[Nerdspresso] How Back to the Future Saved My Love for Cinema

I was 16 years old when I fell out of love with movies. It was the summer of 1985. I was flipping burgers at McDonald’s to earn some spending cash and put gas in my Honda Scooter.

In between making Big Macs, I ventured to the movies and the comic book shop. Over a couple of weeks, I saw both Cocoon and A View to a Kill as the harbingers of the summer movie season. In hindsight, they’re not bad movies, but teenage me was not impressed.

Cocoon was kind of slow and the old people were cute, but it wasn’t my vibe. A View to a Kill had an awesome opening song, but Roger Moore as James Bond was getting long in the tooth. He looked silly battling Grace Jones and romancing Tanya Roberts. The only person in that movie having any fun was Christopher Walken as a villainous French industrialist. These flicks just didn’t light me up. I wasn’t welcomed by their celluloid embrace.  

At the time, I thought: “Maybe I just don’t like movies anymore.” I realize now that I was just in the wrong movies. Maybe I was being a little ageist. I couldn’t grasp the full power of Wilford Brimley, who was younger when he made Cocoon than I am now (Yikes!). Movies had always been a great escape up to that point. My parents didn’t take me to the movies often, so they had this mystique. The theater was a sanctuary. Every movie was an adventure. Not enjoying them had me really bummed.