The Theater Experience You Can’t Forget

Matt Soller Zeitz has posted about 15 different movie going experiences. ¬†¬†It’s definitely worth a read. But since you guys are the most interesting commenters around, I thought I would toss it out for you to tell me what the most unforgettable theater experience for you was.

Maybe it was the theater. A crumbling old movie palace; a gleaming new megaplex; a weed-choked drive-in; a campus screening room that smelled faintly of patchouli and pot; a concrete-walled, strip-mall monstrosity of the sort that Jack Nicholson once derided as a bowling alley with a postage stamp at the end of it: Whatever the place was, and wherever it was, something about it made an impression. When you close your eyes you can still see it.

I have two. Okay, I have many. I have walk-outs, screen talkbacks, hand jobs and blow jobs. I have seen and felt the spilled coke, smelled the vomit. I have seen fist fights and arguments. I have felt the annoying thud thud thus of a kid kicking the back of my chair.

I have theater hoppers getting caught, seat stealers, and movie talkers who won’t shut up. I have the guy who put his stinky feet next to my head during my first viewing of Avatar. He takes off his shoes and puts his stocking feet on the back of the seat back and to my left. Infuriating.

I have memories of my mother, a single mom with four kids before she even hit 25, piling them into the car to go to the drive-in (which must have been in the Valley). We’d drive out of Topanga canyon and just before we got into the drive-in, she would hide us under blankets and in the trunk to save on the admission.

I have hipsters chattering about their screenplay this, their meeting that. And bloggers talking about this screening or that movie or what is going to win Best Picture. Usually I just slouch down in my seat and try to maintain eye contact with the screen. But every once in a while there is interruption.

When my sister and I were small adolescents we would see movies all day long, usually the same movie, while my mom ran errands in the Valley. It was so blindingly hot outside and the theater offered a cooling respite from the choking heat, traffic and smog.

One such time, we were watching probably Jaws again. ¬†The theater was mostly empty. But two boys about our age sat directly behind us. We weren’t quite ready to start flirting yet, but nonetheless one of the boys slid a box of milk duds between us.

We looked at each other, then down at the milk duds. But something primal told us not to look back, not to smile and not to take the milk duds. We gently pushed them back. At least I think that’s what we did. My adult self regrets the opportunity to accept a nice gift from a couple of cute, harmless kids. The kid self remembers the heart pounding, flushed cheeks and overall embarrassment of the situation.

For some reason it sticks with me, even above all of the other unspeakable things I’ve done and seen in movie theaters, my second home, throughout my life.

One more I can’t go without mentioning. ¬†My sister and I were again at a movie theater in the Valley, only this time it was nighttime and we thought we were going to see — I don’t even remember what movie it was. ¬†But they asked us if we wanted to see a preview of an upcoming film no one had yet seen. ¬†We heard it was a sci-fi movie directed by Steven Spielberg. ¬†The movie turned out to be E.T. It received a standing ovation, needless to say.

What are yours?