Guest post: Jurassic parking mad

With the end of the year approaching faster than Lindsay Lohan’s untimely death, I’ve finally done something I’ve been dying to do since starting Movie Mazzupial – a blog swap. And who better to do it with than the fabulously talented Rick over at The Ambiguity Report. Rickis (or Rigor Morton as he’s also known) and I have known each other since we were both teenagers working in the same newsroom together. He’s shown me great things over the years, like how to actually form a proper sentence, how to make cool shapes with cigarette smoke, how not-to-drink wine and the llama video. He’s one of the main reasons I started Movie Mazzupial, as I was a huge fan of his first blog You Might Want To Sit Down For This, and it was he who first encouraged me to start my own where I too could rant about things I love and am passionate about – movies. Little did he know he would also have to guide my technologically retarded hand through every technical aspect of starting a blog, but I like to think of that as a developmental stage in our friendship.

So, after he sold his soul to *insert company name here* and had to turn the life support off on his blog, he thankfully came back bigger and gayer with The Ambiguity Report. He’s only a few months in to blogging again and already his posts on gay marriage and asylum seekers have been featured on media mega-sites like Mamma Mia (the latter becoming the sites most shared article on Facebook ever, which is huuuuuge). Anywho, all of this is my long and convoluted way of saying there is no one I would rather do a blog swap with and I hope you enjoy his highly amusing account of his obsession with one of the greatest blockbusters ever – Jurassic Park.

Not pictured: Rick's credibility.

I’m just going to come right out and be honest.

I thought Jurassic Park was a documentary far beyond any reasonable age for a child to think a movie about dinosaurs was a documentary. I thought it perfectly normal that a dinosaur-themed park welcoming its first batch of visitors would want the entire experience filmed, even after the velociraptors began acting like total bitches.

I was at least 5, possibly six as the movie (released in cinemas 1993) had just come out on the venerable VHS at the local video store and my cousins had insisted I would enjoy it. I watched the shit out of that movie, I assure you. I studied the locations to see if I could guess where in the world it had been filmed so I could somehow convince my parents to buy me a ticket.

This was my desire even after most of the guests on the island were mauled by tons of carnivorous beasts.

Seeing the brachiosaurus for the first time I felt exactly how Elle Sattler and Alan Grant would have felt, had they been real characters and not actors. I saw that dinosaur rear up on its hind legs and practically threw my popcorn bowl in my cousin’s face, wide-eyed with wonder.

This. Changes. Everything.

Some background. I liked dinosaurs. I temporarily thought I was one after a routine doctor’s appointment for some kind of needle. I thought I had fooled both the doctor and my mother by pretending I was a tyrannosaurus rex, based on the flawless logic that dinosaurs do not, in fact, need vaccinations. I believed the doctor might realise the error of his ways, shake his head and say something like ‘I don’t need to immunise this t-rex, what a ridiculous man I am being today’.
I was given the needle anyway but, not wanting to give my mother the satisfaction of an immunology victory, I pretended to be the king of beasts for another two days in some misguided attempt to prove her wrong. My ruse was eventually blown when she threw me the entire leg of a dead cow and insisted that I eat some of it. Cover blown.

So to say I was obsessed with dinosaurs was an understatement.

Sitting through Jurassic Park, I was outraged that some people (mostly the ones who got eaten, saps) wanted to close the park down. I was firmly on the side of beardface whose name I could not remember when I was six but which I now know is John Hammond. The park needed to remain open, if only so I could travel there and take some photos of the goat bait.

I briefly considered writing a letter of support to beardface and the board members of InGen, which would have contained but a simple message.

Dear InGen. If you close Jurassic Park you will make the dinosaurs go extinct again. I do not want this to happen. If this does happen I hope a raptor eats your face right off. Yours sincerely, Rick.

I remember vaguely the first time I realised that Jurassic Park was just a movie and not, as it turns out, a snuff documentary with dinosaurs. I don’t remember who clued me in on the secret but I remember clearly wanting to fire them out of a cannon and directly into the sun for ruining what had been a tremendous fantasy-turned-reality for me.

And that’s why Jurassic Park will forever be my favourite movie, though of course others come close for other reasons. This one came along at a time in my life when I truly believed it was possible to have your leg gnawed off at the knee by a 14m long Rex.

That’s something I will never, can never, have back.

Say cheeeeeese.

For my post on the best gay movie characters, head over to The Ambiguity Report.