Film Form

In a previous millennium, my family was an early adopter of the half-inch video cassette recorder. Our first machine came from Penny's, which was a place to shop back in hose days. The machine itself was a beast of a thing, and had we owned it just a few years prior, we might have used it to record my older brother's appearance in the Orange Bowl Parade. Instead, my father rigged up a Super-8 movie camera alongside an audio cassette recorder to capture the moment. I don't know if the movie and the tape were ever presented at the same time, but I do recall my mother's squeal of delight upon seeing her eldest son on the television. The film, due to the difference in frame and refresh rates was hard to watch, but it was a record of the event.
Interestingly, it took us several years to become accustomed to using our VCR to collect broadcast television. Instead, we were pleased and happy to be in that first generation of home movie watchers. Not that we were watching home movies, there was plenty of that in the seventies. Owning our own VHS machine allowed us to watch movies in the comfort and safety of our own home. Not that I was particularly concerned about the Mean Streets of Boulder, Colorado, but rather more concerned about seeing if "Mean Streets" was available for rental. In those early days, the list of films available for home viewing skewed severely to the Adult section. This kept our family's selection from a rather small set of shelves toward the front of the store. The first movie I remember bringing home for us all to watch was "The Stunt Man." It was also somewhat of a rarity for me then, as it is now: a film that I had never seen before that I brought home to see for the first time on tape. It could have been the romance of this new technology, or it could have been that it was just that good, but I fell in love with that movie. I watched it once with my family and twice more before it had to be returned.
From there on, our interests and tastes began to expand mightily from that first two or three movies. Suddenly we were aficionados. Since my family was already very fond of the moving picture shows, this allowed that romance to grow and blossom. Over and over again. Eventually, I found my way behind the counter of a video store and became even more immersed. The bookshelf in my living room that is stacked with DVDs, having replaced my Laserdisc and VHS collections, still sags beneath the weight of my eclectic tastes.
The film that is missing? Richard Rush's "The Stunt Man." That is why when, after picking up Patton Oswalt's memoir and reading a quote from that film on the inside cover, I was taken aback when my wife told me that she had never seen it. "This is something we shall have to remedy as soon as possible." Now, there was a time when that would have meant rushing to our local video store and checking to see if that lone copy of that particular title was in or hadn't yet been sold off as a "slow-renter." This was the new millennium. We went home and through a twist of some dials and some clicks with a remote control, we were able to have Amazon zap us a streaming version. Just by pushing a few buttons, my wife and I were able to bring ourselves one step closer to a singular consciousness. I suppose I could have opted for Plato's Allegory of the Cave, and described each frame from memory. Instead, I opted for my allegory of the remote control.