I am a graduate teaching assistant in Professor Alan Downer’s Twentieth-Century Theatre class at Princeton University in 1968. Along with several hundred students and a handful of other TAs, I am sitting in a lecture hall, eagerly awaiting Downer’s capsule reviews of the movies currently playing in town. […]
When I was a child, I had childish dreams to be a superhero or a pro athlete. Alas, my only super power was secondary perception, the ability to say, after something had happened, “I knew that would happen.” It did not take me long to learn that the Justice League was not looking for a hero with such an annoying super trait. […]
When I was growing up in the 1960s, the entertainer Danny Kaye seemed to be everywhere — today traveling the world on behalf of UNICEF, tonight hosting his own CBS variety show. My classmates and I knew the songs from Hans Christian Andersen (1952), even if we boys didn’t always admit it. […]
The emergency lights flickered on and off. I found myself 30 feet in the air hanging onto the edge of a railing. […]
Movies — or films, as I would call them when I was growing up in the United Kingdom — have always been a huge part of my life. […]
In our family, movies were special events because most of our entertainment came from television. So I don’t remember seeing a lot of films, but there is one that holds a very special place in my heart. […]
Shortly after graduating film school, I saw the motion picture City of God (Cidade de Deus) in a small art house theatre. I remember thinking to myself, “This is one of the best movies I have ever seen.” […]
As an inquisitive kid growing up in rural northwest Georgia, I was always looking for ways to keep from being bored — reading, watching TV or going to the movies. […]
As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Ghostbuster. For a kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, enduring frigid, snowy winters, there was a certain level of comfort to be found in the warm glow of Saturday morning television. […]
When I was little, I always dreamed of becoming a lawyer. Not exactly a glamorous dream, but I was a very practical kid. […]
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