My Latest Obsession

I've been known to fixate on things over the years. My current obsession: The AFI 100 Years...100 Movies List. For those that don't want to click the link, basically in 1998, AFI (American Film Institute) compiled a list of the 100 greatest American movies over the last 100 years. It was voted on by 1500 people in the movie industry. There's all kinds of criteria that they use to pick the movies, but that's not important right now. What's important is my obsession...

A few years ago, I had the bright idea that I was going to watch all 100 of the movies on this list. I had seen some, but for some reason I thought that if I was going to be a true movie fan, I should watch them all. The idea languished in the recesses of my mind trapped behind other obsessions such as blogging, downloading every single song I could find by Little Brother and anyone remotely affiliated with the Justus League (What up, Adei? I know you think that's weird, but it is what it is. LOL) and watching the entire series of several TV shows, such as the Sopranos, Gilmore Girls, and countless British crime series. Yeah, I know that's a lot of obsessions, but at least I'm not hurting anyone, right?

Fast forward to late 2008. I'm dating Jameil and she is a documentary filmmaker. We started watching tons of movies, some documentaries and other's fiction. I got back in the swing of watching movies all the time. I remembered my old idea of watching all these movies and thanks to Netflix, Turner Classic Movies and the University of Florida library, I put the plan in action. First thing I did was make a list of all the movies I hadn't seen. There were around 55 out of the 100 I needed to watch. Then I started getting the DVDs in the mail from Netflix and taking advantage of their Instant Viewing option. I was making significant progress on the list. Some of the movies I thought I would hate (ie westerns and musicals), I actually liked. Conversely, some of the classic movies on the list were straight garbage to me (The Graduate, The French Connection, Midnight Cowboy.) I guess everyone has his own tastes. Before I knew it, I was down to like 25 movies when I discovered something. AFI updated their list in 2007. That meant that 27 more movies were added to the list. Sure, I could have just went with the original list, but what kind of obsessive behavior is that? I decided I was going to watch every single last movie on both the 1998 list and the 2007 list. I remembered that Turner Classic Movies often plays these movies, so I went to their website and got the schedule for when they were coming on. I added that to my list. I figured if they are coming on TV, I didn't need to wait for Netflix to send them to me. I flew through the movies with ease. It wasn't until I got to the end that I knew it would get more difficult.

See, there were several movies on the list that I was NOT looking forward to watching. The Marx Brothers movies (I think there were 2) took some self prodding to watch. Turns out I loved them. I also have a strong aversion to silent movies. There were way too many of them, and I just can't get into movies without dialogue (with the exception of Charlie Chaplin's City Lights. I actually liked that one.) For the most part I watched those on fast forward, only stopping to read those stupid title cards that explain what's happening in a particular scene. Even though I was dreading those, I made it through those with relative ease. Then the biggest problem: the racist movies. "Birth of a Nation" was basically a propaganda movie about the formation of the KKK. It was incredibly racist, and even though I watched it on fast forward, I saw enough horrible blackface caricatures and Klan glorification to last me 10 lifetimes. Also, Gone With The Wind. I haven't watched that one yet, but I seem to remember back when I was a militant midget (James Evans 1976), hearing about how it was racist. I will soon see, as it is one of only 2 movies I have left to watch.

How's that for obsession? In three months, I've watched at least 70 movies and only have 2 to go. "Gone With The Wind", which Netflix doesn't want to send me for some reason, and the 1939 version of "Wuthering Heights" which is supposedly out of print and not available anywhere, (although my sister who is sharing in my obsession says she found it in the library in Savannah and should be bringing it with her this weekend.) With any luck, I will be finished with this obsession by Monday, and ready to move on to the next one. Any ideas on what I should fixate on next?