{"id":2578,"date":"2014-01-01T01:51:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T01:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/?page_id=2578"},"modified":"2020-09-29T21:39:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T21:39:57","slug":"the-road-to-tenk","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/tenkmovies.com\/?page_id=2578","title":{"rendered":"The Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like every boy growing up in the 1990s, I was into comic books, but I went overboard, and before I knew it I had a closet full of the adventures of Superman<\/a>\u00a0and Batman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Realizing I couldn’t bankroll a project with a such a large, continually expanding catalog, I gave it up, but my passion for collecting did not die. Not long after I graduated high school, my future wife gave me an action figure of Homer Simpson<\/a>\u00a0which sparked a second wave of obsession. \u00a0After 200 figures and 50 playsets<\/a>,\u00a0Playmate stopped making new figures. \u00a0A lot of people might buy a\u00a0Homer action figure<\/a>, but not many people would buy a\u00a0Frank Grimes<\/a>, or\u00a0Gil Gunderson<\/a>, or\u00a0Hans Moleman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Luckily for me, I found a new obsession when my friend, Diane, gave me a book: 101 Four Star Movies<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0At my wife’s suggestion, I watched all 101, then every winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture<\/a>. \u00a0Like reading all of the Bible<\/a>\u00a0or Shakespeare’s plays<\/a>, this sounds like something cultured people should do, right?<\/p>\n

But I didn’t stop there. Roger Ebert’s Great Movies<\/a>, the\u00a0AFI top 100<\/a>, the second AFI top 100<\/a>,\u00a0and so it goes.<\/p>\n

I started keeping track of what I had seen, challenging myself to watch 500 movies in a year. \u00a0I got to 515.<\/p>\n

Then, inspired by my friend Randy, I started ranking what I’d seen.<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2013, I stumbled upon\u00a0icheckmovies.com<\/a>,\u00a0a community of people like me, who obsessed over which movies they’d seen and, more importantly, which ones they hadn’t.<\/p>\n

Slowly, a goal formed in my head: 10,000 movies before I turn forty.<\/p>\n

Forty seems like a monumental milestone to me because\u00a0my dad and maternal grandfather died at thirty-nine.<\/p>\n

This is my game, so I make the rules.<\/p>\n

Watching a movie multiple times doesn’t count. Neither do TV series, but some miniseries do.\u00a0Each movie has to have an IMDB page<\/a>, which means the few films I made don’t count, but for entertainment purposes here’s the best one.<\/p>\n