Vertigo for Kids

Today was my first day teaching kids movie making as part of a week long camp. I showed them a bunch of clips from my favorite movies to teach them the different "genres" (fun new word!).

It was tough finding kid-friendly movies that don't bite. I was stumped for the Horror/Suspense genre. I worried that Jaws might be too disturbing so I went with my all-time favorite, Vertigo.

None of the 16 kids have ever heard of Hitchcock. At first they thought it was boring. I showed them the opening scene where Jimmy Stewart is chasing this crook across the roof and figures out he has vertigo for the first time. The gunshots got them interested.

I also showed them the clip of Kim Novak supposedly jumping from the tower and Jimmy's surreal dream that follows. Someone noticed, "There sure are a lot of people falling in this movie." Hee hee.

I told them to go home and talk to their parents about Hitchcock. Hope this opens a whole new world for them.

The class is mainly boys who love action movies and ask every other second when we are doing a fight scene and if they can bring their weapons to camp and, by the way, "Have you seen Transformers?"

If you noticed some mass death scenes in the park, that was just me killing the campers with waves, magic spells, gusts of wind, canon balls and the occasional sword jab.

"Kill me next!"

"No ME! Kill me with a tidal wave!" rang out from the grassy tranquility.

Why is it that grown ups spend all their time skirting death and kids think it is the most fun thing in the world to recreate?