the history of our cinema history class part i: prehistory

In his blog, Ethan talked about his perspective on the cinema history class we take together. So today is as good a time as any to present my perspective.

Back in 2010, Ethan was enamored of horror movies. And not just any horror movies. The kind of horror movies that some call "torture porn" -- movies that graphically depict torture. The Saw series were some of his favorites. I didn't like it, but I didn't want to forbid them. Blair found that Nassau Community College has adult continuing education classes in cinema history. Maybe that could influence his taste for the better. We signed Ethan up for the class in horror movies. Well, we wanted to, anyway. But he was under 18, and the college's website wouldn't allow him to register. So I registered myself. The plan was that I'd bring him to class. I'd show up early for the first class and explain the situation to the lecturer. Hopefully he'd understand.

And that was how we met Keith Crocker. As I would come to learn, Keith was a local film historian. He makes his living being involved with movies in a variety of ways. I'm not going to try, in the venue, to do justice to what he does. Suffice to say he knows movies.

If I recall correctly, Keith was teaching several cinema classes at the college:

• the history of horror films
• old comedy teams
• Spaghetti Westerns
• filmmaking

He was, pretty much, teaching each of these classes each semester. Ethan and I started taking all of them (well, all except the filmmaking class) over and over again. The classes would meet four times*, for two hours each. During that time, Keith would talk about the genre -- the history, the influences, the people involved. He also displayed bits of memorabilia from his personal collection, and (in the comedy and horror classes) show Castle Film Digests, which were abridged versions of the movies. Essentially, they would show the beginning and ending of movies, along with some of the material in the middle. It was enough for the viewer to get the point, but not enough to get the full nuance or to understand the characters. Keith would show us a reel of several digests. I distinctly remember the abridged version of The Invisible Man.

Ethan and I probably made things marginally more difficult for Keith. With repeat customers, he started trying to find ways to make the class a little different each time. Which is to his credit. He could have easily kept the classes the same. No one could reasonably criticize him for that. But, as a teacher, he felt it was important to give us new material. At this point, I was probably simply that annoying guy with the kid who kept trying to chat with him after class.

But those digests had piqued my interest. I started thinking that it would be great to have some kind of in-depth class where each session focused on one movie. There would be an introduction. We'd watch the movie, and then discuss it. I mentioned the idea to Keith on more than one occasion.

I like to think that that's how Keith got the idea. Maybe it is. Maybe not. But at any rate, within a couple years -- I think it was 2012 -- Keith invited Ethan and me to be inaugural members of his home-taught film class.

*For some reason, I think the Spaghetti Westerns class only met twice. Maybe I'm wrong. I dunno. But it's not a material concern. There may be other immaterial mistakes in the information above. Maybe I have a year wrong, or something like that. But nothing materially important.