When I graduated from West Allis Central high school, in 1969, I wanted to pick the best college I could. I had saved money from various jobs as a gas jockey, janitor and butcher. I needed to get into a college to avoid serving in Viet Nam, a urinary tract infection gave me just enough time to apply and get enrolled and get a college deferment. Playboy Magazine on a yearly basis rated the best party schools in the country, at the end of 1969’s list was an Asterix. In 1969, Playboy magazine described the University of Wisconsin at Madison as “the party school” due to its permissive campus culture, which included serving beer in the student union. It noted that UW Madison was not on the orginal list as Playboy would not rank a professional in a list of amatuers. This quickly clarified my choice of school.
I entered Madison in the fall of 1969, rooming in a tall dormitory called Og East. By the second semester, I was exploring hallucinogens and smoking pot on a regular basis. At the beginning of the second semester the campus was in an uproar about the worsening war in Viet Nam. Marches, protests, sit ins, and lectures by non-university folks like Angela Davis. During this time the teachers' assistants went on strike, thereby cancelling most of the undergrad classes. This meant I had a great deal of free time. I spent mornings protesting and attending Students for a Democratic Society, (SDS) meetings. Afternoons and evenings were wide open for exploring.
This led to me dropping acid or mescaline, smoking pot and attending movie after movie that were presented all over the campus in different locations. I really fell in love with stories, storytelling and movies.
When I still lived on the farm, I had decided that animals and nature made sense to me, but people were something I did not understand and really wanted to figure them out. Movies were a step in that direction. Plus, the hallucinogen enhanced viewing led to some great viewing experiences. After the movies, my friends and I would go to the Rathskeller at the Student Union and talk about the movies we had just seen.
Entrance to the Rathskeller
Rathskeller Interior
I loved the older movies, especially film noir, and comedies. I watched a great deal of foreign films. I watched documentaries, cartoons, and musicals. Each told people's stories in interesting, exciting and visually unique ways. Given that most of my childhood and adolescence, I was restricted from watching much television, and hardly ever went to the movies, this was a life changing experience for me.
To this day, I continue to watch movies of all kinds and television shows that catch my interest. My love of stories and learning about other human beings and their lives started in 1969 during the upheaval of the Viet Nam war and the chaos that came to campus as a result.
An incomplete list of My favorite Movies
The Maltese Falcon
Shane
It Happened One Night
Chinatown
Meet John Doe
Casablanca
To Have and to Have Not
The Magnificent Seven
Bullitt
Mash
LA Confidential
Devil in a Blue Dress
Jon Pinter
I have seen most of those movies, but not Jon Pinter.