What movie turned you into a film buff?

Almost everybody likes movies. Renting a video or going to the cinema are popular pursuits for the majority of people. But some take their love of movies a step beyond a casual interest; some become dangerously obsessed with these celluloid creatures; some become film buffs.

What triggers this? Nobody's born wanting to see the latest Coen Brothers flick. Suddenly one day, a mild-mannered person will go from wanting to see Julia Roberts latest to wanting to forget about Roberts and find out who wrote, directed and edited the thing. Thus you become more cultured, more informed, more boring to your friends.

We're all film buffs. A few here have created a film web site. Others have searched the net for one. We want to talk movies. But what film (though it may not be a film, a brother, a cousin, a grand-uncle?) made you take the next step?

Nobody's born a buff!


Mine was Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Before that movie I loved films. I went the odd week. It was often the topic of conversation with friends. But like most, I treated old films with moderate hatred. I'd never seen one, but like gorgonzola my stomach wasn't strong enough to give it a chance. My cinematic diet was the likes of Top Gun and Days of Thunder - anything that the box office told me to like. Then like an angel from heaven came Olivia Hussey...

Romeo and Juliet was made in the 60s. That's so long ago my Dad might even have been cool back then. Actresses couldn't be sexy because they were so old. What I failed to comprehend in my stupid brain is that film is the only substance that can stall time. No matter how old she was when I was watching it Olivia Hussey was young during the movie's making and she was very, very fine.

Then it happenedI wanted to know more about this young lady and her peers. I checked out more 60s films, more 50s films, more and more films. And I'm still looking for somebody to be as gorgeous as Hussey but I've had a lot of fun watching these golden oldies along the way.

So that's how I became a buff. Like everything in life, sex played a lead role.

How did you become so interested in film?

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I couldn't believe that she knew my name. Some of my best friends didn't know my name.

Excellent thread. I'm not a film buff, however, so I can only partially answer the question. To be a "film buff," I'll have to see a lot more than I have. For now, I'm just an enthusiast of sorts.

Anyway, one movie that comes to mind when thinking of films that sparked a broader interest in the whole big "thing" is 12 Angry Men. Both versions (unless there's a third I don't know of) had the same effect on me: I couldn't help but appreciate the craft of filmmaking after having seen them. Movies like that serve as a refreshment of sorts. I'd say The Shawshank Redemption was another film that made me love, in addition to the film itself, film in general, more than I had before.

Actually, this site turned me into one. I'm still not as buff as some of you, but I have taste..

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"I was walking down the street with my friend and he said, "I hear music", as if there is any other way you can take it in. You're not special, that's how I receive it too. I tried to taste it but it did not work." - Mitch Hedberg

Great choices, TWT.

My dad showed me Goodfellas when I was eleven years old, and since then I've been hooked. He showed it to me that summer, and the next year in school (I was in seventh grade that year), I sat next to someone named Kifah, whose love and interest in movies pretty much lit the spark that my dad had started. Kifah and I would stay up all night every friday at his house and watch classics that his mom had left in a box in the basement, and I saw stuff like His Girl Friday, Adam's Rib, Some Like it Hot, Charade, The Grapes of Wrath, Night of the Hunter, Kubrick's older stuff, and Citizen Kane. We started reading everything we could about movies, making top ten lists, writing our own reviews - it was a hobby, then a passion, and now it's fully expanded to become the main interest in my life. I wouldn't, or couldn't trade the cinema for anything in the world - my love is too deep and my desire to see something flower before me on a giant screen in a darkened room is too strong for me to ever even consider giving up.

Kifah and I still see each other every weekend (he moved), and we see movies and talk about them and try to stump each other. Last year I met Marky (Zweedorf), and his interest in movies has allowed me to learn and love them even more, and he, Kifah, and I are always arguing, shouting, even getting fights over what we think is good, what we would love to see happen, what we want to do.

Mark loves Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch and will defend them until the day he dies, and has an obsession with his collection. Kifah refuses to surrender to any type of empty feature - he despises everything that doesn't advance the art form in some way or another, however miniscule that advance may be. And everyone here already knows what I like and don't like, pretty much.

What a lovely thread.

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**** the Lakers!

Well... I can say what got me hooked in horror movies...
I first saw 'A Nightmare On Elm Street" when i was 6, and from then on i have loved horror movies! (i am now 14)

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God does not exist, so live your life the way you wanna run it

If I am a movie buff, then the biggest step for me was getting access to the internet. After that, I could look up info on any major motion picture almost instantly. I could talk to people all over the world about movies. What a treat.

The film that made me passionate about cinema more than any other was Instinct. If it wasn't for that flick, I wouldn't have spent half as much time in the last 3 years watching, discussing and analyzing movies as I have. I know I wouldn't have started the Yahoo movie club I started in '99, nor would I have had the motivation to help make it the most active Yahoo movie club for a while in 1999 and 2000.

However, Instinct also brought a lot of negativity for me; it made me more conscious of how many "takers" there are, and how much we all need to change if we will be anywhere near as free as we think we are. Also, it made me have much less respect for the tastes of the majority of moviegoers.

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One of the biggest myths told is that being intelligent is the absence of the ability to do stupid things.

Well, how embarrassing that the two films that did it for me are comedies.

First, I remember seeing Blazing Saddles at a drive-in (when it was new) with me and my brother in the back seat, and my parents in the front seat. My mom had her foot up on the dashboard, and was laughing so hard through most of the movie that she was crying and gasping for air. I had never seen her so silly for such an extended period of time -- I'd never seen her have so much fun before (or since, I think).

Plus, I fell in love with Gene Wilder during that showing. (Those eyes! Those blue eyes!) It changed so many things for me as a young teen.

The other movie I remember (probably within a year of the Blazing Saddles episode) was watching Arsenic and Old Lace with my mom when it was on TV one dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon. She told me I'd really like it, and I was suspicious. (Black and white? Old or dead actors? I dunno....)

I adored it. She adored it too. We had a blast. It's still one of my absolute favorite movies. And it made me realize that movies really were more than just light entertainment.

Shortly after these things, I began a quest to become a film director, which culminated in me attending Carnegie-Mellon for writing and being on the verge of transferring into the drama department while I was a young married thang.

But we were too poor to send us both to college, so I took time off, and then I was pregnant with your very own TWTCommish [Yoda].

And the rest is history.

Linda the Long-Winded

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I feel like I was born a buff.
My parents are huge film buffs. I was exposed to movies, and the appreciation of the art, at a very early age. When my parents went to rent a video, they would have my sisters and I pick out our own movies.

First, before we could read, we went by the cover of the jackets.

Then we dicovered the plot summeries.

Then, we started formulating opinions about actors, studios, directors, and the like.

I think the first movie that wowed all three of us, was To Kill A Mockingbird.

We went through a Shirley Temple stage, too. We watched them all; The Good Ship Lollypop, The Little Princess, The Bluebird of Happiness.

The Wizard of Oz had a huge impact on us as well. After that, we watched every Judy Garland musical there was.

Then of course our tastes separated. I started getting into the crime/dramas and murder/mysteries. Sarah stuck with the musicals, and Emily got heavy into foreign film.

I know I'll be a fiim buff for the rest of my life, and I have my parents to thank.

AFI's top 100 list (from 1998?) was the catalyst for me, rather than a specific movie. Before that, I was mainly a casual watcher who didn't own a single movie (and wouldn't think to).

I had actually seen many of the movies on the list before it was released, but I was never really interested in learning more about movies until afterward.

Up until, say 14, I had a general interest in movies, as most, but didn't make it any more than that.

However, in Forth Form ( not sure the American equivalent), I decided to write our class speech on American Beauty.
I quite a while researching, looking at various critics' opinions, renting the movie myself a couple of times, and I think that's when I could first really appreciate film construction, and understand that deeper meaning lurking within.

Ever since then ( I'm 16 now), I've simply been seeing as much as I can possibly see.

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I am Jack's smirking revenge.

I wouldn't call myself a "film buff"... I'm picky about a lot of movies and I don't see everything. I'm an entertainment buff.

A horror buff too because horror movies started me on the path. Just like Spooky Man, I saw A Nightmare On Elm Street at a young age (I think I was 3 or 4) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 & 2 and Friday the 13th and all of the others...

Actually, I did watch a lot of other movies around that age too because we had several movie channels often. I remember seeing films like Project X (which should be a porno film), and Ratboy, The Boy Who Could Fly, The Monster Squad, Porkys, Throw Momma From The Train, The Goonies, The Gate, Mannequin, Ernest Goes To Camp, and so many others. I'm sure there's more that only my subconcious remembers. We have so many movies videotaped and I had a TV in my room since 2, so I've always been in front of the TV. If I wasn't watching movies, I was watching Nickelodeon, or MTV, or The Monkees TV show when it reran in the 80s.

I'm just crammed with so many images, people, characters, life situations, fantasies, scary things, sexual visuals, and I'm still after so much more. Hopefully, one day I'll be able to give it all back when I write and direct my own movies. I want to use my brain to entertain.

Star Wars trilogy
E.T.
Indiana Jones trilogy
the muppet Movie
Back to the Future
Howard the Duck
Superman 1, 2, and 3
....The list goes on and on. I can't pick just one!

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https://shawnsmovienight.blogspot.com/

i think seeing two movies a week (in theatres) did it for me

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"Who comes at 12:00 on a Sunday night to rent Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid?"
-Hollywood Video rental guy to me

You have just mentioned the two movies that my sisters and I thought know one had seen but us. Thank you for proving me wrong.
The Boy Who Could Fly...does it get anymore of a childhood favorite, than that?

I love Boy Who Could Fly, The. I watched it as a kid all the time plus I just bought it on VHS about 4 months ago and watch it again, still good hasn't really lost anything.

I use to ride that type of bike and play GiJOE's all damn day. The movie was film right around were I live. The Part were she falls try to get the flower on the brige I can see that from the bottom of my block and I drive by it daily.

Watching films wise, it was Jurassic Park.

I was in third grade and we were buying action figures and everything long before we'd seen the film, and apart from Milo and Otis it is the first film I can remember seeing in a cinema. I had read the books (the novel and the book of the film) and one day, by pure luck it seems, it was in the newspaper, this big advertisement and my Dad took me in to town and there was a huge line and by luck we got the last two tickets. The place was packed and I was blown away by everything about it and I loved the darkened room and the huge screen and the loud noises. I loved it.

Filmmaking wise, I would have to say that there's a collection. I don't remember the first one I saw that was just like, I want to do that, although it could very well be Jurassic Park. Screenwriting wise, I got my first bout of insperation from Bowfinger. Lawrence of Arabia, A Clockwork Orange and Run Lola Run have all been recent insperations, but if there was a film I had to pin-point it would probably be Jurassic Park

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It was this great new technology called VCRs that did it for me. When my mom got one, we started snatching up all the Hitchcock and Carey Grant we could find (Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story.) From there it was on to American Movie Classics on cable.

I first broke out of old movies, though, when an artsy girlfriend of mine took me to Terminator 2 just for fun. It was the first 'guy' movie I ever really saw and I loved it. Now I even like Jackie Chan!

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Good times, noodle salad.

I don't really think it was seeing any particular movie, rather a combination of events.

Whilst i have been into movies for a long time i never really saw them as that imortant to me. Yes i did sneak in to see both Dracula (Gary Oldman verison) and T2 before i was legally allowed to see them but never really went out of my way to see anything.

When i was 17/18 i learnt to drive and was able to visit the multiplex in the nearest city rather than the dodgy one-screen effort (That would only show films that were guaranteed to sell out) in our town. This opened up a whole new world of films for me to see. Then later that year i went to uni where they had 2 multiplexes and a student-run cinema all within 10 minutes of my house. Without this student cinema i would never have discovered films like The Crow, True Romance, Usual Suspects and Clerks. Ive never looked back since.

Ever since then i have made a point of knowing what films are coming out and when and finding out obscure facts about them.

Also leaving home gave me the opportunity to buy videos/DVDs without having the "What have you bought now?" or "How many this time?" conversations.

Now i go to the cinema twice or more a week and buy movies on DVD on a scarily regular basis!

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Lex Luthor: "I'd question your integrity, but you're a journalist."

I don't consider myself to be a buff either. I would say that I have become an enthusiast within the last 6 months, largely do to the internet (IMDB) and being able to get movies for free from the University.

However, at 15, I saw the first movie that sparked my interest; A Clockwork Orange. I ended up buying the movie (my first movie purchase) shortly after I saw it and only then did I finally learn that the director was someone by the name of Stanley Kubrick.

It wasn't until Lost Highway that I was so deeply marked (and moved) again. It has been a very slow and gradual course. As I said, only in the last 6 months has my interest really kicked into hyperthrust, and I don't know that there was any one movie that really spawned that.

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We've met before, haven't we?

I guess I've pretty much been one all my llife. My mom told me how when I was a little girl, 2, 3 years old, I would sit and watch Mary Poppins over and over again. I figured out how to work the VCR so I could watch my favorite parts and start it up on my own wthout asking my mom for help. I've always been quite fascinated with movies. They're a release and way to make you feel happy when youre feeling a bit crappy, or sometimes even crappier. Well, I guess ever since Mary Poppins caught my fancy I've been a lover of cinema ever since.

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