I direct TV commercials for a living. I studied film in college, my short film played at several festivals. I’ve written feature-length screenplays (“I wrote a hit play!”). Movies have played a big role in my life. This is a list of movie experiences that impacted me at pivotal moments, in big ways. It’s not a list of the greatest movies ever, or even necessarily my favorites. But it is a list of movies that, like the Dude, fit right in to their time and place.
I’m going more or less chronological from when I saw them. This doesn’t always correspond with a release date. I’m going to break them up into ‘eras’, or time periods of my life, just for fun.
Adolescence, the early years
The summer of ‘93 I spent in Salt Lake City living with my buddy Jonathan’s family. My parents were getting divorced, I was 13 years-old. And we basically spent our summer getting slurpees, going to the dollar theater and playing baseball. Not a bad way to spend a summer, if you could ignore the divorce part. The first three movies come from that summer. In order:
1. Jurassic Park
We saw Jurassic Park the opening weekend at Trolley Square. We waited in a line that wrapped all the way around the corner for what seemed like at least an hour. The place was packed. The theater was huge, fitting maybe four or five hundred people. It had stadium seating. This was not standard in 1993, and I had never been in a theater like this before. Every seat was taken.
In the age of seamless CGI, it’s easy to forget how awesome Jurassic Park was. There were dinosaurs up on that screen, and they looked real! And they were coming right at us! People were screaming and curling up in their seats. Not me of course, I just gripped my arm rests and did my best to play it cool. Maybe the experience is magnified because I was thirteen. But Jurassic Park was a legitimately tense movie, with the T-Rex chasing the car, and of course, the Velociraptors. All around good fun.
2. and 3. Groundhog Day and The Sandlot
I put these two together, because they were basically interchangeable in my experience. As I mentioned, we spent most of our summer playing baseball and going to the dollar theater. These two movies were playing at the dollar theater and we must have seen them each six or eight times. Great, classic movies that always remind me of being 13 in the summertime. It still gets a little dusty in my house any time I watch the end of The Sandlot when Benny ‘The Jet’ Rodriguez steals home. Benny was never on the juice. He may have lost a step or two, but none of us should be surprised to see some fireworks out there. Great times.
Nearly made the list:
Last of the Mohicans (my first R-Rated movie. This is when I first discovered they’re not evil, they’re just really cool!)
Braveheart
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
Adolescence, the later years
I guess I didn’t watch many movies during the school year when I was a kid. I spent a lot of time playing sports and driving around.
I graduated High School in 1998, and that summer took a few classes at the local community college, College of the Canyons. They had a deal where the classes were free for recent graduates if you signed up by a certain time. I took two Film classes and an English class. Having a couple classes a week and not much else to do, I got in a ton of movie time. This was an eye-opening time in my movie watching life. A transition from the “That was awesome!” era of my youth, to the “artsy-fartsy, independent/foreign film snob” era of my post-adolescence (still trying to find my way out of that one).
4. Blue
As part of my contemporary film studies classes we watched Kristof Kieslowski’s Three Colors Trilogy, Blue, White, and Red. I think you are supposed to like Red best, it’s the last one, it’s about re-connection and redemption. But for some reason it was Blue that opened up an entire new way of looking at movies for me. This movie showed me their potential. The elliptical ending (that was later lifted quite egregiously in Donnie Darko) was a game changer. I didn’t know what it meant, and when the movie was over I watched as my professor walked to the front. I fully expected him to explain what had just happened, what it meant, and why the director did it. I expected answers.
What I got was, “I have no idea what the ending meant.”
Having been raised on the pre-packaged U.S. style of clear-cut, make-sure-the-audience-doesn’t-have-to-think endings, this blew my mind. In a good way. You could say I’ve been trying to watch this movie for the first time again ever since.
5. Saving Private Ryan
I was listening to a podcast conversation the other day that was talking about how great Saving Private Ryan was, and it really brought back the experience for me. I went in to seeing this movie knowing that it was going to be an important one. But the first 20 minutes of the movie depicting the D-Day landing were unbelievable. They made me sick to my stomach. That’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to experiencing war. I left the theater in a thoughtful daze. The combination of innovative technologies and attention to detail were amazing.
6. Swingers
I’ve probably watched this movie more than 25 times. At age 18, I just knew it was cool. Trent was money, and I wanted to be as smooth a talker as he was. As I watched it again and again, I appreciated a lot more what Jon Favreau was doing with the Mikey character (as hard as it is to watch). And then when I got to my film school days, I really admired what these guys pulled off in terms of movie making craft: tight script, fresh take, low-low budget, fast shoot, indie cult hit. Great template for the late ’90s indie movie. In retrospect, I think it’s amazing Favreau put this together, and watching Doug Liman’s later movies I always smile about how he got his start on Swingers. I still want to write the next perfect role for Vince Vaughn, and direct him in it. That guy hasn’t fully explored his potential yet.
Nearly made the list:
The Big Lebowski (ironically, is probably higher on my list of favorites than any of these three, definitely watched it more)
Good Will Hunting
Fargo
Click to read part II of 18 movie experiences that changed me.
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Jacob,
What caught my eye was that you were moving to Boston but I really enjoyed your journey down movie memory lane and can imagine the great nights you had with your writer’s group. It also gave me a list of movies I haven’t seen.
A movie that really effected me was Hiroshima Mon Amour because of the political climate, that the movie plays with time and is sympathetic to both sides of WWII. Weaves a story about people and how they cope with the unthinkable. Anyway, fun to read your blog. I remember Megan told me she fell in love with you partly through your writing.
Roxanna
Thanks for your comment. It’s great to hear from you. I’m actually not moving to Boston, just going there for the weekend.