From The Trenches: Father Knows Best

Note: Believe it or not, this post was actually written for Father's Day. A little late, but that's OK.

When I was a little girl, I considered it a special treat to go up to my parents' room and choose a book from my Dad's shelf. He was, and still is, a huge comedy fan, so the shelf was full of books about the Carry On films, Laurel & Hardy, Tony Hancock, the Comedy Store or the Marx Brothers.

My favorite was the big, colorful Carry On book. I would sit flipping through the pages and reading intently about Sid James, Kenneth Williams, Barbara Windsor, and my favorite, Jim Dale. This was still a year or two before 1992's flop Carry On Columbus, which was one of my first experiences of film criticism. I was so excited to discuss it with my Dad and show him what I had learned from his books - if I recall, he didn't think it was very good, and I agreed, even though I secretly liked it. I still hadn't seen many movies, but I loved being able to throw out movie titles and specific references; that's something I still take pride in today because I think it makes me sound smarter and more cultured than I am.

Around that time, I also started reading kid-oriented entertainment magazines. I remember the articles about the release of Curly Sue (1991) particularly vividly, and I was just obsessed with Home Alone 2 (1992). Over dinner, I would ask my parents if they had heard about a certain movie (which they inevitably hadn't) and then regale them with information I had picked up. It's been almost 20 years and I still haven't seen Curly Sue, but if you had asked me about it when I was 6, I would have talked your ear off.

I think what I've learned from my Dad is a very intellectual approach to movie-watching and a love of trivia and making connections - in fact, one board game we play asks you to connect two stars or two movies with as few points in between as possible; I've never lost. I think that's what led me into my future line of work and to this blog; I want to be able to quantify what I've seen and create something tangible out of my movie-watching experiences.

More importantly though, I've inherited a serious, deep-held love for comedy. Ninety-nine times out of 100, I will choose to watch a comedy film over a drama. Usually, this will be one of the same few titles: Ghostbusters (or Ghostbusters 2), Hot Fuzz, The Philadelphia Story, This Is Spinal Tap, etc. Eventually, the jokes stop actually being funny, but I'm still mesmerized by the timing and the rhythms. Even though our tastes these days are diverging (my Dad is going back to vaudeville and Old Hollywood comedy, while I'm forging ahead with the likes of The Mighty Boosh), I think we both secretly harbor a desire to be performers. Maybe that's the biggest thing I take from my Dad: we study the intricacies of film and comedy to feel that, however marginally, we're a part of it.