From the Vaults: On the Big Screen

I want to talk a little bit about the theatrical experience and the way it impacts how you watch a movie. In the age of dvds, it's certainly easier to avoid loud talkers, cell phone users, screaming children, and sticky floors by just waiting to watch something at home. Most of us have a home set up we prefer and if we can't exactly replicate the movie-going experience, it can be close enough.

That being said, there are some instances where you just can't properly have the same experience, no matter how well you calibrate your audio. The Others is scary, but it was downright eerie in a pitch black theatre with a really good sound system, and I've never been able to watch it with the same dread as that first time. It has less to do with knowing what happens and more to do with the perfect combination of atmosphere, location, and sound design. While The Others remains a great movie to me, it just isn't the same on the small screen.

More to the point is Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse; a movie designed strictly for the theatre. Since both films were released on dvd, I've noticed that many friends tend to favor Planet Terror over Death Proof, some of them not even watching Death Proof in order to make the comparison. This is fine and well seeing them individual in longer versions, but that's not how you're supposed to see Grindhouse (and it's not just Planet Terror and Death Proof; it really is a package deal). When the opportunity to see Grindhouse came up as I was in Raleigh, I called Adam and Cranford to come with.

Where did we go? Ideally, you'd want to see a movie like Grindhouse at The Studio, a shoebox of a duplex shoved in next to a bowling alley on Hillsborough Street. Both screens were about the size of a living room wall with the nearest seat about four feet away and the farthest no more than fifteen. It's where I saw Trees Lounge and Trainspotting, and for some strange reason The Faculty. If Raleigh had anything resembling the "dive bar of theatres", it was The Studio.

Unfortunately The Studio's been closed for years now; when United Cinemas went under and Mission Valley came up for sale, the people that owned The Rialto, The Colony, and The Studio had the opportunity to take over six screens in primo location near NC State. The catch was that they could either afford The Studio or Mission Valley.

As much as I miss the Studio, I believe they chose wisely. Mission Valley did have Grindhouse, and despite the multiplex exterior, the theatre was more like a larger indie theatre ala the long gone Janus Theatre of Greensboro. Mission Valley kept low prices on tickets and concessions, had comfortable seats that leaned back almost too far, and more importantly, had the aura of a place you could see something like Grindhouse with the right audience.

And was it ever. What you can't possibly understand watching Planet Terror and Death Proof in the comfort of your own home is being able to share the movie with the thirty or fourty other people who came out for the late show (a 10:00, which meant it got out around 1:30 in the morning). A three hour double feature with trailers before and between each film with strange commercials for an Austin based Tex-Mex restaurant led to the perfect atmosphere of people getting up and wandering around, hooting and hollering at the screen, laughing together, screaming together, and registering approval for the myriad of awesome moments.

There was no "pause" button so you could get up and grab a drink. I missed the opening credits of Death Proof because I needed to take a bathroom break, and I passed three or four people on their way in and out of the screen, as well as people just walking around to keep their legs awake. And you know what? That's exactly how it should be for a film like this. Something that I think gets lost watching the dvds is the intentionally bad splices of film that begin Planet Terror and the conscious effort to welcome you to the experience of the film.

I firmly believe that I'll never be able to enjoy Grindhouse the way we did that night, not even when they release the whole shebang on double disc whatever later this year. It was unique to Mission Valley and any other dingy theatre filled with stragglers and people looking to get together and celebrate exploitation cinema. Truthfully, I can't imagine watching Grindhouse at The Grande or The Crossroads 20 or something like that, because it wouldn't feel right. Grindhouse worked because of the confluence of location, crowd, and film, and it's a shame more people didn't see it the way it was intended.

There are other movies I've seen that just weren't the same at home, but hopefully this example helps give you some kind of context to the point I'm making: sometimes it is worth your effort to get out of the house and join other strangers in a darkened auditorium. That's how films were intended to be seen; how they were meant to be experienced. It may take a little more of your time, but the ends more than justify the hassle.