I can't sit around in a group of people and talk movies. Fact is, I love movies too much.

You sit around and talk movies with a group of people, even people you kinda like, and the whole movie experience somehow gets ruined. I went to this party once and ended up in the kitchen with these film 'experts' (and let's face it—everybody sees movies, everybody's an expert). Talking about how great Tarantino is. How "Reservoir Dogs" was "kick-ass." How "Pulp Fiction" was just "total and pure genius." How "True Romance," which was written by Tarantino NOT directed by him, was his best work, blah, fucking blah, blah, blah—you know, "True Romance" just to be esoteric.

Whether or not I agreed with their views, I just couldn't stomach the whole scene and walked out of the room feeling drained and pissed off.

Once I made the mistake of taking a film class at the local junior college. It was called "Film as Literature" and that alone should have tipped me off that it was gonna be a 15 week waste of time. So I decided to just keep my mouth shut and, since the class only met for three hours a week, I figured I'd kick back and watch the weekly-featured flick. The teacher's choices weren't half bad either—typical, but not half bad. He kicked off the class with a fairly decent documentary called "Visions of Light"—a 1992 film about the history of cinematography put together by director Arnold Glassman. We also saw, of course, "Citizen Kane" and "Foreign Correspondent," and checked out John Ford's 1940 "The Grapes of Wrath." But we also had to slog through "Hoosiers" and "Stand and Deliver" because, according to the instructor, "they imbue wonderful expressions and triumph of the spirit."

In the class we had to choose a director and do a 30-minute presentation—with clips—about the filmmaker's movies and their inherent themes for a "final project." I picked Martin Scorsese and, about two minutes into my speech, I was shut down by the teacher for my "blasphemous" ideas comparing Travis Bickle ("Taxi Driver") and Jake LaMotta ("Raging Bull") to Jesus Christ ("The Last Temptation of Christ"). I was all but booted out of the classroom and I swore I'd never take another film class again.

Which, ultimately, brings me to a recent incident where, again, film community is determined to destroy my love of movies.

A couple weeks ago, this local film society (The After Dark Film Society, based in Downer's Grove, IL) had Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" on the bill. Since the film had only played at, like, one theater in the Chicago area for about a week, I missed it on initial release. I was thrilled to see it hit a suburban theater and figured I'd just put up with the "film society" thing for a chance to see it before it hit video or DVD. And, at the same time, I had to admire the spunk of sterile suburbia playing such a hard-bitten piece of cinema. By the last 30 minutes of Aronofsky's drug-soaked nightmare, all the blue-haired little old lady members of the society were tripping ass-over-walker hauling support hose out of the theater.

Then the lights came up and the host (the teacher I had for that "Film as Literature" class, I shit you not) apologized profusely for "offending" anybody by the society's choice of film but wanted to encourage "healthy" discussion anyway. When somebody offered some pretty astute remarks about Aronofsky's use of symbolism, the host shut him down—"I found those images a little heavy handed," he said. And then went on to plug the next film on the Society's agenda—Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night."

One of my favorite films...

Shit.