This is the eleventh in a new series of “Getting to Know”  Pages from Ultimate Movie Rankings.com.  Our interview this time around is with UMR Hall of Famer bob cox.   bob cox has been visiting UMR since 2016.  He is a Top 10 Commentor and a member of the UMR Hall of Fame Class of 2017.   So we figured it was time to learn a little more about bob cox.

Cogerson –  It has always interested me in knowing which thespian made the first impact on a person. Who was the first actor or actress that you knew by their actual name?

bob cox –  Jerome Lester Horwitz is the first actor I knew by his stage name. He made a huge impact on my loving to laugh. My parents made me stop watching him at 8 years old because I was talking like him at school.  Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. bwoob, bwoob, bwoob, bwoob, mi ,mi, mi, mi, mi. soytainly, hey Moe, hey Larry. I give you Curly Howard of the Three Stooges.

Cogerson – As a kid, I was a huge Three Stooges fan.  There was a pizza place that had a room that played old shorts.  The adults would sit in the main room talking, while the kids would sit in the movie room watching Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy shorts.    I would bet the first movie book I checked out from my local library was one that talked about the behind the scenes history of the Three Stooges.

Cogerson – Is there a person in your life that pushed you down the path of liking movies?  For me, it was my parents and my grandmother.

bob cox – No one really impacted me directly.  Indirectly my mother.  She was so busy that she used movies as a babysitter. We had the Dallas Federal Savings and Loan Saturday at the movies. 100’s of unsupervised kids each loaded with soda, popcorn, candy, cartoons, and a double feature for $1.35.  Six hours of cheap babysitting.  Heaven for children ages 5 to 9.  My mom is now 88 and is a nightly moviegoer with her latest boyfriend.

Cogerson – Based on some of your previous comments, it sounds like you have traveled around most of the world. In your experiences which country seems the most movie crazed and the least movie crazed?

bob cox – Nothing compares to the U.S.A. and its love for Hollywood. My only personal experience was in Thailand 50 years ago. The people loved anything from America. They often wanted to touch me or ask for an autograph.  I was blonde, blue-eyed and over six feet tall.   If they asked where I was from and I answered accurately “Dallas” then they went nuts because of the television show Dallas. 

Cogerson –  Buying my first ticket to an R-rated movie was a big deal back in the day.  Do you remember the first R-Rated movie you got a ticket for?

bob cox –  I had a fake I.D. at 14 years old that helped me pass for 21.  In 1969 I bought a ticket to see a midnight double feature. The two movies?  Easy Rider and Reefer Madness.   My first legally bought  R rated movie ticket was to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975.

Cogerson –  What are your Top 3 movies of all-time? Or share as many as you are willing to share.

bob cox –  Forest Gump is my all-time favorite.   I love Tom Hanks, Sally Field and Robin Penn Wright. It has comedy and history (must be nearly 40 historical asides in this movie).  The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Die Hard and The Quiet Man round out my Final Four.  The greatest movie of my life at age 4 or 5, was Old Yeller.  I saw it repeatedly on Saturday at the movies as an old re-run.

I have reviewed over 3,000 movies at Letterboxd.com.   Cogerson turned me on to Letterboxd. It was perfect timing, as my love for movies became my hobby guided by UMR.  Cogerson also guided me to the local library where I can reserve online from my choice of tens of thousands of movies in all the branches of the San Antonio library system and they send the movies to my nearest pick-up branch.

Cogerson –  That is 4 awesome movies on your favorites list.  I love Letterboxd as well, glad to see you have enjoyed my suggestion.  You can find bob’s Letterboxd reviews by clicking the following link bob cox Letterboxd reviews.

Cogerson – Do you have any favorite actors or actresses?

bob cox–  All-time favorites for actors: Tom Hanks, James Stewart, and Paul Newman.  When looking at  actresses Katharine Hepburn is my favorite.

Cogerson – I know it has been a while, but do you remember how you discovered UMR?

bob cox – I found UMR looking for better movie rankings than Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb.  I was searching online and found the one for me, UMR.  I only had 50 movies I wanted to watch at that time. With UMR’s help, I now have 2000 on my watchlist.   Yeah UMR.   That was back in 2016/2017.  I had 7 surgeries which created 13 months of disability.   Needing a sedentary hobby lead me to UMR.  In 2017 I became a regular commenter. The surgeries worked and I have pain free artificial hips and pain free back. praise God for the pain and for the pain-free.

Cogerson – I am glad some of our suggestions helped you get through your 13 months.  Even gladder that you are pain-free these days.

Cogerson – Do you have any memorable movie experiences?   I remember seeing Porky’s in theaters.  People were laughing so hard, I thought the walls might crumble.

bob cox-  My memorable movie experiences involved going to the movies with my grandfather.  In 1962 we saw  How The West Was Won at the Majestic which was in downtown Dallas.  We saw the movie after a perfect steak dinner.  Coat and tie were required in the theater.  Ditto the second memory…. It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World in 1963.  I vaguely recall there was applause after both movies. My grandfather, “Daddy Doc” Carr was stricken with cancer in 1967 and died in 1968 when I was 12.  I was his favorite and he was mine.

Cogerson – This one might be hard to answer….but going to give it a shot…..which movie character do you think best represents bob cox? I would say my answer is Griffin Dunne’s character in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. The way he acts and reacts to things is exactly the way I think I do.

bob cox –  A combination of two: Roger Ebert as portrayed in the documentary Life Itself.   His drinking , his drugging, his passion, his intensity, his intellect, his opinionated self, his obesity and appearance pre-cancer and with cancer.  One girlfriend’s sister nicknamed me Mr.Smiles.  The second would be John Candy.  I impersonated John at a concert where the performer Matthew Ward (2nd chapter of acts Christian music) was a friend of Candy’s. The band had a friend of mine playing guitar and they realized that Ward had mistaken me for his friend Candy.  I visited the dressing room at intermission and shined Ward on for 10 or 15 minutes before we explained why the entire band was falling down laughing.

Cogerson – And finally…..ever had the chance to meet any movie stars in person?

bob cox –  I have met 2 famous celebrities personally.  At about age 10,  I met Lee Majors. He came to my grandfather’s boat.  Majors played college football at Eastern Kentucky State University in Richmond, Kentucky.  That is where my grandfather, “Daddy Doc” Carr,  had been the football team doctor.  While playing football Majors suffered a severe back injury which left him paralyzed for two weeks and ended his college athletic career.  The hospital Majors stayed was where I was born. The hospital’s first room was built by Daniel Boone. My grandfather had helped Lee pay for voice lessons to lower his vocal range for television: The Big Valley and The Six Million Dollar Man.  We had a lovely day on the river near Boonesborough. I had a picture of myself in cowboy boots holding a rifle with Lee (sadly the picture was lost in a fire involving my mother’s condo).