Collecting the Laughs (Part III)
August 21, 2015
The Excitement Level is Quite Palable
September 18, 2015
Word Count: 1065
The Cinema
Obsession Pipeline
Recently I went for cocktails with a friend to the roof deck the local rum bar had just built. In the course of relaxing with our drinks, my buddy brought up the subject of how much the building we were on top of had changed. He asked if I’ve got any sort of memories from when it was a movie theatre and this ripped open the floodgates for me. These days it seems like I’ve become totally become engrossed in writing stories, creating stories, or watching movies. The obsessions will probably be with me till the day after they’re shoveling soil onto my permanent dirt nap. Coupled with a teenage comic book collecting kick, the Lode Theatre where it all started became like the gateway for my creative juices flowing big time.
So just how enchanted was I with watching movies? One of my first jobs was working at the local newspaper on Thursday afternoons stamping address labels on the newest editions of the paper and bagging them up for mailing at the post office. The job was your typical mindless endeavor for a teenager looking to supplement the amount of Dead Presidents in their pocket. Other than the occasional alteration to the subscriber list, things didn’t change much from week to week.
My buddy and I still came to work most Thursdays with a spring in our step and more often than not big smiles on our faces. This was entirely due to the fact that Friday was the day new movies came out at the Lode. The afternoon job at the Silverton Standard & Miner newspaper paid us just enough money to get us into the theatre the next day, buy a box of popcorn, one small soda, and a candy bar. Needless to say, 100% of the time we’d walk out of The Standard office on Thursday evening with money in our pockets. Then wake up on Saturday morning as broke as we found ourselves the other 98% of the week.
The number of premiers I witnessed at The Lodeis endless. The first time I ever saw any of the classic (or unclassic depending upon one’s perspective) Hammer Horror movies, the first Martin Scorsese movies he’d ever produced, Rocky I before the movie franchise sank into its inevitable mediocrity. Quite possibly our boss at the newspaper should’ve sent our wages directly to management at the Lode?
Occasionally a group of us would make the fifty-mile journey to the big city of Durango just to see a new movie right after it had been released. I’ll never forget locking all the car doors and glaring suspiciously at my siblings right after we’d seen The Shining. The first Star Wars movie had me making the trip to Durango nine times that summer.
Then I decided to spend the next four and a half years attending the People’s Republic of Boulder where my movie obsession took another great leap forward. There were three lecture halls on campus where you could lose yourself at least four times a week staring at a screen. Twice a month another spot used to show Independent films the commercial chains refused to subject their clientele too. Occasionally a group of us would even go to downtown Boulder to take in a first-run film. I was in Heaven and my grades occasionally suffered because of my movie going practices.
The tentacles of Hollywood have managed to reach far and wide globally and this was very evident during the two years I worked as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. There were three main movie theatres in Nairobi and during my time in East Africa I became quite familiar with all of them.
Movie going in Kenya back in the mid-80’s was quite the experience. Right off the bat as the lights would come down, the Kenyan flag would appear on the screen and the national anthem would start to play. Everyone in attendance was required to stand up and place their hand on their heart while the music blared. Failure to do this would result in being escorted out into the lobby. This never happened to me, but I’m sure some defiant individual did it once. Probably ended up being subjected to an extensive fingernail inspection as a result.
Playing of the anthem was then followed by the showing of a grainy back-n-white newsreel, a cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and then finally the main feature. This practice also took place at the cinema palace in the provincial town where I was stationed. The Tip-Top Movie Theatre in Nyeri, Kenya is where I witnessed my first Chinese Kung Fu movies and the initial odd wonders of Bollywood.
Sometimes I’d get a little homesick after going to the movies in Kenya, but more often than not I didn’t. Due partially to the fact that we’d go to the local restaurant first. A treat in and of itself. Partaking of regional Kikuyu cuisine which you’ll never see back here in the states.
Since that time going to the movies or viewing them on DVD has become one of my favorite ways to escape the harsh light of reality. No matter where I happen to be living at the time, or what the circumstances turn out to be. Is it much of a coincidence that I’m going into my twelfth year as a volunteer taxi driver for the Telluride Film Festival? Not really. Of course the management provides us volunteers with lots of other nice perks, but cinema will always be the main focus.
Additionally, one of my favorite things besides getting to see first run movies on a regular basis while working at the Nugget Movie Theatre (also in Telluride) was talking about the relative merits of the movie Luci was showing that week. One actually got a chance to sound halfway knowledgeable about the subject while voicing their opinion.
So in the grand scheme of things what does this tell us about me? Basically we can emphatically conclude that I like losing myself in stories. Whether it’s reading them, creating tales of one sort or another through my writing, or losing myself in a darkened room while staring at a screen. Sometimes I even realize that most of them are fictional in nature and don’t try to live out the storylines after I walk out of the theatre.
