My daughter and Seven Samurai

I remember the day I first saw Seven Samurai. I was riding my bike downtown and saw the Neon Movies. I had seen this place a thousand times but had never really looked at it. Die Hard, and Star Wars was about my speed in movies. But today as I rode past something caught my eye. I'm pretty sure it was a poster for some scantly clad femme fatal. As I looked thought the windows I was entranced by movies I had never heard of.
At twelve, I thought myself fairly in tune with the movie business. I watched Entertainment Tonight religiously. But this was a world unknown to me. It was playing a Akira Kurosawa marathon, and something at midnight called the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Without thinking I walked up to the counter and asked about the next two movies playing Seven Samurai and "Shichinin no samurai" that I pronounced all wrong. The guy behind the ticket counter smiled at me. He didn't make fun of me, or roll his eyes, or treat me like a twelve year old kid, he told me that it was the same movie, just the original Japanese title.
"Is it like Lethal Weapon?" I asked thinking about the idea of some guy kicking ass and taking names.
"No." he said simply. He looked at my obvious confusion. "Come on in."
He let me pull my bike into the lobby and gave me some very stale popcorn and told me that I could watch the movie for free, but I had to tell him what I thought of it when it was over.
I walked into the theater and was mesmerized. The screen was the biggest I had ever seen. At the time the screen was one of the last Panoramma screens left in the country. There was only about twenty people in the theatre. The lights went down and it began. It was in black and white, which didn't bother me at all. I had recently talked my mother into letting me watch Raging Bull and loved it.
I can't describe what I felt that day. It was something new, exciting. I love it. I went back to the Neon any chance I could get, and was let in free many times, and saw movies I shouldn't have seen at that age, even more times than that. I was changed and have loved movies, all kinds ever sense.
Seven Samurai remains one of my favorite movies to this day, and I dream about showing it to my daughter one day. As we sit on the couch and I turn it on I will feel that excitement of the first time again. We will watch for awhile, and then slowly, hesitantly, my daughter will turn to me with love in her eyes, I will look back hopeing see that excitement returned and I will hear her say.
"Dad this is boring, can we watch something else."