came along too. I wasn't content to sit back and let movies come to me anymore. I was huntin'.
- In one of the biggest acts of defiance at my young age, I started staying up late on Sunday nights. Why would I do that, you ask? Because 11:30 on Sunday night was when a local TV affiliate aired Siskel and Ebert At The Movies. I didn't always agree with the two most famous critics in the world, but I got a quick fix of what the new movies were, how they were being received, and how to talk about them.***
Which brings us to today, where my happy feeling about the movies of 1996 lives on. I wanted to get back to writing and I wanted to keep it brief and casual, and I can't think of a more comfortable topic that would help me achieve those goals. So stay tuned to Flicks from '96, and let's see just what the hell was going on back then that turned me into such a passionate movie
* - The only movie from this box I can remember that I didn't mention above was Just Cause, a forgettable thriller starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne that I want to remember fondly despite my brain's insistence I shouldn't. And yes, I realize that this list of films makes it clear my tastes hadn't matured yet. Don't worry - they still haven't.
** - I was not.
*** - I was always Team Ebert. Sorry, Gene. You lost me on The Rock and Escape from L.A. Roger didn't.
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