Sunday 25 March 2007

Do Movies Influence Us?

Not all movies are based on novels, but some of them have probably shaped the kind of writing we aspire to.

As a young child, my movie exposure was limited to what my parents watched on Sunday Afternoons (remember Jason and the Argonauts? The King and I?) and what we watched when Dad packed us into the Buick to take in a Drive-In movie.

I remember those days, or rather, nights when my siblings and I played on the swings and see-saws (in our pyjamas) just underneath the big white screen while we waited for the blue light of evening settle into the navy of night. The two movies that I remember distinctly are: The Nutty Professor and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

I remember the music, but mostly I remember the scene where the nutty professor drank the formula that would turn him into Buddy, Playboy Extraordinaire. Jerry Lewis writhed on the floor, with technicolour splashes of spilled beakers all around him. It kind of freaked me out. Now that I look at it, The Nutty Professor was a very dark movie. Plus, I think Buddy was an ass. A complete ass. Nothing like Eddie Murphie's character.

I also remember the late drive home. It was before mandatory seat belt days, and I draped myself along the rear dash of the car with a pillow under my head, staring up at the explosion of stars above my head.

Does anyone remember any big screen movies that influenced their writing? Or at least fired up their imagination?

5 comments:

Kate Thornton said...

Wow, I love your new blog!

So good to see you here - and I'm taking a nostalgia vacation right this moment, remembering going to the drive-in in my jammies with my family as a child.

Kate

Sandra Cormier said...

Hi Kate! Welcome to Chumplet Land!

Anonymous said...

Movies are one of my favorite topics :) I think anyone seeing movies in the '70's would say "Star Wars." That was the first movie I saw in the theatre, and although I wasn't even ten, I do remember the excitement and the good vs. evil theme that I can see in my writing today.

batgirl said...

oh my god, Jason and the Argonauts! Skeletons fighting, best thing ever!
And that great trick of throwing the discus further by skipping it across the water.
I remember an all-night Planet of the Apes drive-in show, with the ape town's strange little stacked mud houses. The architecture is what I most remember, that and the ruined subway station. Those may have been the first post-disaster scenes I really noticed.
-Barbara

best pharmacy said...

Indeed movies influence our art tendencies dramatically.You are completely right.