How We Started

How We Started The Family Film Society

Or, how one family began watching one movie a week off the New York Times' "The 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made" list, starting with 1927, and totally changed, well...not much of anything...but they just had fun!


When the FCC killed analog TV broadcasting it was a very good thing.  I just didn't know it at the time.  Anxiously I signed up for the Feds' $40 coupon cards, then scurried down to Wal-Mart hardly daring to imagine what 21st century television might look like.  (Apparently, our aging fleet of Magnavoxes and Sonys were in the class of Big Banks, and required a government bailout.)  


My rosy-eyed faith in the new technology faded quickly to black and white.  Even all the new fang-dangling of converter boxes and little digital ones and aughts floating out over the ether, could not overcome the low-tech cloddishness of our rabbit ear antennas. We could only get two channels--in Spanish--and one of educational TV.  No, not PBS.  That would have been good.  The one where the professors talk.  I didn't want to bother with buying and installing an outdoor antenna, and what with orthodontist bills and gymnastics lessons, I'm too cheap for cable.  


So, the dilemma.  Would we finally pony up for The Cable Guy and, perhaps, a lovely new flat screen?  Or...could we just cold-turkey it and do without...?  I know, I know...the thought is a little Luddite.  But as a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s all we ever had was a black and white, hand-me-down set from the neighbors, who themselves were upscaling to color.  That old set only bought us a couple years of "I Dream of Jeanie" re-runs before it too passed on.


My wife, Stacy, was opposed to cold turkey.  She always used TV like a nightcap to a long day as she winds down to sleep.  Then, there was the thought of forgoing "Brothers and Sisters," or "Lost."  So we put it up to the girls--our three daughters who range in age from nine to 15.  To them TV, without cable's lineup of Animal Planet or The Disney Channel, is largely irrelevant.  To them it's mostly what Dad did after a tiring day, when he just wants to veg his brain into oblivion with "CSI" or "Law and Order."  In short, I knew that they knew that it was mostly something that took my precious time and attention away from them.  With that Stacy was swayed.  She agreed to try it--at least for awhile.


And it worked!  Sure, at bedtime Stacy still occasionally longs for her fix of "Everybody Loves Raymond," and still can't wait for the final season of  "Lost" to come out on DVD.  (Shhhhh!  Don't tell her if the finale sucked!)  And, yes, Dad sometimes feels totally lost when TV screens lie dormant and he's still not in the mood to read that book he's been swearing to read, and everyone else is busy--amazingly enough--totally not, after all, needing his precious attention.  But other than that it's been great!  No white knuckling it here--really!

But actually we still do watch TV, only in a different way.  We put DVDs on hold at Salt Lake County's excellent library system website (thank-you, Salt Lake County), then a few days later they are ready to pick up at our local branch just blocks away.  So, you might ask, "What the diff?"  And I would answer--really, there is one.  We usually don't watch TV just to veg, because there's nothing else going on.  We usually make something go on.  In fact right now, as I write, the youngest two have high-jacked our little-used sewing machine and are making, of all things, pillows.  Stacy's out back tossing a rope-ball-thingy toy to the dog to relax after a long day of gardening.  Kenzie's at a church dance.  And I'm here, plunking away on the computer.


Okay, okay, what I'm doing is only marginally more productive than learning how much brighter people write and solve yet another murder on "CSI."  But hey, at least it's more interesting--to me.


Watching TV this way is also different because we hardly ever watch TV alone, or just at random, lapping up whatever the corporate media giants spoon out.  We plan out in advance what shows we truly want to see, and most often we watch them together as a family.  For instance, on DVD the TV series, "Heroes," kept the whole family guessing, speculating and happily arguing together about what would happen, or, in the case of Dad, just what actually did happen.  (All those plot twists and turns are as hard to follow as Italian politics.)  

And we mus'n't forget "The Office!"  That too became a much looked-forward-to family event, something we all came to love, and came to love together.  No longer was it just this outrageous new comedy (the best since "Seinfeld"!) that Dad had discovered and mostly enjoyed alone in his room.  TV for us has become a family event, a family experience, even, a family memory.  So once the Heroes saved the world from themselves again, and once Michael Scott got his job, and almost, his girlfriend back....  Then we waited...and we waited... and waited....

Finally--I know, I know, you've waited soo patiently--this is where The Family Film Society comes in....  As we've waited for this season's TV shows on DVD--the ones you all have been watching without us--I began casting about for other good options.  I had heard about a book, "The Film Club," about a guy who lets his son quit high school if he will watch one great movie, of his father's choice, and have a discussion about it once a week.  I even checked the book out from the library (but as usual, didn't read it).    

I had also been hooked into using the New York Times' 1,000 best films list to dredge up ideas of what to see next (the true nature of my film addiction is still a closely guarded secret known only to close family members).  After all, why should I bother with cineplex fare when most of the greatest movies were made years ago, and are still waiting for us, undiscovered.  Stacy herself always says how she wants to watch lots of old movies...someday.  Interestingly enough, without broadcast TV to kick us around anymore, someday comes a little faster than usual.

And that's when the idea hit.  One day driving home in the mini-van I brought it up with Stacy--why don't we pick a movie from each year off the New York Times' list, and watch it as a family.  We would begin with “The Jazz Singer” (1927) and see one film a week from each successive year.  In a little over a year and a half we should make it all the way to “Spirited Away” (2002).  (The list, which does not include the Silent Era, only goes from 1927 to 2002, with no films selected for 1928-29.)

For a change, she actually thought it was a great idea, but expanded on it: Why not blog our way through those years in movies?  And better yet, she offered to fix a dinner each week themed to the movie we watch.  Hard to pass on a good meal, so here I am blogging away.  And joining us, of course, are our three daughters, Mackenzie, 15, Michaela, 13, and Sydney, 9. 

It's all about them, really.  Once, at work, I was shocked to learn that none of the twentysomethings in the office knew who Robert Redford was!  Such is the half-life of stardom, I suppose, but we live in Utah--home of Sundance!

Movies have become such a key element of our culture.  Perhaps more than any other art form they express for more of us who we are, what we fear, and that for which we hope.   I want our girls--and myself even--to see what's currently showing at the cineplex from the long view.   I want us to see the fuller context of our films and our culture.  To see who we are as a people and where we've come from.

How better to empathize with our grandparents, suffering through the Great Depression than by watching Henry Fonda in "Grapes of Wrath."  Or, how better to understand the mentality that brought on our current "Great Recession," than through Michael Douglas in "Wall Street."  I want our daughters to know not only Robert Redford, but Kate Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart...and countless other beloved characters from our past.  If they meet and also come to love some of those characters, maybe they will also better know us--as we sit not just alone, but together, in the dark.

As a child my family hardly ever went to the movies.  I remember only three--"Mary Poppins," "The Sound of Music," and "Oklahoma!"   So, when I hit college I saw just about every movie showing on campus, and there was a ton.  Besides an international film club, Film Society showed older American films, and a regular theater showed more recent Hollywood fare.  What can I say. Either I should have studied more, or I should have majored in film!  In honor of those many fond memories I take the name for this little endeavor--The Family Film Society.

Enjoy the movies!
Link to New York Times' "1,000 Best Movies Ever Made" list:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/1000best.html