35 Years Old

Airplane opened in theaters on Wednesday, July 2, 1980, and yesterday turned 35 years old. That means it is now old enough to become President or Vice President of the United States. I know, that is a little silly, but see my "35 Years Old" post on the Alligator board for more on this. I don't actually remember when it came out that summer, I was 12 and between 6th and 7th grade (between elementary and junior high school), but I did see it for the first time, several times, in 1983, after we got our first VCR in November, 1982 and then began buying and renting alot of movies on VHS. One of the movies we brought was Airplane, my mother decided to buy it even though she had never seen it, because it seemed good, and she and my sister watched it some after that. And as I said I watched it some starting in 1983, and by 1987 it had become one of my favorite movies of all time, and also the funniest movie I'd ever seen. It has remained this ever since, and by the early/mid 1990s was my eighth favorite movie of all time, where it still ranks today. I also liked Alligator alot, and both of them opened on the exact same day. If that had happened now, or in the last few years, I would have gone to a big multi-screen, stadium seating theater and brought a ticket for one and watched it, then just stayed in the theater and gone into another auditorium and watched the other one on the same ticket, as I usually do now. Of course, in 1980 there were very few multi-screen theaters, most were just single screen theaters where only one movie played, but I still think both of these movies deserve an acknowledgement for their 35th birthday.

"I happen to be a vegetarian". Lex, from Jurrasic Park