Whatever happened to imaginative play?
It’s been one year since I started a personal quest to watch an average of one movie per day. I’ve outpaced my goal. Between July 5th, 2021 and July 5th, 2022 I watched 389 feature length films. I watched every Pixar movie (prior to Turning Red); I watched every Leprechaun movie; I watched non-narrative, dialogue free movies about the nature of civilization; meta-documentaries; slow movies; intense movies; and — just once — accidentally watched a movie that censored everything related to Michelle Rodriguez.
I’ve watched television and movies my entire life. Clocking one movie per day isn’t exceptional — especially when considering that two episodes of a show are about the same length as a movie.
But this time it feels different. This time I can feel something changing in me. The way I watch movies has changed — and that difference is effecting how I see everything. I can tell that I am being rewired.
Ages a go I used to joke that playing video games messes with how you see everyday life. If you play too much Grand Theft Auto, then every sidewalk starts looking like a place to mow down civilians. If you play too much The Witness, then you compulsively see circles and lines everywhere. Movies obviously do this too. Seeing a pineapple now makes me think of Only Yesterday. (Unless they are canned then I think of Chungking Express.)
When I was a kid, this side-effect of media was explicit and interactive. After playing Super Mario RPG we’d all run outside and cast magic spells at each other. On Sunday we’d watch the Vikings get walloped and then head to the backyard to imagine ourselves on a football field.
The act of imaginative play — of artistic recreation — was part and parcel of how us kids reacted to stories. Inspiration immediately bred a desire to replicate the source. Any and all available resources would be requisitioned for this purpose. Sticks became guns; cardboard boxes became armor; backyards became stadiums. Friends and siblings were allies and foes.
As an adult, this engagement faded into the realm of internal imagination. I might daydream about falling in love or making music. Watching The Fast and the Furious makes me think about racing cars. Nomadland makes me wonder about living out of a van. But I would never do those things. I wouldn’t even pretend to.
I’d just think about it a little bit. And then I’d move on. No race cars built from refrigerator boxes. No setting up a tent in the backyard to pretend I have no house.
Something feels lost when opting out of play acting. The scrappy, imperfect recreations of stories breeds its own creativity. The stories give you something to say — the trick is figuring out how to do that with limited resources.
This year of film reminded me that telling a story is hard. The act of production is hard. I used to frame my thinking about movies around their impact and content. What did that movie make me think or feel? What did it have to say? Was it interesting or entertaining?
But I’ve slowly become more and more impressed with the how and why. Yes, movies impact us greatly. But isn’t that incredible? That stories can be explicitly built for that purpose?
The ghost in A Ghost Story is wonderful. It makes no logical sense — that’s not how sheets work, it isn’t particularly scary and ghosts aren’t even real. But it tells me a story. Someone had to figure out how to make it work because that’s how they wanted to tell me that story.
Stories are amazing. But this year I’ve been more amazed by storytelling.
There are stories from my life that are worth being told. I find myself wondering how someone could tell these stories in a movie. How would someone share these moments and feelings with others? For instance, when I sit at my day job watching code compile, I think: “How would you film this? What music would be playing? What part of the film would this be? What happens next?”
This personal curiosity is new. Filmmakers have a craft that translates stories into movies to impact an audience. I’ve always loved the last part of that chain. I knew that the former must exist but I’ve never really thought about it.
Sure, I’ve seen behind the scene footage. I’ve listened to directors and actors and screenwriters describe what they do. That’s still quite different from starting with the germ of story and beginning the process of artistic creation.
It took a year of actively watching a strange, diverse group movies for me to begin wondering how all these different storytellers do their work. I’m starting to peer behind the veil — to see the tricks behind the magic.
Moreover, it’s reminded me of being a child and recreating the stories using imaginative play. I feel a pull to do something similar again — to not passively consume but to actively respond and recreate.
I feel this perspective shifting how I think about stories. I look around me to see what tools I have at my disposal. How can I create and recreate? How can I participate? It isn’t enough to let all of this inspiration flood past. I can hear it calling to me. I feel compelled to respond.
I don’t know what will happen next — but I’m excited to find out. I am ready to go play.