"What I saw was perfect."
Welcome to Cinemantics, folks.
There was a moment during the 94th Academy Awards that left me breathless. And, no, it was not when Will Smith assaulted Chris Rock.
It was later in the telecast when two-time Oscar winner Kevin Costner stepped onstage to present the award for Best Director. He stood for a moment on stage, collected his thoughts, and shared the story of when he watched his first “adult movie.”
The movie was How The West Was Won (1962, dir. Ford, Hathaway, Marshall) and he watched it in the Cinerama Dome. The way Costner speaks about this pivotal moment in his life was as if he was speaking of a long-lost love.
“And what I saw was perfect. The curtain, when we still them, opened to a film that was almost four hours long. It had an intermission where the score continued, subtley signaling at one point the second half was about to start. I don’t know where everyone went but I wasn’t going to move an inch. I decided I was not going to give up my magic seat.”
It’s beautiful and sincere and — as one who loves movies — deeply relatable. Many of the great filmmakers have that “ah-ha” moment, that moment when they first discovered the magic of movies: Spielberg has The Greatest Show on Earth and Lawrence of Arabia, Scorcese has The Searchers, Bigelow has Mean Streets, and Tarantino has Jaws.
Everyone has that movie, that “ah-ha” moment. I remember mine vividly.
I was in the third grade and home sick from school. My folks had taken the day off to ease me back to health. There was a terrible storm that was ripping through north central Ohio, freezing rain dropping down in sheets.
Wrapped in a wool blanket, I was sprawled out on the family’s large, purple couch.
My dad came walking through the door with a bag that he had just picked up from the local video store (back when those were still around). He pulled out two VHS tapes.
The tapes were in thick brown cases and I remember that on each of the cases was a piece of square white paper with the film’s titles spelled out:
Star Wars (1977, dir. Lucas) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, dir. Spielberg).
I had no concept of either of these pictures, their influence on our culture, or what they would come to mean to me personally. But when my dad slid that first tape into the VHS player, what I saw when our family’s big, boxy television set flickered to life was perfect.
From my couch in Loudonville, Ohio, I was transported to places and worlds I had never before seen or imagined: desert planets under setting binary suns and ancient temples hidden deep in the Amazon.
Young and impressionable, I fell under the spell of these technicolor visions of music and machine, where the villains were larger than life and the heroes were all played by Harrison Ford.
And I’ve been happy to stay under its spell ever since. In bad times, the movies have been both counselor and consoler. In good times, they’ve been a burst of adrenaline and ecstasy.
Many of my fondest memories have been sharing moments with friends and strangers in a darkened theater, with the projector whirling behind and life unfolding before us.
But what’s even more rewarding than the movies themselves is the community they’ve given me; the friendships that have been made and strengthened through a mutual love of the moving picture.
That’s why I’m teaming up with my friends to start Cinemantics.
Cinemantics is a newsletter for movie-lovers, by movie-lovers.
It’s a place for friends (old and new) to just talk about the movies that interest and confound them.
That’s it.
Nothing too flashy or complicated about it. It’s a place to celebrate the classics or boost the films that have fallen through the cracks. Not only that, but it’s a place for respectful critiques and passionate disagreements.
Think of it this way:
Have you ever been out to the movies and, as soon as the end credits roll, you look at your pals and tell them exactly what you thought, no holds barred?
And then you continue to talk all the way home?
Have you ever gotten home from the theater and debated the 2021 remake of West Side Story for another two hours?
Yeah, we’re basically that.
We don’t expect to be critics, nor do we want to be.
We sure as hell don’t want this to be viewed as some artform-saving work.
We’re just a bunch of friends who really feckin’ love the movies — and we want to share that with y’all.
So, we hope you’ll tag along.
If you’re at all interested, feel free to subscribe to receive our latest writings.
See you at the movies!