Watching Wonka

15 years does a hell of a lot for a person... Studio 23 Presents just had to remind me of that. Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory was on - THE 1970-something WILLY WONKA... and in my opinion, still the only movie of its kind (Marc Nichols and Johnny Depp will just have to forgive me).

I remember watching it for the first time... I was 6, and it was just the best movie ever (Otherwise, I wouldn't have called Gene Wilder Willy Wonka til I discovered his real name last year. It's seriously embarrassing, but he was such a good Wonka I just couldn't remember him otherwise). The songs (Pure Imagination was the essence of the whole movie, such a shame that Marc Nichols didn't include it in the recent version)... The Oompa Loompa's ("Oompa Loompa Doompa Dee Doo... I've got another puzzle for you...")... The Candy Paradise with the Chocolate Falls and the river (and the extra large gummy bears perched on the Candy trees)... The lickable Wallpaper (my most favorite treat)... The Golden Wonka-vator (The Glass one in the new movie just didn't cut it for me) and the Wonka-mobile (which was, again, missing in the new movie)... just basically everything about that movie made captured me in a way that no other fantasy movie has (Well, 'cept maybe for Alice and Wonderland and her whole K-hole adventure).

Watching it again15 years later still hasn't changed my mind. If anything, it just made me see the masked meanings my then 6-year-old brain couldn't process.

... and right now, I seriously I could take whatever Willy Wonka was on during that time... because that whole headtrip of a movie is one hallucination I definitely would like to trip on..