March 1998 feed hollywood by Brian Thomas |
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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Filmgoer
I was a Shock Theater kid. In the 1960s, baby boom children were presented
with a weekly dose of Golden Age Hollywood Horror every week on television,
where packages of fright films started to be shown for the first time,
sometimes with a humorous host. Kids like me - bored, sensitive,
imaginative, gifted weirdoes - responded with a passion, buying up billions
of dollars worth of monster magazines, model kits, toys, gum cards,
whathaveyou. We found straight drama to be limited and unimaginative. I sat
through Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? waiting for Richard Burton to
change into a werewolf and bite Elizabeth Taylor on the neck.
In the ‘70s, the fire died down, but flared into an inferno during the ‘80s,
when the Shock Theater kids revived and expanded their obsession into the
vague intergenre beast sometimes known as "psychotronic". Some of my readers
may be hip to the fact that I, as evidence of my acute affliction, write and
maintain the website of the Psychotronic
Film Society. Maybe some of you are even fellow mutants, deeply in love
with B- and Z-grade drive-in fodder - obsessed with the kind of movies that
'serious' people consider mindless trash.
But come on, who would be insane enough to watch 'bad' movies for a solid 24
hours?
Me. And guess what? I’m not alone. Every year I attend the B-Fest movie
marathon at Northwestern University. About fifty souls tough it out for the
entire run, with another couple hundred dropping in for only 4 or 5 flicks.
The program is well balanced: some Ed Wood, some '50s sci-fi, a few '30s
roadshow features, some odd shorts, '70s drive-in trash, a Harryhausen
crowd-pleaser, about 17 features in all. All shown in 16mm (although past
shows have had some in 35mm, and even 'scope) on the big screen. There’re
always a few features that I’ve never seen in a theater. And there’s always
one obscure movie that even I’ve never heard of. This year, they dug up
something called Let My Puppets Come, which turned out to be a
hardcore porn feature (a B-Fest first!) from the director of Deep
Throat, in which all of the principles are played by Muppet Show
wannabes.
I’m one of those nerds that gets all pissed whenever some asshole starts
yacking at the movies, but there’s a place for that sort of behavior, and
B-Fest is it. Audience participation is definitely encouraged, and some
audience members even prepare elaborate skits to put on during their
favorite flick. Screenings of Plan 9 From Outer Space have taken on
ritual trappings resembling those of the Rocky Horror cult (but hey,
with us it’s just once a year), with traditional audience debates and
hundreds of paper plates filling the air every time a flying saucer appears.
This year, as 5 AM rolled around and I was struggling to maintain
consciousness - while simultaneously trying to think up some more short
jokes to liven up the agonizing midget Western The Terror of Tiny
Town - I fell into a period of dreamy omphaloskepsis concerning my
participation in this event. Maybe it’s because I feel that I’m at a point
in my life when I’m questioning my place in the world and pondering plans
for the future. Maybe there was something wrong with the pizza. But I found
myself with a need to justify the fact that a grown man who shaves and
kisses girls and everything looks forward to this annual celluloid acid test
more than Christmas, Halloween, or any other traditional holiday (even
Waitangi Day). Why does it make me happier than Mr. Blackwell watching the
Golden Globe Awards during a prostate exam?
I mean, I love movies like Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory and Nude
on the Moon, and I’ve got thousands of them on video, but I don’t sit at
home watching them nonstop for an entire Earthly rotation. Love has its
limits, or as Groucho Marx once said, "I love my cigar, but I don’t stick it
up my ass." I like alcohol, but I’ve never indulged in a Spencer Tracy style
binge - tying myself to a hotel bathtub naked and wallowing in my own filth
while downing bottle after bottle of cheap bourbon and screaming
obscenities, trying to drown out the shrieking pit of nothingness where my
soul used to be until I get it out of my system and I’m ready to face the
world again without trying to kill everyone I see. At least, not that I
recall.
So what makes B-Fest , or any of the other similar marathons put on across
the country, so different an experience? Well, for me, the movies are only
part of the equation. I see movies all the time, and while I occasionally
attend a screening with a friend, there are a lot more movies than friends.
I’m *sniff* not so popular *sob* that I can get somebody to go with me to
all of them, so I usually end up going alone. Sure, there’s always somebody
else in the theater (unless you’re seeing The Postman), but it’s
nothing like the group experience/party that I get at the marathon.
Despite the lack of promotion given the show by Northwestern’s A & O Film
Board, people come from all over the country for the event. I get a lot of
e-mail from folks that are into it, and there’s several web pages devoted to
it. I’d like to think that, though they might very well shun each other the
rest of the year, these avid trash hounds can get together every January to
make fun of The Crawling Eye and make ribald jests at the expense of
Invasion of the Bee Girls. There’s a kind of pride in knowing that,
although you’ve all sat through Robot Monster together a dozen times,
everybody can still come up with fresh material. The camaraderie is
inspiring. As I’m bolting for the door after it’s over, It gives me a warm
feeling inside to see a lot of people pitching in to help the staff clean up
the mountain of trash left behind.
I feel a lot of love in that room. Sure, it’s a desperate, perverse, sloppy
and awkward kind of love - but what do you want for fifteen bucks?
DOUBLE DIPPERS:
If you’re not careful, you may find yourself paying twice to see these
people at the movies this month: Robert Duvall, Robert Downey, Jr., Daryl
Hannah, Robert DeNiro, Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck,
Steve Buscemi, David Schwimmer, John Goodman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leonardo
Dicaprio, Brad Dourif, Kathy Bates, and Jackie Chan.
in the junk drawer:
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·feature·
·net worth·
·bumping uglies·
·smoking jacket·
·ear candy·
·feed hollywood·
·target audience·
·three dollar bill·
·compulsion·
·posedown·
·the biswick files·
·mystery date·
·and such and such·
·blab·
·kissing booth·
·contents·
·freakshow·
·fan club·
·junk drawer·
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