At the Movies

I sound like that old curmudgeon in the SNL skit, but when I was a kid, going to the movies was special--and we liked it that way. Today, it's overload. Figgy and Co. saw Twilight at least five times at the theater and then countless more times in our living room once she got the DVD. [That was during their intense Robert Pattinson phase.]

My childhood cinema highlights:

1. How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying [1967] at Wellfleet Drive-in, Cape Cod. I remember someone on a scaffold outside an office window.

2. Yours, Mine and Ours [1968]; same setting as 1. above. That's Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in the photo--but what I really wish I could post is a still of them grocery shopping, when their carts collide, upsetting the tons of cereal and oatmeal they're buying to feed all those kids. That fascinated me. I own the movie on DVD, mostly out of nostalgia. It's silly but happy, like airy pink cotton candy. Spun for fun. No nutritional [or in this case, great cinematic] value.

3. Butterflies are Free [1972] at Radio City Music Hall with my family. Couldn't tell you what it was about, but Goldie Hawn was in it.

4. The Sting [1973] in Tenafly. Mr. and Mrs. Blake took me along with Nancy one Saturday night. Pizza after. I didn't understand the film at all but did like Robert Redford. I was 12.

5. Some movie like maybe Oliver Twist? about a poor boy and/or an orphanage--I think my friend Aggie's nice blonde Irish mom treated us girls to see it at the Palace theatre on Washington Avenue in Bergenfield...except I'm blanking on the actual title and imdb isn't helping. Yet I remember feeling like it was a treat to be sitting in the darkened theatre with Aggie and the rest of the audience.

Here's to happy memories of watching the film roll from a white Ford Falcon with my family under the summer stars...to worn red velvet seats with hard backs and arm rests....to the special treat of going to the movies as a child. It opened up a whole new world.