I’m long out of practice with essay writing so bear with me if you will. It’s been ages since I’ve engaged in any form of long form writing. A paragraph on Facebook is not long form, in case you were wondering. That’s what I did for years thinking that I was posting something of substance when in fact it was just a fraction of what I wanted to say. It’s much more freeing when you get all your thoughts down at length than just providing the short version where something can get lost in the translation or otherwise feels incomplete. Sure, I did that, but I wasn’t satisfied so I stopped. That’s what I decided because I wanted feel good about what I was contributing to this toxic dump we call the internet. Sure, I’m doing it for others, but I forgot that I have to do it for myself, too.

But enough about my dissatisfaction with short-and-sweet. I decided to create this blog/website after several years of thinking about it and not doing it for one reason or another, mainly time. Finally, I just sat down and started thinking about what I wanted to write about and how I wanted to write it. The “What” is movies. The “How” is first person. Sure, I could’ve settled on a typical essay style that you usually see in college essays that goes for the analytical approach. But I find that maybe people connect to the material if sounds like someone is speaking directly to them rather than throwing some in-depth dissection of the content. There is potentially some deep shit that can come from that but it also risks alienating the reader especially when you get too deep. Then it starts to feel more like homework. I have to remind myself that you are reading this and you can stop or continue at your leisure. For your benefit I won’t get too academic.

Now, is this high level criticism? In some way, it is, because it doesn’t aim to be simpleminded to the risk of insult, and it’s not, because we’re not operating on a scholarly level here either. When I told someone close to me that I was creating a website, the person suggested that I do a YouTube channel instead. Why am I not doing a YouTube channel? Because it takes too damn long to make a video. For a 10 minute video you could spend anywhere from 3-5 hours or more to shoot, edit, and post it. I’m sure I’m leaving out dozens of small details that otherwise affect the viewing experience, but the point is that’s time I just don’t have right now. Besides I actually kind of prefer written word, where, at least, I won’t risk sounding repetitive or run out of synonyms before we reach the end.

My love of movies started when I was 8 years old. I remember watching the original 1933 version of “King Kong” on TNT for their Fourth of July marathon. “Part of TNT’s Fourth of July Monkey Business” was the ad line. It was the first movie that really captured my imagination and made me want to find out more about how movies are made. I knew then that was more to movies than just what we digested from the screen. This stuff was created and set about our local library to find books on not just “King Kong” but genre films and film production, as well. My parents were supportive, although, they were just happy that I was occupying myself with a hobby at a young age. I wasn’t just playing with toys or watching cartoons all the time. I had found something I was fully engaged and fascinated with. I got my brother more into movies a little bit, although, he didn’t get as deeply into it as I did. We were still able to communicate on the same level because he engaged with movies on the same creative and analytical level that I did. This eventually led us to do our own movie guide together when we were teenagers. For the record, those reviews will not be transcribed here. My taste in my 40s is not the same as when I was in my teens. But I still have the notebooks. If I could backtrack a bit, the other movies in that Fourth of July Marathon were “Son of Kong” a rushed, inferior, but entertaining sequel, and “Mighty Joe Young” which combined a John Ford-style Western with sentimental pulp. All three movies were shown in their bastardized computer colored versions which would be considered sacrilege now. It was years before I found they were actually in Black-and-White, although, “Mighty Joe Young” had a climactic sequence in color in its original version.

Going to the movies was a semi-regular pastime, particularly, with my mom and my brother, and occasionally, with friends. Dad sometimes went, too, but he wasn’t really a movie guy. NASCAR was more his thing and I imagine that he was disappointed when his two sons didn’t take to it.

Now I get to date myself even more. You see kids, there was once a very cool place called the Video Store where you could go and rent movies on VHS for $2.00 back in the day. In Huntersville, NC where I grew up, we had two competing Mom-and-Pop stores across the street from each other; Jon’s Video World and Video Plus. Jon’s had a good selection and were about 25 cents cheaper, which meant you could rent more movies or video games from them. They had the better selection of games. Video Plus had a bigger store, a larger selection of movies, and better deals. I remember the 5 movies for 3 Days for $5.00 deal that they did every Monday. We also had Pay-Per-View back then where you called up the cable company to watch a movie on a certain channel at a particular time. That exists in a different form these days called Amazon where you can rent whatever is in their library anytime you want.

I miss the video store. No matter what, it always seems that they had a better selection than streaming these days. I know streaming offers thousands of titles, but it always seems that you can’t find what you want unless you purchase a subscription to the umpteenth streaming service. At the video store you could almost always find something, unless the movie was brand new. Nothing can beat holding something tangible in your hands, either.

Speaking of tangible, call me old-fashioned but I still collect movies on physical media (Blu-Rays and 4Ks). I like the fact that I can still own the movies I love, and no evil streaming service can take them away. Sure beats those excess subscriptions. I’ve been collecting discs since the late 90s when DVDs first came out and I have a collection of over 1200 movies. Some of them I could probably get rid of because upgrades are available. But many are worth keeping because streaming has made it difficult access them. I’m sure some of them, like my Fox titles, are worth some money due to reduced availability on streaming, and titles going out of print.

Here I am going from one thing to the next and you’re probably wondering when I’m going to start writing about movies. I wanted to get this first post out of the way so that I could find a groove and settle into mechanics of the personal essay. There will be plenty of time to discuss movies and topics related to cinema in the foreseeable future. This is also my second attempt at a website. My first was 11 years ago and it was squashed because the egomaniac I was working for at the time wanted to dictate and have some control over what I reviewed. So naturally that site failed and was eventually taken down. Now that I have no one else trying to interfere and I have complete freedom to do and write what I want I think this attempt will be more successful. I intend to review some (but not all) new movies, and write about some old ones as well. But it won’t be just reviews as I also intend write about various other topics and do the occasional list or ranking just to mix it up. I look forward to continuing this with you, dear reader. It’s going to be fun.

Kevin A. Wilson