MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. Today, we learned that not every entry in our summer sounds feature comes from the great outdoors.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPLASHING WATER)
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY)
(SOUNDBITE OF TWEETING BIRDS)
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) It's summertime.
SCOTT MANTZ: I'm Scott Mantz, and I'm the film critic for "Access Hollywood." My summer sound is the sound of movies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MANTZ: To most 13-year-old boys growing up in Northeast Philadelphia back in the early '80s, the sounds of summer could have consisted of the following: the distant rings of an ice cream truck rolling down Nandina Street, the cheering crowds rooting for the Phillies at a packed Veterans Stadium or the waves pounding the surf along the Jersey Shore. Alas, I was not one of those 13-year-old boys. So my summer sounded very different.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INDIANA JONES THEME")
MANTZ: I never ate too much ice cream. I hated sports. I still do, actually. And I wasn't lucky enough, like my friends, to have a house down the shore. So almost every weekend, I ride my bike to the movies, theaters like the Eric Feasterville, the GCC Northeast and the new Orleans 4, which was later expanded to 8. And since my friends were too busy playing street hockey or two-touch football, I usually went by myself, and that's OK because I'll never forget the image of Indiana Jones running away from that giant rolling boulder after stealing a rare artifact.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK")
MANTZ: Or those clashing lightsabers as Darth Vader gave Luke Skywalker some very bad news in that galaxy so far, far away.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE, "STAR WARS: EPISODE V -THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK")
DAVID PROWSE: (as Darth Vader) I am your father.
MARK HAMILL: (as Luke Skywalker) No.
MANTZ: Or the majestic theme song that played while E.T. made Elliott's bike fly across the night sky.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL THEME"))
MANTZ: This is how my summer sounded, and in many ways, especially because of my profession as a film critic, they still do. I left Philly for good in 1991, and I soon learned that you can't go home again. But in some ways, you can, especially when I sit in my room, put "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in my DVD player and close my eyes, that's when I'm a 13-year-old boy again, and the sounds of summer sound better than ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "INDIANA JONES THEME")
BLOCK: A cinematic summer sound from Scott Mantz in Los Angeles. We received an email from another listener whose summer sound comes from the small screen. Tay Bannerman(ph) writes this: One summer I hid inside from the East Texas heat and nursed the bruises I had sustained from a rough transition into middle school. I wasn't ready for my looming adolescence, and television provided a distraction from 8:30 a.m. when Andy Griffith whistled his way onto the screen to noon when the morbid lunacy of "The Addams Family" played in the background while I microwaved my hotdog lunch to the late afternoon when "The Beverly Hillbillies" waved their goodbyes. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.