Ray Pride

If you think spending 2003 watching a movie a week at the Lake Street Screening Room (as reported in last Friday's Tribune) is baffling, wait until you've watched seven or eight a week for ten years.

It's always been a professional courtesy to keep specifics about what goes on in such places off-the-record (including giving the specific street address and floor), but perhaps someone who brags on eating "stale popcorn and Twizzlers" doesn't know which questions to ask.

The building is "dank and sterile." Damp and cold equals sterile? It's actually a spiffy, if understated, little auditorium.

"Though the almost entirely male faces are familiar to me by now, I still haven't mustered up enough courage to join in on any pre-screening conversations." Don't bother. Most conversations are hogged by the same handful of bores who stand facing the auditorium, shedding insights, which means a fair number of attendees wait in the hallway until the lights go down.

"Even I am inclined to leave my US Weekly at home, preferring to pretend-read something writerly while I wait for the screening to begin." Unlike the guy in the second row reading TV Guide with a flashlight?

"After attendance is taken and brief announcements about upcoming screenings and interview opportunities are given, the lights dim, flashlight pens come out, burrito wrappers crinkle, and the movie finally begins... " Attendance is taken? Were you invited to remedial screenings? Flashlight pens? Only rank amateurs use them, and are urged by professionals in the room to douse the infernal firefly light, as are those who click their clickety pens and yowl their yawns for attention.

"That intimacy... can cause the spread of a very serious behavioral disease: Honest Emotional Reaction Disorder..." How could anyone be self-conscious amid a tribe liberally populated with howlers who manage to drown out scenes even in noise factories like "Kill Bill Vol. I"?

"We file out, taking the elevator together but not talking about the movie we just saw." And why should you want to hear opinions half-a-minute after a movie, especially when you're going to hear them broadcasting before the lights go down next time?

(2004-01-06)

Also by Ray Pride

Uniform code
While I've read quibbles about the plot machinations of Vadim Perelman's debut feature, "House of Sand and Fog," no one's dared complain about the acting
(2003-12-30)

Short Runs
This week's limited screenings
(2003-12-30)

Tip of the Week
Kurosawa drew from work both Eastern and Western throughout his career, and this tale, finding Toshiro Mifune as a vagabond samurai who sells his services to both sides of a battle in a small town, is utterly indebted to Dashiell Hammett
(2003-12-23)

Wind done gone
"Cold Mountain" is epic yet intimate, strange and shell-shocked
(2003-12-23)

Father figuring
(2003-12-23)

Short Runs
(2003-12-23)

Salud
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-16)

Sirkis people
(2003-12-16)

Holiday Movies
(2003-12-16)

Short Runs
(2003-12-16)

Tip of the Week
(2003-12-10)

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