Outsider Writers–The Speak Easy w/Scot Young

Scot: What was the best all time movie when you were a kid—one that you watched over and  over?

Father Luke:  I worked as a kid. I lived on a farm, and I worked. From the time I
was five years old I was working. I didn’t watch movies as a child. I
did like to watch the neighbor lady take showers. I watched that as
often as I could. She left her curtains open.

Todd Moore:  My favorite movie as a kid and as an adult was a dead on tie between High Sierra and Casablanca.

William Taylor Jr.:  The first one that comes to mind is My Bodyguard.  I loved that movie, and saw it about a gazillion times.  I suppose it came out at exactly the right time (1980), when I could relate to the brooding loner character of Linderman, as well as the nerdy kid getting harassed by the school bully.  And it was always great fun to see Matt Dillon get his ass kicked at the end.

Chris Toll:  I did not watch this movie over and over, but it had a major impact on me. The move was Black Sunday and it starred Barbara Steele. I was just a confused kid – I didn’t know my head from a garbage can lid. And then I saw Black Sunday and Barbara Steele scorched the screen. She held the Torch of Heterosexuality aloft and whispered to me, “Come here, boy. I am Woman. I am Mystery.” And that’s how my lifelong quest for an unknown dark-haired beauty began.

Howie Good:  I grew up in the days before VCR’s and DVD players. But channel 9 in New York City had a program called “Million Dollar Movie” in which they showed the same movie continuously for a few days, as in a movie theater.  I remember stumbling on the original “King Kong” on it when I was home from school (either sick or because of a snow day) and watching it over and over and over. It was such a subversive film — you root for the ape against the humans — that even though I wasn’t conscious of the subtext, I was mesmerized nonetheless.

A.D. Winans:  I grew up in a poor family and didn’t have the money to see a movie over and over again.   Back then we didn’t have the technology where you could record a movie and watch it over and over again.  The biggest thing for me was the Saturday movie matinee when they played serials that kept you breathless waiting for the next  weeks chapter.

Eugenia Hepworth Petty:  We didn’t have DVDs when I was a kid, so I don’t recall watching a certain film over and over, though I have seen It’s a Wonderful Life, To Kill a Mockingbird, Don’t Look Back, and The Wizard of Oz dozens of times.

Rebecca Schumejda:  The Last Unicorn, and I just found the 25^th Anniversary edition for my daughter.

Jack Henry:  First let me say:  What an odd and wonderful array of questions.  Thank you for letting me be a part of this mad experiment.

In regards to the question I have to respond in two ways:

A.  The best movie I saw in the theaters as a kid is Jaws. I saw everything put out between 1976 and 1980, 12 to 16 years of age, so I could have included Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Airplane, and a hundred others.  But Jaws really did it for me.  Scary, funny, old time movie making at its finest.  The key aspect to this film that makes it so good is the casting.  From the lead characters down to the bit parts.  And Robert Shaw as Quint is just brilliant.  The movie still holds up for me.  I have at least three DVD versions, I watch it whenever it’s on telly, I take the DVD with me when I travel:  What more can I saw?

FYI Debbie Does Dallas was a close second.

B.  The best all-time movie from the time or era I was a kid is Reds. I was 17 in 1981 and the last thing I gave a fuck about was John Reed and an American Socialist/Literary movement.  At University we watched the film as part of a Comparative Culture class on Literature of the late 1890s up to 1933.  Fascinating era, but I don’t remember much of the class.  The film lives on.  Warren Beatty does an amazing job recreating the tone and tenor of the time.  That film opened my eyes to social injustice in modern times and taught me to challenge status quo. I also became a big fan of John Reed, a bigger fan of Eugene O’Neill, fell further in love with Warren Beatty. Writing this answer reminds me how important the film was to me, and that’s a surprise of sorts.  It would be simplistic of me to think that a cultural medium would not have influence on me, but as a whole, not as a specific.  Interesting.

Jennifer Blowdryer:  We didn’t have tv, my uncle David took me to West World though, where the cowboy robots at a theme park get homicidal, and it made a big impression. Yul Brenner on a rampage, with a machine head!

Scott Wannberg:  5,000 Fingers of Dr.T

Misti Rainwater-Lites:  Footloose

Hosho McCreesh:  Star Wars–no question. & then The Empire Strike Back, when it came out.

David Pointer:   I watched Journey to Shiloh, 1968, with James Caan, Jan Michael Vincent, Harrison Ford, and Noah Beery. It was an ant-war Civil war flick. I loved that movie.

F.N. Wright:  Favorite movie as a kid?  None really. Money was tight so I watched as many different movies as I could as a kid. One thing I remember I used to look forward to was Saturday afternoon matinees where one of the “serials” was Joe Doakes “Don’t Get Caught Behind The 8 Ball.” I can find no one else who recalls it but last year fx or one of the TV channels spent a night showing episodes & I stayed up to the end of them. I wish I had taped them.

Christopher Robin:  Grease. I saw it 6 times. That was back when they didn’t kick you out of the theatre when the movie was over, you could just stay all day. We had the soundtrack and would dance to it in the living room. I hate musicals now.

Bradley Mason Hamlin:  Planet of the Apes. It’s still the best film ever made, and we’re still running from the apes that control this world.