My only fear is that the audience is gonna ruin it for me.
I got to see it a couple times during it's theatrical run, of course, but this i a completely different beast entirely. I'd like to think it will be appreciative, responsive fans having a blast seeing this movie, in a seminal location, projected on celluloid again. But it's a free screening.... so I expect the audience PTA described at the test screening on the audio commentary.
Only worse.
Though, if I don't let paranoia enter th equation, this is very, very appealing. If only the free Sonic Youth show, the Jon Brion show, and the Inland Empire (with guests!) screening weren't competing for my fanboy attention.
Now, you tell me I can see Hard Eight in a theater again and I'll be the first in line.
Actually, that reminds me of something...
When I was in high school, a local theater in my small town got the idea to do midnight screenings. It was a fine experiment, they played the best of the midnight standards.... I saw shitty prints of A Clockwork Orange and The Shining... but in my town, seeing prints of these at all was quite a feast.
Well, one week they booked Reservoir Dogs and it brought out a shit load of bro's. Lots of backwards caps and high fives and all the other stereotypes. Bunch of assholes, magnified by the fact that I'm in high school, so I hate these folks even more.
So the projectionist comes out fifteen minutes before the film starts and says, due to a mix up and the inability to secure Reservoir Dogs, they'd be showing Jackie Brown instead. This place is packed and their pissed. In a theater for nearly 300 people, everyone left except for about 12.
They didn't concede and make a nit out of it anyway, they left... got their money back and took off.
Now, this is back in 2000... maybe 1999... so the idea of Jackie Brown theatrically is still pretty fresh and not as novel, I guess. Not that they'd stay now, either. I'd seen it a couple times during it's original run, so it wasn't that novel to me, either... BUT...the idea of all these assholes leaving and watching Jackie Brown in a theater, relatively privately was a pretty novel idea. I stayed and had a blast.
Yeah, so it's like if everyone showed up for the Boogie Nights screening and they showed Hard Eight instead... kind of.
Never mind... just wanted to tell that story.