Yep. To be fair, I think the story may be a little more complicated than that. The year before, in Ms. LaMuth’s class, the topic of my twenty-minute project was The Beatles’ impact on modern music. This led me to research and become interested in a lot of older music that I had never heard before. Around this time, I started to get the feeling that learning about film throughout the twentieth century might be just as interesting. By the time forty-minute projects rolled around, I suggested to our group that we should present on the history of twentieth century cinema and how it contributed to cultural change. The rest of the group liked the idea, but wanted to focus on music and cultural change, instead of movies. So that is what we did.

Then, around Christmas time the following year (Sophomore year of high school), I was at Barnes & Noble and randomly found a book called “Four Star Movies: The 101 Greatest Films of All-Time.” I started reading it and was intrigued, because it referenced so many old movies with which I was unfamiliar. I made sure I received that book for Christmas that year, and then read it religiously.

These experiences, plus seeing those posters in Horger’s classroom definitely piqued my interest in film. It’s like that entire world was always there, waiting for me to find it, but I needed that combination of events to break through. (It’s also worth mentioning that I had several high school teachers along the way who recognized my interest in film and encouraged me to pursue it).