My Cable Daze, part 1: Sebastian O’Brien
Here’s the start of a new series we’re calling “Cable Daze”, profiles of what films stick out the most in the minds of each Cinefile employee from the early days of their cable-TV watching, and why.
name: Sebastian O’ Brien, Cinefile day shift
primary watching years: 1981-1984
“Doctor Detroit”: “I found myself amused by Dan Ackroyd’s main character because he’s an alter ego super-villain, plus he’s a pimp! And one of his ‘girls’ is Fran Drescher, who I always had the hots for. It’s not a good movie, but it’s got a lot of entertainment value to it. Have you ever seen ‘Doctor Detroit’? God, I wanna watch ‘Doctor Detroit’ now! The more I think about it, the more I like it, still. It was a colossal bomb that nobody liked.”
“The Last American Virgin”: “The single most-watched movie by me on cable, sheerly because it had boobs. As a kid, you’d know exactly which parts of the movie had the boobs in it, and you’d sit through the whole thing just for those moments.” Did the legendary soundtrack to this film (Blondie, The Cars, Devo, Journey) rub off on you as a music fan? “At the time I was listening to heavy metal. Journey was in a ton of those movies, and if you’d asked my 13-year-old self, I would’ve said ‘Journey is for fags!’, but I like Journey’s music now because of that association. Those movies turned me onto the band’s charms.”
“Looking For Mr. Goodbar” (WARNING! Spoilers ahead…): “I was shocked and disturbed by this one when it was randomly on one night when I was watching with my dad, when I visited him at his house. It’s got a lot of sex, and then it ends in horrible violence. Diane Keaton plays this swinging ’70s slut girl, who goes around fucking ever guy she can find — until the last guy who she fucks stabs her to death while a strobe light is going. It was the first time I’d seen anything like that. I didn’t even understand that you could make a movie like that! She was ‘Annie Hall’, you know? ‘Annie Hall’ getting stabbed to death while fucking a guy. It ends on her dead face, staring off into space as a strobe light is going! It might as well have been a snuff film.”
other memories:
- The Toy
- Halloween III: Season Of The Witch
- Trading Places
- The Golden Child
- House
- Troll
- Night Shift
- the “Vacation” movies
- the first few “Police Academy” movies (”I remember thinking Michael Winslow, the guy who made all the noises, was hilarious.”)
- Blame It On Rio (”The titillating 13-year-old horniness factor…”)
- Howard The Duck (”Saw it at least 5 or 6 times…”)
- The Hitchhiker, TV series (”Do you remember ‘The Hitchhiker’? It was the sexy horror anthology show that hinged around this mysterious guy that would wander from town to town, a la Bill Bixby in ‘The Incredible Hulk’? Somehow it always involved sex and monsters.”)
summation:
“Cable came into prominence during my adolescence, and it was a metaphor for the magic disappearing from my world. When I was a little kid, I loved going out to the movies. The ritual of it was a big deal, especially going out to see R-rated films (the first one I ever saw was ‘Alien’.) I would brag about it to my friends and they’d go “Oooh, you saw an R-rated movie?!” But since cable had R-rated stuff on all the time, it diminished that, because anyone could see one just by staying up late.
The whole transient nature of movies being on whenever, catching bits and pieces of them, diminished my awe of film. It’s like getting cake everyday for dessert; it’s not special anymore. Also, something I didn’t realize at the time was that everything on was pan-and-scan, and I literally wasn’t getting the same thing as in a theater. I really do love going to the movies; it’s like my church, with the movie presented to me the way they wanted it to be presented. Even with high-def DVD, I’ll still be going out to the movies.
Cable’s strange because even now, you don’t have a choice. You’re at the whim of these programmers. Who are they? Who were the people programming cable? How does it even work? I have no idea.”