MOVIEGOING ON MARS

So last week while in grey breezy Los Angeles, i took in a showing of the guitar documentary It Might Get Loud. It had opened that week and i knew it would be weeks before it came to a theater near me. And even that is wishful thinking. Usually small movies like this one i just save to my Netflix queue and wait for them to materialize in my mailbox months later on their street date.

The movie is playing in Hollywood at a place i had never heard of called the Arclight, located on the legendary Sunset Blvd. I found out from my unofficial human California directory that it was once known as the Cinerama, which i had driven by on every trek down that street for the past twenty-two years of visits. It used to be this big funky dome shaped like a cross between a snow globe and a generic knockoff Faberge egg.

(I wonder if those are the same people that made my favorite cologne, BRUT....by Faberge. Wait....okay, G Ramone says no emphatically.)

Like everything else in LA, the theater is adjacent to a shopping center, but at least with this one you don't have to plod through the mall to get to it. You open the doors and you step into this massive room that looks like a museum. Unbelievably high ceilings, soft muted tones in the paint and carpet, and, get this, it was full of people and yet relatively calm and quiet. There's a massive electronic marquee overhead and a huge table for a ticket counter with no partition or microphone that makes the ticket agent sound like Darth Vader.

The admission prices startled me because i knew that this place would not be cheap, even by LA standards. Matinee prices were 12.00! Yikes! If i came on a weekend after 5pm, i'm parting with 15.00! Wow! But, godammit, i was on vacation and dying for this movie, so fuck it! I'm in!!

Here's where it all started to feel like an acid trip.

The nice girl at the ticket counter turned her computer monitor towards me and asked where would i like to sit. HUH??!??!? She explained that i was looking at a diagram of the theater my movie was playing in and any seats that were not highlighted were free for my taking. JESUS!! I don't get that kind of option buying concert tickets anymore. I picked fifth row center and made my way up the escalator to my seats.

The building had these framed color shots of people like Carlos Santana and Slash all over the lobby. I assumed it was for the movie i was seeing but it was to promote another rockumentary called Rock Prophecies playing there next month. They had four seven-foot glass cases with tuxedos and dresses worn in Inglorious Basterds with lobby cards and synopses of each outfit. As i said, it was like being in a museum or an art gallery. No way was i in a movie theater.

We get our seats, which were velvet and built like a new La-Z-Boy. The screen had a very dim subtle Arclight logo which never changed. The speakers played this very soft, unintruding light classical music for the 10 minutes before showtime. The room has again a high ceiling, contoured walls and roomy aisles that you would expect to see in a small concert hall, not a 16-screen multiplex. The front row is easily 30 feet away from the screen so one is never forced to throw their neck all the way back to take everything in.

The music stops and a very professional-looking gentleman steps up in front of the audience and announces his name, his title and welcomes us to the theater. He tells us the movie's name, the running time and that we will have three previews before the feature. He asks us to please turn off our phones and if we have any questions or complaints to please ask for him or any of his employees in the lobby. He thanked us and walked off, the lights dimmed, three previews played and, without abeat, the movie starts!!!

I held my hand up to my face to see if it had melted or just simply gave off vapor trails yet.

Then, after the film, the audience actually sat in their seats for the closing credits, applauded when the lights came up, THEN started talking and filing out!!!! I honestly cannot tell you the last time i saw a movie in a room full of people who actually enjoy going to the movies.

I didn't have to glare or sshhh some fuckhead who brought his cumstain of a kid to an adult-themed movie, that insists on wandering around the aisles aimlessly, while I ponder strangling it like a jizzmop at a nudie booth.

I didn't have jerkoffs with muscle spasms behind me who can't stop kicking my seat.

I didn't have to keep making room for the fat cunt with the bladder dimensions of a Dixie cup every twenty minutes.

Speaking of spasms and poor bladders, I didn't have to deal with the confused and deaf eldery couple who can never understand the movie we're all watching because back in their days of Kinescopes and live piano players in the front row, movies didn't have plot twists and non-linear storylines.

And, best of all, the three trailers before my movie were actually of the non-Jennifer Aniston/Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy type. I swear when i see the audience laughing loudly at the trailer for this upcoming middle-aged guy comedy with Robin Williams and John Travolta, i can simultaneoulsy hear Jesus weeping.

I know someday soon i am gonna have to face all this shit again at a movie theater near me.

But, at least, i know now that a Nirvana-like filmgoing experience is just a gas tank away.