But so limited was my scope that, even at this point I didn’t differentiate between the experience of seeing a film on video or the big screen. In film school at a college in California (Los Angeles, no less), I started to get a real education. Checking out Jules and Jim for the first time, I distinctly remember the clerk warning, “You know it has subtitles, right?” My cinephilia sprung not from breathless viewings swathed in the womb-like darkness of the theater but, first, in a high school classroom and, foremost, from offerings at the local Blockbuster (its opening in such a small market ushered along the quick death of the beloved corner video store, denying me even the satisfaction of renting independently).

I was raised in Hawaii, where an endless summer of big-budget blockbusters junk up the screens year-round, and you’re lucky to catch the occasional pop indie at the single art house down the street from the university. So, to be honest, I didn’t develop a wholehearted sense of worship around watching movies “the way they were meant to be seen” until I made my way to New York in my mid-twenties.

Growing up on an island devoid of film culture circumscribed my early viewing habits.

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