Save Me the Aisle Seat: A Brief Excerpt

Movies have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.   Some of my earliest childhood memories center on little snippets of black-and-white movies I glimpsed while my parents watched television in the Florida room of our second Miami home; they are vague because I was less than two years old and my dad was still alive, but sometimes I still see, in my mind’s eye, little fragments of old John Wayne Westerns and war movies which my father had enjoyed.

It’s no exaggeration when I say that my childhood relationship with the movies was one of the key influences during my formative years.   Because I had very few father figures beyond my maternal grandfather and several uncles before I entered junior high, I tended to mimic certain traits of actors and movie characters I admired.  I wanted to be as brave as John Wayne’s many cowboys and military heroes, as idealistic as Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker, as dashing-and-daring as Errol Flynn and Clark Gable, and as funny as Steve Martin.   

Indeed, my love of movies was, and still is, the most important factor in my conscious decision to become a writer when I was 14 years old.  I probably had flirted with the notion of writing for a living before then, but after watching Star Wars in 1977 and realizing that films begin as scripts on the printed page – or, nowadays, on computer screens – I figured that if I could not be an astronaut, a U.S. Marine or an Air Force/Navy pilot, I would become a screenwriter.  Or a novelist.  Or maybe both.

Before achieving, at least in some form, the goal of writing a screenplay for an active filmmaker, I’ve had a lot of little career sidetracks and even major stumbles along the way.  I studied journalism in high school and junior college and wrote many movie reviews as a staff writer and entertainment editor for two student newspapers.  I then shifted my attention into the more complicated world of communications consulting, English composition tutoring, and ghostwriting for a client who wanted to break into the competitive world of children’s literature. 

I eventually began writing movie reviews again in 2003, the year in which I discovered – purely by chance – that many online stores allow customers to write reviews about products they have purchased.  I wrote my first online review at Amazon on April 13, 2003, a brief write-up about the 2001 two-DVD set of Star Wars- Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

For eight months, I submitted reviews at Amazon almost on a daily basis even though the site doesn’t offer any substantial compensation for writers beyond a Top Reviewer badge once they have written X number of reviews and received Y number of votes indicating positive helpfulness to readers, blissfully unaware that there are Internet sites that pay reviewers for their work. 

At the time, I was still working as a ghostwriter, so I wasn’t really thinking about writing reviews for monetary gain.  I wrote reviews at Amazon because (a) I enjoyed the creative challenge of evaluating items I had purchased and (b) I figured that getting noticed as a Top Reviewer there would get me some exposure and eventual name recognition.

It wasn’t until December of 2003 that I decided to take a friend’s helpful hint that maybe I was wasting my time writing reviews at Amazon for free and that I should check out a four-year-old site called Epinions, which was not an online store but rather a consumer review-oriented online community. 

My friend said that she wasn’t a member of Epinions and that she wasn’t sure about the specifics of how reviews were vetted or how writers got paid, but she kept on pushing.  “Alex,” she said, “you write well and your Amazon reviews are good, but isn’t it time you could make some money with the time and energy you devote to them?”

In the beginning I resisted, partly because I tended to be skeptical about making money online and didn’t want to be conned or have my identity stolen, but mostly because I was unsure about my writing skills and ability to attract readers.  But the more I thought about what my friend said, the more the idea made sense.

Thus, on December 12, 2003, I joined Epinions and submitted a review of the then-new four disc box set of the Indiana Jones movies (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and a behind-the-scenes Bonus Disc). 

At first, I basically rewrote existing reviews from Amazon to adapt them to the more detailed style favored at Epinions, but I eventually got into the habit of writing all-new (and longer) reviews for the new site. This change was gradual at first; if you look at my first 300 or so Epinions reviews, you’ll notice that many are simply expanded versions of the ones I did at Amazon between 2003 and 2005.

Although I write in many categories at Epinions, I seem to focus more on Movies because I love films and appreciate the movie-making process.  I don’t deliberately hold back in style or effort when I write reviews in such categories as Electronics or Kids & Family, but – unless I am writing about books or Star Wars collectibles – I tend to be more enthusiastic and therefore more creative when I critique movies.

I’d like to claim that my reviewing style is something that just happened to come naturally to me from the day that I turned in my first review for Mr. Bridge’s fourth period journalism class at South Miami High, but that’s not quite true.

Before I even knew I would be a staff writer for my high school newspaper, I was already a big fan of Sneak Previews, a PBS TV show which featured reviews by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times and the late Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.   Not only was Sneak Previews an entertaining way to learn about new movies which were in theaters or were going to be released soon, but it also was fun to watch, especially when Ebert and Siskel disagreed about a movie.   The verbal sparring matches between the two critics were often spirited – but never nasty – and always thought-provoking.

Bill Cosford, the late film critic for my hometown newspaper, The Miami Herald, was also one of my wellsprings for inspiration.  I started following his reviews after reading a piece he wrote in 1978 after 20^th Century Fox re-released Star Wars for the first time; Cosford was as enthusiastic about that film and its two sequels as I was back then and that earned him kudos from me right off the bat. 

Eventually, though, as I matured and broadened my movie-watching horizons, I read Bill Cosford’s reviews for their clean and crisp prose, clear analyses of plot, acting, writing, and directing, and his acerbic wit.  I didn’t always agree with his opinions – he gave Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan a negative review that I still disagree with – but I always liked the way he presented them.  He was a great writer and knew his stuff; he was a professor in the University of Miami’s  School of Communication’s motion pictures program and worked at the Herald from 1973 until his unexpected death at the age of 47 in 1994.

***

This book is a collection of some of the movie reviews I have written for Epinions over the past eight years.  It is not, by any means, a comprehensive list of every review I have written for the Movies category at Epinions; it is focused solely on films which were originally released in theaters and not made-for-television productions.  It’s not that I am a “film snob” that believes TV movies are inferior to those made for the silver screen, but choosing which reviews to include would have been far more difficult had I not narrowed the scope of this book down some.

I am not, by any means of the imagination, an expert on films, film production or the movie industry’s financial aspects, nor have I taken any courses such as Film Appreciation 101 in college.  I’m just simply a guy who likes to go to a theater with friends or pop a DVD (or Blu-ray) into a player and watch a movie for the sheer fun of it.  I’m also a guy who enjoys writing for the sheer pleasure of it, and writing reviews – whether it’s to praise a movie or pan it – is a happy product of the mingling of these two passions of mine.

Finally, I’d like to thank my long-time friend and writing colleague Leigh Egan for her kind assistance in the preparation of this book.  She not only has helped in the production and editing process, but her advice and encouragement have been the proverbial wind in this writer’s sails.

(c) 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All rights reserved.