there's a great series of articles over at http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/2008-12-...-and-jj-abrams about favorite summer movies and got me to thinking about the best summer movie experience i had....

i was 14 at the time and was heading over to my friend Philip's place for the first time to help him and his dad (his dad owned a construction company) and when i got there was told that his dad was paying us $20 each to help him tear down an old shed in this guys backyard--so we spent the whole afternoon with sledgehammers destroying this old shed which was awesome and we both new what we wanted to spend our $20 on....LOST BOYS! knowing the movie was rated "R" and that we'd have no shot at getting in by ourselves we begged his dad to take us but he said he'd drop us off at the theater but he wasn't staying, so we get to the theater and Philip goes first and asks for one ticket to Lost Boys and it works! so i walk up and asked the same and it worked no questions asked--we were so stoked and being stupid 14 year old kids thought we were the coolest kids on earth getting to see our first "R" rated movie by ourselves and of course the movie was everything we could've hoped for and still remains an all time favorite to this day

Hands down, it is and will always be JAWS. 1975, I'm a 7 year old kid growing up in Hawaii. When people ask me if I surf, I tell them I fish. I loved playing in the ocean, but more importantly, I marveled at what lived in it. I went to the library to get books on fish, I went to the aquarium to learn more about fish, I knew and wanted to become an ichthyologist when I grew up. So in a theater, the Waikiki #2 with my Mom and her bf at the time Bob, I sat down to watch a film about the most badass fish of all. It's a little fuzzy now to recall things because I've seen the movie hundreds of times and each time is unique and special. As the film unspooled, I found parts of me in each of the main characters. Brody's fear, Hooper's fascination and Quint's bloodlust. And when Bruce takes Alex Kitner. My own jaw is on the floor. And then my mother jumping so hard at the scene with Ben Gartner's head popping out of the hole in his boat, that she flings her bucket of popcorn several rows forward. After the movie, just like Brody did, I was at the library again, bringing home stacks of book on sharks (with an occassional Peanuts paperback or Danny Dunn adventure.) I wasn't afraid of the water, but like family that Mayor Vaughn asks, I would wade into the water with mild trepidation before plunging into the briny deep. No other film has affected me to this day. And years later, it would fuel my passion to be in the film industry as I learned more about the struggles Spielberg had to bring Jaws to the screen.

Great story devilshalo.

One Crazy Summer