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Summer Movies Part 1

Recently the New Yorker published several stories relating the experiences of viewing and seeing summer movies by several artists, authors, and filmmakers. Here is a link to a list of all the articles from the New Yorker search engine.

Of particular interest is Dave Egger's article and the way it describes that nostalgic feeling we all know and remember from watching a film as a child.

"To the untrained eye, the ravines near Lake Michigan really did look a little like a Central American jungle. In August, with the Midwest’s tropical humidity and a little suspension of disbelief, those dense forests could pass for Nicaragua—at least enough for our purposes. We were twelve, thirteen years old, we had just seen “First Blood,” or “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and we wanted to re-create the movie, or at least the spirit of it—of hunting and being hunted. Within hours of leaving the theatre, we would put on our fatigues (we called them “camos”), throw our weapons and accessories in our backpacks, get on our bikes, and ride down to the ravines by the beach...

When we played Commando—we were calling it that even before the movie appeared—the throwing stars were among the many crucial accoutrements brought to the abandoned bridge that spanned the ravine’s main gorge. There we hid our bikes and got outfitted in our various ways, doing our best heroes-strap-on-their-grenades-and-bandoliers montage. Among the six or seven of us, we all had the staple elements—Swiss Army knife, wrist rocket, eye black, as many bandannas as possible—so the equipment modifications and additions became key. I brought my homemade nunchaku (two long dowels tied together with a shoelace), wore the biking gloves I’d painted to look like Mel Gibson’s, and taped a steak knife to my leg. (I always liked to have some kind of knife taped to my calf.)

When everyone was ready, there would be the inevitable awkward pause when we realized, once again, that there was no clear objective to whatever we were about to do next. There were never teams or rules or objectives. Whenever someone would propose some structure—“Maybe there should be a flag or something that we try to capture?”—the idea would die a quick death. “Capture the flag?” would be the response. “That’s for homos!” And that would be the end of that. We would descend into the ravine and fend for ourselves, alternately hiding and pursuing, tackling and being tackled, all the while trying not to get stabbed by the throwing stars in our pockets and the knife strapped to our legs.

During those hours, the danger was real enough. The ravines were sixty feet deep, and the stream that ran below was cold and rocky. Injuries occurred, and people were punched, and, with each step farther away from our regular lives and into the worlds we’d seen on film, we felt more like ourselves. We didn’t think of those movies as escapist entertainments. The worlds they depicted didn’t seem foreign or unattainable. Setting traps and running with a knife between your teeth, diving into a pit and emerging from a river, camouflaged in mud—all of it seemed far more natural, more in synch with the adrenaline that was coursing through our adolescent bodies, than anything else in our pedestrian existence. We’d cobble together an identity—a shoulder pad from “The Road Warrior,” Rambo’s sorry old Army jacket—and go looking for moments of violence. It didn’t matter that our wars were poorly planned and lacked any exit strategy. It didn’t matter that the only real enemy, in the end, was us. We would see these movies and think, That’s my life. That’s the life I’m meant to lead."