Please forgive my sloppy prose, I haven't the time (yet) to make it better.
1. Inherent Vice Premiere - The 52nd New York Film Festival - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - 9:00pm - Alice Tully Hall, Starr Theater, Lincoln Center
In attendance: WorldForgot, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joaquin Phoenix, Owen Wilson, Joanna Newsom, Maya Rudolph, Benicio Del Toro, Jena
Malone, Martin Short, Sasha Pieterse, Michael K. Williams...(also spotted in the crowd: Elvis Mitchell, I think Mike Leigh, Safdies, Alex Ross
Perry...maybe Pynchon? I'm choosing to believe it.)
I never expected to score tickets, yet there I found myself, Orchestra Level, Row W, Seat 115 - admittedly, not the best, but I wasn't complaining. I cannot think of a better place to see a movie on 35mm than Alice Tully Hall on Broadway @ 65th. Grand, quietly opulent, with the best projectionists in town and a sound system to beat The Band. PTA and co, after a brief and very nervous introduction: "Just roll it!", were sat high up in one of the balcony wings. The sound was cranked full of mischief to delightfully squirm-inducing degrees, loud enough to comb your hair and give you a sunburn, and all I can remember is this feeling of the thing just taking off and ceaselessly lurching forward, me leaning more and more precariously in my seat, head over toes, the whole affair striking me as far more melancholic and ragged than I was expecting (having read the book twice), and suddenly it was all over - the lights came up, the applause was long and intense, but there was a palpable unease whipping through the crowd as the spotlights swept the room, landing hard and white on PTA and cast crouched up in the wings like they were breaking out of Sing Sing, smiling and waving sheepishly, embarrassed...right away, I knew that I loved it, but I wasn't sure exactly how I loved it. Certainly not in the manner established by his previous films - even something of the ostensibly colder variety a la The Master. I was soon to learn that many others, erm, failed to love it. Rumors began to circulate about Vice being possibly PTA's first stinker. Boring, they said. Incomprehensible, they said. Miscast. Fails the Bechdel test. It was three months before I was able to see it again, and in that time I played it over and over obsessively in my mind, repeatedly watching whatever short clips and/or trailers found their way online in the wind up to the film's wide release. And in that time the question often re-occurred to me - was this indeed objectively PTA's worst film? Even his most diehard fans seemed ambivalent; many here even expressed indifference! It is true that, though I always maintained my intense affection for it, I at first couldn't bring myself to rank it any higher than Hard Eight in terms of his whole filmography; nowadays, it sits comfortably at the top of the whole lovely heap, which bottom grows soggier by the day. I may give The Master the official edge, but Vice is the one I like to watch most these days, and I also consider Joaquin's turn as Larry "Doc" Sportello to be far and away his greatest performance.
2. Jurassic Park - June 11, 1993 - 7:00pm - Latham, New York - Regal Cinemas, Latham Circle Mall
I was six years old. It was the last day of Kindergarten. I had first seen the teaser TV spots in, I would imagine, the summer or fall of 92, and initially thought they were advertising a FOR REAL park featuring live dinosaurs somehow whisked back into existence by some modern miracle of science. My mother patiently explained to me that this was an advertisement for the new Steven Spielberg movie (I would have known E.T., Hook, Gremlins, Goonies, possibly Indiana Jones and Jaws at the time) and promised to take me to see it opening night. Cut to a few months later and...well, wait, first, let me explain: I was something of a troublemaker as a youngster, a four-foot Rebel Without a Cause rocking Oshkosh B'gosh and Nikes with velcro straps. My teacher had devised early in the year a system of discipline wherein one infraction would incur you a verbal warning, a second infraction would result in your name being written in bold CAPS on the chalkboard, and a third would see your name being UNDERLINED at which point one would usually be sent to the principal's office. I confess, I wracked up more infractions throughout the course of the school year than any other student, my name a daily blight upon the chalkboard, and by years end my parents (both barely 28 at the time) had had it up to the proverbial here with me. Nevertheless, as the big date drew nearer, my mom, having initially resolved to forbid me from seeing the film in theaters at all, decided to cut a deal with me: if, on the last day of school - which was coincidentally the date of JP's wide release - I managed to behave and keep my name off that chalkboard, she would take me. I readily agreed, silently working out how I might still be able to bring a proper finish to my proud year-long spree of junior delinquency without officially signing my name to it. It is to my regret that I can no longer remember the ins and outs of how exactly I managed to still pull one over on my kindergarten teacher without being blamed for it. Nevertheless: that night, my mother convinced anew of my innocence and purity, we eagerly read the early reviews as a terrible thunderstorm broiled outside - the headline read something like DO NOT BRING CHILDREN UNDER 12 - TOO INTENSE and my mother began to have second thoughts...I begged her not to reconsider while, deep inside, I was starting to get very anxious. Waiting in a long, snaking line at the Latham Circle Mall Regal about fifteen minutes before showtime, thunder and lightning rattling the windows, my imagination began to turn on me; palms sweating, bowels churning... My mother bought me a box of raptor shaped gummy bears to calm me down but I could barely eat them. As we moved into the dark theater packed wall to wall, taking our seats somewhere up front and center, the 35mm flicker burning on the screen, the comforting scent of over-buttered popcorn wafting through the air, I took a deep, secretly agonized breath and awaited my fate...and two hours later emerged buzzing with excitement! I had been exhilarated, terrified, thrilled, traumatized - and I begged my mom to take me again as soon as humanly possible! Tomorrow! And the next day! And the next! So energizing was my excitement I quickly downed that box of raptor gummies while perched on my knees sans seatbelt and yapping away in the backseat of the car on the way home...and later, around 3 or 4am, I awoke in bed soaked with puke, little regurgitated raptor heads dotting my Ninja Turtle sheets and (Burton) Batman pajamas. Right on.
Other honorable mentions that I may write more about later:
Melvin and Howard/Something Wild/Married to the Mob/Citizen's Band all on 35mm (CB on 16mm) @ BAM - with PTA in attendance, just a few months after Demme's passing. This was truly intimate - just watching Demme movies with PTA. After his various intros, interviews with Demme collabs etc, Paul would just set his mic down and come sit in the audience amongst the rest of us, calling out at random during the screenings: "We tried to do that shot! That shot! That shot! All failed!" lol
The night I saw Double Indemnity on 35mm at Metrograph then ran several miles across lower Manhattan to Film Forum just in time for The Third Man.
The day I saw 2001 in IMAX 70mm at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX (best in the USA come at me) - then ran across the street to Walter Reade at Lincoln Center and caught the 4K restoration of Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev - then ran back across the street to the Lincoln Square IMAX again and caught The Dark Knight in IMAX 70mm...
The night I saw Dressed to Kill at Metrograph and DePalma entered the theater to a standing ovation, which he urged to quickly subside and said, "Okay - I'm building a wall now."
Seeing Wiseman's High School on my 20th birthday at some documentary symposium in Massachusetts and having Werner Herzog sit down right next to me. Later I approached him to autograph my dvd copy of Land of Silence and Darkness, knowing it would make an impression as it was one of his least known yet personal fave of his films... he took the dvd, paused a moment, then looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You know, this is a GREAT film."
Phantom Thread premiere at the DGA theater in Manhattan. PTA, Vicky, Lesley, and DDL and his extensive arm tats, all present.
The Other Side of the Wind premiere at NYFF - played hooky on Joker to go see it.
All 70mm screenings of Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, particularly those at the Village East on 2nd Ave.
12 hour 35mm Kurt Russell marathon at Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers. Tango and Cash, Breakdown, Used Cars, Executive Decision, Escape From LA.
Seeing Apocalypse Now: Final Cut with Coppola in attendance, hosted by Steven Soderbergh. The screening itself was just okay, but the Q and A afterwards began delightfully with Soderbergh, totally poker-faced, leaning in towards Coppola, saying, "Okay Francis, before we begin, is there anything you want to ask me?"
And all the other amazing screenings largely concentrated in NYC over the last decade I've been lucky enough to attend - I didn't know how good I had it - please come back...soon.
