The One Night I Was Lucky Enough to Have the Theater to Myself

Late on the evening of July 2, 2009, I had one of the best experiences in my life going to the movies. Without straying too far into hyperbole it was a phenomenal, transcendent, seminal film experience. The movie was Up from Pixar Studios and while the movie itself was wonderful, joyous and uplifting, the reason it was such a magical experience was that I had the movie theater all to myself. Be warned there are spoilers ahead.

Let me set the stage...

I went on a whim after my wife suggested I go.  There was barely enough time for me to get to the theater for the 11:05 showing that Thursday night. I had my fruit snacks and wheat thins in my pockets as I walked up to the ticket counter and said, “One for Up please.” The girl behind the glass asked me if I was a student to which I replied, no. She then asked "would you like to be?" to which I replied, "Yes". Eight dollars and fifty cents later and I was on my way inside. 

It was 11:10 by this time but I wasn’t worried about missing these previews so I didn’t feel the need to rush into the theater. I got a small Mr. Pibb from the concession counter and headed upstairs to my theater. As I walked in I heard a preview running, so I was happy because  I hadn’t missed the beginning of the film. I rounded the corner and looked for a seat. A smile began to grow on my face. “No way,” I said to myself. The entire theater was empty. 

I have NEVER had the privilege to see a film in a theater by myself. I’ve been in maybe 6 or 7 films with two or three people and even more with 5 or 6 but never the whole theater to myself. During those films with minimal other people in attendance, I had always wished to be in the theater by myself and wondered what it would actually be like to have my own personal theater. The biggest desire in this fantasy is not having to oblige the social conventions that go with seeing a movie in public. No talking, no texting, no loud noises, no annoying movements or anything else that would disrupt the spell of the cinema for another viewer. I take these social graces very seriously when I am seeing a film and appreciate when others have the same respect for my theater experience that I have for theirs. As anyone who has ever been to a movie will atest, this is usually not the case. Thus, the real joy of having the theater to oneself is not having to deal with anyone else's noise, idiosyncrasies, or cell phones. That and the feeling that you have the world's largest home entertainment system at your disposal. :) 

I sat down in the exact middle of the theater, measuring based on where the projector was streaming light onto the screen. I sat down and hoped beyond hope that no one else would walk in. As the preview for The Princess and the Frog ended and the theater logo came up, I had this wonderful knowing feeling that it was finally going to happen. I would finally have a theater to myself. This feeling was so gratifying and wonderful that as the Disney logo came up, that castle with the fireworks behind it, a logo that has meant so much to so many children, I felt compelled to stand. I stood up from my seat and watched with a feeling of childlike glee as the intro played. I stood up because I could. There were no social conventions to be observed here.I was on my own. Bliss. Utter bliss.

Then the film started. Like all Pixar movies it was preceded by a short film, this one called Partly Cloudy. A very cute little short but not overwhelmingly great. Then the film started. Pixar and the creative braintrust there have placed themselves as the master storytellers of our generation because they take what has worked before and twist it ever so slightly to suit the new story they are telling. In this case the introductory newsreel footage and story of Charles Muntz harkens back to Citizen Kane and the introduction of Welles' titular titan. It was brilliantly executed and well done. 

After little Carl meets little Ellie and he breaks his arm the next part that swept me away was the greatest montage I have ever seen in a children’s film (perhaps all of film?), showing their entire lives and their goals, failures, and great sadness. It is a nearly impossible task in a children's film to show that a woman can’t have a baby...without words but all Pixar needed was three quick scenes. A shot of Ellie wanting children, a shot of her crying in the doctor’s office with a poster that said “Your Body” behind her and a shot of her looking wistful and despondent alone in her yard. The three scenes start at 1:08 in the video below:

Heartbreaking and brilliant. I'm getting teary-eyed just remembering it. The montage concluded with a moment I knew was coming but it didn’t make it any less poignant. Ellie’s death. Very powerful because we saw the life they had together and how happy they were and how sad Carl was that she was gone. I cried. Not huge crying but tears spilled out of my eyes, hot and fast. I immediately loved this movie.

I’m not going to do a blow by blow of the entire film but just mention the parts that I found extremely moving or noteworthy.

Doug, the talking dog, was awesome. He reminded me a lot of my old dog Max (best dog ever in the history of time). I really identified with how Pixar wrote his character as being everything that is characteristic and lovable about dogs. The fact that Doug instantly loves Carl and calls him his new master, “Squirrel!” and just everything he did was spot on perfect. Skip way ahead to the moment when Carl turns selfish and yells at Doug for being a bad dog. The look on Doug’s face was perhaps the most realistic animation I've ever seen. They captured emotion perfectly through animation. Truly amazing and another heartbreaking moment. 

Then came another beautiful Pixar visual storytelling device. After Carl has given up Kevin (the giant, rare bird), told Doug he’s a bad dog and ostracized Russell he finally completes his dream and sets the house down next to Paradise Falls. He then goes inside the house to find everything broken. Even when he cleans up the mess there’s still broken bits and pieces of stuff lying around, showing that his dream, even though it is now complete, is a broken dream. I let a few tears go here also.

Then when he decides to go after Kevin and Russell, Doug knocks on his door and says, “I was hiding under your porch because I love you.” I started to instantly well up and then Carl says something like, “Of course you can come in you’re my dog aren’t you?” I lost it. Doug was so happy, the music swelled upwards and they were off on a mission. Oh, it was an amazing moment.

At the end of the film, Russell is getting his badge to complete his sash. Carl stands in for his dad (who is never there) and gives him the soda cap (the Ellie badge) and I teared up again. Just great moment after great moment. The film ended on the perfect image of the house right next to Paradise Falls just like in the drawing Ellie made when she was a kid. The credits came up, I took a deep breath and started to get up but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to absorb every moment of this experience knowing I might never get a theater to myself again (to this point I haven't, though I saw Les Miserables with only two other people in the cinema). I watched the entire credit reel, which was full of little injokes, references to filmmaking and even Pixar itself so  even the credits were enjoyable. 

After the credits ended, I walked out of the theater glowing. It was truly one of the best experiences I’ve ever had going to the movies. While the film certainly had a large part to play in my experience, it was being able to view the film without worrying about interruptions and in a place where my emotions (which were very clearly on full display) could come out without any embarrassment. To be able to have that kind of intimate experience with a film, while simultaneous enjoying the massive screen and booming surround sound, was a night at the movies that I will never forget. 

1999 - My Favorite Year in Film History

The medium of cinema has been around for over 100 years and in that timeframe, thousands of films have been released. Everyone's cinematic experience is different and for me, the most important year in my film life occurred in 1999. This was the summer I was 16, usually a year of change in the lives of American adolescents and I was no exception. I turned 17 in the fall, just after seeing the two films that would change the course of my life (for better or worse) in Fight Club and American Beauty. My thoughts on that experience can be found in my previous post. However, the year was so much more than just those two films. This year was filled with incredible experiences from all genres and during all points of the calendar. Here are some of my favorites.

The Top Three
Fight Club, American Beauty, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

This is the one movie that I can never properly categorize into one genre. Whether it spends it's time rolling in black comedy, pummeling the viewer with gritty action or crystalizing great moments of human drama, this film transcends genre to become something more. Fight Club did not make a lot of money when it came out in theaters. It was not until the DVD hit the shelves that everyone started hearing, "you have to see this movie". That's when adolescent males started their own "fight clubs" and a revolution was under way. Actually it was less a revolution and more a reflection of how influential this film is and how effectively it subverts the consumer driven culture of the late 90's. Brad Pitt gives one of his best performances as the charismaticly insane Tyler Durden and Edward Norton plays an excellent straight man. One of the things that I love most about the film is how it breaks the 4th wall and incorporates the audience into the story more effectively than any other film. Without question, this is one of the best films of the 90's and one of my favorite films of all time.

American Beauty is many things. It's a beautifully shot film and a true testament to color acting as character. The great Conrad Hall was the cinematographer on this, his last film and his work here thematically will stand against any of his other projects. It's also a wonderfully acted film with great work from the leads but also very touching performances from the supporting characters. Kevin Spacey was on a roll at the end of the 90's and this acted as the coup-de-gras to all that momentum.  It's a brilliantly written film, with biting comedy, poignant drama and a touch of sentimentality thrown in for good measure. What this film is mostly though, is the perfect story at the perfect time. At the end of the 90's everything was going great in the good ol' USA. The economy was up, the internet was booming and everything looked like roses up ahead. That sense of comfort allowed a story like this to be made. Once everything is great and you have everything you say you want, what do you do? Do you become a creature of habit and slowly devolve into a shell of the person you used to be or do you recognize the beauty in the world? Do you have the ability to appreciate how lucky any of us are to be alive? Do you do anything about it? A film that asks these questions with conviction and incorporates all of the other accolades I have heaped upon it, surely must be one of the greats and another personal favorite of mine.

One of the hardest times I have ever laughed at a movie, came from South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut in the mid summer of 1999. As I was walking out of the theater, my face literally hurt from laughing so much. I was already a fan of the show and the movie took everything that the show did well and amplified it. The whole thing is so deliciously absurd and over the top that you can't help but laugh. One of the most amazing things about the film is that it's a traditional Hollywood musical, just with very, very filthy language. The songs are all original and (almost) all of them are hilarious. My personal favorites are Uncle Fucka, Kyle's Mom's a Bitch, La Resistance and Mountain Town. Anytime I hear one of the songs, it gets stuck in my head (in a good way). Like Anchorman, Caddyshack, and The Blues Brothers, this is one of the great quotable movies as well and never fails to incite memories of mirth and warmth and other feelings of 'mth. It's simply put, hands down, the best R-rated, animated, musical of all time.

Best of the Rest
The Matrix, The Iron Giant, The Insider, Office Space, Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Galaxy Quest, Sleepy Hollow, The Sixth Sense, Election, Toy Story 2, The Green Mile, Three Kings, The Limey, The Boondock Saints, The Blair Witch Project, Being John Malcovich

This was another year that was heavy on originality. The aformentioned Matrix aside, Three Kings, Being John Malcovich, Election, The Boondock Saints and The Limey all played within their own sandboxes to create new elements of genre. Other films did not so much stretch genre conventions as perfect them. South Park gave musicals a new, dirty life. Toy Story 2 and the Iron Giant showed us what computer animation could be and were bright lights towards the future. The Blair Witch Project was a phenomenon, mostly because half the people who saw it thought it was real (myself included) thanks to a very clever marketing campaign. The Green Mile, The Sixth Sense and Sleepy Hollow all incorporated elements of style into their stories that felt fresh but classic at the same time. There was also the wonderfully spot on Office Space, the calculated send up of Star Trek in Galaxy Quest and the all out bombastic Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Lastly, The Insider showed everyone that Russell Crowe could act and Al Pacino could still act. This film still has one of my favorite lines when the lawyer deposing Crowe's character tells the tobacco lawyer who keeps objecting and interrupting Crowe's testimony essentially that he has no power here and to "wipe that smirk off your face!" The contempt in that line delivery is spot on perfection and worth sitting through the rest of the movie even if you enjoy nothing else about it, which would be hard to do because it's a very well made film. This year was full of moments of perfection just like that and one of the reasons I am so fond of this collection of celluloid.

Other Films of Note
American Pie, Arlington Road, Analyze This, Go, The 13th Warrior, Payback, Dogma, Stir of Echoes

Overall this year is one of the greatest collections of stories we've ever known. There was no one specific genre that was more represented or massively important drama towering over everything. No this year was more a time when things felt like we were very close to something. Whether it was a new achievement, a new kindred spirit with our fellow man, a new desire to make the world better, is hard to say, probably because it wasn't any of those things. What I do know is this collection of films made me feel hopeful for the future. The fact that we were about to flip the calendar from the 1900's to the 2000's probably had a lot to do with this pervasively imminent feeling but I think more of it had to do with a level of optimism that was well represented in the films released this year. I've already mentioned in my last post how much Fight Club and American Beauty affected my life, but it was the full tapestry of cinema that year which really affected me and had a large hand in molding me into the person I am today. Truly one of the best years of my life.