MY MOVIE LIFE
The films that inspired, scared and calmed The Martian author Andy Weir...
THE FIRST FILM I EVER SAW
I can’t really remember the first movie that I ever saw. I guess my earliest memory of watching a movie would probably be THE WIZARD OF OZ. It would have been on television and I would have watched that with my parents when I was a kid living at home. I was four or something the first time I saw the movie, so I didn’t even really understand a lot of what was going on [in it], but it had flying monkeys and witches and stuff - and that was all very exciting to me.
THE LAST FILM I WATCHED ON A PLANE
The last movie I watched any portion of on a plane was INSIDE OUT, but I only watched about five minutes of it. I have a pretty significant fear of flying, so I load up on Valium beforehand, so I don’t really have the opportunity to watch movies. I’m just zonked. My doctor and I went through a bunch of different experiments until we discovered Valium would keep me from panicking on planes. It makes me stupid for a day afterwards - so I can’t fly and do an event on the same day.
THE FILM I LOVE THAT NOBODY ELSE HAS HEARD OF
THE LION IN WINTER with Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Timothy Dalton and Anthony Hopkins. It’s actually a pretty famous movie, but usually people haven’t heard of it. It’s just this incredible cast and a really incredible watch. It won a bunch of Oscars, too, but nobody remembers it. It’s my favourite movie - I really love everybody in it. It’s extremely clever and witty and has great dialogue. It’s incredibly well acted, too, which considering the cast, isn’t a huge surprise.
MY MOST MEMORABLE CINEMA EXPERIENCE
One of my all-time favourites was RETURN OF THE JEDI in 1983.
I was 10 years old, the perfect age to be watching it. I was also very into Star Wars, I had all the action figures and watched it with all my friends. I wasn’t clever enough to see plot twists before they happened, so when Vader chucked the Emperor into the reactor core, it was a huge surprise and everyone cheered. No moviegoing experience will ever compare after that, because I’ll never be 10 again.
THE FILM THAT SCARES ME MOST
When I was 11 years old,
I watched the horror movie GHOST STORY, and that thing kept me up at night. Nowadays, Ghost Story doesn’t really frighten me too much, but when I first watched it, it was really terrifying. Looking back on the experience, I was probably way too young to watch that movie
- it just freaked me the hell out [at the time]. I really remember the scene with the ghost monster lady with the slimy, green, dripping face. It just scared the crap out of me!
MY LAST PRE-LOCKDOWN CINEMA TRIP
The last movie I saw in a theatre before the lockdown hit was ALIEN. Our local movie theatre will sometimes run classic movies. Ridley Scott’s Alien is one of my wife’s favourite movies of all time - so when the theatre announced they were planning to show it, we were like, “Oh, we’ve definitely gotta go watch that.” It still holds up really well - apart from the crew smoking on the spaceship. SB
ETA | 4 MAY / PROJECT HAIL MARY IS PUBLISHED NEXT MONTH.