QUEST: The Year I Watched 365 Movies

Some people set out to cure cancer, climb Everest, or become a vigilante, fighting the scum of the city with a nifty black cape. I decided to watch movies. And lots of them. 365 movies in 365 days, in fact. Did I prove to myself and future generations that with a little bit of physical laziness and expansive brainpower anyone can run the gamut of movie history? I wouldn't rule out the possibility just yet. In 2006, I decided to cram 111 years of photographed visuals into my head in one year's time. Ridiculous you might say? Yes. Let us travel back in time to see how this exhaustive waste of everyone else's time, but mine, started and how it almost buried me in a grave of celluloid dreams and late rental movie fees.

2005 was dying fast and Father Time was ready to bury it. The New Year waited eagerly in the cold wings of late December, ready to bare the torch of time. With the 2006 just six hours away, most people my age began to dream of throwing back shots while making useless resolutions, like going tanning more often, and figuring out ways to reduce their hangovers the next morning. Me, I thought about a forth-rate get-together I'd be attending that night with a laggardly shrug. To kill time, I decided to pop in Stanely Kubrick's 1957 classic, Paths of Glory, into my DVD player, a film of his I hadn't seen yet. Although I was thoroughly enjoying it, I found myself in an inexplicably bad mood, having always hated New Year's Eve. I shut it off halfway through. Heading out into the night I promised I'd finish it tomorrow. Little did I know, I was about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime…. or a year, to pin it down.

Indeed I did finish the movie the next day. The following day I watched another movie. And on the third of January, I watched another. Things tend to move pretty slowly in the dead of winter. On January 5th, I began watching one of my favorite music documentaries, Killing a Camera, about the criminally underrated band, Braid. In it, their guitarist, Chris Broch, mentioned their singer, Bob Nanna, had watched 365 movies in 1998. Eureka. It hit me. What a remarkable feat. Never in my life had I heard of such a brilliant idea. Jefferson helped write the Declaration. Rodney Mullen invented the flat-ground ollie. And Bob Nanna watched 365 movies. One movie for each day of the year. Not even learning about Kennedy's assassination, the 1981 USA Olympic hockey team's miracle win, or watching FOX's Alien Autopsy when I was nine, got me so worked up. I knew then what I had to do.

I began documenting my work in a notebook, trying to cram in movies day after day. But the harsh depression of the dead winter break, mixed with a redundant substitute teaching job I recently undertook, took its sullen toll. By January 22, I had given up, having only watched 20 movies up to that point. Admirable, but losing its luster fast.

In February, I began dating my girlfriend Kristin, and, naturally, with dating comes watching and talking about movies. If you're like me, and prefer talking about director's work to make-out sessions and sex, then you know exactly how invigorating this can be on several levels.

Sometime around March, I had mentioned to her my original goal.

"What the hell? Why did you give up? That sound pretty cool to me," she said.

"Come on. I've got better things to do, like try to seduce you and get out of this room for a change. Besides, I'm more than 25 movies off pace at this point," I reasoned.

"No. You should do it. That sounds like a really cool idea."

Thinking this was some twisted way of being sexy and impressionable to her, I decided I would continue my conquest, knowing full well this could possibly destroy my newfound relationship from the inside out. I will do it, I decided. I was pretty obsessed with movies anyway and this would do me good. It later occurred to me, maybe this is some sort of demented female test to see what I loved more; her or Alfred Hitchcock. Who knew? With little thought, I began loading up my Netflix waiting list with hundreds of movies. I was armed, dangerous, and ready to sit on my fat ass, a lot!

With the passing Spring semester, I sunk deeper and deeper into my expedition, renting and copying movies onto my computer as if every movie itself contained the secret of the Holy Grail. To gain valuable viewing time, I had to devise plans to cut out the social life I had once mildly participated in. For one, I became a MacGyver of alcohol, researching and concocting vicious schemes in which I'd buy the cheapest, lo-carbonated beers, so my girlfriend would ultimately consume them, not burp, retain the alcohol, and fall asleep before me. Meanwhile, I'd finished up on my dirt cheap six pack of Miller HighLife and would dive into the night with a two-and-a-half hour film and a slight buzz, ready to tackle the dawn and all the omni-present metaphors that lay before me on the glow of my television. When the phone would ring in the middle of a movie, my parents or friends on the other end, I'd hang up. No I don't want to hang out with you. I'm hanging out with Spike Lee and Sergei Eisenstein. Hmm, what a peculiar ménage tiors, indeed.

On Fridays in the Spring, I'd substitute teach, which required little to no brain power. I had to pass out worksheets or quizzes and continually tell ungrateful twerps to "sit down" and "shut up" R. Lee Ermey style. On Thursday nights, when the sleep wouldn't come, and the thought of knocking off a couple movies entered my brain, I ultimately opted to go on little to no sleep. After the film, with an hour sleep under my belt, I'd cursed the phone call from the superintendent in the morning. She'd assign me to my class room for the day. "Fuck off superintendent. What do you know about Ingmar Bergman's films anyway? Do his extreme close-ups mean nothing to you? What about his representation of settings as a reflection on character emotions? I don't think so! And for that matter, I don't need a paycheck," I'd dream of saying. Instead, I'd humbly agree to work, throw the blankets off my sleepless body, pump myself full of coffee, and head over to the school.

After the Spring semester ended, and my substitute teaching job became seasonally obsolete, I headed into a new realm. For the past five summers, I had worked laborious night jobs, warehouse slave tasks, and delivery nightmares. This summer was gonna be different. I became completely obsessive and engulfed in my goal. Catching up to my pace of one movie a day was growing closer as I began consuming two to three films in a 24 hour succession. I scrolled notes on the movies in marble notebooks that began to tatter under my feverish pen. Scratching out the name, director, and a meaningless rating next to each movie, I became fanatical about updating it daily, if not tri-hourly.

To make some money on the side for my CD and dinner collection, I decided to take up one of my old jobs delivering newspapers. This meant my internal clock was again thrown a knuckball of delirium. In my insomnia, and drive to stay awake until four in the morning to be the best newsy I could be, I wrapped my whiskey stained eyes, and caffeine fueled brain around an array of foreign films, soaking up the subtitles like a livid vacuum.

Despite constant threats from my mom to get a real job I never cracked under the pressure.

"Are you just gonna sit here all day and watch this movie. Everyday, I come in your room and you're sitting in this chair watching that television. It's like your eight years old again," she'd say.

"What do you know about film anyway Mom? Go watch Sleepless in Seattle and write me a shot-by-shot analysis and then we'll see who's laughing. And it's not television, it's a movie," I'd say, but only silently in my head. Generally, I'd end up murmuring something like, "Yeah I'm gonna…uh… sit here. I like… this movie thing here…..okay….yeah."

The summer dragged on as I pressed onward. I walked a fine line of cult, contemporary, and classic film, fueling my knowledge with any director or off-beat piece of picturesque narrative that intrigued me. My brain became a cinemaphile's wet dream.

Eventually, when my fall 2006 semester of college started, I had officially caught up, and even surpassed my one-movie-a-day average. By the first day of classes, I was, in fact, two movies ahead of schedule. I began boasting to my girlfriend. She cheered me on as if I had just found a formula to reduce the size of tumors in lab rats. The select few of my friends who knew of my project began saying things like "Good job" and "Wow" instead of an uninspired "Oh, okay." Even my parents began asking me how many I had seen so far, sometimes recommending films like America's Sweethearts, Bloodsport 37, and Dirty Dancing to me. A smile and an "I'll check it out" usually soothed them for about a week.

Through casual, but wretched, stomach viruses, sinus crushing colds, and Italian 101 homework, I continued to chisel away at my goal, locking myself in the basement of the Montclair Library, viewing movies in between classes. At night, I began skipping meals and packing pre-made wraps from convenience stores just so I'd have time to scribble down my homework and finish my movies. To better my foreign language skills, I began diving into the films of Fredrico Fellini and Victor De Sicca. Still, I got a D in Italian.

On January 31, 2006, one year after I put Paths of Glory into my DVD player, I watched the last twenty minutes of Herschell Gordon Lewis' drive-in splatter classic Two Thousand Maniacs and I began to ponder. I felt about the same, thinking of a get-together I only wanted to go to so we could sulk over Dick Clark's stroke afflicted voicebox. I thought about the year that changed my life, almost drove me mad, and convinced me to stay an extra semester in college to obtain my film minor. I thought of my girlfriend who inspired me to achieve this goal in the first place and how last New Year's I was wondering how it'd be to kiss her. But most importantly, I thought, Shit, this is that last twenty minutes of the 365 th film I've gotta watch. And Goddamit I did it. As the credits rolled, I lifted my hands above my head and clapped as if I were watching Joe DiMaggio make his farewell speech. In the aftermath, I had gained about 20 pounds from lack of moving all day, run out of money in my checking account, learned how to substitute sleep for art, and forgot most of the good points and great shots I told myself I'd hang onto forever back in the Spring. It nearly killed me. I ejected the movie. With the goal finalized, I realized the future was mine for the taking. I could do anything as long as it didn't involve any accounting skills or strenuous physical activity. I had achieved the impossible. And all I have left was a notebook full of film titles and an expansive bootlegged DVD collection.


BELOW IS A LINK TO A LIST OF ALL 365 MOVIES I WATCHED IN 2006. COPY AND PASTE PLEASE!
http://365moviesin365days.freeservers.com/