A movie junkie watched more than 1,000 movies in one year, after losing his job in the first COVID-19 shutdown.
Phil Watts, of Somerset, finished 1,028 films after sometimes watching up to seven in a day.
Phil, whose father worked as a former film model in the cinema, describes himself as a “nerd” when it comes to cinema.
His marathon year of film included all James Bond, Star Trek and Fast and Furious movies.
Watts, also known among his movie-watching network as Knott George Lucas, was working at the carpentry company Endless, near Yeovil, when he was laid off in November 2020.
And in the spring of 2021, as he was working from home on other projects and one movie was shown on his TV, he realized he had seen “a lot” of movies.
“I have to write and take notes or I will forget what I saw,” he said.
“I had reached about 300 or 400 films in March, and I thought maybe I could see a thousand a year,” he added.
On December 28, 2021, Watts, who lives in the village of Hazelbury, saw the 1000th movie, Gone with the Wind, which he had never seen before.
“There were some days I didn’t see a movie because of work or other reasons, but on other days I could watch some of the early Universal Monster movies that were only about 70 minutes long. So on the best days I can watch about seven films.”
“In the end, I was trying to watch as many movies as possible, so it got a bit stressful, but for me, watching movies is a way to relax.”
He said that a movie-going phrase doesn’t make it: “I’m just one of those people, I usually use the term ‘too geek’.”
cinema legacy
Cinema runs in Watts’ blood. His father, Roger, was a film model in Plymouth and, since 1992, Phil ran a business selling home movies on DVD.
“When I grew up in the 1970s, one of my first memories was of my father converting a garage into a cinema, which had eight small cinema seats he repurposed from one of the old cinemas in Plymouth, with a small projection room and the hook he used to open and close,” he said. curtain in front of the screen.
“A form of escape”
Watts said that while watching so many movies sometimes messed up his sleep patterns “especially since I was staying up late to watch a good horror movie”, it didn’t affect his life much.
“I always use movies as a form of escape,” he added. Some people go jogging or read a book. For me, the film is two hours in a distant galaxy, in the depths of the sea, or in a realistic drama.”
“Because we were in lockdown, it didn’t have much of an impact on me socially. I made friends on social media because they have the same tastes.”
He noted that his wife agreed to his film marathon.
“She was happy in the garden when I was inside, and usually the curtain was closed so that no glare or reflections of the light got through.”
“Our tastes are very different in films,” he said. We found a few movies that she would watch with me, but she was comfortable letting me watch mine.”
After spending a year exploring everything from classic movies to ’90s cinema and movies released in 2021, Watts said the movie he would choose to watch if he could pick just one is Cinema Paradiso.
Watts said the 1988 film, about a young Italian boy who learns the craft of cinema at the hands of a cinematographer, reflects his private life.
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Watts’ passion for movies has led him to now be a review contributor to The Last Movie Outpost website, interviewing actors and directors and also contributing to weekly discussion shows.
“It’s a great hobby, and if it turns into a paid job, I’ll be very happy,” he said.