What’s a book, movie, or TV show that you wish you could experience again for the first time?
I’ve written before about seeing Star Wars and the big movie musicals of the late 70s over and over again. Grease in particular was so fun to see on the big screen for the first time. The “teenagers” in the movie were a few years older than me and they made high school look like, well…a Hollywood musical. What could be better? And it’s hard to explain just how appealing young John Travolta was back in the day.
I had a poster similar to this in my bedroom (though mine was in color).
OK, I looked it up and Travolta was actually 24 when he played Danny Zuko. And Jeff Conaway, who played Kenickie, was 28. (So I was a 13-year old lusting after grown men twice my age.)
As an adult, I’ve not been a big re-watcher of movies, or re-reader of books for that matter. Once is usually enough. Sometimes, if I really like a movie, I’ll see it twice in a movie theater. As an adult, I saw both Good Will Hunting and Barbie twice on the big screen.
As a kid, I watched a few movies five or more times. Other than Star Wars, they were all musicals:
Sound of Music (1965)
Leisl and Rolf in the gazebo
Stars Wars (the original 1977 film)
Grease (1978)
Hair (1979)
For the musicals, I also bought the soundtrack albums, so I could listen to them over and over, and act them out with my neighborhood friends. I remember fights over whose turn it was to be Liesl (from Sound of Music) and whose brother could be roped into playing her Nazi boyfriend Rolf. Unfortunately, nobody in the neighborhood had a gazebo, so we had to act that one out by jumping on and off living room sofas. (I am 16… going on 17…thud)
For Star Wars, I bought the sheet music for the main theme by the great John Williams and learned to play it on the piano. I still have it.
I had to pencil in the base notes, because they fell so far from below the staff lines.
Has a more perfect movie theme ever been composed? Are you really even GenX if this piece of music doesn’t give you at least a couple of goosebumps?
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