"Before the Movie"

[M2d]

[ QUOTE ]
Gleaming the Cube for suburban Skaters. Probably increased 10 fold in my neighborhood.

[/ QUOTE ]

has Lords of Dogtown resulted in a similar surge of interest in skating? these movies notwithstanding, I'd think that the Xgames was what really brought skating/inline/moto/etc to middle america.

[samjjones]

The Food Network has resulted in a ton of gourmands who enjoy making elaborate meals at home. Before the Food Network, it was basically Julia Child and Yan Can Cook.

"Friends" really jump started the lame twentysomethings sit in an apartment and live uninteresting lives sitcom format.

[M2d]

The obvious follow up is "was the "movie" (or event) good for your activity? in fly fishing, now that the craze has simmered down a bit, the general fishing populace has a deeper understanding of streamside entemology, fish life cycles, food chains and other subtle factors that affect fishing. the popularity of the activity has resulted in a lot more attention to streams and watersheds that were in trouble from pollution, overuse and general apathy. ever since getting wet and waggling your stick became acceptable, people are more aware of natural resources in general, and more apt to do something about the threats rather than sit back and let the inevitable happen. You still have the orvis wearing tools and pretentious [censored] heads, but, now that the sexy has worn off, the greater fly fishing population seems to care more about the fish, the stream and the environment. a pretty good trade off.

[Slow Play Ray]

This probably doesn't count, but still along the same idea - as soon as we finished watching Wordplay, my girlfriend and I picked up the paper and forced our way through the crossword puzzle.

[daryn]

wow haha, way to remind me of yan can cook

[Mike Gallo]

Wall Street and Boiler Room for young aspiring stock brokers.

It made the "profession" more glamorous.

[nyc999]

Not a movie, but CSI has triggered a significant increase in the number of people studying to become forensic investigators.

[bellytimber]

"Before the Movie" ...haha, I thought for sure this was going to be a thread on first date ideas or the half-life of rohypnol.

Hm, I think American Graffiti and Saturday Night Fever and Desperately Seeking Susan all had a pretty big effect on fashion/culture. Before the movie Flashdance women went to aerobics with unwarmed legs. Before the movie Beat Street I had never owned a cardboard box for fresh handglides.

Before the movie The Bridges of Madison County there was no real industry for covered bridge tours. Also, love did not exist.

Before the movie The Great Train Robbery there were no movies.

Before the movie Hotel Rwanda I don't think many people cared about that. There are many such examples of movies increasing awareness/acceptance.

good question, I need to think about it some more. I think before the movie The China Syndrome people were more open-minded about nuclear power. I think before the movie Thelma and Louise life was simpler.

[tsearcher]

[ QUOTE ]
The obvious follow up is "was the "movie" (or event) good for your activity?

[/ QUOTE ]

Lance Armstrong was good and bad for me personally. When I first started cycling seriously, mountain bikes weren't around yet. There were a decent amount of bike shops in the Chicago area and they all catered to road bikes.

But once the mountain bike fad hit, everyone needed one. Never mind that there are no mountains in Chicago, but there are lots of roads. Any way, once that happened all the shops catered almost exclusively to mountain biking. It became hard to get parts and service for road bikes. This was before the WWW. Fortunately, mountain bikers generally weren't real hard core, so the good routes and paths were still pretty wide open and cycling was still a lot of fun in and around the city.

Once Lance Armstrong became famous, road bikes were back in vogue. This was good since now it was easy to get parts again and there was a nice selection of new bikes to choose from.

The bad, is that the roads and paths became full of Lance wannabes. The congestion is bad enough. But a lot of these folks have no common sense or bike etiquitte. They don't signal. They don't maintain a straight path. They do maintenance in the middle of the path. Just really spoiled riding for us old timers.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
Not a movie, but CSI has triggered a significant increase in the number of people studying to become forensic investigators.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've also heard that it has made jurors expect to see forensic evidence and to be skeptical when there is none.