Thursday, August 11, 2011

august MOVIE MEME, day 11: first R-rated movie I ever saw

But enough about my DVD collection... and it's vast, overzealous inventory.  Let's move on to some more reminiscing.  Did anyone else have parents who were firm abiders of the age rules of the MPAA?  Well, mine were.  (And as a now-adult I have to agree with their methods, to be honest.)  But all of us in that boat had our act of rebellion - going over to a friend's house where R-rated movies weren't exactly outlawed...

Speed (1994, dir. Jan de Bont) - Now, I certainly did my fair share of sneaking the against-the-rules flicks during trips to other people's houses, but my first experience with a scandalous "R" movie was in my very own living room.  Even though I had to close eyes and ears during a couple of parts, my first one was Speed.  It was all the rage to kids growing up in the '90s.  And since everyone had seen it (and since I was a pre-teen I probably really thought that was true) it was only fair to wear my parents down until I could see the action epic that takes place on a bus... and features new levels of demented behavior from Dennis Hopper.  Sure, I didn't see the villain's demise the first time, but on later viewings I got the full effect.  I think the fact that Sandra Bullock was in it (my mom and I were at the time obsessing over While You Were Sleeping) probably gave me the edge.  So ends the tale of my first R-rated experience (Hee.) - spill the beans:  How did you see your first 17-and-up flick?

1 comment:

TomS said...

This goes back a bit, to when the MPAA Rating system was in its infancy. Not only were my parents strict enforcers,, but theaters enforced the ratings too. This was before any type of home video...you had to see a movie in a theater to see it uncut.

I was a voracious reader of reviews and purchsed soundtrack albums.. I sought to recreate the experience of seeing forbidden films, even if I could not get into the theaters.

After the 1971 Oscar Broadcast in which "Patton" (rated 'M', the precursor to 'PG', for language) won Best Picture, 20th-Century Fox released a double feature of "Patton" and fellow BP nominee "MASH", (rated R for notoroius sequences of raw humor and operating-room gore).

My father LOVED "Patton" and wanted to take us to see it again. I pestereed him for almost a year to take me to see "MASH", and this time he relented.

I was 12 years old. It was one of the most memorable moviegoing experiences of my life.