It was 1962 – I was 8 years old, and my older brother, all of 10, took me to see my first movie on the big screen, not in a movie theater, mind you, but at a matinee showing in our church’s basement of Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Imagine, Cecil B. DeMille taking hold of an 8-year-old’s life for 2-1/2 hours. I would never be the same. I don’t think I had any sort of handle on what a movie was back in 1962, which is to say I didn’t realize movies were fiction. To me, “The Greatest Show on Earth” was real, like my life was real, only their life up on the screen was bigger, bolder and better than mine. I decided then and there I wanted to be in that life.

I also hadn’t cottoned on to the idea that movies employed actors and actresses. But that all changed in a hurry when I saw Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” when I was 13 and developed my first movie star crush on Leonard Whiting. I wrote him a fan letter, to which I never received a reply, and that was the end of that, and so I moved on, as I suspect he did, although he probably wasn’t aware there was anything to move on from. My takeaway from that heart-wrenching denial of our relationship: If I was a movie star, I’d answer my mail.

You know me. Give me a challenge, and I’m going to say, “I can do that!” So at the tender age of 13 I decided what I most wanted to be was an actor. Well, that career dream didn’t last long. Two years later, I was in a school production of “She Stoops To Conquer” and my teacher told me I’d make a good actor. While I basked in the affirmation, for the first time I actually stopped to think about it for a minute. Which is all it took me to realize: all those lines to memorize. That sounded like a lot of work that couldn’t sound more boring if Perry Como sang the tune. I lay down my thespian dreams and picked up the guitar. Kumbaya.

However, this newfound respect for actors only intensified my love of movies. I grew up on the West Island of Montreal, with its one movie theater nine miles away. That meant growing up, going to the movies was a big deal, like getting Ruby Foo’s Chinese takeout — it never happened. And if it did, it was an event of vast proportion. But when I moved away from home to an apartment in downtown Montreal, I knew I had died and gone to movie heaven. I could see any movie anytime I wanted. Those were the years of “Jaws,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Return of the Pink Panther, “Silver Streak,” “All the President’s Men” and dozens more. Talk about gluttony. I had my fill.

For years I would watch the Academy Awards, having seen every movie up for an award, and it was fun to guess the winners. Then came married life, and kids, and a night out at the movies was beyond the budget. Thankfully, the world invented DVDs and Block Buster and Netflix and saved us parents from a movie desert. And nowadays with Netflix streaming, I could watch a movie every night, if I only had the stamina.

I get it that movies reflect the society that creates them, but a lot of the movies produced since Covid are reflections I’m not willing to spend my time and weekly allowance on. The ultimate movie curmudgeon. Two examples from a lengthier lists of things that bug me in movies nowadays: 1) Why is there always a parking spot in front of the New York office building when our hero shows up in his BMW? Every single time. That defies reality — beyond a leap of faith. 2) Why do directors have actors who don’t smoke play characters who do? I’m not against smoking in movies, but if a character smokes, then they should really smoke. Not light the cigarette, take a puff, hold that puff for a few seconds, then blow it out, then get called away, and they butt out the cigarette. No real smoker would ever do that. They’d smoke it down to the filter, cough and then go on their way. Now that’s Oscar material. OK, one more. 3) Actors who are constantly moving their head from side to side when they talk. This is meant to indicate something, I’m sure, but all it looks like to me is wobble dolls.

Languid is the order of the day today – Derek and the Dominoes …