"Follow the Reviews" ("Angels and Demons")
The first movie I can remember watching when I was a little boy was Disney's "Pinocchio" at the Cooper in Saint Louis Park. The Cooper was a beautiful circular theatre with, I swear, the plushest red silk curtains you've ever seen in your life. I was only four years old and yet I can still vividly picture the inside of it as if it were just yesterday. Perhaps my fondness for it is due from being the first cinema I ever went to, but I'd like to think it was simply because the Cooper really was that elegant and grand. Unfortunately, it went out of business a decade later (a Hilton hotel resides in its place now) but I can recall the Cooper and my enjoyment of watching a silly wooden puppet wanting to become a real boy.
The second movie my parents took me to was closer to home. In fact, "Airplane" was playing in the theater literally behind my home: the old Hollywood on Johnson Street in Northeast Minneapolis. Want to hear something ironic? Not only did I have a historical theatre in my back yard, but two blocks away there lived a young man named Anthony Larson who would become my best friend 15 years later. Yup, I kid you not. Tony and I used to live near each other and neither of us met until we were adults. Of course, maybe it's because we were too preoccupied giggling at grown men call each other Shirley and spilling drinks on their foreheads to make any new play mates at the time.
My third film was "Animal House" which I saw on Laserdisc in a basement reeking of marijuana smoke; particularly the scene of a college student debating with an angel and a devil on his shoulders on whether he should or should not have sex with an unconscious minor. May I point out I was still four years old at the time. That's most likely the first time I heard the 'f' bomb get dropped. Repeatedly. I'm also sure that was the first time I saw breasts on screen. And heard the word "tits". And when that scene was over, I watched a bunch of college students shoot a horse in an office. And heard the 'f' bomb again. Yeah... a long departure from "Pinocchio".
Anyhow the point I'm try to make is my love for the cinema began at an exceedingly early age and not because my father used to work at Columbia Pictures and had a ridiculous VHS collection when VHS (and myself) were still in our infant stages. I mean, I was exposed to the good and the bad. I watched movies in gorgeous surroundings and sat through them in real dives. And from those moments I was taught to appreciate everything having merit. - Jake