Film in New York

I have for such a long time equated New York City with serious filmgoing that I can't remember a time when I didn't! And while I started going to the movies at such a young age that many of my earliest memories are connected with movie experiences, even before I moved to New York City there was always a certain gravitas (to use Therese's word) around seeing a film here in New York. So it seems only fitting that I tell you about the first movie I remember seeing in New York.

It was the summer of 1973. We had purchased tickets to go see the Mets at Shea Stadium for a Saturday 1:00 game. My dad, my two older brothers and I made the train trip from New Jersey into Manhattan and then took the number 7 train out to Shea. The weather was crummy and it looked like the game might be rained out, but we went there hoping to see a game. As it turned out, the game was rained out, and we waited in line to exchange our rain checks for another game. But the question turned to what we would do with the rest of that day.

The idea of seeing a movie came up, which sounded great. Which movie? I would bet it was my oldest brother Bob who came up with the idea of seeing Jaws. It had just come out, there had been lots of commercials about it, and it was rumored to be gory, which my brothers loved. My dad agreed that we could see it - I would imagine he had a newspaper and was able to find out where in midtown Manhattan it was playing. We took the subway back to midtown and traded our rain check line for a ticketholders line, waiting to get in to one of those huge theaters that used to be all over midtown in those days.

I was poised at the ready from the moment the movie started to cover my eyes with my hands. It wasn't the first time I was going to a movie that my brothers would love but that would most certainly prove to be too scary for me. Just a year earlier my brothers had snuck me into a showing of Willard with them, duping my mom into thinking we were going to see some kid's film that was playing at the same theater. I spent most of those 90 minutes with my hands over my eyes, and walked away with a stomach ache from all the gut-clenching I had done.

But this was supposed to be a high-quality film, not a lowbrow shock feature. And sure enough, from the first scene of teens partying on the beach at night, I was pulled in. And though there were a couple scenes that were too scary for me - the one where Brody and Hooper go out to investigate the boat floating aimlessly at night, and the guy's head pops out of a hole in the bottom of the boat stands out - overall I was awed by the experience, and of course relieved when Brody finally killed the shark at the end.

The movie let out just in time for us to go catch an early dinner at the Horn & Hardart Restaurant in Penn Station, our usual routine after watching ballgames, before hopping on the train back home to New Jersey. My mom was irritated when she found out what my dad had taken us to see - she was particularly worried that it would cause me to have nightmares. Sure enough, when I laid down for my usual 9pm bedtime (hey, I was only 11 at the time!), I found it hard to settle down to sleep. Vague scary images were floating around in my head, and each time I dozed off, they would start to solidify into disturbing storylines of monsters chasing me and such. So after maybe an hour of trying to sleep, I got up and wandered into the living room, where the rest of my family was watching tv.

My confession that I was having trouble sleeping renewed my mom's complaint to my dad about taking us to such a scary film. But she went easy on me, offering me cookies and milk and letting me watch tv until I had settled down enough to go back to sleep. I'll never forget what was on tv: my family was watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, I think on public television. Well, I couldn't understand their accents very well, or get their jokes which were over my head, but still I felt very special, getting to see what was obviously adult fare. The fact that my two older brothers, who are only 2 and 3-1/2 years older than me, were also watching, did not diminish my feeling of being included in adult entertainment watching.

I suppose I did settle down after a couple of chocolate chip cookies and glasses of milk, and then was able to sleep just fine. It would be a number of years until the next time I saw a movie in New York City - off the top of my head, I can't think what the next one was, but it must've been during college, nearly ten years later. That first time made quite an impression. And "Jaws" remains a favorite, the kind of film that, if I am idly watching tv on the weekend, and I notice it's on, I will watch it all the way through without changing the channel.