I used to go to the movies every weekend with my brothers. Name a movie with an explosion between 1992 and 1999, and we've probably seen it in theaters. In 1999, we all moved out of our parents' house, and managed to find lives outside of movies with Creature Effects credit.
Most of my movies come from cable now. Turner Classic Movies, American Movie Classics, TNT, FX, TBS, and whatever other basic cable channels will give me good movies I haven't seen yet. I barely rent any more: cable will usually be showing a movie better than whatever just hit DVD. I realize it's impossible to watch every good movie ever made (especially with my over-inclusive definition of 'good'), but I'm trying.
Theater-going has turned into a nearly-100% social activity for me. It always struck me as odd that you need other people with you to stare silently at a screen for two hours, but you're not silent. You're laughing together, and checking over at each other when a cool preview shows, and whispering "Hey, that's the guy from that X-Files episode!" You're sharing the same experience which, thanks to me liking most movies, usually means I have a good time.
Notable theater experiences:
Independence Day
This was my first conscious attempt to see a movie opening night. I knew
people saw films opening night, and I saw a lot of films opening weekend, but I never consciously plotted to become one of those people. Until ID4. It was a big stupid movie with giant plot holes, but it gave me exactly what I wanted: the White House blown up by aliens.
Instead of being released on Friday, July 5, ID4 was getting the appropriate relate day of Thursday, July 4. And just to make an extra day's money, that date was bumped to Wednesday, July 3. There was a huge crowd in the lobby, and it was remarkably easy to strike up conversations. Strangers were talking to each other about which snippets of film they saw, and what rumored stuff the previews weren't showing. The word 'awesome' was really overused. Everyone, while not in the same age group, was certainly in the same mental state. We were all movie geeks, and today we were feasting.
A placard said JULY 2 on screen before all the destruction began. Right after the half-hour of awesome destruction, the placard changed to JULY 3. "Hey, that's today!" some guy yelled, and he became everyone's hero. Most talking in theaters is rude, but the right comments enhance a movie like a dash of Tabasco.
Star Wars
The Star Wars re-release is the best movie experience of my life. I had
never seen Star Wars on a movie screen, or with more than a handful of
family and friends. (Technically my dad might have carried me into a
theater at sixteen months to see it, but I don't remember that.) The
re-release was every inner child's dream: you get to see Star Wars on the
big screen, only now with dinosaurs.
My brother waited in line for a few hours early that morning to buy tickets for the late show, and he bought at least a dozen of them. Half of my college was in the audience. As I was walking through the theater, I was shaking hands with everyone I knew. This felt like the prom. I was waiting in line for snacks, and heard a thousand people spontaneously cheering. Two guys had brought light sabers, and were dueling in the aisle. This was the geek Mecca, and we had all come for our pilgrimage.
I sat in the very front row, the only seats my friends and I could find together. 500 conversations were going on at once. The trailers rolled, and I could barely hear the speakers over the crowd's din. This could be bad. As much as I wanted the opening night experience, I wanted to see the movie peacefully.
And then the movie started, and everyone went silent. No matter how crazy or drunken or socially inept, we all loved and respected Star Wars enough to shut up. People still joked and screamed and called Luke a crybaby, but only at appropriate moments. I've never heard anything like it.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars geeks camped out for weeks to get opening night tickets to
this. I walked up to a theater in Morristown a few days beforehand and
bought tickets right there. I even got them all with a student discount,
a year after I graduated. (Thank God those IDs don't have expiration
dates.) No one needed to camp out to get the tickets; they just wanted
the experience of it. I knew how they felt.
I had my fingers crossed that Episode I would recreate that Star Wars night for me. The theater was once again packed with 100% freak shows and unwashed Quake players. I bought a light saber just for this viewing, and waved it tentatively. No one took me up on a duel.
The lights went down. We were jazzed watching a couple trailers come out. And then, the Fox logo, that initial trumpet blast, and the yellow scrolling Star Wars saga began. We had all waited 16 years for this.
And in twenty seconds, the Star Wars legacy turned to crap. It started with the words 'trade federation', then some planet I've never heard of, then some confusing economic crisis. It cuts to live action, and it's stereotypical Chinese accents coming from bad rubber suits.
We were too stunned to imagine Star Wars being anything less than perfection. This was a religion for us, and no one wanted to admit that their pantheon was now taking the short bus to school. For weeks and months afterwards we defensively claimed that Phantom Menace was a great movie. And then a pretty good movie. And then at least it had killer special effects. And then, well at least Darth Maul was cool.
Blade
I saw this at a multiplex in East Orange. Newark doesn't have too many
movie theaters, so the Newark population largely comes to East Orange for movies. Blade is a movie you want to see in this setting. There's little
fun to be had with constrained white people enjoying a movie silently.
You need half of Newark screaming along. In a good way, though; Newark
crowds are just as respectful as Star Wars fans to good material. In
several cases, audience members synced up with Blade's thoughts and beat him to the punch on the exact swear he was about to say.
This crowd gets ugly with bad movies, though. So stay away from any Eddie Murphy movie made in the last three years when you're in East Orange. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
American Beauty
Sometimes a crowd isn't necessary. I saw this in a little-visited second
run multiplex where I was the only person there. A cold empty theater is
the ideal setting for American Beauty.
An hour into the movie, two people slipped into the theater. This multiplex had thirteen screens and two employees, so this was a theater-hopper's dream. They 'quietly' went to the back row, but they were both wearing what sounded like head to toe Gortex. They were a marching band in snow pants. A little after they sneaked in, the marching band began doing drills. THWIT-THWIT, THWIT-THWIT, THWIT-THWIT, with the plastic bag on-screen dancing along.
When the credits started rolling (I had a date with the Bond movie playing next door) I realized I'd kick myself if I didn't say something. So I yelled "Hope you guys used a condom!" right before I left.
The Blair Witch ProjectI saw Blair Witch in Connecticut, when my brother was living there. I was crashing on his floor for the weekend. The bathroom at his place had a window that opened onto his deck. This was during the summer, so the window was wide open. The deck had a motion detector light; anyone jumping on the deck would set it off. It was pitch black outside, but as soon as the monster made his move to grab me, I'd get a clear view. The toilet was right by this window. I sat down to pee. For the first time in years, I was scared to go to sleep.
I refuse to watch this movie a second time. Not because it would be too scary, but just the opposite. Horror movies lose their shock value the second time you see it. You know Jason's going to jump through that window, you know the Scream guy is hiding in the closet, you know the Leprechaun's going to pogo stick that guy to death. And I know there's no shock stuff in Blair Witch. Just a constant low heat, which will get water boiling so long as you leave the top on.
My second Blair Witch viewing would probably be at three in the afternoon on a Sunday. I'd be sitting at my computer playing Spider Solitaire as I watched, and I'd pause it half an hour in to make some food. Half an hour from the end, my mom would call and I'd talk about the health of my mom's side of the family for twenty minutes while it played in mute. It'd be as scary as a sleeping puppy.
So I'm refusing to watch it. I'm keeping my memory pristine of that one scary showing.
A Night to Remember/Titanic
The Loews Jersey is a 1929 movie palace that's in the middle of a long
restoration. It came perilously close to getting torn down, but a team of
volunteers is bringing it back to life. It's a five-minute walk from my
apartment.
Inside is jaw-dropping gorgeous. A two-story lobby, with big red carpeted stairs and a chandelier. Marble columns, gilded carvings along every wall, and bathrooms that have a lounge room. A statue of St. George slaying the Dragon is mounted on top of the theater, six or seven stories up.
Last year, for the 90th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, a Titanic Day was put together. A Night to Remember was shown in the afternoon, and Titanic after a dinner break. The combined ticket price was seven bucks. You can't even rent the movies for that price. (And good luck finding A Night to Remember at Blockbuster.) The Loews Jersey does this a couple times a year, with Hitchcock, Bond, and horror films, as fundraisers.
A movie palace is the perfect place for a movie about early 20th century opulence. Most of the Loews Jersey looks like it could have been taken from the A Deck of the Titanic right before it launched. (The rest of the building, however, looks like it came from the A Deck some time after it sank.)
Titanic is much better on a huge movie screen than a 13-inch television set with limited resolution. James Cameron went through the effort of putting all those people walking around the Titanic, and you ought to be able to see them. I also never cry at movies, and it's worth having someone nearby sniffling during the sad parts. These designated criers flock to Titanic showings like pigeons to spilled popcorn.
1,000,000 Years B.C.
I saw this projected on a support column in a flooded mine shift. I'm
involved in the caving world, and a regional meeting of cavers was held
at a campsite with a flooded mine nearby. We were in the upper section
with daylight visible, but thirty feet away water lapped at us. Cavers
sometimes brought canoes to the shaft with helmet lights and paddled
their way as far deep as the ceiling allowed.
Met Grotto (the cave group for New York City) put together a film festival inside the mine. Two movies were scheduled for Friday, emphasizing the cave aspect: 1,000,000 Years B.C. and the Mole People. Two were scheduled for Saturday, emphasizing New York City: King Kong and C.H.U.D.
No one sat down for these movies. There was a concurrent wine tasting party, thanks to a Met Grotto member working for a wine distributor and getting free bottles. Everyone circled around the food and drink, casually glancing at the movie 100 feet away.
Mole People's not the best movie for this. A few cool scenes of mole people coming out of the sand, but more than its share of bad sci-fi dialogue scenes. You need words to fully enjoy it. (Most movies fall into this category, although not most of the ones I saw in theaters between 1992 and 1999.)
1,000,000 Years B.C. has no words. Just grunts and Harryhousen claymation and Raquel Welsh. Casual glances are all you need. You can have detailed conversations while watching the movie, which is what we did. The novelty was all we needed.
Matrix Reloaded
The midnight shows for this were substituted by 10:00 P.M. shows.
Apparently the 12:01 A.M. showings weren't legally necessary, just a cool
way to keep the mutants away from the normal movie patrons. I went with
the same group of people I watch Buffy and 24 with on Tuesdays. TV works the same way as movies: a communal experience is always preferred.
I saw it at the Wellmont, an old time Montclair movie house that got converted to four theaters. Drywall went up at floor level, and split the main viewing area into three theaters. The balcony got its own screen erected at the banister, and became a fourth screen. (The same thing got done at the Loews Jersey, but restoration turned it back into one huge arena.) Matrix was showing in the balcony theater. The Wellmont is kind of falling apart, so it feels like you're actually in the Matrix.
The viewing wasn't perfect. The screen had a slight but distinct slant to the right. My knees were an inch away from the head of the guy below me. And I sat in gum. Whoever leaves their gum dead center on a movie seat deserves a spot in steerage on the Titanic.
It was still yards better than seeing it solo on my TV. The fights scenes are awesome, awesome, awesome. We got in a conversation with that head in front of my knees about the Wiz store on Route 22 that looks like a battleship. We applauded at the end, something odd for a media outlet, but absolutely normal for a true good movie experience. No Matrix producers are around to hear the applause, unless the movie's a true story.
On the surface, movies in the theater seem like a waste of money. Why pay nine bucks when you can wait five months and rent it for four bucks. Or wait a year and get it on TV? But the communal experience is often better than the movie. Comedies are funnier, action movies look bigger, and event movies actually feel like events when a thousand people are around you. I look back on the Phantom Menace night fondly, except for that minuscule part about watching the bad movie. Hell, I look back fondly on watching Daylight and making dumb jokes throughout it.
Theaters cost more money, but they're worth it. It's worth it to whisper to your friends about how a Lord of the Rings plot point is exactly how it appeared in the book, or to see five year olds literally crawling out of Spider-Man. It keeps the entertainment industry healthy enough to continually make movies, but that's a small point. The big one is that the communal experience is good enough to keep me stuck in movie seats for the rest of my life. And I don't mind.
Except when it's accompanied by gum.