As Halloween approaches, I think back to how my love affair with movies really began.
My love of movies began with monster movies. Not horror movies, monster movies- specifically Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein. For personal reasons, I identified with these monsters- loners who lived by night.
As a kid, I would constantly get my days and nights mixed up. As a baby, my mother thought I was great because I would sleep until 1 pm. It was only when my aunt stayed over and found me standing in the crib of my darkened bedroom that my mother realized the truth. From that moment on, my aunt began calling me ‘demon,’ a play on my middle name Damon.
Even school couldn’t quell my nocturnal habits. Every summer vacation I’d find myself staying awake until 8 am and sleeping until 4pm. I’d go outside to play when the sun was going down and stay awake all night watching television. It was in these late-night hours that I’d get together with old friends, my fellow castaways from the world of the living who found themselves (like me) on the graveyard shift. It wasn’t their choice to keep these hours just as it wasn’t mine, so we bonded. Continue reading
