Shadow Puppet Storyteller

The Lover of Media

continuing

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Welcome To My Reality Forum  (E) Prompts to help you blog about real life and more... #1967461 by Sunny

The prompt: Aside from anything writing or reading or WDC related, what is your favorite thing to do in your spare time?

Since before I deliberately set aside time to write, it has been watching television shows and movies which has been my biggest pastime. This is probably due to my parents freely taking me to movies, and allowing me to watch television at a young age. I watched Sesame Street and other children's programming on the UHF channels, like (28) KCET and (56) KDOC -- if you don't recognize that designation, "UHF," those are the higher frequency bandwith airwave channels before cable and still utilized by digital signals. And on Saturday mornings I could watch hours of programming on what used to be called the "Big Networks" (2) KCBS, (4) KNBC and (7) KABC. Here in Los Angeles, the local stations then were channels (9) KCAL, (11) KTTV, (5) KTLA and (13) KCOP. Much that would be on the air once I'd be home from school were reruns of shows like, I Love Lucy, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. I first watched anime-style shows like, Simba, The White Lion and Speed Racer. Prime Time (8 pm - 11 pm) miniseries and game shows were normal. The most subversive things I could watch on television would be on later than "prime time," the most avant-garde: the show Soap. I admit to watching The Benny Hill Show, or Monty Python's Flying Circus, also.

A few of the first movies I remember seeing with my parents are "Tommy" (The Who Rock Musical), The Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies, The Sting, Sleeper (a farcical sci-fi movie by Woody Allen), and Star Wars. On my own, by 1978, I remember going to the movies solo to see a Benji movie, and also the Ralph Bakshi animated, The Lord of the Rings. The early Eighties were the height of my obsession, and of course, that included the Star Wars sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi.

I religiously watched many shows -- sometimes along with my parents like, All In the Family, Chico and the Man, Upstairs Downstairs. I cataloged TV Guide episode descriptions for shows like, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I drew pictures of the entire collection of characters for a network's season. NBC was powerfully popular at the time, with dozens of top shows. I was totally into Remington Steele on NBC.

Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman was probably the first show I ever felt I could write a script for. I did start college with the intention to write scripts, however, by 1990 I was graduating with a degree in Radio-TV-Film. I was more focused toward video producing/educational programming than I was interested in shopping movie or TV scripts around Hollywood.

With the explosion of cable channels and the unfolding of the computer age intersecting with media really changed the viewing landscape. My children have had a completely different immersion into programming than I experienced.