Dear Gwen,
Welcome to Planet Earth, little
girl. This is me, your father.
There’s a great deal out there to
see, all kinds of animals, plants and faraway places, ancient monuments and
modern marvels, the stars in heaven and the ground beneath our feet. Your
mother and I will show you a lot of it, and you will see even more on your own
one day. Your mom will teach you to bake, to sew, to sing, to do all the things
that she’s good at.
I will teach you about the movies.
I’ve already taught your brother
Isaac a great deal, and he has turned into a bright and eager student. He can
already tell you about the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Bruce Campbell,
Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff and his self-proclaimed favorite director,
Guillermo del Toro. I hope you like the movies as much as he and I do.
We’ll start off with cartoons,
Disney fare like The Jungle Book, Dumbo,
Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Then
we’ll move on to Pixar with stuff like Finding
Nemo, Up, Wall-E and my personal favorite, The Incredibles. Maybe I’ll introduce you to Hayao Miyazaki and
films like My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away (they’re a little weird,
but I think you might like them).
As you get older, I show you
Chaplin, The Marx Brothers and Buster Keaton. It’s important that you never
develop a bias towards black and white films, as many of the best films ever
made are black and white. I’m curious to see if you are a Chaplin fan like your
mother or a Keaton fan like me.
Either is okay.
When Halloween rolls around, I’ll
introduce you to Universal Monster movies, so that you can experience Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein,
Dracula, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon
and my favorite, The Phantom of the Opera.
When you’re a little older, we’ll watch Hammer Horror, so you can see
Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in films like The Horror of Dracula and The
Curse of Frankenstein. (Cushing is the best Van Helsing- in my opinion!)
At Christmas, we’ll watch A Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life, traditional
holiday classics, as well as Gremlins
and the “Mystery Science Theater 3000” versions of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Santa Claus, which are not traditional, but they are a tradition
(for your mom , Isaac and I).
One day, when you’re ready, I’ll
show you my favorite movie of all time, Harold
and Maude and ask you what you think of it. I don’t expect it to be your
favorite as well, and that’s okay.
I wonder what your favorite movie
will be. It could be something that’s already old, it could be a movie that
hasn’t even been written yet. Only time will tell.
Of course, movies being what they
are, there will be new ones all the time for us to discover together. I should
warn you now: some will be bad, some will disappoint you, and some will leave
you wanting your money back. It’s okay; it’s all part of growing up. Perhaps
you will, like your old man, develop a fondness for “bad movies” (what we
cineastes’ call “paracinema”) and we can watch and laugh at the films of Ed
Wood and Coleman Francis together. It would not surprise me if this turned out
to be the case, as your mother and I were watching episodes of “Mystery Science
Theater 3000” while you lay in the crib in the hospital, fresh from your
Mommy’s tummy.
Just so long as you don’t forget
the good stuff. And I will teach you all about the good stuff, not only showing
it to you, but explaining why it is
the good stuff. This way, you can go out and tell your friends, maybe try to
infuse the next generation with a little culture.
I am so
very excited about you, watching you grow and become the person you are. I am
also excited about sharing with you what I love, hoping that you will love it
as well.
Right
now, you are looking around the room with your newborn eyes, trying to take it
all in. I am already fighting the urge to sit down with you, all swaddled up in
a blanket, bottle at the ready, and begin showing you what the movies are all
about.
I don’t
think I can fight that urge much longer.
That’s
all for now.
-Dad
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