A Life With Film

Tonight we've been gearing up for the midnight premiere of Paranormal Activity 2, the sequel to last year's run-away hit. From the beginning, I had my doubts about the sequel. Mostly because the original forced it's way to the top of my Scariest Movies Of Ever with stunning speed. The fact that I really did not care for the shock-value ending factors in there somewhere, but I'm not sure if it's more or less important than the pedestal I've cleared of for Paranormal Activity.

In the long run, it didn't really matter. I still spent a good amount my morning texting and calling people to make sure we had a veritable posse heading into Columbia's Forum 8, Auditorium 2 for the 12 'o clock show. We still scrambled to buy tickets hours before hand just to make sure it wasn't sold out. Nevermind the fact that it's not even a midnight premiere proper. The theater is also showing Paranormal Activity 2 at 10.

No, we'll be there regardless.

Something about the midnight premiere is exciting. Enticing, even. I've attended quite a few midnight premieres in my time (Watchmen, Iron Man 2, Harry Potter 6 - to name a few). It takes a special kind of person - a special kind of fan - to file into a packed movie theater at 12:01 to be one of the first to see anything. It's almost electric; a feeling of camaraderie. These people are crazy enough to wait hours in line and prepared to tough out the morning after. Just like you.

It's a rich tradition, the midnight premiere. It all began, in some respects with the midnight movie in the 1970s. This is where the remnants of the counter culture came to get the film fix. Movies that were not exactly a part of the Hollywood mainstream began to swim at after midnight.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's avante garde cowboy epic El Topo is often credited with starting the midnight movie craze. While personally I haven't seen El Topo, it is allegedly a surrealist style film a la Salvador Dali that boasts enough red paint blood and plot holes to send most audiences running. This unintentional camp endeared the film to audiences and El Topo played for packed theaters night after night, the line often reaching around the block. With El Topo, the midnight movie culture was born. Midnight staples such as George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and John Waters' Pink Flamingos soon followed.

If El Topo got the midnight movie ball rolling, The Rocky Horror Picture Show picked that ball up and made it a fabulous feathered centerpiece. To this day, Rocky Horror has the longest running release in film history, as 20th Century Fox has never actually pulled the movie since its original release in 1975. Calling Rocky Horror "offbeat" would be an understatement. A rousing drag-show, sci-fi musical is a little more specific, but far less accessible.

Taking the midnight movie culture to it's very extreme, Rocky Horror takes audience participation to a dizzying level. Somehow the film prompted people to start dressing up as the characters, "shadow acting" the scenes in tandem with the film and talking back to the screen with script-like precision. You have

n't really experience midnight movies until you have danced the Time Warp with a theatre full of lingerie clad film fans.

I can't speak for every one, but its the crowd that makes a midnight premiere what it is. We are all there together, searching for the next Rocky Horror phenomenon. Hoping for a film that jumps off the screen and into our hearts.

It's the excited whoops when the lights dim. The cheers when the title card emerges onscreen. The feeling that you belong to a special group. An intimate bond that is shared between you and the crowd at 12:01.

{reference: Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, 2005}

{photo: Rocky Music}