The romance between films and their viewers languishes on for more than a century. Since the time of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope and Georges Melies’ adventure of a journey to the moon, times spent in the dark of a theater have caused us to fall in love, to go to war, to travel the stars. We’ve broken our hearts and mourned the dead. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried and screamed and we’ve cheered. None have denied the power of the motion picture.
My earliest movie memory was Sleeping Beauty, still one of my favorites from the Disney Vault. It’s classic tale and fantastic song set, along with the virtuous themes and undertones set the tone for my love affair with movies. As I grew up, fed on a steady diet of Disney and LucasFilms with a dash of John Wayne, I began to love a good story. My life left the screen into the pages of CS Lewis, Tolkein and Edgar Allen Poe.
William Goldman pulled me back to the screen through his novel The Princess Bride as I realized I could invest in both. And so began my interest in fiction. I loved the creation of a world and the people populating that world. I joined the creative writing class during high school…and never left. My college years, spent studying story and how to put it on screen, led to more writing and the desire to study the innards of the motion picture.
Now my brain is wired differently to that little girl who wanted to love her prince and waltz along for eternity once upon a dream. And now my lab is open.
