Movies Let Me Back into Life

Thanks, Roger.

I didn’t really get into movies—like really into movies—until my early twenties. I’d always loved them growing up, watched whatever I could find, but it was mostly what was available to me at my local video store. In college, my friend Maureen (who was a year older than me and in film school) gave me a list of art films to watch, and I watched all of them. I got really into Godard, simply because I thought Anna Karina was so beautiful. But, you know, a way in is a way in, and I took it. College gave me a lot of cool movies, and I’d watched a million horror films growing up, but I was woefully ignorant of the classics.

I’ve mentioned this before, but after I quit the band I was in and moved back to Mississippi, I didn’t really know what to do with myself. The thing I’d based my entire identify on since I was about fifteen year old was gone, and my parents had recently moved from my childhood home, so I was living in a bedroom meant for me that was without a bed, sleeping in a sleeping bag, pretty much clueless of how I was going to spend the next day, much less the rest of my life. I started freelancing, picked up jobs here and there (would eventually wind up in my first cubicle gig), but as for free time, and for purpose, I was lost.

My parents had a lot of movie channels, so that seemed like a good place to start. (The book Brian, which is a masterpiece, is great about movies as purpose.) I didn’t really know what movies to watch, so I looked to the only film critic I’d ever heard of, Roger Ebert. He had a list of Great Movies on his website, complete with reviews. I didn’t much care for critics back then, but Roger seemed okay, and here was a list of movies. So I watched them. Or, well, as many of them as I could get on my parents’ movie channels, supplemented by the lone Hollywood Video still eking out an existence in my hometown.

I dove in, from Fassbinder, Preminger, Ford, Huston, Lang, Fuller, anything I could get my hands on. These were the first Billy Wilder movies I ever saw, and he’s the greatest who ever lived. So many things I’d heard about but never bothered to watch. Do you know what it was like the first time I saw a Nicholas Ray movie? I’d never considered movies could be made just for me. That’s what it felt like, watching some of these. I’d always loved books, sure, but books were things people did in secret. Movies were public. It was a whole different world.

(Also, is anything better than when someone gives you a list of movies they love? This is a thing in my life. Later, when I was in grad school, I’d go to the bar with my friend Bill and Megan and Jack and Ace and Liam and secretly take notes on every movie they mentioned that I hadn’t seen, then go home and watch them. It was awesome.)

I made a schedule, I worked, I watched movies. It was a pretty great way to spend some time. Better than that, it was an education, because I had the syllabus, and I had a pretty thoughtful guy guiding me along the way. (Yes, in time I’d find other critics who maybe dove a little deeper—a lot deeper—sure. But give a kid a break.)

Even better, Ebert had a website with a message board, and you could post questions or comments, and in all likelihood he would reply. This was amazing to me. I was only vaguely aware of Rober Ebert’s health problems at the time, but I couldn’t believe he spent so much of his days responding kindly to people like myself posting stupidly about movies all day. This was the gentler internet, when everyone didn’t treat each other like a potential threat.

So Roger was kind in his comments, always encouraging, and for the most part he was happy you watched anything, delighted when you disagreed with him. It was sort of shocking, really. Most of the critics I’d ever encountered were young people with a bone to pick, desperate to prove they were smarter than everyone else. There was a cruelty to their knowledge. Ebert didn’t care. His primary focus was to make sure you watched the movies, even if you didn’t like them, especially if you didn’t agree with them. Just seeing them, struggling with them, was good enough. And he was very much right about that. If you see enough great movies, even great movies you don’t like, your world opens a little bit more to let something else in. You develop your pallet, learn to taste new things, grow some discernment, become canny enough to build your own canon. It’s a wonderful feeling, and in its own way, pretty empowering, as much as I don’t like that word.

Eventually I reconnected with old friends, got a steadier job. I started playing music with other people, and for the first time in my life, I spent most of my off time writing (at the old Eudora Welty Commons, no less. They had a great porch. To this day, I think she is one of the best and wildest and most deranged and misunderstood writers in whatever is left of the canon. Eudora Welty rules.)

After about a hundred movies and a lot message board posts, I emailed Roger Ebert, and again, in his deep sweetness, he emailed me back. He was just happy I was into movies. I read the books he recommended (my first shot at Proust), dug the films he mentioned, all of it. At one point I wanted to thank him, for all the movie recs and for the kindness shown to a stranger on a message board. I asked if I could send him a book, and he said sure, though he wasn’t sure if he would have time to get to it. I sent the book to the PO Box address he emailed me. I never heard anything back. I didn’t really expect to.

I’ll always be grateful for that guy.