Classic TV Inspirations

[AjariBonten]

Mods, feel free to move this to Off Topic if it's too "out there" for the general catagory....

The "Flipper" thread, ( http://www.sailnet.com/forums/general-discussion-sailing-related/38658-flipper.html ), got me to thinking about a topic I'd been planning on posting:

What television, movies, books, music, etc. did you enjoy as a child that inspired a love of the sea, sailing, boats, adventure, etc.?

I'll start with a few:

ON TV

Jaques Cousteau TV Specials. I grew up LOVING those; and they are what inspired me to go to college for Marine Biology.

The Space Program. I STILL want to be an astronaut.

Flipper.

Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. OMG remember that one?

Sea Hunt, (in reruns)

Daktari, adventure in the african bush


Movies

Captain Blood, the one and only.......

The Swiss Family Robinson (Disney version)

Kidnapped (ditto)



BOOKS

Treasure Island

Up Periscope

Iron Coffins & The Killing Time (both about WWI & WWII U-Boats)

7 Years before the mast


I'm sure there will be others I will be reminded of as they come up.

[Giulietta]

I'll add.

Sandokan
Treasure Island
Moby Dick
Gulliver (this was first a series then cartoons)
Mandrake
Space 1999
Star Trek (the original, not the gay stuff)

[deepblueme]

As a kid (kind of still am) reading about Magellen, Cook, Balboa and those boys adventures gave me a wanderlust to see the world, now I am saving to buy my own boat.

All the Errol Flynn movies... who didn't want to grow up to be a pirate???

Cousteau, Sea Hunt and Flipper influenced me so much I grew up to be a SCUBA Instructor. Took that vow of poverty for 20 years, thats why now I'm saving for my own boat.
But boy was it fun being poor!!!!

[Valiente]

The mental movies made by my father describing his life as a sailor during and after World War II.

[kbyte]

Just ordered the DVD set of the first season of "Adventures in Paradise" with Gardner McKay.

I haven't seen those in at least 45 years. I loved the show when I was a kid, but they'll probably seem pretty cheesy now. Can't wait to find out.

[Joel73]

I'm probably younger than the majority here but i did watch a lot of Cousteau, Flipper, Lassie, Gilligans Island, Star Trek and Doctor Who.

I was a fan of a lot of 70's stuff too...

Battlestar Galactica
The Incredible Hulk
The Muppet Show
Fantasy Island
Happy Days

And of course the 80's as i was truely an 80's kid...

A-Team "I love it when a plan comes together!"
Airwolf
Hill Street Blues
Knight Rider
Macgyver
Quantum Leap
Simpsons (of course)
Tales From The Crypt
The Young Ones.... I LOVED this show... but not really until the late 80's

I could go on because i watched too much TV as a kid probably. I hate the TV now... all this "reality" crap. Although some of it is quite amusing, i just hate drama... which is what the producers of this crap try to stir up.

[MobyMike]

As a very young kid in the 1960's, it was watching Adventures in Paradise, Surfside 6, and Hawaiian Eye on TV. Later it was Flipper and similar 70's TV shows. But it was reading books that really got me turned on to a life on the sea: Books like Robin Lee Graham's "Dove" (my favorite!); Joshua Slocum's "Sailing Alone Around the World"; and Sir Francis Chichester's "Gipsy Moth Circles the World."

[MobyMike]

Also read "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana as I was sailing up the California Coast from Southern Cal to San Francisco along the very same route as Dana traveled ... only a hundred years or so later ... and experiencing some of the very same nasty weather conditions rounding Pt. Conception as he did. Reading his accounts at the same time as experiencing it on my own made the book especially fascinating.

[Robby Barlow]

As the surfer boy I am "Big Wednesday" is a classic. There is a another one but don't remember the name, with Keanu Reeves as an FBI agent trying to catch bank robbing, surfing, ex Presidents gang incl. P. Swayzy.

[TrueBlue]

That was Point Break Robby - we had the VHS tape (that's how old it was) and our surfer-girl daughter played that movie constantly when in High School.