I love going to the movies. My parents started me out by taking me to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. I saw “Mary Poppins,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and “The Flight of the Phoenix” there. Wow.
I can remember seeing, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: in 1963, when it showed locally to my home, I was 10 years old.
These movies had a big impact on me. To participate in grown-up conversations, it paid to be able to drop names of movie stars like you just got off the phone with them. I actually met Jack Lemon at the Palladium. I was “somebody.”
I still go to the movies. I sit through the credits until the last dog drops. You cannot believe how many workers are needed to make a modern-day movie.
Yet somehow, the movies I remember most did not need all the special effects and blowing up the world. I’ll leave you with a few quotes ….
Bond. James Bond (Dr. No, 1963).
Round up the usual suspects (Casablanca, 1942).
And my favorite …
What we have here is a failure to communicate (Cool Hand Luke, 1967).
Randy Main
Yucaipa