Images of Broken Light
What is the very first thing you remember? How far back can you go? Can you pinpoint that moment when you become self-aware for the very first time?
For me, it's July 1988. My parents are showing me off to some friends up in Maryland almost exactly a month before I turn two years old. Being a cinephile, my father decides to take me and my mother to the theaters up there. We end up seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
For anyone who doesn't recall the film right offhand, the hybrid live action-animated flick starts with the titular rabbit tasked with babysitting a precocious infant in a kitchen filled with an absurd amount of dangerous objects and appliances. Chaos inevitably ensues as it is wont to do climaxing with Roger catching on fire and running around the perimeter of the room screaming at the top of his lungs.
And, in that moment, with that white, goofy rabbit literally running in circles bellowing, I come online.
Simply put, I was startled; I had never been in an environment with that much concentrated noise and that much kinetic activity on screen. The movie theater can be an overwhelming place when you're young and I got scared. My mother took me out to the lobby so I could calm down. Fortunately, most of the rest of the film isn't quite as loud. Granted, at the end of the movie, Christopher Lloyd does become a cartoonish version of T-1000 complete with straight-up murder arms, a high-pitched voice, and bug eyes so there is that.
Spoilers.
In a way, there's something poetic about my first conscious memories taking place in a movie theater, an environment I take great comfort visiting with the intoxicating aroma of popcorn soaked in butter and salt quietly popping in a staccato rhythm and the instantly recognizable hiss of overpriced soda being poured into paper cups the size of artillery shells over ice. Even now, 29 years later, going to the movies still feels like a bit of an event. Even if I know the movie is going to be complete fucking garbage.
For years, I thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the first movie I saw in theaters. In actuality, it was Crocodile Dundee which my parents took me to see late in 1987 at a second-run theater in Falls Church. Owing to my earlier age, I have no memory of this. Also, a wise-cracking Aussie bragging about the size of his knife is less likely to leave an impression than a cartoon rabbit careening towards me screaming.
Movie theaters didn't figure too much into the remainder of the 80s after that experience; my parents probably considering me too young. I do remember seeing The Land Before Time at a theater in Union Station with what used to be the ticket booth and concession stand now a liquor store. Ghostbusters II was probably the last movie I saw in the 1980s which may not have been the wisest decision because I was not quite three and that movie is full of screaming ghouls, a tunnel filled with heads on pikes, and an evil portrait (Which still kind of creeps me out all these years later). Yes, my mom had to take me out to the lobby occasionally for that one too.
But movies and, honestly to a greater effect, music have always been a sort of comfort food for the soul for me. I've always enjoyed reading but I'm pretty active about it; the medium requires you to pay attention line-by-line, word-for-word. With movies, I can just turn off my mind, relax, and float downstream. Ironically, letting go to ride the celluloid flow is when I became irrevocably conscious.
For me, it's July 1988. My parents are showing me off to some friends up in Maryland almost exactly a month before I turn two years old. Being a cinephile, my father decides to take me and my mother to the theaters up there. We end up seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
For anyone who doesn't recall the film right offhand, the hybrid live action-animated flick starts with the titular rabbit tasked with babysitting a precocious infant in a kitchen filled with an absurd amount of dangerous objects and appliances. Chaos inevitably ensues as it is wont to do climaxing with Roger catching on fire and running around the perimeter of the room screaming at the top of his lungs.
And, in that moment, with that white, goofy rabbit literally running in circles bellowing, I come online.
Simply put, I was startled; I had never been in an environment with that much concentrated noise and that much kinetic activity on screen. The movie theater can be an overwhelming place when you're young and I got scared. My mother took me out to the lobby so I could calm down. Fortunately, most of the rest of the film isn't quite as loud. Granted, at the end of the movie, Christopher Lloyd does become a cartoonish version of T-1000 complete with straight-up murder arms, a high-pitched voice, and bug eyes so there is that.
Spoilers.
In a way, there's something poetic about my first conscious memories taking place in a movie theater, an environment I take great comfort visiting with the intoxicating aroma of popcorn soaked in butter and salt quietly popping in a staccato rhythm and the instantly recognizable hiss of overpriced soda being poured into paper cups the size of artillery shells over ice. Even now, 29 years later, going to the movies still feels like a bit of an event. Even if I know the movie is going to be complete fucking garbage.
For years, I thought Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the first movie I saw in theaters. In actuality, it was Crocodile Dundee which my parents took me to see late in 1987 at a second-run theater in Falls Church. Owing to my earlier age, I have no memory of this. Also, a wise-cracking Aussie bragging about the size of his knife is less likely to leave an impression than a cartoon rabbit careening towards me screaming.
Movie theaters didn't figure too much into the remainder of the 80s after that experience; my parents probably considering me too young. I do remember seeing The Land Before Time at a theater in Union Station with what used to be the ticket booth and concession stand now a liquor store. Ghostbusters II was probably the last movie I saw in the 1980s which may not have been the wisest decision because I was not quite three and that movie is full of screaming ghouls, a tunnel filled with heads on pikes, and an evil portrait (Which still kind of creeps me out all these years later). Yes, my mom had to take me out to the lobby occasionally for that one too.
But movies and, honestly to a greater effect, music have always been a sort of comfort food for the soul for me. I've always enjoyed reading but I'm pretty active about it; the medium requires you to pay attention line-by-line, word-for-word. With movies, I can just turn off my mind, relax, and float downstream. Ironically, letting go to ride the celluloid flow is when I became irrevocably conscious.
