John K. Kelso's 'most perfect love affair' involves a lot of celluloid

John K. Kelso's 'most perfect love affair' involves a lot of celluloid
by Bob Getz, The Wichita Eagle, Jan. 21, 2000

You don't bump into people like John K. Kelso everyday. I don't, anyway. John K. Kelso loves movies like nobody else I know begins to love movies.
Take the latest "Star Wars" epic the critics panned --"Phantom Menace."
Through the first of this week, John Kelso had seen it 131 times since it came out last May.
Kelso has also watched "Raiders of the Lost Ark" 122 times and "The Birth of a Nation," his all-time favorite, 111 times.
Through this Tuesday, he's watched 14,853 movies. One "off" year, he watched only 420. His top year, 1984, he watched 1,024.
"Sometimes," Kelso said this week, "I will see as many as 9 or 10 a day. I've watched movies 15 hours a day."
That's not all that sets John Kelso a little apart from people like myself who really have to like a movie quite a lot to sit through it a second time, let alone 131 times.
Kelso's one-bedroom apartment is almost completely covered with movie posters. All walls and ceilings. Kitchen. Dining and living rooms. Bathroom. Bedroom. Everywhere you look except the carpet. Posters.
"It's like a movie theater," he said. Two chairs face his 27-inch Sony, with posters and other movie memorabilia, figurines and doodads all around.
Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton. Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Ed Wood's campy films. The Marx Brothers. Star Wars figures. Jar-Jar Binks.
"I paid $65 for the 'El Cid' poster," Kelso said as I looked around Tuesday evening.
He keeps a log of the movies he watches. Saves the "Phantom Menace" ticket stubs. Reads about movies extensively. Has considerable movie dialogue memorized.
Kelso works as a dishwasher and has his own business card. It says "John K. Kelso, Motion Picture Archivist, Historian, Consultant," with the address of his Web site, which he'd like publicized: www.prophotos.net/kelso.
Kelso is 48. He wears silver-rimmed glasses. Has muttonchop sideburns that threaten to spread into a beard. And he likes wearing a T-shirt that proclaims: "John K. Kelso, Wichita's Biggest Phantom Menace Fan!!"
What is it about that movie that has such a hold on him?
"I just think it's a return to old-fashioned movie-making, but with modern technology," he said. "There are a lot of subtle references to silent comedies. A lot of references people don't get."
He's loved movies since he was 6. He calls them "a hobby that's an obsession." He knows what some people think.
"I've had people say, 'It's weird,' 'It's sick,' " he said, grinning.
"I do go overboard. But with movies, you're either bitten by the bug or you're not."
He was married for 15 years. Divorced in 1987.
Now he almost always goes to movies alone. But he wouldn't mind meeting the right woman to share his obsession with.
Once he ran an ad in the personals. A woman who liked movies responded. They dated. Then she saw his place.
He remembers she said, "You're really into this, aren't you?"
And away she went.
He grins. He still had his movies.
"In fact," he said, "they've been my most perfect love affair."
Kelso said his job washing dishes at an upscale Wichita restaurant suits him perfectly. But....
"My ideal job," he said, "would be if I were surrounded with 400 or 500 miles of film in an archive."
How can anyone love movies so much? How do you explain it?
Kelso said there's a phrase he really likes that he once came across in a book about silent movies:
"Spellbound in darkness."
That's you? I said.
"Oh, yeah."