Dick
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- May 22, 1999
- Messages
- 9,938
- Real Name
- Rick
Suddenly you find yourself measuring time, not only by the days or weeks between paychecks, but by the month or two between Criterion and Twilight Time announcements. Suddenly it's the fifteenth of the next month or the first week of alternate months and you're given another half-dozen or more new releases to ponder and possibly use up much of your hard-earned money for. You spend an inordinate amount of time constantly refreshing your Criterion or HTF screen on the expected days of new release flashes as you would during the final few moments of an eBay auction, until they finally show up. And, although there are almost always one or two (or more) titles you're really excited about, you wonder (all too briefly), "What the hell am I doing?" and realize that, on your deathbed, you will be saying, "If only I could have back the time I spent obsessing about my movie collection..." (along with, of course, all the time in your life you expended trying to get buttons through buttonholes or looking endlessly for something you put down only seconds earlier or holding the phone for hours as you tried to get through to a real person or...yada yada).
As kids, time stretched to infinity, and I think that was because everything about life then was an adventure, and we drank in the endless summer days actually living our lives, so each day seemed fulfilling and complete. Sure, we were anxious for next Christmas or vacation or birthday the very day after the last one ended, but we still managed to fill in the periods of waiting for those with new experience after new experience. new memory after new memory. Somewhere along the line, and so gradually we never noticed, our attention was consumed by the mundane, and adult responsibility began to rule: paying bills, buying a house or car, raising kids, going to work, being exhausted, and, if you're like some of us here, obsessing over our movie collections and home theaters.
This is all a bit exaggerated, of course, but I'm sure, as members of this forum, you get the point in a way that few of my non-collector friends or family would be able to. Don't get me wrong -- I don't regret having this collection, as it is a natural outgrowth of my love of collecting 8mm movies as a teenager, then the quadruple-dipping on video (Wow! Whole movies without reel changes or splices or burned-out projection bulbs!) of all the titles I liked, starting with VHS, then to Laserdisc, then to DVD, always wanting to have a theater of my own. But this Blu-ray format has really brought it all to a head. I'm 65 now (and still working), and so don't care much about 4k t.v.'s or 1000" screens or 18.1 sound systems, as long as I have a little home theater where I can share my favorite movies, looking fantastic on a fairly big (55" plasma) screen, which I finally do. But my collection is disproportionate even for a "normal" collector. I own close to 2,300 Blu-rays and about 1,800 DVD's. I keep most of them in high-capacity storage cases and they don't require all that much space, but on those shelves are hundreds of movies I may never watch! I bought them because I like them or I heard good things about them, but I find myself returning to old favorites and guilty pleasures while leaving so many unviewed. Further, I check into this forum three or four times a day just to find out what else I might acquire!
Anyway, let me just sum up by saying that life is a whole lot different now than it was in the 60's. Priorities have shifted and not usually in a good way.
Still, it sure is cool to just stroll into my office any time it suits me and pull BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI or 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD from a shelf and watch it looking and sounding as good as I'm ever likely to see or hear it in my remaining lifetime. Would I trade all that in to be young again on sultry summer nights? Probably, although I have to keep in mind that childhood memories are often distorted by nostalgia and not terribly accurate -- at the time, we might not even have thought our lives were all that great. We adults tend to deny or bury a lot of the "bad" stuff from our youth. Plus, if we wanted to see a movie back then (in my generation), it would only show for 3-4 days at the local theater, and Million Dollar Movie had commercials. Then, we wanted to be older. Now, we want to be younger. People are rarely happy with their current age or with the weather.
But, when it all comes down to it, I have always and will always love movies of all genres, and having such easy and (relatively) affordable access to them is a lifetime movie aficionado's wet dream come true. Re-reading this post, I see there is a dichotomy of feelings regarding my film collecting. So be it. Life is complicated.
Damn, an essay! I started out to write a short paragraph. Collecting obsession indeed!
As kids, time stretched to infinity, and I think that was because everything about life then was an adventure, and we drank in the endless summer days actually living our lives, so each day seemed fulfilling and complete. Sure, we were anxious for next Christmas or vacation or birthday the very day after the last one ended, but we still managed to fill in the periods of waiting for those with new experience after new experience. new memory after new memory. Somewhere along the line, and so gradually we never noticed, our attention was consumed by the mundane, and adult responsibility began to rule: paying bills, buying a house or car, raising kids, going to work, being exhausted, and, if you're like some of us here, obsessing over our movie collections and home theaters.
This is all a bit exaggerated, of course, but I'm sure, as members of this forum, you get the point in a way that few of my non-collector friends or family would be able to. Don't get me wrong -- I don't regret having this collection, as it is a natural outgrowth of my love of collecting 8mm movies as a teenager, then the quadruple-dipping on video (Wow! Whole movies without reel changes or splices or burned-out projection bulbs!) of all the titles I liked, starting with VHS, then to Laserdisc, then to DVD, always wanting to have a theater of my own. But this Blu-ray format has really brought it all to a head. I'm 65 now (and still working), and so don't care much about 4k t.v.'s or 1000" screens or 18.1 sound systems, as long as I have a little home theater where I can share my favorite movies, looking fantastic on a fairly big (55" plasma) screen, which I finally do. But my collection is disproportionate even for a "normal" collector. I own close to 2,300 Blu-rays and about 1,800 DVD's. I keep most of them in high-capacity storage cases and they don't require all that much space, but on those shelves are hundreds of movies I may never watch! I bought them because I like them or I heard good things about them, but I find myself returning to old favorites and guilty pleasures while leaving so many unviewed. Further, I check into this forum three or four times a day just to find out what else I might acquire!
Anyway, let me just sum up by saying that life is a whole lot different now than it was in the 60's. Priorities have shifted and not usually in a good way.
Still, it sure is cool to just stroll into my office any time it suits me and pull BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI or 7th VOYAGE OF SINBAD from a shelf and watch it looking and sounding as good as I'm ever likely to see or hear it in my remaining lifetime. Would I trade all that in to be young again on sultry summer nights? Probably, although I have to keep in mind that childhood memories are often distorted by nostalgia and not terribly accurate -- at the time, we might not even have thought our lives were all that great. We adults tend to deny or bury a lot of the "bad" stuff from our youth. Plus, if we wanted to see a movie back then (in my generation), it would only show for 3-4 days at the local theater, and Million Dollar Movie had commercials. Then, we wanted to be older. Now, we want to be younger. People are rarely happy with their current age or with the weather.
But, when it all comes down to it, I have always and will always love movies of all genres, and having such easy and (relatively) affordable access to them is a lifetime movie aficionado's wet dream come true. Re-reading this post, I see there is a dichotomy of feelings regarding my film collecting. So be it. Life is complicated.
Damn, an essay! I started out to write a short paragraph. Collecting obsession indeed!
