I mention this since the year in which you were born determines a great deal about how you encountered film in your American youth. In my case, I was born at the dawn of the summer blockbuster, which I think still imparts a soft spot in me each year for the ultra-mega summer films.
I have hazy memories of the anticipation of the opening weekend of The Empire Strikes Back, as I was firmly under Mr. Lucas' spell at that time. The tickets were purchased in advance and pinned on the bulletin board next to the lone telephone in our Bayview rowhome. Seeing that the tickets had perforations similar to the ones in my activity books, I got up on a chair stacked with phone books and tore them. I was in big trouble then, but a call to the theater confirmed that we could still get in.
Well... at any rate, I spent my childhood in Baltimore city.
I mention this as Baltimore city did not have cable television available in the standard form until some time after my family moved just over the line into Baltimore county. Outside of occasional trips across that city/county line to "see a picture" at Golden Ring Mall, the television was the main way I encountered film. I harbor no cherished memories of the film palaces of Baltimore (which were firmly in decline at the time). Sorry.
Most of my "film on television" experiences came from broadcast television via the big three networks and the UHF affiliates. There were about seven channels to choose from, with a few more available if the DC stations were coming through on that particular day.
I harbor vivid memories of Kung-Fu Theater showing and re-showing terrible transfers of sub-Shaw Brother chop sockey flicks heavily edited to fit the running time, of midnight movie programs lulling me to sleep at slumber parties which gave the same rough treatment to the Universal Horror Creature Features and their attendant parodies, of WBFF TV45 having New Year's Eve marathons of Marx Brothers films. I am fairly certain I had more fun as a kid staying up watching old movies with my family on New Year's Eve than I do today running the Mount Vernon bar gauntlet.
Our "big screen" projection television was on almost constantly as my brother and sister and I played in the basement. My dad always insisted that he wanted to be able to "see what's on the television from the kitchen", and so we always had one of these monsters somewhere in the house. Despite the "big screen," these films on television were almost always poorly transferred, leading me to believe that the 1970s in America was a murky, badly-lit, washed out time in our nation's history. This was in sharp contrast to the eye-popping, sharply colored world of the 1980's situation comedy. Diff'rnt Strokes, indeed!
Despite our lack of standard cable at the time, we did have the outlet of VHS video rental and a Pay Television channel called SuperTV, which was sort of like being able to get just HBO. I remember waiting in vain for E.T. to come out on VHS, of watching and re-watching the Star Trek, Star Wars and Superman movies we had made copies of (my father, an electrical engineer, employed the system one used for making tape copies that defeated the Macrovision copy protection system). I used to leaf through the monthly SuperTV schedule booklet, looking for things to watch, wondering about the movies being listed, having no idea about the awesomeness of Z Channel and its then-unfolding impact on the world of "film on television" on the other side of the country.
It is clear from the outset of my existence that I liked watching movies. It was a part of what my family did together. Our tastes were admittedly mainstream, with the exception perhaps of my mother's love of all things musical theater-related. Those 90 to 120 minutes we spent together were often free of bickering and fights. I remember these times fondly but dimly, and consider them formative.
To be honest, things didn't get left-of-center for me in terms of my film tastes until we moved to the county. Because then we got cable.
More on that next time, after an update of films viewed in November. Until then, this is the Charm City Cineaste, signing off...
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