The Paramount Theater "Movie Classics"
Shannon and I had planned a date tonight, intending to go to the Paramount, where they were showing Back to the Future.
Okay. Sidenote. What? The Paramount Theater is showing Back to the Future? Not North by Northwest? Not Casablanca? Not The Maltese Falcon? Not Citizen Kane? Not Singin' in the Rain? Not All About Eve? Not It Happened One Night? Not A Night at the Opera? Not something starring Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn or Marlon Brando or Jimmy Stewart or Clark Gable or Joan Crawford or Buster Keaton or ... I don't know ... somebody classic? But no, they're showing Back to the Future as part of their "Movie Classics" series this year? I am appalled. Is it perhaps intended to be ironic? Like "Our theater is old and we usually show old movies, but here we are going back to the future by showing something newer!" Well, except that the movie is still 25 years old (Ouch. Okay, now I feel older than ever. Which makes sense, since I am older than I've ever been before. I mean, that's true every single moment of my life, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise or disappointment when I notice it.), so we're still not talking about the future, but I suppose it's futurer than, say Rear Window. And it is kinda the future of the theater, if one is considering its perspective (if a theater had a perspective) from it's time of construction in 1931.
Anyway, so we had this kinda spontaneous date all planned out. We normally go out to dinner together on Friday nights, but it's generally pretty local, and it generally doesn't involve other entertainment. But I had noticed yesterday (due to a Facebook post) that Back to the Future was going to be showing at the Paramount tonight, and so I resolved to go. I've always loved going to movies at the Paramount, and I haven't gone in years.
Unfortunately, as I just mentioned, I haven't been to the Paramount in years, and so I'd kinda forgotten the sheer insanity of the crowds. We ended up getting there (or, at least, riding our bikes past, because the crowd outside was so immense that we decided it wasn't even worth stopping) maybe half an hour after the doors had opened, maybe half an hour before the curtain was scheduled to go up. But the sidewalk in front of the theater was packed. We had passed the theater an hour or so earlier, at which point the line to buy tickets already stretched all the way to the south until it hit the corner, and the line for ticket holders to actually go in to the theater stretched all the way to the north until it hit the other corner. When we passed it the second time, heading toward home after dinner, the crowd looked even worse.
So I decided I didn't feel like waiting in line for 20 minutes (or more) in order to search for seats in an already crammed full theater. I mean, I love the Paramount, but ... we should have gotten there an hour earlier.
So ... no Back to the Future for us tonight. But we still had a pleasant bike ride together (though I kinda thought I was gonna die when we were biking uphill for miles and miles on our way home) and a pleasant-enough fast food dinner. I'm not upset that we missed the movie and missed the Paramount experience ... I just have a different plan for next time.
Okay. Sidenote. What? The Paramount Theater is showing Back to the Future? Not North by Northwest? Not Casablanca? Not The Maltese Falcon? Not Citizen Kane? Not Singin' in the Rain? Not All About Eve? Not It Happened One Night? Not A Night at the Opera? Not something starring Humphrey Bogart or Audrey Hepburn or Marlon Brando or Jimmy Stewart or Clark Gable or Joan Crawford or Buster Keaton or ... I don't know ... somebody classic? But no, they're showing Back to the Future as part of their "Movie Classics" series this year? I am appalled. Is it perhaps intended to be ironic? Like "Our theater is old and we usually show old movies, but here we are going back to the future by showing something newer!" Well, except that the movie is still 25 years old (Ouch. Okay, now I feel older than ever. Which makes sense, since I am older than I've ever been before. I mean, that's true every single moment of my life, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise or disappointment when I notice it.), so we're still not talking about the future, but I suppose it's futurer than, say Rear Window. And it is kinda the future of the theater, if one is considering its perspective (if a theater had a perspective) from it's time of construction in 1931.
Anyway, so we had this kinda spontaneous date all planned out. We normally go out to dinner together on Friday nights, but it's generally pretty local, and it generally doesn't involve other entertainment. But I had noticed yesterday (due to a Facebook post) that Back to the Future was going to be showing at the Paramount tonight, and so I resolved to go. I've always loved going to movies at the Paramount, and I haven't gone in years.
Unfortunately, as I just mentioned, I haven't been to the Paramount in years, and so I'd kinda forgotten the sheer insanity of the crowds. We ended up getting there (or, at least, riding our bikes past, because the crowd outside was so immense that we decided it wasn't even worth stopping) maybe half an hour after the doors had opened, maybe half an hour before the curtain was scheduled to go up. But the sidewalk in front of the theater was packed. We had passed the theater an hour or so earlier, at which point the line to buy tickets already stretched all the way to the south until it hit the corner, and the line for ticket holders to actually go in to the theater stretched all the way to the north until it hit the other corner. When we passed it the second time, heading toward home after dinner, the crowd looked even worse.
So I decided I didn't feel like waiting in line for 20 minutes (or more) in order to search for seats in an already crammed full theater. I mean, I love the Paramount, but ... we should have gotten there an hour earlier.
So ... no Back to the Future for us tonight. But we still had a pleasant bike ride together (though I kinda thought I was gonna die when we were biking uphill for miles and miles on our way home) and a pleasant-enough fast food dinner. I'm not upset that we missed the movie and missed the Paramount experience ... I just have a different plan for next time.