10 movie facts about me

I missed the boat on the Facebook "25 Things" meme -- people were already joking about it by the time I composed mine, so I never posted it.

But I did get tagged recently to write "10 Movie Facts About Me" -- thanks to Mike over at You Talking to Me? So I'm sacrificing my "day off" to come up with something, and pretend that my arm is being twisted. Of course, anyone who knows me knows that I love this kind of thing. (And besides, I call it a "day off" only because I'm actually proud of myself when I can go a day without writing something, and I didn't have anything inside me bursting to get out on this particular Thursday, so I was going to take it off.)

So, somewhat arbitrarily, here are mine:

10) I saw my first NC-17 movie, Henry & June, on my 17th birthday. It wasn't like I'd been waiting and waiting for this day to arrive, it just worked out that way. The film was released on October 5, 1990, and I saw it just over two weeks later, on Saturday the 20th. (It may have taken an extra week or two to reach the suburbs around Boston.) As it happened, I really did not like the film.

9) I have seen exactly one film twice in the same day, and it was Wristcutters: A Love Story. I know that sounds like a random choice, but see it -- it's great.

8) I watched these movies repeatedly as a child, because my mom recorded them off cable for me: Time Bandits, The Goonies, Superman II, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Airplane!, Airplane II: The Sequel, The Secret of N.I.M.H., The Jewel of the Nile, Johnny Dangerously, Octopussy, WarGames and The Pirate Movie. I love them all, even The Pirate Movie. I was in love with Kristy McNichol for quite awhile.

7) I have only seen The Godfather Part II once, and I saw it out of sequence. That's right, my wife and I accidentally put the second disc in first, and didn't notice there was anything wrong until the movie was over after 45 minutes. We laughed and laughed.

6) I have been in exactly one movie, but you can't see me. I'm standing behind a wall in one scene of The Man Without a Face, which partially filmed at my college. As part of the film class, I got to vacuum up a bunch of confetti off an outdoor track after the filming of a graduation sequence. I also took a moment to shake Mel Gibson's hand. This is before he was an unrepentant anti-Semite. Or before we knew about it, anyway.

5) The movie I saw the most times in the theater was Pulp Fiction, which I saw four times. I hadn't really been intending to go the fourth time, but it was a sort-of date with a girl I liked, and it was her choice. Not that things would have worked out with her anyway, but I almost blew it by forgetting to go to the bank beforehand. Fortunately, I saved face by borrowing money from a friend before the date began.

4) I hate it when I'm hanging out in a group over at a friend's house, and channel surfing leads us to come in halfway through a movie I haven't seen. For any movie I haven't seen, I want to see it in its entirety, or not at all.

3) Because I have reviewed over 1,000 films during the past decade, and the reviews are syndicated on dozens of websites, I am very likely one of the most published film critics on the web, even though I don't have a particular following that I'm aware of, and I haven't even made enough money during that time for one decent year's salary.

2) I frequently tell people that it's my goal to see every film that's ever been made, and sometimes wish there were a movie equivalent of speed reading.

1) I have a list of all the movies I've ever seen, which I believe to be pretty much complete. I expect to surpass 3,000 titles sometime in mid-May.

I think I'm supposed to tag other bloggers to do this same project, but most of the people I read regularly have already done it in some form or another. Is it bad form if I don't name anyone else?

Thanks for reading ...