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Movies With My Dad

I have already talked about my first movie experience with my dad so I won't repeat it here. Like many memories of my dad it is a mixed bag of good and bad. But that wasn't the only memory of him I have involving movies. He didn't talk about movies a whole lot except to say he loved westerns and wished they would make more of them. But one non-western that came up was Rebel Without a Cause. He found out it was coming on t.v. and raved about it. He told me how much he loved it, and what a great movie it was. He insisted that I had to watch it when it came on. I watched it and let him know. He asked me what I thought of it and I told him I liked it. And that was it. There was no further discussion of the movie and it was never brought up again. But I still think of him whenever I see the movie or anything referencing it. I know it must have been an important movie to him for him to react the way he did, seeing as he rarely talked about movies at all.

When I was a little bit older we went to the video store once to rent some movies. We were browsing and he came across this movie called The Trojan Women. He grabbed it and said this was something we could both enjoy. We got home and he put the tape in the vcr. The movie started and it was not at all what we were both expecting. If you're not familiar, it a very dry story about the aftermath of the Trojan War. There is no action, and even worse no titillating flesh. We watched for about 25 minutes before he admitted that it was not the kind of thing he was looking for and took it out. We watched some old western instead, probably The Magnificent Seven again. Dad liked his porn, but this was only time he tried to watch with me, although I did once find his copy of Life in the Fat Lane left in the vcr.

Once I decided to return the favor for him introducing me to Rebel Without a Cause by showing him a movie I had found recently and fallen in love with. The movie was The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I had seen it on MTV, and I talked him into renting it. We started to watch it. He enjoyed the opening song, Science Fiction Double Feature. He seemed a bit puzzled by Dammit Janet and the Time Warp. Then, Tim Curry made his entrance into the movie. When he threw off his cape and revealed himself in all his cross dressed glory my dad stood up, threw his half empty beer at the television and walked out of the room. There was absolutely no convincing him to come back and finish the movie. Looking back, I should have anticipated his reaction. Of course, all it really did was cement that movie as one of my all time favorites. And I still love it to this day.


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