Theater Thursday

Theater Thursday

Theater Thursday, because I'm now 2 days late, and several thousand dollars short.

Week 18 - The big screen.
The very first movie I ever watched on the big screen was Home Alone. Now that cute litle boy is being arrested for drug charges.

Do you remember your first time?

1. Do you remember the very first time you watched a movie on the big screen? Describe it.

I remember seeing a few on the big screen when I was little, but don't really remember the experience...Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark (which scared me stupid), and The Great Muppet Caper.

But the one movie I remember seeing on the big screen, where I remember the whole experience, was Return of the Jedi. I was 6. My Dad took me and my cousin David to a theater in the mall in Bristol, Tennessee. We were up there visiting my grandmother at the same time, and I think David and I were raising so much of a ruckus that there was a mandate to get us out of the house.

I remember David telling us all that he'd heard about it...among the things that were untrue, that Yoda would fight with a lightsaber (which, sadly, came true a couple of decades later), and that Han Solo would shoot Darth Vader.

It was awesome. I remember the whole Sarlacc scene most of all. It still stands out in my mind as my sentimental favorite sequence in all the Star Wars movies. It's Luke acting a Jedi. It's Leia (in bikini and all) strangling a Hutt. It's Boba Fett getting eaten by a giant whole in the ground.

The sarlacc was the basis of my unhealthy fascination with garbage disposals, a preoccupation that has plagued me my whole life. I hunt and peck on the keyboard because typing correctly is really difficult when you have only 3 fingers.

2. What was the last movie you saw on the big screen?

I saw King Arthur the other night at the $2 theater. Mostly for the Keira Knightley.

The Keira Knightley was good.

The rest of the movie wasn't worth two turds on a cracker.

3. Did you ever like a movie so much that you paid to watch it more than once? If so, what movie?

There are a few. I ended up seeing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Spider-Man 2 twice, but only because they were part of the all-night Labor Day show at the Midway Drive-In.

Pirates of the Caribbean I saw three times. I saw the first two Lord of the Rings movies a couple of times. Star Trek: First Contact. Christmas Vacation.

I was, and still am, a huge Batman fan. So I saw the 1989 Tim Burton Batman four or five times. It played the whole summer at the Plaza Twin Theater in Athens. I saw it a few times there, plus once at the aforementioned Midway Drive-In.

BONUS) How much does a movie ticket cost in your neck of the woods?

I guess we're lucky down in Southeast Tennessee. You can still go at night pretty cheap. If you hunt, you can still find a night time ticket for $7, though the better theaters are up around $8 and creeping up toward $9.

Of course, my favorite theaters are still the second run theaters, where you can go for a couple of dollars, any time of the day. I'm kind of stingy with the money, sometimes. And there are a lot of movies that I'm not willing to spend $8 to see. King Arthur was one of them.