I thought of a fun game. Name your seven all-time favorite movie experiences — the movie, when you saw it (approximately), who you saw it with, where you saw it.
Should be in a theater and it doesn’t have to be your favorite movies. Most of my favorite movies I saw the first time on VHS back in the day and usually the first cut is deepest.
Here’s mine:
1. “Tootsie”, Christmas Eve 1982, Copley Plaza, Boston, with my grandfather and uncle.
2. “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, 1986, Hamilton, NY, with my friend Jim.
3. “Pulp Fiction”, opening night 1994, California Theatre, Berkeley, a big group of friends.
4. “McCabe and Mrs. Miller”, 1995 or so, Solano Theater, Albany, CA, with my friend Ben.
5. “Murmur of Youth”, 1997, Pacific Film Archives Berkeley, with my friend Vlada.
6. “The Departed”, 2006, some theater in Manhattan, with my friend Maryann.
7. “Nashville”, 2013, Dryden Theater, Rochester, NY with my wife.
I really love movies so I’ll throw in some more.
Best double features: “Glengarry Glen Ross”/”Reservoir Dogs” and “Sunset Boulevard”/”In A Lonely Place”.
Best theaters: Paramount Theater, Oakland and Castro Theater, San Francisco.
In some ways, I think my most intense movie experiences were “Chinatown” (on VHS) and “Vertigo”, which I saw by myself, I can’t remember on VHS or in a theater. I just remember the movie! I also can’t remember where I first saw “The Wild Bunch”.
Anyway, what’s your magnificent seven?
Downpuppy
Rocky Horror, midnight show, group celebration
2001, end of a 28 hour Sci-Fi marathon, with lack of sleep turning the light shows into an acid trip
Groundhog Day on a gray afternoon that turned time into an alien concept
Anonymous at Work
Double feature, drive-in: Arachnophobia followed by Tremors
First film made you leery of being inside the car, second one made the blanket on the ground scarier.
Villago Delenda Est
Star Wars…opening scene. 1977.
The Jerk…1979, with my brother…I literally rolled on the floor laughing at the cat juggling scene.
TaMara (HFG)
JAWS, opening weekend, with my dad in a drive-in theatre in Wellfleet, MA (on Cape Cod) – I mean, watching a scary shark movie while you can actually smell the ocean. Unforgettable.
True Grit with my parents – I was little, so I thought it was cool to watch such an adult movie with them – and I loved Glen Campbell sooo much they had to warn me ahead of the movie that he dies in it.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the two that jump to mind.
randy khan
It’s hard to come up with 7, but #1 is very, very easy:
Star Wars (before it was “A New Hope”), June, 1977, Loew’s Astor Plaza Theater, 42nd Street in Manhattan, with the woman who would become my first serious girlfriend, with a 70 mm print and Dolby surround sound. (The sound was so good that you heard the Star Destroyer in the opening sequence coming from the back of the theater before it showed up on the screen – I actually looked behind me.) We’d made a special trip to the city to see it.
A more general favorite movie experience was a group of movie-going friends who would get together more or less every week over the summer to see a movie on its opening night at the localish multiplex. We must have seen a couple of dozen movies that way, and it was a lot of fun.
And I should add my worst movie theater experience – the opening midnight showing of Dune, also in Manhattan at some upper East Side theater while I was in school in New York. I went with a friend who also was a fan of the book, and we both knew – everyone in the theater knew – within about 2 minutes that it was going to be a disaster. We sat through it anyway, just in case it got better, but it just kept getting worse.
TaMara (HFG)
@Villago Delenda Est: OMG, how could I forget those opening moments of Star Wars. Changed my life. Not in the sci-fi way – so much more.
Woodrowfan
“Star Wars” Summer of 1977, five times with high school buddies (I had just graduated, they were going to be seniors). Sat in the front row once in the big theater with Sensurround. I had a union job at Frigidaire so I made a lot more more (for 1977) than my buddies working fast food so I could afford going to the movies as much as I wanted.
“Rocky Horror Picture Show” 1980? In Louisville at Midnight with friends.
“The Final Countdown”/”Clash of the Titans” Summer 1981 double-feature at the drive in with my girlfriend Becky. (yes we sat in the back)
“Ghostbusters” 1984. By myself in a small theater in Athens Ohio. Never went to a movie by myself before. Learned I could do it and be fine.
“Apocalypse Now” Spring 1981. a room in a Louisville Holiday Inn with Becky. At a college formal. Even with the subject of the movie it was a very romantic night.
“Excalibur” Summer 1981, Lexington, KY. Yes, with Becky. Gad, I was head over heels for her that Spring and Summer.
“Wizards” Early 1978 in Crowe Hall in college. A little buzzed from a party and enjoying the movie with friends…
“Young Frankenstein” 1974 with my Dad in Dayton, Ohio. My Dad shared his love of scifi with me.
“Frankenstein” not sure when but it was on TV on my birthday on on of the Dayton TV channels on a Saturday afternoon. I watched it after my party and the final scene at the burning windmill has never left my mind…..
Missouri Buckeye
1. 1980 – The Empire Strikes Back – I remember being completely engrossed and then when the credits hit I think I actually shouted “It can’t be over!. What about Han!”
2. 1982 – The Wrath of Khan – It’s been parodied so much now, but in its original run, the famous “Khan!” scene hit me like I ton of bricks.
TaMara (HFG)
And Purple Rain – friend and I were two of about 5 white folk in the theatre (the only one showing it and we had to take the train to get there). Everyone else knew all the songs and it was wild and so very much fun. I think we kind of floated home.
MCA1
Some of my most memorable moviegoing experiences were around movies I love, but many are nowhere near my favorites. In fact, I hate a few of these:
Pulp Fiction – with a bunch of study abroad buddies in Copenhagen. We had Tuborgs and burgers before, hit the bars afterward.
Silence of the Lambs – with a couple friends in high school. Scared the living crap out of everyone. Seeringly intense in the theater.
Return of the Jedi – I was 10 and went with my two best friends from elementary school. In retrospect I’m firmly in the Ewoks are a sign of the end of civilization camp, but I loved this movie at age 10.
Pump up The Volume – I was no rebel, but I saw this with a high school girlfriend from another town before heading to a local party, after telling my parents I was up to something else that night. Not sure why; they didn’t disapprove of her and I didn’t get in trouble in high school. I think I’d just gotten my driver’s license. Slater living a secret double life as anarchist underground dj seemed to fit the theme.
The Usual Suspects – saw this in a second run theater during a summer in college with a bunch of friends who hadn’t gotten together in awhile. We all yelled “WTF!!!” the whole way out of the theater and continued dissecting the movie for the next 2 hours.
Ghost – terrible movie, but seeing this holds a special place in my memory/heart because of the girl I saw it with. I can remember holding her hand during this movie like it was yesterday.
Inside Out – saw this with my wife and kids, and my parents. It was amazing to me how a film could be instantly loved by three separate generations.
I’ll add one more not in the theater experience. When I was a tween, we went on a ski vacation in Utah with three or four other families. The parents were nuts enough to let the kids split one of the large condos, so they could have some peace and quiet in the other. One night the oldest kids found The Exorcist on TV and we all watched it eating pizza. 12 kids slept in the same room that night – we all dragged in pillows and blankets and even a few mattresses, because no one wanted to be alone.
raven
Worst
“The Castle” movie based on Kafka’s book about paranoia with my ex and best friend. . . on Acid!
“Stand By Me” with my ex and her minister father and his wife. I was SOOO glad I didn’t pick it because the fucking language was intense and I just sat there.
“An American Werewolf in London”with ex, we always smoked a bomber just before we went in and the gory shit in this sense the running out of the theater. Everyone said it was a comedy but I couldn’t hack it.
“Raging Bull, same as above, the first fight scene is intense but we stayed for that one.
Dersu Uzala, ex again. She got hit with a stomach bug and hurled alll over the joint!
TaMara (HFG)
@Anonymous at Work: I was lucky enough to work with the producers of Tremors and I can tell you, that story would just make their day. Nicest, funniest people ever.
ET
My mom took my sister and I accidentally to see Animal House when we were way to young. It was still funny.
My grandmother took me to see The Deep and there is a scene where an eel grabs something that freaked me out not so much because it was scary but it was so startling.
Seeing the Jungle Book with my 2 siblings about 3 times in a row.
Don’t get me started on Empire of the Ants. That scared the bejebus out of me and I can’t remember who I saw it with but I was way too young. This is the movie that turned me off scary movies.
Shana
Watched Sixth Sense with a bunch of teenagers in our family room. I’d seen in before but at least one of them hadn’t. When it got to the big reveal he yelled “Oh my god! HE’S dead!” and really freaked out, in a good way, that he hadn’t seen it coming. The director would have been so happy if he’d been watching.
Best double feature, Blazing Saddles and Monty Python and the Holy Grail at a theater in England. I was taking a college course and there were a few of us Yanks there. AIR, we were about the only ones laughing at Blazing Saddles, but still a fun afternoon.
My first movie in a theater that I remember is Way Way Out, a weird Jerry Lewis movie where he and a female astronaut go to a space station along with a similar Soviet couple for a few months. About the only Jerry Lewis movie I can stand.
Danton
Looks like somebody went to Colgate, that scruffy school south of Hamilton College.
Woodrowfan
@TaMara (HFG): my wife and I loved that movie!! We still joke about “Graboides”
David Hunt
I think The Maltese Falcon still tops my list. It was a marvel to discover Bogart as more than a caricature in the odd Bugs Bunny cartoon. His Sam Spade was funny, tough, brave, and (above all) smart. If I were being honest, I’d have to admit that his Casablanca is an objectively superior film, but that film suffers from being so good that its best bits have become cliche. If a list was put together of the 100 all-time most famous lines in American Film, at least five of them would be from Casablanca. It distracts from the enjoyment I can get out of it, so the prize goes out to the Black Bird.
geg6
I don’t think I have seven film-going experiences that were memorable. At least, not many lately since I almost never to a theater to see movies. Mainly because most of the current films available at my local cineplex suck donkey balls, either being animated junk for 6-year-olds or super hero movies that don’t interest me in the least. Also, I simply hate doing anything with the general public any more because they are rude assholes.
That said I will dig into the way back machine:
1) Star Wars Episode IV: 1977, the weekend it came out. Was just getting ready to graduate high school and went with a bunch of friends. We were stoned out of our minds. And the film just blew me away. I’ve never experienced such a revelation through a film like I did that one.
2) Mary Poppins: 1964, with my mom. I was 5 or 6 and it was the first time I was taken to a theater to see a movie. It was at the old State Theater in downtown Aliquippa, PA. One of those spectacular movie palaces of days gone by. Was torn down by the time Star Wars came out.
3) Up in Smoke: 1978, with my sister and some dates at the local cineplex. We smoked a ton of pot before entering the theater and had snuck in a bottle of wine. No one seemed to care. We laughed our asses off.
4) The China Syndrome: 1979, again with my sister and some dates at the same local cineplex. We saw it the day before Three Mile Island happened. Totally got weirded out by the coincidence, not to mention that TMI was just a few hundred miles away and the nation’s oldest and first nuclear power plant is essentially in my back yard.
That’s all I can think of right off the top of my head.
Montanareddog
Restored version of Vertigo (for the first time) in the 90s on a big screen – I was transfixed
Pulp Fiction – seem to be witnessing the birth of a new style of cinema
Taxi Driver – madness
Night of the Hunter – even more bizarre than I could have imagined
In the Mood for Love – such beauty and longing
Doug!
@Woodrowfan:
Young Frankenstein is up there for me too.
raven
@David Hunt: His scene with Dorothy Malone is hot as a firecracker!
Hello. . .
Doug!
@Danton:
No, I grew up there.
oatler.
Looking back I realize that almost all of my memorable movie experiences involved Luana Anders or June Fairchild (june was the Ajax Lady, geg6), or Anitra Ford.
Doug R
A couple of rereleases, back when the studios still did that: Jaws in 1977 at the Towne in Abbotsford, BC. Jumped twice. You know where. Alien in 1981 at the Towne in Calgary-at the facehugger scene one guy yelled out “Looks like he had lobster” the whole theater laughed.
First runs: Poltergeist at the Stanley with a bunch of friends, some of them stoned.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (the first time) at the Vancouver Centre. My first 70mm Six track. The scene with Indy running away and you could hear the natives yelling behind you, then the arrow shots and the gunfight in the bar. So immersive.
Das Boot at the Fine Arts in Vancouver. The claustrophobic suspense, then the sound of ships passing over you with then the crack/bang of the depth charges.
The movie at the Canada pavilion at Expo 86. First IMAX 3d experience, the floating teddy bear experience.
The movie at the Ontario pavilion at Expo 86. The Canada geese that had been trained to fly along an ultralight, shot in IMAX 3d. I don’t know why the guy in front of me didn’t feel the wings on the top of his head.
swiftfox
Saw Sixth Sense three times (by myself on travel;mother;girlfriend). Worth it.
At 6 I saw the Disorderly Orderly, and while it was on the downward arc of Lewis’ movie career, the scene where he puts his foot through the car floor while stepping on the brake pedal has stayed with me.
Deer Hunter remains the most powerful movie I’ve ever seen; Young Frankenstein the funniest.
Matt McIrvin
Don’t know if I can list seven, but #1 was absolutely seeing Aliens on or near opening weekend in a packed, grand old movie theater in Boulder, Colorado. That isn’t my favorite movie, but seeing it in that place with that hyped-up audience that jumped at all the scares and cheered and booed at all the right places was just the greatest thing, and it was the perfect movie for it.
narya
Groundhog Day: saw it in a nearly empty theater, by myself, before going on a date.
Spinal Tap: saw it with a friend at Theater of the Living Arts (TLA) on South Street in Philadelphia–literally fell out of my seat at the stonehenge scene
Blade Runner: also at TLA. Also by myself. A friend had recommended it and I was blown away.
Casablanca: a friend named Rick had quoted it to me when I was in high school, but I’d never heard of it or seen it; finally saw it in college
will add more later . .
Gin & Tonic
The Last Waltz at the Ziegfeld in NYC. Still remember the pre-opening screen saying “This movie should be played loud.” The Ziegfeld was one of those classic old-time movie palaces.
Terrence Malick’s Badlands at some long-forgotten theater in Boston. Still one my favorite movies ever, and probably the first time I’d heard Orff’s Carmina Burana.
Villago Delenda Est
Hmmm….should have added a couple more…
Lawrence of Arabia restored in 70mm back in 89 I think it was. The panoramas were…amazing.
2001, I was 11 at the time…blew me away, especially the various Also Sprach Zarathustra moments…
raven
@oatler.: I have a friend whose Facebook handle is Lunar Landers and I never got it!
Amir Khalid
Return of The Jedi, midnight premiere screening in KL. We were a fairly big group of Star Wars fans, some twenty people. There was much good-natured mockery of the commercials before the main feature. And, of course, the movie was well worth it.
Matt McIrvin
…A bunch of the others were at the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass. That week they ran the European cut of Brazil and I saw it back-to-back on two nights. Also, the original Japanese cut of Godzilla, and the first Kino restoration of Metropolis (that was before they found all the missing footage, but there were title cards interpolating the missing plot, and it was the first general release to reunite it with its wonderful opening-night score).
Hungry Joe
A W.C. Fields/Marx Bros. mash-up at a small seat-of-the-pants theater on Telegraph in Berkeley, around 1971. I think it was “The Bank Dick,” “It’s a Gift,” and “Duck Soup.” I’d never seen any of them. People were howling, holding onto each other, falling on the floor laughing. I mean it: The guy in front of me just lost it completely, slithered out of his seat and into the aisle during the car chase in “The Bank Dick.” Hardest, and longest, I’ve ever laughed.
Peale
Airplane: Hometown theater in Wisconsin after Sunday School with my friend Stephen. We were nine. There were breasts.
Dream Girls: New Years Eve the year it came out. Raucous audience. We gave Jennifer Hudson a standing ovation, one of maybe three S.O.s I’ve ever experienced during a movie. Who cares if she can’t actually notice. Just felt like the right thing to do.
Unknown movie, Union Square New York: Realized that the guy peeing next to me in the urinal next to mine was Quentin Tarrantino. No I didn’t bother him.
trollhattan
Ooh, hard to narrow down but across the decades:
“Snow White” when very young, probably my first movie theater memory and the witch and dragon scared the crap out of me. Probably at the Seattle Orpheum, but could have been the Paramount.
“The Longest Day” on a ginormous screen–the “Saving Private Ryan” of its day due to the enormous scope and spectacle, although we kids weren’t repelled by war so much as wanting to go out afterwards and fight some Germans. Probably their intent and none of us had yet heard the word Vietnam.
“Thunderball” my first Bond, James Bond flick and I was the perfect grade school age, loose on the town with a buddy and no parent to ruin the experience of seeing our first implied shagging, baby. Of course what impressed the most were the baddies and all the gadgets. Definitely helped being released in the midst of the British Invasion.
“Night of the Living Dead” was my first cult movie “event.” So much hype beforehand, delightfully cheesy fun mixed with genuine dread. Perfect.
“Sleeper” had my friends and I simply falling out. The same group later went to
“The Holy Grail” to an identical reaction. Probably the most relentlessly funny movie experience possible.
“Star Wars” on the day after release–had to drive 50 miles to see this. Hooked from the moment the damn ship comes overhead and keeps coming until you’re pressed flat in your seat. Like “2001” only you don’t have to think.
Looks like I’m over my limit and stuck in the ’70s. “Help” and “Hard Days Night” need to sneak in there. “Annie Hall” (best date movie ever) “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” “Young Frankenstein” “Harold and Maude” “Amarcord” “Seven Beauties” (not recommended as a date movie) “Rocky Horror” “Alien” “Stop Making Sense” …
Conclusion: as an adult a nonpareil movie experience is scarce, if not impossible.
Rosalita
My first movie experience as a kid was when they re-released “Sound of Music”. My grandmother took me. I loved it, sue me!
Next memorable was Star Wars in the fall of 1977, ironically on day of my father’s funeral (my mom thought the distraction would be a good idea). The music, the effects…
1980ish was seeing “Stir Crazy” at the drive-in on my first car date (a gorgeous black Z28. oh my…)
“Titanic” because it was so good and we were so wrapped up in it, the 2+ hours flew by
jacy
1) Blade Runner. 1982. David Brown Colorado Springs at the big theater before it was turned into a stupid megachurch
2) Jurassic Park, 1994. My son Cole, who was four at the time and mesmerized, at the Park Theater in Estes Park.
3) Saving Private Ryan, 1998. My now ex-husband. The Springs
4) Jaws, 1976, my mom, dad, and brother. The Springs, downtown, where we waited in line for an hour.
5) Alien, 1979, my best high school friend. The Springs
6) Blade Runner 2049, 2017, my sweetie. Baton Rouge.
7) The Thing, 1982 — saw it five times at the drive in, with various people. The old 8th Street Drive In, which you could see from my house, and you could actually watch a movie from my front yard with binoculars.
Hoodie
1. Dr. Zhivago, Fox Theater, St. Louis, with my mom and sister.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey , student center theater, SewaneeTN with friends.
3. Easy Rider, same, with mom(!)
4. Star Wars, Lakeshore Theatre, Gainesville GA, with friends
5. Apocalypse Now , Phipps Plaza, Atlanta, with friends
6. Lawrence of Arabia , Senator Theatre, Baltimore, with wife
7. Dr. Zhivago, Senator Theater, Baltimore
Includes a duplicate, but entirely different experiences.
Best theatres: Senator (Baltimore), Fox (Atlanta)
Mustang Bobby
In no particular order…
“Lawrence of Arabia” 1962 at the Paramount Theatre in Toledo, Ohio, with reserved seats and a program. Big family outing. I was 10, I think, and while I didn’t get the storyline all that well, I thought the film was spectacular, and the sound — my first stereo film experience — was overwhelming.
“Casablanca” shown on a 16mm projector in my high school gym, also about 1962, with classmates. We were having a film festival and this was the lead-off. I’ve loved the movie ever since.
“Star Wars” June 1977 at the Continental Theatre in Denver. I was working in Estes Park that summer and drove the 50 miles to catch the first showing of the day and still had to wait in line. I went by myself. I saw it twelve more times that summer at various theatres ranging from Denver, Boulder, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Toledo.
“To Kill a Mockingbird” 1962. My first “grown-up” movie at the Maumee Theatre, Maumee, Ohio. My parents thought it was important to expose their kids to the fact that movies could be more than escapism and Disney.
“Darby O’Gill and the Little People” 1959 at the Rivoli Theatre in Toledo. I was seven and even though it was Disney, the Headless Horseman (and Sean Connery singing) scared the crap out of me, and still does.
“Gone With the Wind” September 16, 1973 at the University of Miami. It was my 21st birthday and they were showing it in one of the big lecture halls. The print was muddy, the sound was scratchy, but I finally saw it. For all the hype, I thought it was a costume soap opera and frankly, my dear… But I remember it really well.
“Schindler’s List” 1993 at the Gaslight Theatre in Petoskey, Michigan. I was stunned, and at the end where the Schindler survivors were putting stones on his grave, I began weeping like a baby and kept it up all the way to the parking lot. My partner thought I’d lost my mind.
Rosalita
How could I forget! “Batman” (Kilmer) in Groman’s Chinese theater!
Matt McIrvin
…One of my first movie dates with Samantha was Star Trek: First Contact. Not a masterpiece, but a solid popcorn flick and probably the best Star Trek movie (certainly the best with the TNG cast). I remember Sam thought I didn’t like the movie because I was giggling at all the silly bits throughout. She didn’t understand yet how I appreciate movies. But it was a great time.
sheila in nc
1. Saw A Hard Day’s Night in 1964 with my mom and brother. I was 10 and loved it. I didn’t realize until 40 years later how much my mom loved it too.
2. In high school I saw Wait Until Dark starring Audrey Hepburn. I don’t remember with whom I went, but the movie was riveting. I screamed aloud (along with the rest of the theater) when the guy lurched across from out of the blackness. You don’t hear about this movie very much, but it was totally awesome and worth viewing.
3. Star Wars in 1977, natch. The special effects blew us all away. So funny to see now how relatively lame they look next to modern CGI, but I still love it.
lethargytartare
1. Peter Pan – 1976 (re-release of 1953 film) – Genessee Theatre – Waukegan – with my mom and brother. Probably my 1st movie memory It’s a shame so many movies get made now that only select theatres even play re-releases
2. Star Wars – 1977 – The Academy Theater – Waukegan, IL, with my dad and little brother. I was 9, it was Star Wars
3. One of the Harryhausen Sinbad movies, also at the Academy with my dad and brother, around the same time. these two films engendered a lifelong love of scifi/fantasy
4. Nightmare on Elm Street 2 1985 – the Dunes Theater – Zion, IL. with my two best friends from high school. Wes Craven, FTW
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (re-release) ca 1996 – Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, England. with some friend I made while an exchange student at Oxford, first Brew & View experience, rowdy participting crowd, good fun
6. Zootopia – 2016 – Marcus Theater – Gurnee, IL, with my dad and uncle – went to see something else, but it was sold out or something. 2 senior citizens and this guy pushing 50 laughing just as hard as the 6 year olds. everyone loved it.
7. Wonder Woman – 2017 – Hawthorne Theatre – Vernon Hills, IL – with my Wife. DC finally makes a good movie, wife smiles for 1st time since 11/8/16. Who could ask for anything more?
Hoodie
@Villago Delenda Est: that reprint of Lawrence was the most gorgeous movie I’ve ever seen
TaMara (HFG)
@trollhattan: I saw Hard Day’s night when I was, hmmm 4, maybe 5, so I don’t remember much – except the bathtub scene. But as an adult, when i rewatched the movie, I realized it had a dramatic influence on my creative endeavors.
ruemara
Asking me for 7 good experiences is tough.
1. I saw Return of the Jedi in Jr. High. It was our honors science field trip. He totally surprised us.
2. I saw Dracula with Frank Langella. don’t know how old I was, but it was a family outing and I got to go. It was a bit scary.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’d start with Ferris Bueller’s Day off – I can’t rememeber which Grand Rapids area movie theater I saw it at but it was the first John Hughes movie I saw in the theater rather than on VHS and as he defined the ’80s teenager and I was an ’80s teenager it has to be listed.
Star Wars certainly made an incredible impression
Also Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I saw in the theater on its original run. First Spielberg movie I saw in the theater.
For Your Eyes Only – not the best Bond film by any means but it was the first one I saw in the theater.
And now I’m going to bend the rules a little and mention a couple movies I saw, but saw earlier in life but again later on the big screen thanks to a classic movie festival the downtown theater in Champaign, IL was running to raise money for theater restoration in the early 2000s. Thanks to that I got to see Blazing Saddles and Jaws on the big screen. Also Roman Holiday and Sunset Blvd.
When I saw Blazing Saddles earlier in my life a lot of the race-based humor kind of went over my head. Seeing it live, as an adult with some historical context, turned it from mildly amusing to absolutely, brilliantly, hilarious. Jaws is just a fun suspense ride and seeing it on the big screen amped things up just that much more. Sunset Blvd. is definitely deserving of the praise it gets and Roman Holiday, well, rom coms don’t come any better – it’s possibly the most charming movie ever made.
Hannah and Her Sisters was the first Woody Allen movie I saw in the theaters and the first movie geared toward full fledged adults I saw of my own free will because I was just at the age where intellectual movies seemed cool. The first adult themed movie I saw was when my parents forced me to go see Gandhi – and I’m glad they did because it was a great film and I could tell that even as a 6th grader.
scav
I suppose Star Wars because I at least remember where and with whom, which I don’t for a lot of early ones. Drive in movie place in Lake Zurich with the smaller cousins who instantly named their new (black) kitten Leia.
Henry V at the non-Arlington theater on State in Santa Barbara. On my own for the first few times, but Corey eventually visited so I had a friend to come with that would’t sneer at Shakespeare. He and I also did Women on the Verge but I forget the theater. At least five times as I matched the title.
Wings of Desire at Campbell Hall UCSB, again, on my own.
Frankenstein at the Music Box in Chicago, on my own and for the entire run of six times because I got so enthralled at comparing the two versions and actors. (I think a theme is developing).
patrick II
1. the bells of St. Mary. I saw in 1956. (which I saw when I was about 8 years old) I could not believe how beautiful Ingrid Bergman was, and all you could see of her was from just above the eyebrows to her chin. The greatest smile I have ever seen. My first movie crush. She was not at all like Sister Bertha, my teacher at school.
2. Solomon and Sheba. 1959. I was 11. Actually not the whole movie, just the trailer. Gina Lollogrigida appeared in her dancing girl constume. The bra was made up mostly of nude colored material, which fooled me, and I felt a different kind of love for the first time. I know most of you are going to have lists of movies that moved you intellectually, but what can I say, I was 11, it was the 1950’s, it had an effect. It would help to understand the arrid desert of the female form of 50’s suburbia, and an 11 year old boy. I watched the trailer before the two movies they used to show in theatres, stayed after to watch it again before the movies replayed, watched the two movies again so I could see the trailer again before the evening show. Gina Lollobrigida was the most beautiful woman, excepting Ingrid Bergman’s smile, that I had ever seen.
3. Casablanca. I saw it on TV sometime in the fifties. Humphrey was so cool — and he got to save Ingrid. Bravery, loyalty, humor, adventure in a foreign land, serious bad guys. It is still my favorite movie.
4. Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia. Two movies directed by David Lean in the 60’s. Back then if we were anxious to see a first run movie we went to he giant old theatres in downtown Chicago where they opened two weeks before the opening in the suburbs. The Chicago Theatre used to show movies then on a huge screen, the best way to see these movies. The cinematography and the landscapes it captured were incredibly beautiful, the harshness of the land affected the land and the culture. If you want to understand some basics of both Russia and the Middle East, these two movies are not a bad start.
5. Woodstock. 1970. I had been in Japan for two years (1968-1970). Being overseas was very isolating back then, no internet, no American tv, even phone calls were very expensive. I liked Japan, but I missed home. When I came home everything had changed. People wearing bright colors, long hair, smoking dope. I had missed the whole thing (it came to my town late, a suburb of chicago, but still with Indiana small town ethos.) Anyhow, I went to downtown Chicago again and saw Woodstock, which added even more to my culture shocked (what the hell were you guys doing while I was gone?). It was wonderful. The musicians were beyond belief. The first movie I was ever at that got a standing ovation at the end.
6. Jaws. 1971. Downtown Chicago, huge screen again. The shark was everywhere. I have never been that frightened by a movie. When I left the theatre and came to my first stoplight I jumped a foot when a car pulled up to the light in the lane next to me. I thought it was the shark.
7. A Monster calls. 2016. In a Virginia Beach cineplex. A small movie about a boy who’s mother is dying of cancer and he must eventually face his true feeling about it. It was a reminder even, or perhaps especially, at my age, the difficulty of telling oneself the hard and sometimes unpleasant truth.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Hard to think of 7, especially if I have to remember where I saw them and who with, but I’ll do my best to come up with a few…
1. “Foul Play”. Goldie Hawn was still in her ditsy-blonde phase unfortunately, and I detested Chevy Chase and resented the fact that among all the talent on first-season SNL, this un-funny pretty face was the one that Hollywood chose to elevate to the big screen first.
But this was my first date with the woman who became and is still my wife, and so it’s an annual tradition in our house to watch it every July on the anniversary of that date. It’s bearable if dated, and does have fond memories.
2. “Jaws”. Hard to express how effective that jump-scare was, when the movie was new and nobody knew it was coming.
3. “Star Trek” original movie in 1979. Wasn’t much of a movie, but it was awesome that the fans had actually convinced the studio to make the movie and restart the franchise. I loved the original show, but probably can’t claim to be a “Trekkie” as (a) I’m not good on the trivia and (b) was just generally embarrassed rather than excited at my one and only Star Trek Convention. Guest was Walter Koenig as I recall. And a cute “Star Wars” parody called “Hardware Wars” was making the rounds, which I enjoyed a lot more than the Star Wars movie.
4. “Groundhog Day”. Walked out of there with jaw to floor at the brilliance of the concept. Definitely up there in my top 3 all-time comedies.
5. “Trading Places”. Saw it in the theater with my wife, and again just brilliant, brilliant stuff.
6. “Dragnet” (the Dan Ackroyd takeoff). I know this is not supposed to be based on how much we like the movie, but there is something extra about discovering a movie on the big screen before it’s well known. I just loved Ackroyd’s version of Joe Friday. And now to make enemies: I never liked the “Blues Brothers”, the sketches or the movie. Sorry, just didn’t.
7. (Whaddya know, I came up with seven after all!) A comedy nobody else might have seen called “Cold Turkey” with Bob Newhart and Dick Van Dyke about a town quitting smoking. We had a big family, and there was still one functioning drive-in near us when I was a kid. So occasionally we’d all go take in a double feature. All the kids would hide as my parents paid the admission, then pop up out of the upholstery as we got settled into our space (yeah I know, but other than that my parents were painfully honest people). This would be when there was a G-rated family film followed by the more PG or PG-13 film which we were supposed to sleep through. But I stayed up and watched “Cold Turkey” and enjoyed a really funny film and the sound of my parents relaxing and laughing together.
Matt McIrvin
…and Star Wars in 1977, yes, at Fair City Mall in Fairfax, Virginia. I was probably the last person in my fourth-grade class to see it; it was sometime in the fall, when the movie was still on its original run. I remember actually being a little hesitant to go because it sounded like parts of it might be too scary (I was a sensitive 9-year-old).
Seeing the Special Editions in the theater with Sam in 1997 was fun, too, though Star Wars and Return of the Jedi seemed like they’d taken a lot of damage from the tweaks (in The Empire Strikes Back, they were subtler and actually did good).
KithKanan
My absolute best moviegoing experiences both happened in 1999, my senior year of high school.
The first was the local Santa Cruz independent Nickelodeon Theatre (since sold to Landmark) celebrating it’s 30th birhday with a 9-movie marathon (all Columbia pictures distributed films as they were also celebrating their 75th birthday that year).
The marathon started around 10pm on Saturday IIRC, ending around 5pm on Sunday (could be Friday and Saturday, I’m not sure). For slightly more than the price of a single ticket, you could stay and see (I don’t remember the exact order but I’m sure of the first two and last two):
* Ghostbusters
* Terminator 2
* The Tingler
* El Mariachi
* The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
* The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
* Five Easy Pieces
* The Last Picture Show
* Dr. Strangelove
They served cake before starting Strangelove, and if you checked in at the snack bar between every movie to prove you were still awake, at the end of the marathon you were given a free t-shirt and two free movie passes. The local paper had a reporter covering the end – the friend I went with had his picture in the story, and I was quoted saying something like “We’re seniors, it’s the end of spring break, so we figured what the hell?”
The other good one from 1999 was Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. Terrible movie, but excellent line party – we decided to go to the 7pm showing opening night, and lined up after we were done with school around 2pm.
The Santa Cruz Cinema 9 was very loose about lines, so a number of other friends gradually joined our group at the front, and we all hung out playing card games. At one point a couple of us ran down the street to Togo’s to pick up a party sub, and we placed a Pizza My Heart order to be delivered to the front of the line about an hour before they’d let us in.
The pizza was so late we called the store and they told us when it finally did show up it would be free. At this point it became a mission to eat that pizza. We entered the theater and I held our seats while my friend went out to wait. He talked the driver into loaning him a hoodie for concealment, and somehow smuggled an 18″ pizza into the movie theater. Cold pizza never tasted so good. Shame about the actual movie.
sheila in nc
@sheila in nc: Also, I don’t actually remember this, but I am told that it made a big impression on me when I was taken to see Sleeping Beauty in 1959 when I was 4. My parents and I were a little late getting to the theater, so reportedly my first view of the film was the image of Maleficent stretched threateningly across the whole huge screen. I screamed and ran out.
Cckids
First, Star Wars; I was 12, think I saw it 17 times, at an old movie palace with the enormous screen. Like others, the sound, the spectacle of it just blew me away. Then, decades later, taking my 5-year old to the big screen re-release before the prequels came out. He was so mesmerized he couldn’t even sit- he watched the whole movie standing & holding onto the seat in front of him.
Ghostbusters, both for how much fun it was and for being the first movie I saw with the guy I married- nice to know he had a similar sense of humor.
Not a specific movie, but fond memories of the $1 second-run movie days in Lincoln NE, in college- our group of friends would see two movies back to back, go out for dinner & beer, come back & see another one or two. Fun.
Taking my kids to see Wizard of Oz on it’s 60th anniversary- first time any of us saw it on big screen- I was amazed at how engaged we all were. It was my oldest’s favorite movie for years, and so much fun to see his enjoyment.
Going to all the Harry Potter midnight releases with my kids; it was lovely that they still wanted to continue that even after they were in college, adding friends & significant others, usually in costume. We only missed one!
And finally, seeing Wonder Woman with my sisters, daughter & nieces. Power on, ladies!
Tokyokie
I saw Chinatown in 1974 the first week it played whatever (no longer extant) cinema where it premiered in London, and seeing it on not just the big, but the grandiose screen was special. Saw it with my high school friend Sparky, who stopped by on his way to or from Saudi.
For some reason, Ken Russell’s film version of Tommy had its world premiere in 1975 at the Inwood Theatre in Dallas, and because it occurred during spring break at the University of Oklahoma, I managed to get down there and get a ticket. Ran into my old pal David (a fellow OU student and somebody I’ve known since grade school and with whom I still occasionally see movies), and we were awestruck by the magnificent tackiness of the whole thing: spotlights, red carpet, and limos disgorging the likes of Russell, Ann-Margaret, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Ollie Reed, Elton John, and even Jack Nicholson. Yeah, the movie’s dreadful, but it was in keeping with the spectacle that preceded the screening.
Once Upon a Time in the West, Eastland Twin, Bartlesville, Oklahoma. We’d been seeing the trailer for six months, and, as Dempsey and I had become huge spaghetti western fans, we were pumped to see it, and it was even better than the trailer. Liked it so much, that I went back to it the next weekend as well, the first movie I ever saw twice during its initial run. (Pretty sure my friend Mark, who later was a college roommate and with whom I’m still good friends, was on at least one of those trips.) Turns out my taste as a teen-ager was spot-on; although pretty much universally panned when it came out, the movie’s now considered an all-time classic.
Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte at the Osage Theater in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The only movie that ever kept me from going to sleep, then gave me nightmares that woke me back up. I’m thinking Chip was my primary moviegoing pal when I was in fourth grade.
A dusk-to-dawn marathon of Catch-22, Deliverance, Little Fauss and Big Halsey, The Wild Bunch, and something else at the Winchester Drive-In, Oklahoma City, fall of 1973. The only clunker in the bill was Little Fauss and Big Halsey, through which I largely slept and didn’t miss much. A carload of guys for that one, with Mark (again), Kevin, and Tom (whose unsuccessful House campaign this website helped promote, although this would have been back when he was a Nixon supporter), among others, along for the ride, as it were. The first time I’d seen The Wild Bunch, and yes, it loses something if you see the final shootout as the sun is rising. Way too much testosterone on that movie adventure.
A revival of Lawrence of Arabia at some theater in the Tokyo’s Ginza district, 1995. El-arance is just one of those movies that, if it’s showing on a big screen, you need to see. Saw that one by myself.
A revival of Vertigo at the Lakewood Theater in Dallas around 2000. Another movie that needs to be seen on a big screen whenever the opportunity arises. (Once Upon a Time in the West, The Seven Samurai and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly are others of that ilk.) But watching it from the front row of the balcony really enhances the experience. (I took some cajoling to get my current moviegoing pal Eben to indulge my choice of seating arrangements, but he thanked me afterward.)
A critics’ screening of Apocalypse Now at the Village Theater (now Alamo Drafthouse) in Austin in 1980. Not a movie to see at 10 in the morning after staying up all night, but it made the experience much more nightmarish.
Marx Brothers movies at children’s matinees at the cinema in Sandnes, Norway, in 1972. My brother, his friend Terry and I , who were all college age, went to see several of those because we loved the Marx Brothers. But the real joy was how much the Norwegian kids loved the movies. And, because the Norwegian subtitles would come up a beat before Groucho’s wisecracks, half the jokes were drowned out by their laughter, but we were laughing all the same.
MattF
Lots of good stuff above. I’ve always had a weakness for the weird ones– Brazil, 2001 (if you don’t think 2001 is weird, I don’t know what to say), Barry Lyndon (how many shades of green are there?). And then there’s David Lynch– Eraserhead, Blue Velvet. That’s approximately seven.
SenyorDave
My first full time job was in NYC in 1981, and I commuted from New Jersey. My brother was also in the city, in medical school at the time, and I stayed with him a day or two a week.. This was the heyday of bad old New York, with sky high crime rates, and 42nd Street still had all the old theaters, about half of which showed XXX movies. I was never into hard core porno, but my brother occasionally went, and he persuaded me to go one evening. The name of the movie escapes me, but I do remember a few things about the experience. It was a large theater, seating more than 2,000, and there might have been a couple of hundred people there. There was also a cloud of marijuana, enough so you could get a contact high just from staying a few minutes. But the highlight for me was the fact that there was a woman going around offering to give handjobs to the guys for 20 bucks (this was 1981, I assume the price has gone way up). My brother explained that this was pretty normal, and she was basically the house prostitute. The whole thing was pretty shocking to me, I grew up in a small town in NJ.
Doug!
@KithKanan:
My wife is from Santa Cruz and also graduated HS in 1999.
trollhattan
@TaMara (HFG):
Roger Ebert moved me to revisit and reconsider “A Hard Days Night” and bless his departed soul for giving me the experience of rewatching it for the first time, considering it after a lifetime of watching films from horrid to transplendent. Now have a fancy schmancy edition on disc complete with marked up script.
KithKanan
@Doug!: It’s amazing what a small world this blog is sometimes. MrForkbeard and I recently discovered we were in the same school/major at the same time and have friends in common.
If she graduated from SCHS, odds are good I at least met her. Lower odds but still possible if she went to Soquel since most of the people I went to elementary school with went there. If one of the other schools, probably not.
Walker
For movie going experience my wife and I only do drive-ins. With digital projection, the ones that are still alive are doing well. It is nice and intimate, unlike the normal theater.
Unless it is something like IMAX, where picture quality is so much better than home, I am not really compelled to go to a normal theater anymore.
trollhattan
@SenyorDave:
Ever-so-briefly there was a period when porn went mainstream as somewhat ironic “cinema” with the surprise success of “Deep Throat” “Devil in Miss Jones” and a couple others. “Boogie Nights” captured it pretty well. The all-porn movie houses were a skeevy bridge too far for me. I recall when some dude coming up to my bro and me in Boston bemoaning, “What have they done to my Combat Zone?” and thinking “We don’t want to hang with guys like you.”
p.a.
The Hellstrom Chronicle, Fairlawn Theater, 1971. Yeech… why do insects and arachnids need so many mouthparts??!!
VeniceRiley
Jaws 1971 – With my sister Patty Some theater in the South Bay. Del Amo, IIRC. Thanks for making me afraid of the ocean!
Star Wars 1977 – Opening day, 2nd showing. With my best friend Jim. Westwood. that opening shot with the Destroyer coming in from the top. Got my Princess Leah lifelong crush started.
Alien 1979 – I wont to this with my brother and his girlfriend on the night every other senior was doing Grad Night. In protest, because grad night wasn’t at Disneyland that year. Here is what happened: As Ripley was stripping down to her tank and undies, some dudebro down front shouted “TAKE OFF ONE MORE THING!” and Ripley reached behind her head and unclasped her necklace. The whole theater erupted with laughter. Sublime.
The Muppet Movie 1979
&
Victor / Victoria 1982
Both made me love musicals so much. I bought the albums and wore them out.
I don’t know how many times I watched V/V but it was a LOT
Terminator2 & AlienS
Gave me faith that sequels could be better than the 1st movie.
One I did not love but it was a great story… Something Wicked This Way Comes – Westwood. Opening night, 1983. It was awful. That is what I loudly proclaimed post-show while descending the staircase. Best friend Jim smacked me, twice, as I was paying attention to the stairs and not his frantic fingerspelling and pointing at the old man 2 steps down from me “RAY BRADBURY” I fell out laughing so hard, I had to go sit in the ladies room on the toilet until I could stop.
Amir Khalid
One of the most memorable acting moments I’ve seen in a movie: Anne Hathaway singing I Dreamed A Dream from Les Mlsérables. Fantine’s tragedy hangs over almost everything that happens after she dies. If you forget her after her brief presence, and I’ve seen non-musical adaptations with unmemorable Fantines, the rest of the story doesn’t quite work. I heard people around me weeping; and after “Now life has killed the dream I dreamed” Hathaway got a round of applause from a typically very reserved Malaysian movie audience. Two months later she swept the best supporting actress category during the movie awards season.
divF
North by Northwest, 1967, in a high-school film class. My first exposure to film as art.
2001, 1968, where it opened in DC at the Uptown Theater.
Rules of the Game, Marat / Sade, 1970, Wheeler Hall at UC Berkeley – a bonding experience with my college friends.
Chinatown, 1975, Falmouth Theater, Cape Cod. Just. Wow.
Johnny Guitar, Kiss Me Deadly: Early 1980’s, UC Theater, Berkeley. A double feature. A superb example of what you could see in repertory at that venue – a huge, traditional theater.
Repo Man mid-1990’s. Went with my thesis advisor, and ran into one of my own Ph.D. students there, who was a little stunned to see us old guys going to something that hip. Also Harry Dean Stanton.
Henry V, 1990. Best filmed Shakespeare ever.
L.A. Confidential, 1998. Lush film noir.
Minority Report, 2003. Gotta have some PKD. Lois Smith (Dr. Iris Hineman) and Peter Stormare (Dr. Solomon Eddie, the eye surgeon) perform star turns.
O Brother Where Art Thou ?, 2002. Gotta have some Coen brothers.
zhena gogolia
@Montanareddog:
Yeah that remastering of Vertigo and Rear Window in a big theater was quite an experience.
marv
Wasn’t going to jump in here, but like geg6 saw China Syndrome the night before Three Mile Island – it’s a sign!…of something. That was in Clearwater. Happened to be staying in Manhattan right next to where Apocalypse Now opened (a Sheraton, I think) and saw it one afternoon. Packed a punch, or several of them. I’m pretty sure a little flier was handed out after about still working on the ending. Wish I’d kept it. Also in Clearwater in the ’70’s there was an old classic movie house that showed films for a buck. Saw The Late Show with Lily Tomlin and Art Carney. Don’t think that film holds up very well but it sure seemed great to me that night. When I was in college there was a Thursday night film series, just in an auditorium on campus, where I saw Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Night of the Hunter – really ignited love of old films for me – and a Bergman movie, which brings me indirectly to number 7 – seeing Diner in Santa Fe with my wife. The connection is I didn’t get any further with the Bergman movie – I think it was the Seventh Seal – than Steve Gutenberg did in Diner.
NotMax
Spent a gazillion hours inside a movie theater while working in one for several years when in high school. Always felt I’d put in my time so avoided them a lot later on. That said, a few memorable theater outings from various periods of life.
Early kiddie days:
Old Yeller
The Robe (which I find impossible to sit through now) – first film released in CinemaScope wide screen
War of the Worlds
Later on:
Cheyenne Autumn – memorable specifically for how monumentally disappointing it was
The General
Topkapi
A Shot in the Dark
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Wages of Fear
End of the Road
Ulzana’s Raid
Star Wars – the original
A Grin Without A Cat
Fantasia – with the assistance of certain controlled substances
Das Boot
Ordinary People
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Local Hero
Koyaanisqatsi
Tampopo
hueyplong
Following the rule of seeing it in a theater instead of TV/computer stream, etc.:
1. Arabesque (1966 St Louis with family). First non-animation movie I ever saw at a theater. Just a few minutes in, Gregory Peck was forced by circumstances to hide in a shower with a naked Sofia Loren. Shot so as to avoid straight-up nudity, but a revelation to my 8 year old eyes (and no doubt an awkward moment for parents).
2. Young Frankenstein (1975 Los Angeles with brother and childhood friend). Laugh if you like, but to me the cinematography and sound make it seem like Brooks really, really loved the original and worked hard to recreate the vibe. And it has the Abbey Normal and Puttin’ on the Ritz scenes.
3. Mephisto (1983 Charlottesville VA from here on all with spouse). First date with spouse. Marriage was inevitable when we both liked a Hungarian movie dubbed in German with English subtitles. A framed original poster hangs in our house to this day.
4. Seven Samurai (approx 1985 Atlanta). So glad my first time was on a big screen.
5. Miller’s Crossing (1990 Atlanta). First big screen Coen Bros experience.
6. Once Upon a Time in the West (approx 1993 Atlanta). So glad my first time was on a big screen.
7, Pan’s Labyrinth (2008 Concord NC). Hard to explain– just got absorbed.
Anonymous at Work
@TaMara (HFG): If you can tell them, please do. Family gathering and we just slowly made our way back into our cars without calling it out…
NotMax
@NotMax
(slaps self with wet celluloid)
How could I have left Network off that list?
Anonymous at Work
One for my father: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when the first wire-fu scene started. “This is our movie, our world, and we’ll dictate what is possible.”
trollhattan
@hueyplong:
No question Brooks put his heart and soul into it as both homage and parody. Far and away my favorite work of his for that very reason, and an easy member of my top-ten films list, top-five most days.
Also, too, probably because it was my first Cohen brothers experience “Blood Simple” really stands out. Little did I suspect the enormous impact they’d have ever since.
CaseyL
“Fantasia,” 196?, in a Philadelphia theater with my aunt. The dinosaur segment hit me like a Shakespearean tragedy.
“Head,” 1971, in a theater on Steel Pier, Atlantic City, with a friend.
“Anne of the Thousand Days,” 1973, in a Miami Beach theater, with a friend. It started my lifelong love for English history.
“Star Wars,” 1977, in a Seattle theater with about six friends. Oh, lordy: that movie, that summer. I remember saying, in the opening scene, with the Imperial Battlecruiser sliding endlessly past overhead, “Someone finally got it right!”
“Terminator,” 1984, in a Miami Beach theater with about ten friends – notable chiefly because we were actually at the theater (a multiplex) to see the much-hyped premier of “Dune,” which turned out to be so awful we snuck out and went down the hall to watch “Terminator” instead.
“Last of the Mohicans,” 1992, in a Seattle theater with a date. The movie gave me a vivid, visceral feeling of what it was like, physically and emotionally, to be in the 17th Century American frontier.
“The Namesake,” 2006, in a Seattle theater with a friend whose family is from Pakistan. He said the movie captured very well what it felt like to balance one’s ethnic identity with an assimilated American identity.
Plus one of my most traumatic movie experiences: seeing “Old Yaller” as a very young child, with a bunch of other young kids and our mommies. The mommies had to deal with a whole row of crying traumatized kids at the end. My Mom had to patiently and sincerely explain to us that the dog was an actor, “just like the people,” and had gotten up afterwards and wasn’t actually dead.
… there are probably more. I do notice that truly memorable movie experiences become scarce in recent years. I think it’s because movies hit me harder, for good and ill, when I was younger and more impressionable.
Tom DeVries
Grand Lake, Oakland! Hateful Eight, which I didn’t like, but with my boys whom I do.
Tokyokie
@hueyplong: Did you see Seven Samurai at the Rhodes in Atlanta? They’d bring it in for a week once a year, and I’d drive down from Chattanooga to see it on the big screen. The Rhodes closed in the mid-1980s, but the development that was supposed to take its place never was built. I hate losing old movie theaters like that.
Roger Moore
The Matrix, opening week at Grauman’s Chinese Theater with my friend Felicia. We had gone to Hollywood for an art opening but we couldn’t find the place and were looking for something to do. We decided to go to a movie and picked it because we wanted to go to one of the big movie palaces; we hadn’t heard much at all about the movie. The first bullet-time sequence was just amazing- you could practically hear the entire audience gasp- and the whole experience was simply amazing.
Uncle Omar
We’ll start with why I became a lawyer and why I went to UM law school…Compulsion (about Leopold and Loeb), Anatomy of a Murder, and Inherit the Wind–all of the protagonist lawyers were UM grads, Darrow and John Voelker. All were with my father at the Riviera Theater near our farm. Maybe he was pointing me in a career direction. I also saw Anatomy of a Murder while in law school with a bunch of law school buddies and it was still great. Battle of Algiers in a smoke filled auditorium in Ann Arbor. The Harder They Come–with sub-titles for those of us who had trouble with Jamaican patois–also in Ann Arbor. A bizarre thing called Wild in the Streets–teenagers rule the world–in East Lansing. And, Blazing Saddles at the Biograph on the near North Side of Chicago just after it came out. Laughed all night.
BC in Illinois
Times when I remember the theater and the experience, not just the movie:
1 – – Ben Hur, Silver Theater, Silver Spring MD, 1959, with the whole family.
2 – – Hound of the Baskervilles, Viers Mill Theater, Wheaton MD,1959, with other kids
Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee; not a lot of Conan Doyle, but the wolfhound was scary.
3 – – The Party, Silver Theater (I think), Silver Spring, 1968, with college-age friends
still a favorite
4 – – Planet of the Apes (Charton Heston and the S. of Liberty), Rockville MD, June 18, 1969. I remember the date because after the “date,” I walked into DC (5 miles) to get a bus to the Solidarity Day March for the “Poor People’s March on Washington.”
5 – – Easy Rider, Chicago, 1970, alone, on a break from Navy Hospital Corps School
6 – – The Empire Strikes Back, 1980, Concord NC, opening night with Mrs. BC
And the worst experience . . . watching the opening night of the indefensible Tommy, Northwest Plaza, St. Louis, March, 1975. With great anticipation, Mrs BC and I came at 7:30; the 8:00 movie was sold out, so we waited until 10:30 to see the worst movie of all time. The anticipation, and love for the music, heightened the downfall.
Mom Says I*m Handsome
I’m playing the Doug! Title Game instead.
My kids are going to grow up with the phrase, “Italian mobster shoots a lobster, seafood restaurant gets out of hand” burned into their memories.
…
Hayzeus, these fecking lyrics!
“What do we have for entertainment?
Cops kickin’ gypsies on the pavement”
“Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi
Went to the park to check on the game
But they was murdered by the other team
Who went on to win fifty-nil”
“Cheeseboiger”
That’s The Clash, amigos, “The Magnificent Seven” from the Sandinista album. Just like there’s a Trump tweet for every occasion, so also too is there a Joe Strummer lyric…
rp
Raiders of the Lost Ark — I was nine and transfixed.
Jurassic Park — blown away by the special effects.
Pulp Fiction — The closing speech by Sam Jackson is still my all time favorite movie moment. Gives me chills.
A Woman under the Influence — both good and bad. Incredibly intense experience. It’s a great movie, but I don’t think I can watch it again.
Henry V
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
Got more than 7, but sticking to the rules of the game here’s the 7 favorite “experiences” I’ve whittled them down to (chronological order):
“The Longest Day”, 1962, Mercury Theater in Middleburg Hts (OH), with my dad (Korean War Marine combat vet, only time I ever went to the movies with him).
“Hercules Unchained” (“look at the muscles on that dude! that’s, uh, Steve Reeves!”), summer 1964 (re-released), Variety Theater in Cleveland (Sat. kids’ matinee), with a group of my grade school pals (we walked the several miles back and forth by ourselves, that was non-controversial at the time, cost like $.50).
“Love Story”, summer 1970, Parmatown Cinema in Parma (OH), with my first girlfriend and her just-returned-from-Vietnam brother and his date.
“The Sting”, winter break 1973, Fairview Theater in Fairview Park (OH), first movie date with my wife-to-be (still married, nearly 40 years now).
“Fantasia”, 1974, midnight movies at some theater somewhere in Los Angeles, with a bunch of hippie/stoner friends (none of whom I’ve seen or heard from in decades).
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, 1975, some theater in downtown Denver, with a group of fellow AF airmen.
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, 1984, Scottsdale Drive-in, with my wife, kids, and young niece sitting on lawn chairs and eating KFC.
Of these, only “Holy Grail” is on a list of my favorite movies, but the experiences of being at the others (even the execrable “Love Story”) are some sweet memories. Thanks for this, Doug, it was great conjuring these up (many of which I hadn’t thought about in years) and reading yours and other commenters’ lists.
Tokyokie
@NotMax: Damn, I didn’t think anybody other than Big Lou Black and I thought a lot of Ulzana’s Raid. My choice as the most subversive film ever made at a Hollywood studio. (The villain of the piece is the grotesquely incompetent lieutenant played by Bruce Davidson, only Bob Aldrich present him sympathetically.) Sadly, I’ve never seen it in a theater. And I had to obtain the Australian DVD to get it uncut and in the proper aspect ratio
raven
@Tokyokie: And Garden Hils!
NotMax
@Uncle Omar
“There’s nothing funny about a pair of panties.”
Also re: Anatomy of a Murder, the judge was played by Joseph Welch, the lawyer famous for his “At long last, have you no sense of decency?” skewering of Joe McCarthy.
...now I try to be amused
In no particular order:
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey, in its first run in 1968. (I was 8 then.) The special effects really wowed me. The SFX in Star Wars paled by comparison, IMO.
2. Big Meat Eater, a cheesy horror/comedy/musical, at the Odeon theater in Lansing, MI. (I always want to call it the “Odium”, but whatever.) It was my first visit to Lansing in several years, and it was an informal college reunion for me.
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in an auditorium at Michigan State University. They showed it every year.
Helmut Monotreme
Summer of 1977. Star Wars. I was three. My dad, my brother and I got the last 3 seats in the theatre and I was blown away. It is one of my earliest memories.
Whenever “the Life Aquatic” came out. Saw it alone in a theater that’s now a target parking lot. It was after my first serious girlfriend and I had broken up, and I recall it was the first time in weeks that I didn’t feel terrible.
“The Brothers Grimm”, “The English Patient”, “The People Under the Stairs”, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, All movies I saw with the women with whom I was totally infatuated at the time. Dishonorable mention: “Unforgiven” a movie for which I had a date with a woman who I was infatuated, that I never got to go on, because my stupid car wouldn’t start.
“The Thing” which I saw for the first time on the first night of winter after all the summer people flew out, at the coffee shop in McMurdo Station Antarctica.
smintheus
Wizard of Oz, Nov. 1998, Oaks Theater, Solano Ave. Berkeley. With my wife.
I’d grown up seeing it only on black and white TVs. What a revelation.
bluefoot
Let It Be – Went with my brother to a showing at an art theater (remember those?) a week after Lennon was killed. Everything about that night just blew me away. People singing Beatles and Lennon songs out front and in the lobby, everyone still stunned by his death, the movie itself which really documents the slow break up of the Beatles, realizing how much we all lost with Lennon’s death.
Empire Strikes Back – Some friends and I skipped school that Friday afternoon to go see it opening weekend. When it ended we were all, “wait, what, it can’t be over!”
The Matrix – Went with a friend on opening night because she had heard it might be good. I hadn’t heard anything about it, so experiencing it with no expectations was *amazing*.
Wrath of Khan – a long and funny story about waiting in a theater with a crowd of people who were Star Trek fans and the poor theater staff who were trying to prevent a stampede.
A Hard Day’s Night – Castro Theater San Francisco some time in the early 2000s. There was a lecture and Q&A after which made it all the better.
Ran – Saw it in NYC when it came out. It just killed me, everything about it.
NotMax
@Tokyokie
Yup yup. Wouldn’t make my list of bests, but did fit right in with a list of memorables.
Tokyokie
@raven: Think I saw the restored version of Once Upon a Time in America there, plus a few others, if it’s the theater I’m thinking of. When I lived in Chattanooga in the mid-1980s, I’d go down to Atlanta at least every other weekend to see movies that were never going to show in Chattanooga.
JPL
Movies that make me laugh out loud in the theater
The Birdcage
Ruthless People
Movies that I loved because of the musical score
anything with a soundtrack by Henry Mancini
Wait Until Dark
Charade
The Pink Panther
That was during the high school boyfriend era.
smintheus
@Helmut Monotreme: Star Wars was another memorable movie for me, partly because I went with my whole family except my older brother who was in the hospital in a coma. The two of us had been in a bad car accident a few weeks before, and we were despairing that he would ever come back from it. After another late night in the hospital, we decided we needed something to cheer us up so we went to see Star Wars.
My brother recovered, but Star Wars never got any better.
trollhattan
@Mom Says I*m Handsome:
Now then, have you seen “Rude Boy”?
Elizabelle
Good thread to bookmark for movie suggestions.
Don’t have seven, but I really, really liked Miyazaki’s Porco Rosso, and then The Wind Rises. Film series this month; great to see them on a big screen.
Saw a documentary on Miyazaki last night, as he prepared his final film (The Wind Rises). List on a door at Studio Ghibli:
Actual list in film was only 1, 2, 3 and 5. But works for me!
hueyplong
@Tokyokie: I remember that theater. I saw Seven Samurai in a week-long Kurosawa film festival at whatever theater was near the MARTA station that had the Gold Club at one corner of the parking lot. Not too far from the Varsity 2.
catclub
@Helmut Monotreme:
wow. location, location, location
BC in Illinois
Let me add two movies, where the experience was only memorable because I saw them with fellow Seminary students:
1. “The Omen,” Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, 1976. The movie was great, but all I remember is a row of us softly muttering “oh, no, no…” every time they said something biblical, theological, or historical. (It’s like someone else said, on seeing the “Raiders of the Lost Ark”: “You just forget about Exodus and Leviticus. Just watch the movie.”) It was actually a fun evening.
2. “The Twelve Chairs,” Mel Brooks. It was released in 1970, but I saw it on campus in 1977 (I think.) An often-overlooked masterpiece. The quest, the justice, the ending. And, being Mel Brooks, hilarious. I am now inclined to go back and see it again.
это курам на смех
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey when it opened, in glorious panorama in the only theatre in St. Louis that had a curved 70mm screen. I was 15 at the time.
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey, three years later on a screen that had been set up in my college dormitory cafeteria. I was lying on the floor under the screen and tripping on LSD.
3. Blade Runner, 1982, in a theatre in Times Square in Manhattan. Still my favorite film ever; I’ve seen it in the neighborhood of 30 times and have memorized all of Rutger Hauer’s lines. “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe…”
JPL
@hueyplong: Pan’s Labyrinth was great, but I have to admit that I closed my eyes at one point.
Tokyokie
If that’s the theater I’m thinking of (believe it was a three-screen theater), I saw several Kurosawa films there for the first time during the mid-1980s. Also saw CNN personality Bella Shaw coming out a movie once there as well.
raven
@Tokyokie: Small place on Peachtree just up from Peachtree Battle.
http://photos.cinematreasures.org/production/photos/2936/1307414427/large.JPG?1307414427
Heidi Mom
The Last of the Mohicans, in a theater on opening weekend. I was totally immersed in the violent but beautiful 18th-century world created on-screen. When we walked out into the drab parking lot of a shopping mall, I was heartbroken — “Where did that beautiful world go??!!!”
Elizabeth, on DVD. Gorgeous, suspenseful, downright creepy when Daniel Craig’s murderous priest is gliding through the palace like Darth Vader. And Geoffrey Rush was amazing as Walsingham — sly, acerbic, wise, lethal, totally devoted to his Queen. Accuracy? Well, I’d say it was 15 years compressed into 15 months, but who cares.
Master and Commander. My husband and I, who both loved the Patrick O’Brian novels on which the movie was based, saw it first in a theater, and I wasn’t impressed — too dark, too easy to miss things. On DVD, oddly enough, every facet of this complicated movie is clear as day. Anyone interested in the exercise of leadership in a variety of challenging situations should watch Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey. And the baroque soundtrack is wonderful.
Henry V, on DVD (Kenneth Branagh version). It’s incredible how great actors can make Shakespeare accessible with just a gesture or an intonation. Not a boring moment. The highlight for me was the singing of Non Nobis Domine over the bloody battlefield. And “The day . . . is yours.”
The Age of Innocence, in a theater. Gorgeous moviemaking doesn’t mean lack of substance. The ending was a punch to the gut — saw it with a friend, and we couldn’t speak for minutes afterward.
In the Bedroom, on DVD. Semi-spoiler alert ———————devastating ending, when you realize what the husband (Tom Wilkinson) did for his wife (Sissy Spacek), and that he’s destroyed but she’s coming back to life.
hueyplong
@Tokyokie: We probably were in that theater at the same time, watching the same movies.
Petorado
Jeremiah Johnson – saw it with my brother as kids and we both walked out of the theater realizing we weren’t meant to be city kids.
Patton – went to the theater with my folks who lived through WWII in Europe. Saw them in a completely new light.
Silence of the Lambs – never was so scared at a movie before.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail – sense of humor was never the same again.
Saving Private Ryan – the opening scene had my body vibrating the rest of the night.
Blues Brothers – one of the best times ever with childhood best friend.
Shawshank Redemption – most unexpectedly uplifting movie watched on a lark.
sheila in nc
@BC in Illinois: Yes yes yes, The Twelve Chairs. A young Frank Langella. He was gorgeous.
Doug!
@divF:
Berkeley is the best place I’ve ever lived for seeing movies. Better than NYC (which was a bit disappointing in that regard).
Mom Says I*m Handsome
@trollhattan:
I have not seen “Rude Boy”, but it’s going into the queue. Thanks for the tip.
Kay Eye
Midnight Cowboy, 1970, powerful story of love and salvation, with my mother who taught an adult Sunday School class in a conservative small town God help her; Rosemary’s Baby, 1968, with my husband, who leaped up at the end when Rosemary was cooing over her baby and screamed, “Stab him! Stab him!” I divorced my husband (there were, of course, many additional issues).
Brokeback Mountain, Christmas 2005, with my sister, husband (the new one), daughter, granddaughter, and daughter’s niece.
Nebraska, 2013 or so, with a friend who grew up in bleakest Kansas, just a nearly perfect movie.
Mr. Turner, on dvd at home with husband, once with subtitles because those people simply cannot enunciate, and once without to feel like I was in a painting.
Straight Out of Compton/Love and Mercy, a great double feature about the power of music and the high cost of creativity on that level – Compton with a friend, Mercy with my sister on Martha’s Vineyard.
Paterson, at home, on one of those streaming services, homage to poetry and poets, the extraordinary in the ordinary, such a quiet and powerful film. That’s seven if you count the double feature as one.
Oh, and Only Lovers Left Alive because vampires done right.
cynthia ackerman
I saw Six Degrees of Separation in the theater which appears in the film.
Still remember the odd feeling of intersecting disbelief and surprise when the set on screen was the exact room I was in.
Friend next to me was in NYU film school and was non plussed.
bushworstpresidentever
Two best double features:
Patton/Mash
A Hard Days Night/Help
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
That would also be on my list. I was visiting my Grandmother in San Francisco around that time and went to see the rerelease with my brother at one of the old-fashioned single screen theaters. Absolutely stunning!
Cheryl from Maryland
Superman at one of the downtown theaters in Chicago. Theater was a major hangout for homeless people (the managers would let people stay all day for the price of one ticket — heating/cooling/bathrooms). At the end where Superman is flying off with Lois Lane in his arms, one of the homeless men stands up and yells :Don’t do it, Superman. Women are nothing but trouble. Everyone dissolved into giggles.
Barry Lyndon with my mother, who insisted on going with me. During the naughty wet sheet bathroom scene, I hear this snoring noise. My mother had fallen asleep.
Abel Ganz’s Napoleon at the Chicago Theater in Chicago. Both film and theater just restored. Carmine Coppola, Francis Ford’s father, led the live orchestra.
Star Wars: A New Hope. Nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said.
Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet for high school English. Being clueless, they didn’t know the film had nudity. The projectionist threw up a piece of cardboard to protect our innocent eyes. Not knowing how long the scene lasted, the cardboard went up and down, giving us sneak peaks.
Lawrence Olivier in Richard III. Crappy copy shown in a library. Didn’t matter; I was hooked on Olivier and Shakespeare.
Broken Blossoms directed by D.W. Griffith. Corny as hell, racist too (RIchard Barthelmess as a Chinaman; Lillian Gish with flapper makeup). But every time I see it, I cry.
Richard Lester’s Three and Four Musketeers. Because. Reasons.
Matt
In Berkeley, In the Company of Men, with a girl who didn’t want to date me so chose it to put me off. We both liked it and we ended up dating.
In Utah, The Exorcist, with a friend and two girls I didn’t know very well. We cuddled up under the blanket during the scary parts.
Also in Utah, Clerks. Fun to watch people walking out.
Back in Berkeley, Brokeback Mountain The rural setting I grew up in, viewed differently. Incredibly moving.
hueyplong
@raven: Lots of memorable experiences at Garden Hills (including Miller’s Crossing and Freaks), but that’s not where I saw the Japanese ones. That was at either Cheshire Bridge or one that simply doesn’t exist anymore, near the Lindbergh MARTA station.
Seanly
My father is a big film aficionado – grew up with both a love of wonderful films and of schlocky crap. He instilled a love of movies in my siblings and me. My parents divorced when I was 8 and my father went on to have a very big family with his second wife. It was interesting when I got together with my half-siblings who I don’t know well, but we had similar memories of watching movies with Dad.
1970’s – going to see Frankenstein with my Dad at UALR. I was just a little kid so this is one of my earliest memories.
1977 – Dad took me to see Star Wars pretty close to opening day.
late 70’s, early 80’s – LR used to have this cool Cinema 150 theatre. I saw a lot of films there – off the top of my head I know I saw the first & second Raiders films there, Red Dawn, probably a lot I don’t remember. The screen was so big that you had to look around to see the entire picture…
1989 – Chapel Hill – with my brother & a couple of his friends – we went to see Batman in the theatre on opening day. We were waiting for the first showing & got interviewed by a news crew about all the highly anticipated films that summer. We were pretty stoned. That summer was my last one at home as I was a rising senior in college so a lot of good memories.
My brother & I try to see movies together when we can despite usually being hours away. Other memorable times with him include Stallone’s terrible Judge Dredd, Pulp Fiction, Princess Bride, going to see Prometheus in 3D when I visited him in NYC for his 40th.
2017 – Village Cinema, Meridian, ID – Wonder Woman – it’s hard to get my wife out to a movie now. She’s always loved WW (more based on the Linda Carter show than the comic book). She was a little resistant but I finally got her to watch trailers and she got excited. In the early 2000’s in Harrisburg, we used to go to a lot of blockbuster films with another couple. We had moved away from there a while ago so it’d been a while since she was excited about a movie. We did see WW with some new friends we’ve made in our current locale so hope this is the start of a new trend.
Austin
1. Star Wars – 1977, Century 21 in San Jose, CA. Absolutely fantastic.
2. Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind – 1977, San Jose, CA. Better than Star Wars.
3. MASH – 1970, Century 21 in San Jose, CA. Classic anti-war movie.
4. The Seven Samurai – 1978, New Varsity Theater, Palo Alto, CA. Fully restored original, epic.
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey – 1968, Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco, CA. Mind blowing, but also boring.
6. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – 1969, multiple time, including Paris in 1973. Newman and Redford, who needs more (The Sting was also outstanding).
7. Bullit – 1968, The Belmont Theatre, Belmont, CA and many others including Stockholm in 1969. Every guy wanted to be Steve McQueen.
8. The Great Escape – 1963, The Belmont Theater, Belmont, CA. Just freaking great.
The Golux
1. Casablanca, at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, with my wife and my mother. Early 1980s; packed house. I had only seen a few short clips prior to that, and the roar of laughter from the crowd after the last line indicated I wasn’t alone. Following the movie, we enjoyed sundaes at Fetterhoff’s, an impressive recreation of a Victorian-era ice cream parlor, now long gone.
2. Murmur of the Heart, at Cinestudio on the Trinity College campus in Hartford, early 1970s, with my girlfriend, now wife. This was when admission for a double feature was $1.50 with a student ID, and this was the movie we didn’t go to see, but liked better.
3. Breaking Away, also at Cinestudio, early 1980s, with my wife. Went to see something else (can’t remember what), but Cinestudio couldn’t show it because it was still hanging on in first run theaters. Decided to go in anyway. Very glad we did.
4. Animal House, during its first run, with my wife. Enormous crowd.
5. Charly, Central Theater, West Hartford, March 8, 1969. I know the specific date because it was my first date with the girl who would become my wife. It was a semi-blind date; we were in the same high school class, and I was filling in as the fourth in a double date. I always thought she was cute. Still is.
NotMax
@sheila in nc
Saw him on Broadway in Dracula and he was even more so in the flesh.
les
I think I hate you. Thought I had forgotten my first movie memory: Minot ND, special showing of The Ten Commandments for all the Catholic grade school kids. Mid ’50’s. Treated like a documentary.
d58826
WOW Sarah starts out with a home run. All we have to do is cut the corporate tax rate and we will all get a $4,000.00 raise. Now I can buy that pink unicorn and at least one lane of the Brooklyn bridge.
People are not perfect so it’s ok to praise slavery. She simply will not condemn slavery.
And the Trump portion of the Mueller investigation will be over soon. But it will probably go on for a long time because of the crimes of the Clintons.
ALurkSupreme
@Seanly:
Nice to see that a fellow BJ’er grew up in Little Rock! You escaped without too much damage, I hope.
narya
The rest of my list:
Dazed and Confused: dragged my friend Roger (now gone . . . RIP) and pointed out all of the ways it reminded me of my high school experience (I also graduated in 1976)
Wayne’s World: also with Roger, because I loved Wayne’s World and also liked dragging Roger to movies he might not otherwise go see
And here’s a 3-fer: I very eagerly awaited the LOTR trilogy, each one, because I had read the book so many many times, and, after the first movie, knew that this was as close as I was likely to get to seeing it on the big screen. I still think there are very serious flaws, but still like so much of it. Saw all three by myself, I think. Apparently I mostly go to movies by myself . . .
NotMax
Coming out of the theater after seeing Warhol’s Trash, friend who was part of our group was plucked from the crowd and had a microphone shoved at him.
His image and response to the question “What did you think of the film?” was subsequently included in the movie’s TV ads.
“It certainly lives up to its name.”
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Villago Delenda Est: These are some of my “additional” favorites, too.
Had never seen “Lawrence of Arabia” on the big screen before the restoration/re-release. Had the interesting scene with Mel Ferrer (Turkish officer) restored that had been cut out since right after it was first released. Was fantastic seeing it on the largest screen in Phoenix at the time (the Cine Capri on 24th St). Saw “2001” with a bunch of teenage friends somewhere in Cleveland when it first came out in ’68; was head-and-shoulders better than any sci-fi film we’d ever seen before. Still one of my all-time favorite soundtracks.
prostratedragon
@Villago Delenda Est: Saw that reissue with my mother at the late, lamented McClurg Court theater in Chicago. A knockout.
Also concur with The Silence of the Lambs. I wasn’t exactly scared by it, but somehow on the big screen it is riveting from start to finish in a way that it just isn’t at home.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: Saw both versions a few years apart at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor. At the more recent performance, Dr. Steven Ball played the original score on theater organ, a well-deserved standing ovation. Tears of joy just remembering it.
d58826
In spite of repeated questions she will not condemn slavery and/or explain how you compromise in 1860 w/o leaving slavery in place.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
I saw that movie at a country drive in. The sky was full of stars – totally magical.
dexwood
So many to list, so many theater experiences over the decades, but here are two. To Kill A Mockingbird, 30th anniversary showing at the Madstone Theater in Albuquerque with my wife and 7 year old son. Mary Badham/Scout and Phillip Alford/Jem attended and answered questions after the movie. This past June at the historic Kimo theater in Albuquerque a special showing of The Big Lebowski with Jeff Bridges and T-Bone Burnett sitting in the row behind us. A very funny, interesting question and answer session followed.
Aleta
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: One of mine is the restored Lawrence of Arabia too– saw it in boston — I think it was a different theater than the Brattle — It had an old fashioned wide screen and older seats. The wide screen as they crossed the desert, wow.
I had a lot of movie-theater-transformation experiences. It’s like I was given an entire separate education over the years, sometimes by individuals who were running a shoestring alternative theater. And at college movie nights near where I was living.
One thing that affected me a lot was the quality of light for the old black and whites, which seemed silvery and made the movie about the magic of light itself, in addition to the story.
Aleta
@MomSense: Hey, do you have power? I don’t, and battery about to die. Chilly here too.
raven
@hueyplong: I saw Nil by Mouth at that one.
HeleninEire
Don’t know if this is my #1; I gotta think about it and I bet no one else will have it.
I remember seeing Little Miss Sunshine with my two best gay friends Jonathan and Ed and we SCREAM LAUGHED at the end. We were peeing our pants. Went out to dinner afterwards and could not stop laughing. Everyone in the restaurant was staring at us.
I think had we not ordered those stupid expensive bottles of wine we woulda been thrown out.
The next day on the subway I started laughing again. I became that person in the subway who everyone moves away from.
Good times.
prostratedragon
Once Upon a Time in the West —
Me, about halfway through: My God, it’s an opera!
And a very grand one. Somewhere around there (a revival in the 1990s) was the end of me and movie critics, though I still appreciate those who know some history.
KithKanan
I’ve seen a number of good revivals both here and in Santa Cruz, but Dersu Uzala at the Palm Theatre about a decade ago stands out for emotional impact.
Seeing The Lost Boys as a midnight in Santa Cruz is always fun. One of these years I want to make it to the public screening each summer at the Beach Boardwalk, but I’d have to take PTO as it’s on a Wednesday.
Larryb
The Empire Strikes Back – Opening night 1980, after my buddies and I consumed magic mushrooms. It was beyond awesome until I had to go to work later that night still high as a loon :-
raven
@hueyplong: The Screening room is the best I can find.
catclub
@d58826:
They make up whatever number they please, then multiply by 4 – why not. The basic completely bogus calculation gave $4000 over ten years,
not what most people call a $4000 raise. And even then the calculation is wrong.
also under the ‘we will all’ the bogus calculation was per household
trollhattan
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Priceless. In Billy Cristal’s “700 Sundays” he recounts Billie Holiday taking him to see “Shane” (frealz) and after the little kid shouts “Shane, come back!” she said, “He ain’t coming back.” How does anybody top that?
zhena gogolia
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
Jose, not Mel!
Groucho48
Most, if not all, my choices have already been mentioned, but, here goes…
Peter Pan (Disney) Probably the first movie I saw in a movie theater.
American Graffiti
2001
Rocky Horror. Saw a bootleg at a S-F convention while it was still in its first run and hadn’t attracted a lot of notice, yet. It was in one guy’s room and he ran it continuously for the whole week end.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. A great coming of age movie and, well, Phoebe Cates.
Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen.
My Fair Lady. Took my mom as her Christmas present. Great musical
The Devils…Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave. Went with a bunch of roommates. First and last time I drank (cheap wine) at a movie. The movie was weird enough on its own.
Okay, that’s eight. So, sue me.
Arclite
1976, age 7, San Fran, Star Wars: I was sitting in the front row. When that theater went dark and that Star Destroyer went rumbling overhead, I was blown away. Been a sci fi fan ever since.
1993, West Hartford, Jurassic Park: As a movie effects aficionado, I thought I knew how all the effects were done: models, forced perspective, stop motion, puppetry, etc. When I saw that first brachiosaurus on screen, my jaw literally dropped. My brain couldn’t comprehend how they had done it. Sometimes it’s hard to recognize the exact moment of a paradigm shift. This wasn’t one of those times.
Petorado
@The Golux: Breaking Away got me too. It turned a cigarette-smoking high school senior into a bike riding college student who fell in with a bike racing club and went on to race for the next 21 years. Loved that film!
Arclite
1984, age 14, summer camp, The Thing: The tension, the mystery, and the sheer inventiveness of the monster made me a lifelong creature feature fan. Rewatched it last year, and it still holds up.
eclare
Summer between junior and senior year of high school, The Breakfast Club. Hey, hey, hey, hey…….
eclare
@Woodrowfan: Tremors is such a fun movie, glad to hear the producers were nice.
Brachiator
O noes, I came late and may have missed all the fun. Can’t come up with seven, but a few memorable experiences.
Star Wars, opening night, 1977. Chinese Theater, Los AngelesI actually had someone hit my car earlier that day, and came on anyway to see the movie with a friend. I did not know that much about it. Two things, I was knocked out immediately by the visuals. And from some of the murmurs and cheers when the movie opened, I realized that people had seen the movie and immediately come back and ordered tickets for the next show.
“Interiors” (Woody Allen), sometime in the 70s or 80sSaw the movie with the same friend, and almost got thrown out of the theater for laughing at the movie’s pretentiousness, and for mocking the worshipful Allen fans in the audience. And note I will give almost any movie a chance.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom,” Nuart Theater, West Los Angeles,70s or 80sThis is a challenging film, in which the film imagery increases in intensity in scenes of outrage, torture and sexuality. My film buddy (same friend as before) and I would chuckle softly as we watched as people who had had enough got up and left at various points of the screening. At the end, we wondered what kind of people would stay throughout the entire movie. And then we realized that we had stayed for the entire movie.
The Fly (1986), National Theater, Westwood, CaliforniaGreat horror movie, but during the screening, I noticed a woman stalk out with her date behind her. She was saying, “Why would you take me to something like this?” Not good for date night, especially not on a first date.
woodrowfan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I saw “Cold Turkey” in the theater when it came out with my folks. I suspect because it had Bob Newhart and Dick Van Dyke in it they thought it was more of a kids movie. oops….
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Hands-down best movie version(s) of the grand old Dumas tale, and very true to the story, too, with a fun layer of humor added throughout. The great Oliver Reed (one of the best movie actors ever IMO) along with Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay as the Musketeers, Michael York as d’Artagnan, Charlton Heston as Richelieu, Christopher Lee as Count Rochefort, Faye Dunaway as Milady de Winter, Geraldine Paige as the Queen, Roy Kinnear as great comic relief. And Raquel Welch. Fantastic reasons, every one. One of my very favorite movies all-time (originally made as one film, was released as two due to length). Highly recommend to one and all.
hueyplong
@raven: That’s it. I saw the Kurasawa film festival at the Screening Room. Well done.
low-tech cyclist
I remember seeing lots of movies, but rarely where or with whom I saw them.
One exception: we were visiting my Kansas relatives in the summer of 1975. My uncle insisted we had to see Jaws, which we did.
Incidentally (and there’s a connection), this was the summer between my junior and senior years at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@zhena gogolia: Yes, damn, you’re right, close but no cigar!
GVOR08
@hueyplong:
Young Frankenstein – there’s a book on making it. Somebody still had the lab equipment from the original in a garage. Loaned it to Brooks for Young Frankenstein.
woodrowfan
one to add, La Cage aux Folles about 1978-79. Drove up to Bloomington Indiana to see it there with a bunch of fraternity brothers. Before you form too definitive a picture in your mind, my chapter of Sigma Chi was the theater house on campus and I think everybody who went except me turned out eventually to be gay. We had dinner in a great Italian place near IU, then saw the movie. Great movie!!!!!!
zhena gogolia
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
I had a huge crush on Mel Ferrer because of War and Peace, so I never forget the difference.
Where are all the political posts today? People spent from yesterday?
sheila in nc
@HeleninEire:
I left it off my list because I saw it at home, not in a theater, but totally agree it was hilariously funny in a dark and sidesplittingly horrible way. It’s still one of my favorites.
OldDave
@prostratedragon:
First time I saw Once was in an ICU, recovering from a overly long thyroid surgery. Woke up, watched a bit of the TV, thought “Henry Fonda western; that’s nice, he’s always fun in those roles” … just before he shot a kid in cold blood. I was certain the anesthesia had screwed me up.
I don’t have time to list seven – but like many, the first Star Wars movie, seen with SWMBO in Denver on a big 70mm screen. Magnificent. “The Usual Suspects”, by myself in a theater in Dearborn MI while in town for a trade show. Being by myself was good – it allowed me to concentrate on the plot, which is the only way I had a chance to arrive at the end without my head exploding. And the first time I saw an IMAX print. Don’t recall what feature, or where, just the “wow” total immersion of it all.
low-tech cyclist
Taken as a group, my favorite movie experiences were all the movies I watched at the late, lamented Circle Theater in DC. Anyone else remember the Circle, with its printed schedules of its twin bills for the next several weeks, and its books of 10 tickets for $10?
Second favorite place to see movies (and I don’t know if it still exists or not): Cinestudio at Trinity College in Hartford. Just a few minutes’ walk from the dorm, regardless of which dorm I was in that year.
The common thread is, I miss repertory movie theaters. It’s fun to go to a movie theater to see old movies. Watching them at home on your TV is fun too, but just not the same.
Gravenstone
Star Wars (1977) – Bryan, Ohio. Finally got around to our little podunk single screen theater a few months after release. During the scene where the droids are walking away from the escape pod, the film broke. While we were waiting for the projectionist to sort things out, started talking with a couple guys in the row behind me. As a 12 year old geek, of course I’d read the novel so I was able to “correct” some of their misunderstanding about what had transpired to that point.
Animal House (1982) – North Manchester, IN. Watching it in the common room of the campus union. Entire room cheered when the boys were at the sorority house asking after “Fawn Liebowitz, from Ft. Wayne, IN” – which is about half an hour from our campus, and most of the students present were from the surrounding area.
low-tech cyclist
@The Golux:
We may have overlapped at Trinity, then. I was class of 1976. And Cinestudio was great. Saw Blazing Saddles there, Start the Revolution Without Me, Sleuth, and numerous other movies – those are just the first ones that come to mind.
MomSense
@Aleta:
Yes, thank dog we got power this morning. We were about the only ones though so driving is still like the wild west – no traffic lights and trees and power lines in the roads.
NotMax
One more.
Fellini Satyricon. Audacious from start to finish. Memorable first time seen in a theater because after exiting we each had the same urge and spent close to a half hour wracking our brains as to whether there was anyplace we could possibly get to for a wretched excess buffet at 11 p.m.
dr. luba
@Gravenstone: There was a “Star Wars” novel? In 1977?
trollhattan
@Petorado:
“I don’t want any more ‘ini’ food!”
Mary G
Yellow Submarine, probably 1970. Saw it with my best friend, her mom and my mom. I loved it and they all hated it and thought it was weird. One of my first experiences of being different.
Harold and Maude, at the $1 movies 1973? Was Harold, wanted to grow up to be Maude
The Exorcist, opening night in Westwood, scared the snot out of me and made me avoid horror movies forever after
Deep Throat, the next week, on a blind date with a drug dealer from Chicago my crazy friend Anna talked me into
Star Wars, also too, opening night at the Coronet theater in San Francisco. My ex-husband had been following hints and stuff in Rolling Stone Magazine for several years and was obsessed. I dropped him off at 9 am and went on to my day. Went I got home, he made me come right out again and get in this line. After two hours I was hungry, tired, pissed off and ready to hate it, but I had to admit he was right, after he had bought me a very late and expensive dinner.
Can’t think of two more, though I am sure there are many of them.
divF
@low-tech cyclist:
Re: Circle Theater. I remember it well, from summers at home from college. Play It Again, Sam and Cries and Whispers come to mind.
Villago Delenda Est
@dr. luba: There was! It came out before the movie did.
ruemara
@TaMara (HFG): Tell them I watch it every time it’s on, because it’s one of my fave A level B movies. Glad they’re good folks. Otherwise the time I’ve spent enjoying the entire franchise might be considered frivolous.
randy khan
These lists are so much fun, and since a lot of people seem to have had their peak movie periods around the same time as mine, they bring back a lot of memories.
While the events around seeing the movie aren’t particularly memorable, I have to agree that the Branagh Henry V was phenomenal from beginning to end. His Much Ado About Nothing was awfully nice, too.
And the multiple mentions of Monty Python and the Holy Grail have stirred up one of my most memorable movie-watching events: When I went to see it, the people in front of me (a late-middle age to early senior citizen couple) was so offended by the opening credits that they left the theater. I think it was the moose jokes, but I’m not sure. I can’t imagine how they’d have reacted to the Black Knight scene.
catclub
@trollhattan:
MST3K
randy khan
@dr. luba:
The novelization came out very soon after the movie. Alan Dean Foster wrote it, I think. (Yep, he did, according to one of the Star Wars wikis.)
FunLady75
I was there at 14 yrs. old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZJyZnQcyjQ
catclub
@randy khan:
I could watch many more good films a week now than I could then, but I cannot bring that time back – of seeing art films.
I think Proust wrote a bit about this problem of existence.
Brachiator
@Cheryl from Maryland:
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
Aside from the wonderful cast, one of the things I remember is that the first movie was almost a madcap comedy and the second film, while it was also comedic, also turned deadly serious, especially with respect to Oliver Reed’s character. It also included a sequence in which a character is NOT rescued in the nick of time. This added unexpected weight to the proceedings, and just made you root for the Musketeers even more.
RedDirtGirl
Truck attack in lower Manhattan. Drove down a bike path.
Gin & Tonic
Vehicle-based alleged terrorist attack in NYC.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Yarrow
@RedDirtGirl: Saw chyron said 6 dead, 15 injured. Terrible.
Matt McIrvin
@randy khan: The novelization came out the year before the movie!
Silent no more
1) Harold and Maude, forget the name of the old theater in Maynard MA, with my boyfriend, probably in the 80s. Favorite movie of all time from that day on. I still want to be Maude.
2) Adam’s Rib, at a rerun theater somewhere, by myself. Had seen it several times on the TV, I am a K Hepburn fan, but it’s lots of fun on the big screen.
2) Robin Hood (Disney version). Saw it in Hadley MA with my husband, at 9 pm showing. There were only 4 people in the theater. Silly movie, but I still like it.
3) Raiders of the Lost Ark, can’t remember where I saw it, shortly after it came out. I walked out partway, the use of a gun on a guy only armed with a saber really bothered me. Back when I had standards. Had to wait many years before finally seeing the whole thing, and ended up enjoying it.
4) Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Went to this movie three times, mainly because I fell asleep through the first two times and kept wanting to see it. This must have been when we had small kids at home — the lights dim, the chair is comfy, nobody needs water or a story, and it’s over…. Turns out to be a really fun movie.
BC in Illinois
@low-tech cyclist:
I am pretty sure that I went to the Circle (among other times) on the Friday night that I got my wisdom teeth taken out. I could either stay at home in pain or go out in pain with a group of friends to see a collection of oldies / “firsts” / and old TV stuff.
The first Lone Ranger episode. The first Mickey Mouse Club. Nixon’s “Checkers” speech (hilarious in itself, but even better in Washington, as Watergate was heating up). A few classic Ernie Kovacs and Sid Caesar. Good stuff.
ruemara
@Matt McIrvin: Wild. Really?
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Great, just great. I’m thankful that it wasn’t worse. And I hope it’s just two rage-filled morons of the non-minority variety.
Aleta
@KithKanan:Dersu Uzala
What a n incredible move that was. After seeing it we named a pair of kittens Dersu and Uzala.
Yarrow
@ruemara: Tom Costello on NBC just said law enforcement said the suspect seemed to deliberately target the school bus, the driver said “Allahu Akbar” and had two fake weapons. Suspect looked like someone of Middle East origin.
Aleta
@RedDirtGirl: sorry for this to happen in your great city.
Doug R
Couple more: A high school friend of mine dragged me to a rerelease of Blazing Saddles at the Mission Cinema in Mission, BC. We were almost rolling on the floor during the beans scene. He’s now a particle physicist, runs the neutron detector in Sudbury. (He’s the main reason I passed Physics 11).
Saw Up In Smoke at the Mission Cinema with my other Physics partner, the film broke and melted, I don’t think it was ironically.
Saw Return of the Jedi on opening weekend on Sunday, waited on the sidewalk of the Vogue on the warmest day of the year. Beautiful weather, beautiful picture. Saw it again in a few days with my best friend from the balcony, the sound mix up there was perfect, especially in the forest chase.
Brachiator
@randy khan:
Agree that these are mighty fine. on the other hand, his “Hamlet” was only intermittently exciting. I remember some people saying, “Oh, but this is the complete ‘Hamlet.’ ” And I had to note that Branagh compiled a version based on the various Hamlet texts, but that nobody knows what was actually performed. Assuming that Shakey Baby was a talented theater guy, he would make cuts and revisions based on his artistic bent and audience reaction.
Anyhoo, for my money the Mel Gibson version is also pretty good, as is the modern retelling starring Ethan Hawke, with Bill Murray as Polonious.
PaulWartenberg
1) Star Wars, August 1977. I was seven years old. I never grew up.
2) Raiders of the Lost Ark, June 1981, the weekend it came out. It was at a 6-screen multiplex… and the line for it circled the building. Twice.
3) Star Trek II, June 1982. First time I went to a movie without the parents. Best Trek ever.
4) Terminator, November 1984. I was underage but got in with my older brother getting the tickets for us. First time I saw an R movie in the theater. Also, TERMINATOR. When he says “I’ll be back”… and means it… was probably the greatest exposure to dramatic irony I ever saw.
5) Labyrinth, June 1986. Went for the Muppets, ended up crushing hard on Jennifer Connelly.
6) Out of Sight, June 1998. Went because I was reading a lot of Elmore Leonard at the time. Fell in love with the movie itself, utterly cool, surprisingly mature, deserved every Oscar. Went multiple times to see it. GUZMAN!!!
7) Incredibles, November 2004. Was the first time since Out of Sight I went to multiple viewings of a movie while in the theaters. I even – don’t report me – snuck into another showing in the multiplex one day to get another viewing in.
8) Mad Max Fury Road, May 2015. GOD. GOD. I went five times, once for the IMAX, once for the 3-D, three times just to sit there and go THIS GODDAMMIT THIS IS A MOVIE THIS IS WORLD-BUILDING DONE RIGHT I WILL NEVER BE THIS METAL.
Matt McIrvin
@ruemara: Yeah–the book (ghostwritten by Foster but with George Lucas’s byline) was out six months before the movie opened. Things really worked differently in those days; it wasn’t this coordinated marketing blitz for the opening weekend.
On the other hand, Kenner was caught unprepared when the movie was a huge hit and couldn’t get the licensed Star Wars toys out by Christmas. They were pre-selling certificates to get the first action figures. By the time The Empire Strikes Back came out, it was all different.
Brachiator
Tim Burton’s “Batman.” A lot of false memory has built up around this Batman, especially with the recent disappointing DC universe stuff. But I remember a lot of negative talk over the idea of Michael Keaton being cast in the role. Then, when the first trailers hit, people went nuts, in a positive expectant way. I know of people who would go to the theater just to watch the trailer, and then leave when the main movie started.
In Los Angeles, some bus benches had glass cases with the poster for the movie. Some people started vandalizing the cases, breaking the glass and taking the posters.
Special honorable mention to Tombstone. Kids would memorize Doc Holliday’s dialog. Originally under-appreciated, since it was supposed to be easily bested by Kevin Costner’s overlong and boring “Wyatt Earp.”
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Also, I believe that Lucas wisely had the rights to the merchandising. Nobody thought that this Star Wars thing would amount to much.
Tokyokie
aven
October 31, 2017 at 2:17 pm
@Tokyokie: Small place on Peachtree just up from Peachtree Battle.
http://photos.cinematreasures……1307414427
Just as I thought, the theater where I first saw the restored Once Upon a Time in America. I’m bad at remembering names of theaters or the streets they’re on, but I retain a vague idea of where they are and a good idea of what they look like. The Rhodes, as I recall, was on a short side street on the opposite side of Peachtree a bit more toward downtown. Is the Garden Hills still around?
NotMax
@Brachiator
Trivia: During the early 20th century, Wyatt Earp was involved (off camera) with the film industry in L.A..
maurinsky
1. Rocky Horror Picture Show, midnight showing with cast acting it out in front of the screen. I snuck out of the house to go because my mother banned me from hanging around with my friends. Had an amazing time, made new friends, went out to breakfast afterwards. My sister, who I had covered for a billion times, turned me in.
2. Night On Earth at Cinestudio at Trinity College – when they got to the Rome story, I laughed so hard I fell out of my seat.
3.. In America – I started crying about 5 minutes into the movie and didn’t stop until it was over. The two little girls were so like my own two little girls.
4. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars – my mom took me when I was 11 because I LOVED David Bowie.
5. Stop Making Sense – everyone was standing up and dancing.
6. Fast Times At Ridgemont High – was the first adult-ish movie I saw in the theater
7. Serenity – saw it in a special preview before all the music and special effects had been added in.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Brachiator: Yes, the 2nd half of the duo shows what a great actor Oliver Reed could be if he wished. Also, in addition to the cast, one of the first films with William Hobbs, premiere fight choreographer (Macbeth with Jon Finch, The Duellists, Excalibur, Ladyhawke, Brazil, Dangerous Liaisons, Count of Monte Cristo, Rob Roy, Robin Hood, Sunshine, Shakespeare in Love, and the first season of Game of Thrones). The duel on the ice in the Four Musketeers is both hilarious and deadly.
Tokyokie
@NotMax: That’s the peg for the Blake Edwards’ film Sunset, in which James Garner (who played Wyatt Earp in John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun), plays the latter-day lawman, alongside Bruce Willis as Tom Mix, who was an actual sheriff before he was a movie star.
Tokyokie
@hueyplong: Wish you would have let me know! We could have sat together!
Gravenstone
@dr. luba: Adaptation of the screenplay, iirc. I knew the plot going into the movie. Suspect this is the book I’m remembering. When Splinter of the Mind’s Eye came out the following year, I was thrilled to know what the next movie would be about. Until it wasn’t …
Brachiator
@NotMax:
I think the movie “Tombstone” mentions that movie cowboys Tom Mix and William Hart attended Earp’s funeral.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Yeah–I recall reading somewhere that he mostly wanted the merchandising rights for creative control over things like posters and T-shirts. The studio people thought he was a chump. But he was sitting on a gold mine.
Matt McIrvin
@Gravenstone: “Splinter” was supposedly intended as a treatment for a low-budget sequel that Lucas was going to make if “Star Wars” wasn’t that successful. When it instead made all the money in the world, it became possible to be much more ambitious.
randy khan
@maurinsky:
Still the only movie that caused me to walk out of a theater. It was playing at the 8th Street Playhouse in Manhattan – of Rocky Horror fame, and you’ve seen the interior if you ever saw the movie Fame. I went to see it at a midnight show with a bunch of school friends. We thought it was terribly boring and left to do something more fun (and there were plenty of options for that in the Village).
For whatever reason, and even though I lived within a few blocks, I never went to see Rocky Horror there, which in retrospect was a terrible mistake. And unfortunately the theater is gone now.
ProfDamatu
My favorite movie-going experience, hands down – went to see Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at the London equivalent of the dollar movies back in 1996 (semester abroad). Went with a fellow RA from my program who was…not really homophobic, but didn’t really “get” gay or drag culture at all. Before the movie started, there was the most awesome live drag show, right there in front of the screen! The look on his face was just priceless. To his credit, though, he was able to chill and enjoy the experience.
Doug!
@Mom Says I*m Handsome:
Great song, right?
jc
“Pickup on South Street” I saw it the first time I visited NYC in 1980. Seen it three times since then.
Seanly
@ALurkSupreme:
I can’t blame the damage all on LR!