Saturday, November 14, 2009

Yaaaaaaarrrr, Night Moves!

You're a student in southern Ontario during the early '90s, and you haven't yet learned moderation. After a crazy night out with friends, you come home at 3am, and you feel like you're going a bit insane: the room is spinning, you feel spectacularly ill, you're exhausted, but your brain is running laps around your spectacularly-abused body. There's nobody you can talk to, there's no way to distract yourself...where do you turn?

Global TV's "Night Moves."



Somewhere in Toronto, a cameraman with a steadycam walked slowly through streets, subways, and deserted buildings. Sometimes you'd be in a car driving through the main streets and back roads of the city. No narrative, no structure, just some smooth jazz and a vicarious trip through the deserted city.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA. I'm sure it was conceived primarily as a cheap way to fill the early hours with Canadian content, but I (and many, many others) viewed "Night Moves" as a life-saver.

It's still fabulous, and has the added bonus of being a time capsule for the ever-changing city. I'm thrilled that I've finally found it again. Thank you, Global!

3 comments:

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

So I just saw your name mentioned in the latest SPAG newsletter and sort of had my mind blown--not that there's any real reason for it, I guess, but it just struck me as so weird that two areas of the internet I would never, ever have connected came together like that. Whatta world.

Adam Thornton said...

It IS a small world.

Your comment prompted me to revisit the discussion about Paul Panks, and after a last moment of denial I had to look unashamedly at how monumentally crappy I'd been about it. I'm definitely not proud of my behaviour.

I will spare the world the long, unfinished, therapeutic blog post about it, however. In many ways, though, your bringing this up lead to some big ugly soul-searching.

We're never too old to fix our badness, I think!

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

I have never paid attention to IF politics, so I don't know what the controversy was--but I definitely admire anyone who's willing to admit to having behaved less-than-admirably on occasion. Nice job.