Yesterday, as the temp topped 99 degrees (ah, but the dry heat still beats humidity any day) Paul and I were counting the hours until the matinee showing of The Fellowship of The Ring at the awesome indie air conditioned theater in town. We were talking about nothing other than sitting in a cold dark spot for three hours, munching popcorn and watching a great film. So. Being an independent theater apparently staffed by overworked teens, the movie starts twenty minutes late. But we don't mind. Then, twenty minutes into the flick, just as Gandalf realizes that Bilbo has been drawn to the dark forces of the ring, just as it all starts to get good, the film skitters sideways, jams, breaks, and melts onto the projector's light. And there we sit, filmus interruptus, for another twenty minutes while the kids try to figure out how to salvage the reel. Finally they announced that "due to technical difficulties" the matinee was cancelled, but we could all get free passes to the evening showing. So we show up at 7, and the line of hot Idahoans craving mythological fantasy stretches down the block and across the street. But with our free passes, all the matinee crowd gets to go in first! Everyone else is pissed. The film starts half an hour late, and there's an amusing amateurish splice where the film must have melted into oblivion. But the reel held up for the remainder, and we all lived happily ever after.
posted by Jen at 12:45 PM link/comments
