How did your parents shape your movie habits?

Because of my father (former movie exec), I judged the quality of a movie based solely on financial success. As an example, according to my father, Paramount's greatest achievement during mid 70's to mid 80's was Up in Smoke. It took years to shed that instinct.

My brother (the actor) pretty much made me watch every Robert Downey Jr. movie at least ten times growing up. As such, I'm a big fan.

As for my mom, she let me watch The Color Purple, Alien, Robocop and Raw at a very young age. Pretty much ruined me for kids movies.

This is something I've written a lot about before. I don't really talk about this much on the boards these days, but my mom died in 1989. The first thing my dad and I did a month after she died was go to the movies. (The Little Mermaid, a movie that I love, but is always bittersweet.) The next month, my dad joined Columbia House and the first four movies he got were the Star Wars trilogy and The Searchers. I like to think that 'diversity' of those movies -- as well as his constant desire to show me things like Casablanca and Citizen Kane and the Capras -- played an instrumental part in leaving me perpetually curious about film.

My dad currently works as a movie critic, and although we disagree quite often about things (the most recent and stunning being his claim that Crash is better than Brokeback Mountain, and he liked Dark Knight more than I did), he's one of a few people who's opinion on films I trust implicitly.

thankfully not at all as they both seem to have pretty bad taste. Try never censored my viewing really though so there was that and I could see pretty much whatever I wanted.

I'd say with music they were more influential.

Well, growing up we watched all kinds of movies. My parents would rent whatever new release was out and we'd watch as a family. We grew up watching stuff like Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Ghost Busters etc.... almost every chance we got.

I do remember that I was starting to head down the path of liking shitty movies. I one day asked my mom who her favourite actor was and she said, "Clint Eastwood." So I became interested and just started renting his movies every weekend. I think I'd end up getting one or two every weekend. I was 12 or 13 at the time and thank God I asked her that question and took an interest. His movies really changed the way I viewed movies and opened my eyes to all sorts of different movies.

My parents don't care jack shit about movies, which is sad. The most vivid movie memory of my father is when he rented the sensuous Pamela Anderson erotic thriller SNAPDRAGON and forbade me from watching it!

My father loves noir and films from the 20s, 30s, and 40s - so I grew up watching many older films and from that I garnered an appreciation for all cinema. Also, my parents never censored the films or television that I watched, and would often take me to films that you probably shouldn't bring a young child to. But, I loved every minute of it.

My dad was a big Star Wars fan. He was 31 or so when it came out so he was young enough to really dig it, and my earliest memory of movies is seeing Star Wars with my dad. And he loved Ridley Scott's Alien, but I was too young to see it. Since we didn't have home video I would always ask him to "tell me the story of Alien." And he would recount the film's plot to me every time. It was kind of like a bedtime story so when I actually saw it on video a few years later it was just incredible.

Dad introduced me to James Bond (Connery) and Superman (Donner), Batman (comics).

He more got me into surround sound setups and the Beatles.

Mom got me to basically hate Star Trek because she used to make fun of it, and how that my uncles used to watch it all the time and didn't pay attention to her.

Sounds like we are in the same boat. It was no problem for me to see any kind of beheading or violence, but if a tit popped out I had to leave the room until the tit was put back. Other than that, sky's the limit.

My mom rarely watches movies, except for a Pixar movie or something once in a while. My dad was a big influence, however. He'd rent stuff like 2001 and Metropolis as much as Raiders of the Lost Ark or even shit like 3 Ninjas.

But they would really censor everything I watched. No R rated movies until I was around 18, major exception being The Matrix. They were more lenient when it came to violence (tearing hearts out in Temple of Doom was okay, since it was PG). Sex and nudity in movies didn't even exist for me. I even started to self-censor. Once, my dad wanted to rent Brain Candy but I had to stop him and point out it was rated R. So I now have a lot of catching up to do, since so many classic films were denied.

When it comes to pop culture, my dad and I share the same tastes in music (eclectic but mostly classic rock), comic books (I grew up with his childhood collection) and he even recorded kids' shows like Pee Wee's Playhouse for himself.

Neither parent had a great deal to do with shaping my movie habits, except for The Godfather. When my dad showed it to me it was a revelation. Other than that my parents basically let me watch whatever I asked to see, and didn't really censor me at all. My mom freaked out when I saw Rambo as a wee tot, but that didn't last long.

Now, my aunt and uncle probably changed my movie habits considerably. They kept a massive VHS collection of classics, Disney, action, comedy, sci fi, drama...it was a ridiculous collection. Whenever I would visit my family my aunt would give me a new table of contents of what she had, and would let me go through and pick out movies to watch while I was there. I remember watching Excalibur on a loop, and taking it home to my dad to see.

My folks pretty much took us to see anything. I remember being bored as all hell as a child by Chariots Of Fire, tickled by DC Cab, and confused by all the pubes in Porky's.

My Dad never really watched many movies.. but there were probably a handful that I know he loved.

Blues Brothers
National Lampoon's Vacation
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
the Great Outdoors
A Christmas Story

yeah.. that's about it. He likes comedy.

I refuse to listen to my Mom talk about movies, because she likes to 'tell the whole movie".

My dad took me to see Robocop in the theater when I was 8. Afterwards he couldn't believe what he had just allowed his son to see but it was too late. I was forever changed.

I was raised by television in the 70's and 80's.
As a result I have a love of horror and classic movies since that's what local stations ran on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. In the 80's we got cable and my television introduced me to the glory of higher cinema such as Caddyshack and Urban Cowboy. A few years later television brought a VCR home to live with us and that lead me down the sordid path of cult trash.

Like MikeShayne, my parents had a bigger influence on my musical tastes, but they would take me to see everything from Tron to Tootsie to Time Bandits. My mom took a couple film appreciation classes back in college and subsequently taught a mass media course for middle schoolers. Every once in a while (before we had a VHS player) she'd bring home a big beastly projector and screeen and show some movies in our living room. I was fortunate enough to see Nosferatu at a young age.

Outside influences were my older sister and her boyfriend, who would get me excited for months leading up to the VHS releases of Aliens and Silence of the Lambs, stuff that I wasn't allowed to see in theaters. I also have many fond memories of one of my grandma's friends who, in retirement, ran the local video store. She'd let me rent damn near anything.

My parents would rent two movies every Saturday night when I was growing up. I think this might be part of the reason I don't like going out Saturday nights to this day. My mom would try to keep me from watching certain things but my dad didn't much care. The biggest thing they taught me is how not to like movies. They pick the oddest reasons to dislike things. Their biggest complaint is usually vulgar language. For some reason my mom just can't handle it.

My parents censored when I was younger. I watched the TV edit of Jaws for years before actually seeing the uncut version. It took a while to let me watch Jurassic Park despite the fact that I owned dozens of the toys and was a huge dino nut (it took even longer to see The Lost World cause the dude got ripped in half, that was another one where I saw the TV edit and not the uncut version for the longest time). The one I can't explain is Top Gun. I was allowed to watch it because I loved fighter planes despite the cursing at least they could cover my eyes during blue-lit lovemaking.

Even once I started watching R-rated movies (which my mother apparently never agreed with completely but went along with anyways) at about 14 there were still some restrictions. Violence and nudity were for some reason not a huge problem which is why I ended up seeing every single Friday the 13th movie in the span of about a week, but language was the one that stuck with my dad. I couldn't see Tarantino's movies because of the language, or Scarface etc. My dad had never heard of Clerks otherwise I'm sure that would be verboten as well. Odd too since he loves George Carlin.

He was helpful though, he introduced me to Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood etc. My mom doesn't get it but encourages me to do what I love and doesn't stop me at the very least. We also discovered a year or two ago that even if she covers her eyes at most of the gore she absolutely loves Shaun of the Dead, so she's not completely without hope.

My Mom was a big hand with influencing what movies I watch and how I watch them. I still remember sitting with her on weekend afternoons after we would visit the library and watch the Marx Bros, or Metropolis, or the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. She introuduced me to the masters of the silent era and made me fall in love with noir.

My Father, on the other hand, would watch westerns and Kung Fu movies and that lead to my love of Leone and the Shaw bros films.

And I remember when we bought our first VCR (back when you had to pay a membershp fee to rent movies) we would rent two movies every weekend. It seemed that the horror section always seemed to be the most well stocked and my parents were never shy about letting me watch gore.

I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing my dad watching old WWII movies on late-night TV (back when late-night TV actually showed something beyond infomercials). And he was always watching Star Trek reruns and Godzilla movies on weekends. He also dragged me to see Star Wars -- I was actually lukewarm on it based on the TV spots I'd seen, but he'd heard from people at work how great it was and took me to see it. Boy did that end up costing him.

In junior high and high school, him and I were constantly going to the movies, all the classic 80s stuff, Godzilla marathons at the local drive-in, even crap like Richard Chamberlain's King Solomon's Mines.

My parents LOVE the movies.

Growing up, practically every week was a new adventure to the theater. We saw everything, and waited in long lines for so many movies. It's probably why to this day I have a strong need to show up at the theater really early. Back when there was only one screen/theater, we even sometimes stayed and watched the movie a second time, if it was that good. Probably another reason I don't feel guilty about the movie buffet (seeing more than one flick in a multiplex on one ticket).

We got our first VCR in 1984 (for the LA Olympics), and shortly after we started going to a Mom & Pop video store. The place is still in business today. We'd rent the max # of tapes and go to the Alpha Beta to stock up on candy, and sit in our air conditioned house and watch movies all weekend.

We were the first to have pay TV (in the early 80's). ON TV was a satellite service, and they showed anything and everything. They even had special events, like the first televised showing of Star Wars, for an extra fee. We invited many family and friends over. My Grampa fell asleep.

My family get-togethers still involve a lot of movie-talk. I remember not being very close with my uncle's family, but when we were together for Thanksgiving and Christmas, man, the house was all about movies. Very memorable times for me.

Clint Eastwood. My dad adores him, especially in the Leone movies.

My mother was a massive, massive, massive, cinema fan and something of a libertarian and as such I was introduced to the weird and wonderful of cinema at a ridiculously early age. By the time I was ten I'd already seen the likes of Robocop, Total Recall, Predator, The French Connection, and Undersiege. But she also really believed in trying to get me to watch the best that cinema had to offer at a young age and so with all of those action films I was also shown films like The Seven Samurai, la belle et la bette, Solaris and a ton of other fascinating classic films.

In fact because of this I'll sometimes watch a movie and about halfway through realised I'd already seen it when I was much, much young. This happened to me with La Dolce Vita when I literally had a flashback to being five years old and seeing the thing in an arthouse cinema with my mother.

Me - "I don't know what VHS to rent.."

Mom - "You'll like Reservoir Dogs, get that"

Me - "Reservoir Dogs? That sounds lame"

Mom - "Just get it."

Thanks mom!

Think I'm probably more influenced by my uncles. Mom had five brothers, so a lot of varied tastes & influences (I was an only child, except for a brief five year stretch where had foster brothers/sisters) They were the ones who took me to r-rated flicks. Thanks to them saw BLADE RUNNER & PURPLE RAIN in the theatres.

Mom dug the old classics. A lot of sappy Hollywood meladramas & Sirk dramas. Also the screwball comedies (especially the TOPPER and THIN MAN series). Big into mysteries.

Dad a bit more low brow. He's the type of guy who loves to laugh. And to my embarrassment back in the day-he laughs loud! (Still joke with him about laughing so hard he was practically cackling during the forgettable John Candy comedy SUMMER RENTAL) Big memory with him is watching the ABC Sunday Night Movie whenever it was James Bond.

As Dre mentioned in a recent column, in the early 80's parents had a sense of obligation to take you to the latest Spielberg & Lucas. Mine were no different. Remember winning free passes to see an advanced screening of TEMPLE OF DOOM. The whole theatre was palpable with excitement as the show was about to begin. Looking up at them, seeing pure joy, was maybe the closest glimpse of knowing what they were like as a kids. These excusions to the cinema, we were sharing something. Good times.

Since my mom worked two jobs when I was younger, say around age 3 or 4, when she got home she just wanted to get some sleep without having to worry about me so she'd pop Terminator 2 into the VCR, since it was the longest movie we had and she knew I wouldn't go anywhere while it was on. I watched that almost every day for a long time.

Eventually I guess my parents figured my young, impressionable mind had already been tainted by the R rated goodness of T2, so they'd pretty much let me watch anything. I pretty much exclusively watched R rated action movies for a long time. Total Recall, Robocop, Predator, Aliens, you name it, I had probably watched it by the time I was five. Then my dad got me in to horror movies. A Nightmare on Elm Street was a big favorite of mine at that time. The fountain of blood coming from Johnny Depp's bed just mesmerized my four year old mind. My dad was also a huge Western fan, which rubbed off on me a lot.

Since then my taste has refined a bit, but I'm always really grateful that my parents never shielded me and let me discover movies on my own for the most part.

Much like some others in this thread, not at all.

My dad's favorite film is A Clockwork Orange. He took me to see Aliens. He took me to see Raiders, Dune, Buckaroo Banzai, etc. Throughout my childhood, he worked in radio or TV, and so I was going to free preview screenings almost weekly. My mom was right there with us.

Lynch's Dune is one of my mom's favorite movies. She also loves the Coen brothers. She's not as big of a film lover as my dad or me, but she was almost always game to give something we wanted to see a fair chance.

My dad's office at work usually has movie posters all over it. The last time I saw it, he had posters for True Stories and Buckaroo Banzai up.

My parents rule. They were a huge influence on everything about me, not just taste in film. I live 20 minutes away from them, and we hang out a few times a month (granted it's now mostly about the grandkids for them, but I'm always talking film with my dad).

My mother didn't pay much attention to film, and my father usually rented direct-to-VHS action movies starring the likes of Ice Cube and Dolph Lundgren when I was a kid. I did get to see the occasional tit in them, though. Today they love Adam Sandler flicks (except Punch-drunk Love) and 'inspirational' movies (ie. the man with a double-jointed index finger discovers love against all adversity).

My mom loves movies and still tries to see nearly EVERY movie in the theaters these days. She let me watch The Godfather from a very very early age. In fact, it's one of the earliest movie memories I have, watching the Godfather and trying to follow everything, not really getting most of it, but still loving it. She loves mob movies, and later let me watch Goodfellas as well as pretty much any mob/mafia movie I could find at Blockbuster. Even today when I go home and visit we try to go to the movies, and talk about them on the phone when one of us sees it first. I actually trust her taste if she says a movie's shit. One of her favorite movies is, no joke, 8 Mile. She loves Eminem, thinks he's great.

I think that early memory of The Godfather shaped my view of movies, like that was what movies were supposed to be, not kiddie shit that other parents were unleashing upon their kids. It's probably what's made me such a snob to this day.

They left me alone with HBO.

Also, my dad used to take me to the movies every other weekend or so when I was little (not like a visitation thing, we just went to the movies without my mom). He couldn't stand cartoons and most other kid stuff, so we'd usually see comedies or PG-13 action movies. If you asked me when I was eight years old what kind of movies my dad liked, I would have told you "Bang-bang-shoot-em-ups."

When my mom went shopping she used to leave me in the video store that was attached to the grocery store. I would wander the aisles, looking at all the covers and reading all the descriptions. That's what began my attraction to horror, looking at all those fantastic boxes to films like Child's Play 2 and Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child, reading the backs of the boxes, and imagining what the movies must be like.

The cruel twist is, while she left me in there for up to an hour on occasion, she never let me rent anything.

hahahaha I actually watched that one once (along with so many others of its kind) during my formative years.

My parents didn't really censor. The only thing that maybe came close was them saying "You'll be scared of this one!" and that generally told me enough to stay away as I was a huge pussy. ARMY OF DARKNESS was my first "horror" movie, at around 11.

Strangely enough, because the TV guide classified PREDATOR as "action", I saw that at about 8. I guess it really is more of an action/horror hybrid, but it's just waaaaaay more gruesome and frightening than ARMY OF DARKNESS. I guess I just told myself "Oh it's not scary, it's action!"

My father likes (action/)comedies and my mom likes horror/thriller/action movies. She's a big fan of HELLBOY! They're both really into Italian sex comedies from the 70s. I mean, shit, how do I know who Edwige Fenech and Laura Gemser are?

Jesus Christ, I can't believe how long it's been since I've seen one of those sleazefests. I oughta pay 'em a visit.

Did you have a lot of those "Man, the box made this shit look cooler" experiences? I know I did.

My dad put me on his Star Video account with no parental restrictions when I was nine, and I haven't been the same since.

Yeah, my parents really didn't give a shit about me watching R-rated movies. I saw Pulp Fiction for first time when I was like 7 or 8, from there I moved to stuff like The Thing, From Beyond and Night of the Creeps.

I remember renting Pulp Fiction when I was ten because I liked the cover. That's how I decided what to rent usually. Or if I heard it was 'dirty' - like Showgirls. I heard someone talk about how dirty Showgirls was and I rented it. I don't know how that got past the person who rang me up.

For me it was, my dad rented it, I watched and I liked it. Simple as that.

My first R-rated movie was Judge Dredd, which I still defend to this day, in spite of Rob Schneider (whom a friend a mine paid a homeless guy to piss on when he was shooting a movie here).

I have no way to back that story up unless you were to ask Scneider himself. His reaction at the time was yelling for his handlers and confusion of the "What the fuck!?" variety.

Yeah, but my parents were super strict about it, so by the time I ended up seeing most those R-Rated horror films, I was 17. So I had kind of accepted that they wouldn't live up to expectations.

My dad loved Sci-fi.

He used to record things like Babylon 5 & Space Above & Beyond for me and my brother. I'm pretty sure its why I love that kind of sci-fi now.

Did you guys read that? I said Rob Schneider, not Roy. I thought that'd be a vicarious moment for anyone with taste.

My parents were, and are, almost completely without taste in the movie department. My dad and I recently saw Iron Man together, and after it was over, he told me that he thought that the preview for "Don't Mess With the Zohan" looked like more his type of movie. It's sad.

But my parents did influence my movie-going habits in one way. They made me utterly comfortable going to the theater alone, from the time I was about 8 years old. My obsession with movies (Star Wars in particular) made it really easy for them to get some shopping done. They would drop me off, go about their business, and pick me up after the movie. This became even more convenient when I discovered that you could *say* you were seeing Star Wars again, and slip into some other, more adult-themed movie. With the number of times Star Wars was available second-run in the late 70's, I expanded my movie universe quite a bit!

My Dad got me into Bond and the first Star Trek films. Mum got me into Hammer horror.

My mother put me on the Disney track. The very first movie that I ever saw in a movie theater was Oliver and Company with my mom when I almost three, and from there I just became a Disney disciple. She would take me to anything with the Disney brand attached, and I'm still thankful to have grown up during the Disney Renaissance with Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King , which is hands-down my all-time favorite film. Yeah, I said The Lion King is my personal number one movie. I can watch that movie all day long and it does not get tired. I still go to see the Pixar movies with my mom, and she boo-hoos more than I do. She was a MESS after Wall-E. I get my action movie love from my dad, since if I want to hang with him and watch a movie, something has to blow up in said movie. My dad took me to see T2 when I was almost six, and I LOVED it. Still remember my mom giving him hell for taking me to see it, claiming it would give me nightmares

I posted in a similar thread about my parents (mom doesn't much care, dad was into Carpenter, Cronenberg) but reading these I'm reminded of what was probably the biggest influence on my tastes, and definitely the biggest exposure I had to varied films: I had a friend who lived nearby, and we'd spend the night at each others' houses every weekend. His parents were much more avid filmwatchers than mine, and they'd rent a movie or two every week, and they were less strict about what they'd let us watch. Mostly it was cheesy action or 90s "thrillers" but there was some gold mixed in. That's where I saw The Silence of the Lambs, that's where I saw Fight Club, and all manner of films, new and old, bad and good.