I've loved movies my entire life. My earliest movie memories began in 1978, when I was only five-years-old. I remember sitting in a theater watching the Chevy Chase/Goldie Hawn comedy called "Foul Play," and rather than laughing, I was scared to death of the scary albino guy. Also in 1978, I remember seeing the original "Star Wars" over and over again. Same with "Grease" (though I was too young to understand the sexual innuendo) and "Every Which Way But Loose" (Clyde was and is the best animal actor ever), all of which were movies I repeatedly begged my family to take me to see. And they usually did. I couldn't see those movies only one time, I had to see them a thousand times!
Throughout the 80s, I was at home watching movies on HBO; three, four, ten, and twenty times, I'd watch the same movies over and over again. I LOVED "Better Off Dead," "Revenge of the Nerds," "Teen Wolf," "Just One of the Guys," "The Last American Virgin," and of course, all of those John Hughes movies that took place in the fictional town of Shermer, Illinois. I wanted to be Ferris Bueller!
When the 90s rolled around, I realized that I liked movies a lot more than most people, and I went to Full Sail's Film Program just as the Internet gained prominence. I almost loved the Internet as much as I loved movies. After I graduated from film school, I decided to stick around and attend Full Sail's Digital Media program, and that's where I learned, among many other things, how to build a web site. I eventually decided to build my own web site, and on August 21, 1997, I created "Joey's Webpage of Stuff He Likes" through one of those free services from Tripod, so it had those annoying pop-ups. The web site was about as awful as it sounds. After some constructive criticism from my friend Tom Price (actually, it's Dr. Tom Price... considering how much he spent on medical school, and how hard he worked while he was there, the "Dr." is well-earned), I made some changes to the design and concept, and on September 27, 1997, "Joey's Film Geek Web Site" was born. It was far from perfect, but it was a vast improvement over what was there before. Then on February 26, 2000, "Joey the Film Geek" was launched. It was another big design change, and rather than using a free server through Tripod, I had my own domain. No more pop-ups, but I'd have to pay for the domain and web hosting. It all seemed worth it, though.
For most of the years that I'd been working on the site, I enjoyed doing it. It was something I liked maintaining, and even though the design sucked, I was proud of it. Also, every job I'd gotten since graduating from Full Sail was directly related to my web site. Those who interviewed me went to my web site, liked what they saw, and hired me. Unfortunately, in the last year, maintaining the web site has gone from being a fun hobby to a tedious chore. I've gone to fewer movies because I didn't wanna write reviews. Instead of averaging two or three movies a week like I used to, I was averaging one or two a month. I'd been pondering quitting for a while, and now, I've made my decision.
This is the last update I'll be making to JoeytheFilmGeek.com in its current incarnation (which isn't necessarily a guarantee that there will be a new incarnation), and it's just to say goodbye. For the last nine years, I've been running this web site, updating it every Sunday night, with a few rare exceptions, and I'm officially retiring. I've gotten sick of writing reviews (I've written a total of 467 reviews) and updating the home page every week, so that's it. I'm done.
Sort of.
In my life, I've written five screenplays, none of which are worth wiping my ass with. I kept telling myself that writing reviews was helping me with my writing, and that's true to a certain extent, but I wasn't working on character development, storytelling, plot structure, or anything having to do with screenwriting. So now, instead of spending several hours on Sunday working on reviews I hate writing (as well as a home page that I hated updating), I'll be working on scripts. I'm sure they'll continue to suck, but at least I'll be practicing what I should REALLY be practicing.
As for JoeytheFilmGeek.com, I'll be keeping the old site archived, and you can check it out by clicking here. There's a possibility (perhaps even a probability) that I'll come back to it, but it'll be a completely different concept. I've yet to decide what that concept will be, but I have some ideas.
To all of you who have been frequent readers, thank you, thank you, thank you. Seriously, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
And good-bye.
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