Ever steal a peek at your parents’ Netflix queue? How did that turn out for you? Here’s why I’m asking: I got my parents (retired, in their 60s, and braving another Happy Valley winter) a subscription for Christmas. Last night, my mother told me that my father had submitted his first requests: Deliverance and Sliver.
How is Sliver (pictured), starring Sharon Stone and Billy Baldwin, No. 2 on anyone’s list, let alone my father’s? "I think he likes Sharon Stone," my mother* said, as if the news she’d just delivered hadn’t been as scarring as the time she’d let my father cut out and mail me a Sylvester Stallone interview that he’d read in Playboy. (We share a love of all things Sly.) I spent the rest of the night thinking about it: Has my dad been dying to see Sliver since 1993? Did he catch the second half of the movie on cable one night, years ago, and always wonder how it began? Is it weird that I myself have searched (ill-fatedly) for Sliver on YouTube? Should I add it to my Netflix queue?
While I process how alike my father and I have become, share insights in to your parents’ Netflix queue (or rental history) — and what it means for you.
* Her first request: Sex and the City: The Movie.
More on your parents:
Bonding with dad through entertainment
Bonding with mom through entertainment
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When my parents got Netflix, the first thing they did was spend the summer getting the first five seasons of “24″ to get caught up with the new season. I love my parents.
My father just got an account, and the first thing on his quene was the entire Sopranos series. Which is awesome. My dad actually enjoys good, current television. I would watch it with him, but then we feel awkward during Tony Soprano sex scenes. No one should have to watch that man make love while a parent is in the room.
That’s actually kind of amusing, because I manage my dad’s Netflix entirely. He doesn’t have a computer, so I set the whole thing up for him. He calls and tells me what movies he wants me to put on there, or else I’ll see one I know he will like and put it on for him. So our queues are virtually identical, at times.
Somehow I doubt my folks Netflix queue will ever become mine, or vice versa. I don’t see them developing a love for Daniel Craig movies, BBC sci-fi or GLBT flicks. And I don’t see me losing that love.
This does remind me of the time I found Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers amongst the grown up movies my Dad kept stashed under his bed. Suprisingly, I’d have been less disturbed if I’d just found straight up porn flicks!
Last night my Mom called and asked if I wanted to borrow “Tropic Thunder” or “The House Bunny” before she returned them to NetFlix.
Yeah, for some reason I liked Sliver too. I still own a copy on VHS.
My parents don’t get Netflix, but I do see what movies they rent and buy. While my mom barely watches any movies, my dad will watch just about anything once. He’ll even watch Hilary Duff movies. And his rating scale? Anything above an “It was ok…” is good movie to my dad.
Also, he use to watch TV in our old basement, but since we moved he now views everything in the family room. Now I see all his wonderful movie choices from TV which of course includes Cyborg 2 starring Angelina Jolie. I kinda wish he’d watch stuff in our basement again…
Sounds like your folks are going through theyre second adolecence..I can relate I caught mine smoking a joint last summer! lol
My mom’s Netflix list has some good stuff on it (current releases such as Burn After Reading), some obscure stuff(something with ‘leprechan’ in the title, but not the horror movie), and some stuff that curiously already have her ratings on them. I asked her if she was renting them again because they were good and she said, “No, I just can’t remember if I saw them already.” THAT makes me scared for my future.
My mom and I talk about our Netflix movies quite a bit, and we have a lot of the same stuff in our queues. My mom is the one who instilled in me and my sisters a love of movies.
We just got netflix and my dad became obsessed with queue-ing the worst horror movies ever invented. Braineaters? Seriously, dad?
(Doesn’t help that my mom is beyond squeamish. Poor lady…)
My mother recently got a Netflix subscription, and has been adding a random assortment, such as Penelope and some Tarantino. My father complained that he “never gets to pick a movie.” She let him pick one movie and he got the privilege revoked after queuing up the new X-Files movie.
Mandi, maybe your dad is a fan of Ira Levin, enjoyed the book, and wanted to see the movie. The novel was pretty good, as I recall (it must have been, as when I was recently cleaning out my stash of books I discovered that I had two copies of it. Then again, they were both freebies from the library, so maybe not enough people were checking it out.) Then again, I read it years ago and remember very little beyond the basic plot. And it may be just me, but having Deliverance at #1 on a movie queue is more disturbing.
My parents don’t have Netflix–my mom just DVRs Hallmark Channel movies and watches them when the satellite goes out. My husband and I don’t subscribe to Netflix, either; we don’t even have the time to watch the DVDs that I buy or check out from the library, so subscribing to Netflix would be a waste.
My father, since cable days, will watch anything if he ‘heard about it’. Not if it was good or bad, or genre, or who’s in it. He also won’t listen to me about why this is not a good movie for him. So he will rent Porky’s, or Cyborg2, or Sliver, or Meet the Spartans. Then he will complain about the state of movies today. Of course, a diamond shows up in the garbage, like An Inconveinent Truth, or No Country… This an blaring the ‘Hitler’ Channel, is what gets my goat with my Dad
This piece made me laugh – I talked to my mom yesterday and they had just received their lastest NetFlix movies – Pinapple Express.
Wow–you all have cool parents. But then again, my Mom was 40 and my Dad was 51 when I came along, so there’s probably a much larger gap. My Dad probably would have kept the catalogs of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronsan, and Chuck Norris on a constant loop sprinkled with a selection of the worst martial arts movies ever made. No Crouching Tiger for my Dad–he like the ones with horrible dubbing and cheesy special effects. Mom, well, she’s content to watch M*A*S*H and Golden Girls reruns all day long and probably wouldn’t watch any Netflix movies even if you sent her all her favorites. My tastes will probably run along those of my sibilings who were in their late teens and early 20s when I was born. Though I have a hard time believing that any of them would go along with my foreign flick jones, corset drama love, or my science fiction obsession.
I don’t want to spend my old age watching The Quiet Man, Babylon 5 (disk by disk each week) or Little House on the Prarie–all 9 seasons! I don’t want to watch them, ever. The best thing about moving out was watching whatever I wanted. I don’t even want to think about my great-grandfather watching Shirley Temple movies in his last weeks. He’d always hated the kid, but in his final days, he liked it. It doesn’t look good for me.
No Netflix for my parents. They do the Blockbuster plan thing, though. And now, they have DVR through DirecTV. My 9-year-old brother has to show them how to work it
Actually, I make most of the suggestions for my parents (I’ve done pretty well so far, based on their ratings with only one 2-star movie – Junebug – among them). If it’s not one of those suggestions I send, it’s often a PBS series or something like that. It keeps ‘em off the streets.
i have on more than one occasion caught my dad watching “unfaithful.” yeah thats right, the one with diane lane and the hot french guy. this from the same father who says the pg-13 romantic comedies i watch are a little too racey. and did i mention i’m 23?
Sliver was one of those “so bad it’s almost good” movies. How bad is it? Stone has a bathtub masturbation scene where she climaxes while both hands are on her shoulders. Did she use telekenisis to get off?
That said, it’s easy to figure out why this was #1. Sharone Stone was at the peak of her sexy era then (this was her follow up to Basic Instinct), and has some pretty steamy scenes in this flick (including the “hands free” masturbation scene mentioned earlier). Plus the UB40 cover of “I can’t help falling in love with you” is flippin’ sweet!
Mandi, I think your father might be a little bit of a perv. Watching sliver is one thing but mailing you interviews from PLAYBOY? And don’t tell me he just reads the articles.
Great post Mandi! On a semi-related note my friend Daniel got my Netflix password from my boyfriend and added PHAT GIRLZ and a Larry The Cable Guy movie to my queue. Imagine my surprise when receiving those films!
I can’t talk about movies anymore with my parents. It’s no fun – everything is a reflection on the sorry state of “society”. They have Netflix now, but I’d be everything I have that it doesn’t contain anything like what you all have listed here.
A few years back, I gave my dad a Netflix subscription which he filled with tons of old movies that he’d seen at least a zillion times. He and my mom constantly give me crap for watching the same movies over and over again and here was proof of where I got that from but they were in denial. Although they didn’t renew their subscription, my dad is the guy with about 700 cable movie channels. So he can plunk down on the couch, turn on any movie right in the middle and start wacthing which I find so annoying. But at least I haven’t seen him pick out anything disturbing. My mom? Well, she usually falls asleep 7 minutes into any movie so she doesn’t count.
I’m not sure my parents know what Netflix is. My mom watches very little TV at all. My dad loves to catch movies on cable. He’s mostly into action, westerns or some fantasy. Most movies he sees have been out for like 3 years.
My netflix account says its an extra 1.00 for blu rays does anyone know if that mean for each disc or for the month?
The extra buck is per month not per blu ray disk. You’re just increasing your monthly charge. Did it myself late last year when we bought our blu ray player.
There’s no way my parents could figure out netflix…my mom can’t even figure out online movies.
I ate my parents a few years ago, so they’re not really into NetFlix.