How Do You Build a Cinephile?

My wife and I are expecting a baby boy… She’s due this week and one of the many questions that keeps coming up as we talk about raising him is how we’ll introduce certain hobbies. To be honest, I keep thinking about cinema, probably more than I should knowing my wife is pretty much due anytime. But I love this art form, it’s been a passion of mine since I was a little kid, and what I’ve learned from it has shaped me into the person I am today… It’s important for me to properly introduce my son to the movies but I want to be mindful, I don’t want to push so hard I turn him off, and I also want his taste to align with mine.

To be clear, I don’t expect his favorite movies to match my favorites. I want him to have a normal childhood and I know he’ll go through his period of Paw Patrols and Minions… But I’m thinking more about his taste as he gets older. I’ve seen it backfire where a parent or older sibling force something they’re passionate about too strongly and eventually get pusback.

I keep coming back to how my own parents did it, because they evidently did it right. And they did it by giving me a lot of agency.

They never sat me down and said watch this film, it’s important. They just watched movies because they loved movies. We went to the theater maybe once a month, it always felt like a special event, but my love for the movies was really built through our weekly movie nights at home. Towards the end of the week, we’d go to our local video store and rent two movies: a kids’ movie for me, and a more adult drama for them. They’d usually send me to my room when it was time for their movie, but I got curious by proximity. What are you guys watching? Why can’t I see this? It looks interesting.

When I think back on it, I remember my dad being more involved than I realized. It never felt pushy, but he’d give his opinion on whatever movie I picked and often steer me toward something he thought I’d like more. He was very patient in nurturing my tastes… the man should have won Father of the Year just for sitting through a double-billing of the ‘93 Super Mario Bros. movie and Ninja Turtles 3.

My mom, on the other hand, would question any movie that looked too violent but was mostly game for anything. Her MVP moment came when she took me to see Jurassic Park four times while it was playing in theaters.

It’s one thing to look back on how my parents supported my tastes, but when I think about our current reality, the model gets harder to replicate. You have video games that never end and the infinite amount of slop on Netflix… there are so many choices and that’s my real question: how do you lay a strong foundation in today’s world? Like I said, I don’t expect his taste in movies to match mine. It would actually be great if his passion lands in a completely different genre. I really don’t care, as long as the little guy has quality taste.

I keep thinking about the actual lineage of my own taste. My accidental curriculum started with Jurassic Park. That film led me to the rest of Spielberg, and Spielberg unlocked everything else. He took me to Jaws and Indiana Jones, which took me to Lucas and Star Wars. The Spielberg web spread to the films he produced: Gremlins, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

I don’t want my son watching Citizen Kane or Kurosawa at nine. There’s time for the canon. I’m still working my way through it. But I want to build the foundation that will eventually lead him there.

If the timing is right, maybe he gets to experience some of my favorite films through the theatrical re-releases that are becoming more popular. After all, my first experience with Star Wars was opening night of the Special Edition release in 1997, and my mind was appropriately blown.

The closest thing I have to a working model is how I introduced my wife to all of this. She didn’t watch too many movies when we first met, but we quickly got into the habit of watching films together every week, either at home or in the theater. She loves rom-coms, those are her comfort films, and we got into a rhythm of rotating picks: one week something she was into, the next something I was into.

I quickly learned I couldn’t get her into the classics right away. She had an aversion to anything that looked old. I remember pitching Heat to her and it just didn’t connect, but then we watched The Town in theaters and suddenly she loves heist movies. Heat was an easy sell after that and it’s since become one of her favorite films. I keep coming back to that example: how do I build a curriculum that helps my kid find his way back to the classics?

As I write this, I realize I didn’t plan any of this out with my wife. I just went with the flow, and maybe that’s the real answer. Don’t overthink it, just go with what feels right, and the passion will naturally grow if it was meant to be.

If you’ve raised a kid who loves what you love, tell me what worked and what you’d take back. Did you let your kid lead more than you wanted to? Did you ever force certain movies on them? And even if you're not a parent, I'm still curious: have you ever successfully built someone's taste? A partner, a sibling, a friend?

Baby is due anytime now but I have a couple of years before finalize his watchlist.

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