First published 2005
Stephen Hunter takes readers back to 1950s Evanston, Illinois, where he spent his teenage years skipping school to watch movies at the Valencia theater. The Valencia was everything a respectable cinema was not. It had floors that stuck to your shoes, bathrooms that reeked, and popcorn that tasted stale. The screen sat behind a cheap papier mache castle wall that looked ridiculous. But the Valencia showed what the fancy theaters would not: westerns, science fiction films, crime stories, comedy, and monster movies like Godzilla. Hunter claims this rundown theater as the site of his film education. He compiled his movie reviews from 1997 to 2003, connecting his adult perspective as a critic to the passion he developed as a young moviegoer. The book captures how those formative years watching B movies shaped his understanding of cinema. Hunter argues that while filmmaking has transformed since the 1950s, the excitement of discovering entertainment in that fifteenth row seat remains unchanged.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, memoir, film
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, passion-project
Setting: Evanston, Illinois, Valencia
Period: 1950s
352 pages · Kindle Edition · Simon Schuster