1 post tagged “memories”
I was thinking today about my first trip to the Castro Theatre. We saw the 80 mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the spring/summer of this year. Of course, being new to the city and a complete cinephile, I was seduced by the theatre itself and have returned for every ridiculous B movie fest since.
But 2001. I mean. There are not words to express this experience. I was profoundly awe-struck. This is not a film. This is a vision of the future that you cannot walk away from, and it will haunt you. I know, I know, says me and 10,000 grad student theses.
Let me preface by saying this: it isn't that I hadn't seen the film before - as a child, you want to understand the greatness of your parents' generation of artists and thinkers. At least I did. So I saw 2001, ten years old, trying to grasp the 'thing' that made my father speechless and my mother talk excitedly. And I missed it. And this year, at the age of 35, I found it.
Of course, I called my father and gushed into the phone about my discovery. He humored my nerdy-come-lately enthusiasm, recounting scenes and lines and metaphors. And then we got silent, as we often do, and he said: Jesus, they don't make films like that any more. And I realized that he was right. They don't. We don't.
I would never brush aside all the risks that are still being taken by so many filmmakers. I am not suggesting that nothing will ever compare. But that monolith is burned into my brain as a symbol of maybe the last time someone in hollywood, someone with money and power and influence, took a Great Artistic Risk.
Maybe.
