Growing Up at the Movies

"When we walked out of the Oaks movie theater in Berkeley, California, we were giddy, punch-drunk. It's a perfect movie-a big, exciting American movie. From its opening minutes you live inside of it, your regular life suspended somewhere behind you. Waiting for my mother to pick us up, we noticed that we were both vaguely on guard against shark attacks, even though we were standing on Solano Avenue, where the only dangerous sea creatures were down the street in the King Tsin lobster tank."

"My father loved the movies, and he knew a lot about them. He'd grown up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and as a child he'd gone by himself to the Pickwick Theatre every weekend. On Saturdays, he'd get the whole enchilada: the serial, the cartoons, the short subjects, the newsreel, a Western, and then the feature. On Sundays, there would be a shorter, more dignified program-the coming attractions, the newsreel, and a better class of feature."

A summer 1975 screening of Jaws in Berkeley produced exhilaration and a lingering fear of the water for a child and his father. The film immersed viewers immediately, suspending ordinary life and prompting hypervigilance even on a city avenue. The marketing line "You'll never go in the water again" amplified the visceral impact and a personal resolve to avoid the beach. The father’s childhood movie rituals at the Pickwick Theatre—serials, cartoons, newsreels, and features—left deeply lived impressions, linking generational memory to the formative power of communal moviegoing.

Read at The Atlantic