media: films

I thought that in cinemas, all the dust particles that you could see lit up in the beam of light from the projector were actually thousands of little pieces of the film travelling to the screen to make the picture!

When I was a small child, I used to love to watch Godzilla movies. I thought they were like documentaries and I felt so sorry for all those people in Japan who kept getting attacked by Godzilla and the other monsters. I also worried about the day that they eventually made it over to California (where I live) and attacked us. I guess my parents should have talked to me more.

My sister was convinced Laurel a Hardy were puppets because of the lines in the old black and white films. We were quite young, and I didn't have the ability to persuade her otherwise, despite knowing she had to be wrong. It was very frustrating.

I used to believe that everything I saw in the movies was a documentary, so I could never understand why people kept rebuilding Tokyo or any of the other cities, because King Kong, Godzilla, etc were only going to come and stomp them flat.

I used to believe that William Shatner starred as "The Incredible Shrinking Man." Once I saw the movie with Grant Williams in it, I came to believe there must be another version, identical in every way except with William Shatner in it.

My mother used to tell me that when people French-kissed in movies they were actually not really kissing, as with their heads at an angle to each other their lips did not touch (somehow that meant it didn't count as a 'real' kiss).

I'm still inclined to believe that she believed it, too. And still does.

When people got killed on the big or little screen, I thought it was for real. When grown-ups were "tired of living", they would very naturally volunteer for that kind of thing.

Even though I was already eleven years old, I was really terrified by the movie posters for "Carrie" when it came out. I didn't know anything about the story or why this poor girl was covered in blood. I assumed it was just one more random and scary thing that could happen to people. For a long time I was afraid that blood would suddenly come gushing out all over me for no reason.

I was 7 years old when"The Excorcist" first came out and there tons of scary rumors about this film. My aunt knew a woman who had aged twenty years while watching it. I of course believed her.

It was some time in my teens before I realised that James Bond actually had sex with all his 'Bond girls'. I thought they were just kissing and stuff - the idea and them having sex was quite shocking to me - "But they're not even married!"

When my ten year old daughter was about
two, she used to ask to watch the Dig Digs
all the time. I had no idea what she was
talking about until she recieved a Snow
White shirt for Christmas and said "look
mommy the dig digs" Later that day, we watched the movie and realized the Dwarves sing a
song about digging! Mystery solved.

When I was very small, Dad took us to a drive-in movie where Ivanhoe was playing. It was my first knowledge of 'knights in armor'. My brother and I were so impressed, we stopped playing cowboys and Indians and began a new game. But we didn't know what to call ourselves. I asked Dad (who wasn't very impressed by the movie), "Dad, What was Ivanhoe"? Dad said, "He was a goon". We played 'goons' until I was about twelve.

For many, many years I thought that when the movie stars kissed on tv, the women became pregnant, and that is why you wouldn't see them in a movie again for a long period of time. Took awhile to have that baby! :)

My parents had me convinced that the Wizard of Oz went from BW to color to BW because they invented color movies after they started filming and only had a limited amount to use in each movie made so they used what they had and went back to black & white to finish it.

For years the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate factory terrified me. The thought of a little kid, no matter how mean and evil getting burned in a furnace or being squeezed after turning into a giant blueberry filled me with dread. To this day, I still sort of see it as a horror movie.

I used to think after watching the movie Goast Busters that that the pink foamy gewy stuff that came out of the bath facet would come out of mine when I had to take a bath so I was always scared to take a bath.

Movies used to befuddle me.I couldn't figure out the amazing coincidence by which a phone would ring at precisely the right moment...or someone's lottery ticket "coincidently" just happened to be drawn.

Before I could read, I used to believe that movie credits were the book version of the exact same movie, so couldn't figure out why people who could read would stick around to see the film.

As a small child, I used to believe that Elizabeth Taylor (the actress) and Queen Elizabeth (the queen) were the same person. I think I figured out the difference around 3rd-4th grade (1962), but I was really confused there for a while (both were in the news a lot back then).