This past weekend I got caught up on many little projects
and errands that I had been putting off, none larger nor longer overdue than
getting my DVDs in order. You see, a few years ago I wanted to put together a comprehensive
movie list. I wanted to create a list of all the titles I have, all the titles
I want and put myself in a position where I could update these lists regularly.
For whatever reason, probably laziness, I didn’t do it but lately my movie
collection has grown so large I felt compelled to get a handle on it. So I entered
in the title of every single film I own onto a spreadsheet and finally got a
count. What’s the number? 645 DVDs. I have 645 movies… at least as I’m typing
this and that doesn’t factor in the 34 seasons of TV shows, the 17 musical
DVDs, the 8 poetry DVDs, 29 stand up comedy DVDs, 10 sports DVDs and 17 DVDs of
documentaries, short films and other fun stuff.
It’s turned into quite the collection but the movies drive
it. I usually pick up one or two a week on average, mostly used but always in
great shape and mostly from places online where I think the prices are best.
You’re probably thinking to yourself, Ed must really love movies, where does he
find the time to watch all of them? I do love movies but to be honest with you,
I haven’t even watched half of them yet. They come in much faster than I watch
them, and quite frankly, the ones I have seen I probably saw before I acquired them.
In fact, I can’t even tell you when the last time was that I pulled a movie
from the collection that I hadn’t seen and watched it alone. I’m simply not
trying to watch many of them… yet. Despite all of that I feel compelled to get
stuff I loved from childhood, classics I might have missed out on and intriguing
new releases that interest me. The collection must grow!
So what are you waiting for Ed? Why haven’t you been
watching them? More on that later.
For as long as I can remember I’ve always loved movies. I
saw my first movie when my brother Bryan took me to see Ghostbusters when I was
little and I never looked back. During the late 80’s when my dad would finally
spring for movie channels, boy did I watch a lot of them. The month that Star
Wars finally came to HBO I watched it so much that my father started to hate
that movie. In the early 90’s my dad bought our first VCR. I would get tons of
blank tapes and record every movie I could. We were poor so we weren’t going to
get too many new movies in their original cases. But I could buy multi-packs of
blank videotapes for less than the cost of a new movie. So I would use 6 hour
tapes and usually put 3 dramas or 4 comedies on them. When I encountered a
3-hour film, I’d put another 3-hour film on the same tape, usually of the same
genre. Sometimes I’d have more than 10 “active” tapes just waiting to be
finished off with a movie close enough to the ones already on there. I would do
theme tapes like a Quentin Tarantino tape, a Tom Hanks tape, a Bill Murray tape
and so on. If it turned out a movie sucked, I’d record over it with a better
one. I amassed a huge collection of tapes and I learned there was nothing I
enjoyed more than watching those tapes with my friends. I mean why have
anything worth having if you can’t share it with others? It started a habit
I’ve never really been able to shake, but again, more on that later. I love
watching movies with other people but only under the right conditions. I’ve
tried to watch serious films with meatheads and horror movies with people who
can’t keep their eyes open. I’ve learned that I don’t like to watch movies
alone but I can’t watch them with just anyone. I guess this makes things more
complicated.
Yes, more complicated. When it’s something I’ve already seen
I have no problem watching it alone, some films in fact will cause me to stop
whatever I am doing or make me late getting to wherever I was going because I
love them so much and have to watch some if not all of them. I’ve seen the
original Star Wars at least 50 times and probably Empire and Jedi just as many
times. Off the top of my head I know I’ve seen Die Hard, the American
President, the Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller, Coming to America, Blazing
Saddles, the Matrix, the Breakfast Club, Goodfellas, the Godfather, Spaceballs,
the Crow, Friday, Office Space, When Harry Met Sally, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice,
Big Trouble in Little China, and Enter the Dragon at least 20 times each.
I treat my movie collection the way a stamp collector treats
their stamps or the way a doll collector treats their dolls. I loathe to let
anyone else touch them unsupervised and I really don’t like to lend them out. I
love to share my movies with people but I like to be there to share it with
them. Call me a bit selfish but lending out a movie, especially one that I
haven’t even seen yet to someone else to watch with their significant other or
gasp, alone makes me a sad panda. Maybe it’s because I grew up poor and never
had much that I cling to this collection so tight. Maybe it’s my pride from
slowly building it over many years or perhaps it’s something else.
About 11 years ago I fell in love for the first time and for
all the wonderful things finding a partner presented one of the things that I
thought about most was; now I’ll have someone to share my movies with! Of
course back then I still had a massive VHS tape collection and was probably just
starting to add DVDs to it but the sentiment was no less important to me. The
relationship while wonderful, was complicated. It became difficult because not
too long into it she had to move to another state for a college internship. We
kept things going for as long as we could I guess and I visited her every
month, sometimes for as long as a week but I couldn’t really bring the movies
with me. It would have been impractical to pack my suitcase full of videos when
I needed clothes and other, more important things for a trip spanning several
days. In absence of that we rented a few and went to the theater a few times
but sad to say we never had the chance to watch that many together, especially
from my cherished collection.
When that relationship ended it only strengthened my resolve
to find someone to just kick back and watch some of these movies with. It’s not
even a case where I am fanatical about watching every single one, because let’s
face it, the chances of me finding someone who will want to watch every one of
them are incredibly remote. I’m realistic about that. I just want someone who
loves movies and would be into watching many of them with me. In a perfect
world, she’d have a collection of her own whether it was movies, music or
whatever and she could share that with me while I shared with her… a man can
dream right?
Shortly after that relationship ended my life turned into a
Seinfeld episode, sizing up women on first dates as to whether they were
sponge-worthy, but in this case the “sponges” were my movie collection. I
wanted to find someone ready to settle down. Actually I’ve always had trouble
with the term “settle down”. I know I’m using a different interpretation of the
word settle, but it feels like settling down sounds like you’ve settled for
something. Like maybe you shot for the moon, but settled for something less
than that and called it a day. I dunno, I guess I prefer the term “calmed down”
as in we don’t need to go out so often looking for things because most of what we
need is right beside us.
My fairy tale is that I love movies. Then I was in love with
her. Then I wanted to share my great movie collection that means so much to me
with her, but then there was no her so I keep collecting them and I hardly
watch them until the next “she” comes and honors me with love and her desire to
watch them with me once in a while. So I keep collecting until she collects me.
Maybe it’s a foolish quest to you but to me it means everything. Perhaps I’m a
modern day Don Quixote. But I dream the impossible dream and I wait for her. And
when I find her, by the looks of it, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
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