Shared Experiences of the Silver Screen

Shared experiences of the silver screen
By Nate Nichols
Every child of my generation has seen Bambi, but to this day I have never seen the movie because my mother hated the fact that it starts with the mother getting shot. It’s ironic because I’ve seen just about every other movie that’s been released since I was born. My grandfather, a very sarcastic law librarian, was addicted to movies, and took me to see anything that was G-rated, even though he hated “kiddie” movies. He started going to movies when he was a boy and his uncle owned a theater in San Francisco. He would take the streetcar on his own and go see movies like Tarzan. He spent one summer living in a treehouse, wearing only a loincloth tied around his waist with a rope. Later in life, he turned to movies when his first wife was dying of cancer. It was his only escape from his grief.
We would go to the movies every weekend, sometimes twice. He would always buy Goobers (chocolate covered peanuts) and Hershey’s Almond candy bars. I got popcorn, and we both drank Cokes.
We saw Finding Nemo, Toy Story and Rugrats. But afterward he would complain about how awful they were for days. I would always say, “I didn’t think it was that bad,” and he would groan and say, “It was awful.” He was particularly vicious about Nemo, savaging the little fish with words I can’t use in a school assignment. Still we kept going to movies.
He even took me to see Never Been Thawed, an independent film my guitar teacher was in. It played at the Valley Art Theater. The movie featured a Christian rock group with a lead singer who collected frozen dinners. I thought it was pretty funny, but he hated it.
My parents love movies, too, and we go frequently. We sample everything from documentaries to comedies to foreign films to action. I like almost everything.
But now that I’m older, I’ve put my foot down about seeing “chick flicks” with my mother. I’ll never go see Sex in the City.
Movies have brought my whole family together because it’s something we all enjoy doing. They’re a window into other worlds and you can see things from someone else’s perspective, like reading a book by a foreign author.
My grandfather died last year, and I miss him a lot, but I think about him every time I buy a movie ticket.