CARLTON FLETCHER: With movies, you get the good and the bad

Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?

— The Doors

I think my earliest movie memory came in 1964, when The Beatles starred in “A Hard Day’s Night.” To hear the greatest musicians ever on the radio was cool. Seeing them bigger than life on the movie screen was a wonder.

My brother and I told one of our younger female — and, I might add here, gullible — cousins that everyone at the theater would be screaming during the movie, just like they did when John, Paul, George and Ringo played in concert. When the lights went out and the first images flickered across the screen, there was a timid “Aiieee” from a few rows back. Followed by a good bit of laughter.

Going to the movies in Ocilla, Georgia, circa the 1960s was one of those childhood things that reminds me how much things have changed. First of all, you could take a dollar to the theater, pay your way into the movie, get a Coke, a bag of popcorn and a candy bar … and get change back. Take a dollar to the theater now, and I think they’ll let you sniff the air around the popcorn machine.

I also remember not quite understanding why we paid our way into the theater (35 cents!) and walked into the auditorium through the lobby, but the black residents who attended bought their tickets at a side window and took outside stairs up to the balcony. Try convincing those folks that they were living out the good old days.

Our parents would take us to the theater around noon on Saturdays, drop us off — unattended, even though we were 10, 8 and 6 — and we’d stay there all day. If a double-feature was showing, we’d watch both movies twice. If it was a single show, we’d watch it a couple of times, then wander the streets of downtown or walk the railroad tracks that ran through the middle of Ocilla. Imagine turning your kids loose like that today.

Movies have always fascinated me, but there’s something of a risk/reward dynamic that comes with the best of them. Someone said at the Oscars the other night — which, by the way, I can’t believe I watched because, except for “American Sniper,” were all about movies I have little to no interest in seeing … and I still can’t believe “The Interview” wasn’t nominated for movie of the year, sheesh — that when you watched one actress or another on screen, you “became” her character.

Movies do that. The best of them offer portrayals that allow you to project yourself into the role of action hero or beauty queen or sports star or international man of mystery. If you’re a timid person, for a while you connect with a character who is brash and bold. If you’re a homebody, you get to imagine yourself as the one who miraculously saves the day while jetting to exotic locales around the world.

When he was still king of late-night TV, Johnny Carson was interviewing Richard Pryor around the time Pryor was in the movie “Superman 3.” Pryor, in that hilarious way only he can, told of scenes in which he “flew” with the Man of Steel, played by Christopher Reeve. The comedian said he wasn’t that happy about floating through the air on thin wires, and when he expressed his fear, Reeve said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

“He really thought he was Superman,” Pryor said.

Even with their grandeur, I believe movies can negatively impact our self-image as well. We watch in amazement as Liam Neeson flies halfway around the world to save his kidnapped daughter, and we know we could never do that. We watch Julia Roberts, as single mother Erin Brockovich, take on and defeat a multibillion-dollar corporation, and we know we’d never have the determination it took for her to succeed.

Heck, even in my chosen profession, I watch Woodward and Bernsten bring down a presidency, and I know I’m not destined to write or report on anything that will have such an impact.

Instead of uplifting us, then, movies can also highlight our inadequacies. Oh well, I guess I can always hope The Herald will send me to interview Kim Jong-un.