If you’re a big enough film geek you’ve watch certain movies enough times that they become your friends. Some of them you watch when it snows. Others you watch once a year and then there’s a few you’ve seen so many times that you can play the whole film in your mind from memory. One of my oldest and dearest friends is named ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. I really can’t express how much this film has influenced me over the years. I had the chance to spend some time with my friend Lawrence earlier in the year at a screening in the TIFF lightbox. How does a movie change your life? How does become part of you? You have to be a special kind of film geek to think a film can change your life but they do. The great ones do. They take you to new worlds and give you a brief escape from reality. I’ve spent my life escaping into dark rooms to watch light flickering on a white wall. The fact I spend so much time escaping reality explains why the real world confuses me most of the time. Instead of facing reality, i’ll continue to spend as much time as possible with my old friends. As the years go by I keep seeing and learning different things after each viewing. Once every year if I’m lucky but not every year, I walk out of theatre knowing that I’ve just met a new friend who I will spend the rest of my life with.