Our workplace has a United Way drive every year, during which we put on various events aimed at raising money for that organization.
One of the main events is a bake / book / movie sale. Employees are encouraged to bring in stuff from home that they’d like to donate, and it’s all organized and laid out in one of our conference rooms upstairs. I used this opportunity this year to go through my movie library and purge it of some of the films I never watch (is it kosher to still call these things “films?”). OK, DVDs. And VHS tapes. It was a bit of a harrowing experience. I found myself sitting in front of our media case for a long time, in silence, running through each movie’s scenes in my head before finally leaving it alone or dropping it into the “bye bye” bag.
I parted with quite a few titles. Twenty, maybe? A couple were duplicates (Leon: The Professional, for example, which I’d ended up with two of when a special edition was released — I’m such a sucker), and some were films I figured it was time to upgrade to a nicer version. I did keep both my copies of This is Spinal Tap, of course; I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid.
I also spent some time thinking about how and when to expose Ava to some of these movies. I’m a big fan of all the Pixar stuff, and there’s nothing terribly objectionable in any of those titles. But movies like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Deer Hunter, and Platoon are clearly going to have to wait a while (and don’t forget Full Metal Jacket, featuring a still-plump Vincent D’onofrio).
I probably would’ve had a more difficult time culling my library had I watched any of my DVDs in the last 18 months. I’ve found that having a toddler is antithetical to enjoying movie screenings.