For Patrick Bromley, what started as just an annual family trip to the movies and binging cable programming has blossomed into a multifaceted career focusing on film education and appreciation.
Bromley has taught at Harper as an adjunct faculty member for over ten years now, starting in 2013 as a speech professor. His lifelong passion for watching movies motivated him to earn his master’s degree in the years following so that he could teach film history as well.
“I’ve been just obsessed with movies since I was a kid, and I thought what better way to make a living than to get to talk about movies with a group of students,” Bromley said. “ [It’s great to] get their perspectives on things, and get to share my perspective on things.”
He continues to teach both subjects, and enjoys both due to the different learning environments they offer – his speech class tends to have more one-on-one discussion while film history follows a more traditional lecture format.
If you’ve been in one of Bromley’s film history classes, you know that he starts the week off by asking students what movies they’ve watched. It’s a simple exercise, but it speaks to his philosophy that film is an ongoing conversation and provides a great way for students to hear new recommendations and perspectives.
Growing up in a family of six, Bromley would attend maybe one movie in theaters a year, but the beautiful world of cable television allowed him to dive head-first into film. He would watch “anything and everything he could absorb,” and fell in love with horror as a genre through a series of books about different cryptids and movie monsters.
He recalls George Romero’s Creepshow as the first R-rated movie he ever saw – at only seven years old – stating the experience was nothing short of formative. These days, his favorite director is Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, an artist who he grew to appreciate more and more over time.
“I’ve seen more of his films now and I’m like, ‘Oh, I feel like he’s speaking directly to me,’” Bromley said. “He makes the kind of movie that I really connect with.”
Before he ever had thoughts of teaching film as a career, Bromley had been writing movie reviews and think-pieces for different online publications in 2004. The first publication he wrote for was the now-defunct DVD Verdict, a site aptly named for hosting reviews of different DVD releases. Following this he continued to write freelance for different publications like Bloody Disgusting and Daily Dead, but despite his passion for the art-form, he felt the restraints of constantly having to pitch fresh topics – especially at publications that have been around for a long time.
“I love doing it, but I have a really hard time coming up with ideas for them that haven’t already been covered,” Bromley said. “So, I was like, ‘Well, if I’m going to write about movies, I’d love to be able to just write whatever I want, for the audience that I want.’”
That idea was brought to life in 2010 with the conception of Bromley’s very own movie-centric online publication: F This Movie! The site started as a modest way for him to share a weekly podcast where he casually discusses movies with his friends as guests, which is still going to this day. This was also at a time when the podcast format wasn’t nearly as oversaturated as it is today.
“It was just me and my friends talking about movies the way that we would even when we weren’t being recorded,” Bromley said. “And I was like, ‘I want to make a show that would be like the one I want to listen to.’”
From this point, output on the site gradually ramped up into Bromley writing and posting his own reviews, as well as bringing friends onboard to write. As the site grew, he started receiving offers from strangers wanting to write for the site, which only further expanded his network of friends and contributors.
“We have writers from all over the country now,” Bromley said. “It’s still a small group and people kind of come and go because it’s a labor of love as they say – it’s not a paid gig.”
In addition to the weekly podcast episode, F This Movie! now posts at least one article a day. This feverishly consistent output is not only a true display of dedication for a passion project, but also the reason for their extensive backlog spanning over a decade.
Bromley’s ideas for expanding the site didn’t stop once the podcast and articles were established, though. He had his sights on an F This Movie! film festival, and while funding an in-person festival as a nonprofit publication was out of the question, another idea began coming to fruition.
“I was like, ‘What if I put the whole thing online?’ So, I picked six movies from a specific year, and we just time it out. So, at ten o’clock you start watching Robocop, and then at noon you press play on whatever,” Bromley said. “And everybody talks on Twitter about what they’re watching, and you just follow the hashtag.”
Especially following the pandemic, live watches such as this have become very popular, but Bromley was ahead of the curve when the first F This Movie! Festival took place all the way back in 2012, and he takes credit as being one of the first to commit to the idea. Just like the podcast, the annual F This Movie! Festival is still going strong; its main purpose being to foster a positive community around film.
The 2024 festival was hosted on February 24, with this year’s theme focusing on movies released in 1994. Throughout the day, people from around the world tuned in to watch The Mask, Stargate, Terminal Velocity, Timecop, Cabin Boy and Speed.
“We had people in Australia, people in the U.K., people in South Africa tweeting through all these movies with us.” Bromley said. “And it’s been big enough every year that there’s like a fifteen-minute window where we’re trending on Twitter and somebody always announces it like, ‘Hey look we’re trending!’ And then it goes away because something horrible will happen in the world and then that’s trending.”
Make sure to keep an eye out for next year’s festival, which usually takes place during late February or the beginning of March. F This Movie! can be found by clicking here, as well as on Twitter and Facebook @fthismovie.
