Lego my idol, Indiana Jones!

If you ever want a real film history trip, go back and look at what the all-time top-grossing movies were on a particular date. This one is from the First of January, 1990. Forty-five percent of it is Lucas/Spielberg, one of the films is fifty years old, and, at that point, Crocodile Dundee is one of the most successful movies ever made. Keep in mind that the average ticket price at this point hovered around four bucks, and when E.T. rampaged to the top it cost less than three dollars per ticket. Exactly two of these films continue to appear in the top range of all-time winners, while fourteen of the movies come from the last ten years. No disrespect to the various facets of The Lord of the Rings, of course, but the huge numbers at the top of the list seem less impressive when the ticket prices hit sixteen bucks in some parts of New York and Los Angeles.

This can also lead to an amazing self-curated film fest. Pick a date, like say the day you were born, and watch the most successful movies at that point. (Mine would include not only Animal House, but also Smokey and the Bandit. That’s a power duo if I’ve ever seen one.) You might just stumble upon a forgotten popular classic, something that still resonates with an audience. Because really, when was the last time you watched Rain Man?

Seventeen years ago tomorrow. 

Feel old, nineties kid!

The commemorative magazine: for the film fanatic who just can’t wait until their favorite movie gets to the local video store or shows up on TV. Those of us who were sucked into the high-altitude adventure of The Rocketeer, who wanted way more of Cliff Secord but knew that the VHS wouldn’t be in stock for months, threw our spending money this way, or towards the original graphic novel, or to the Disney Adventures issue featuring behind-the-scenes footage. 

Yes, there is a movie called Sh! The Octopus. Also it’s available online free for the next two days.

Seriously, click through and see this insanity for yourself. Your grandparents were doing absurd six decades before you were born, and it was glorious.

My days crawling to movies that start at midnight are well in my past. It’s been a very long time since I skipped out, much too young, to catch Rocky Horror at the Movieland downtown. Movies with “special midnight screenings” are now blockbusters and sequels, designed for overeager fans who can’t wait the extra few hours it would take to see the movie at a normal hour. There are too many, and mean too little, for there to be any reason to be excited by them. Yes, I waited in the blinding cold of a New York December to catch The Return of the King at just-past-midnight eight years ago, but even then the midnight show was a rare occurrence. Even Paranormal Activity 2 and Prince of Persia had midnight screenings; is there any mystery and wonder left when that’s the lineup we’re getting?

But there’s still something about Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course it’s more than a movie at this point, buried under hurled toilet paper and toast and cries of “CLIMB THAT NECK! FUCK THAT CHIN!” It’s closer to a rock concert than a movie, but you will rarely ever see an audience more psyched to catch a flick. If you don’t know the joys of RHPS by now, I’m not the person to introduce you. There’s a magic spark in the meeting of overenthusiastic audience and scattershot movie that fails in the telling. One has to see it close-up to understand it.

A Halloween show years back in Los Angeles, rushing to the historic NuArt in my best Brad Majors, was the last time I bothered actually partaking in the whole experience. I was still in college, and was eager to introduce my friends to the world of alien transvestites, Susan Sarandon’s questionable sexuality, and screaming obscenities at the screen out of love, and not because one just actually paid ten bucks to see Pluto Nash. I felt great at that show, but I was also younger and more willing to go see movies at any old time. A look at my ticket stubs from those years makes me blanch now; did I really go see Mystic River at a 10:45 screening? Love Actuallywhen I should have, by all rights, been asleep? An around-the-clock screening of Spider-Man? My body would hate me if I did that today.

Which leads back to the central dilemma of Rocky Horror. If I saw it today for the first time, I’d probably think it was obnoxious. Meat Loaf isn’t in the film long enough, the lead characters are plot vacuums, many of the callbacks to the screen have degenerated into an icky place that states a man in woman’s clothing is both supremely shocking and absolutely hilarious. I don’t know if I’d even be able to withstand the show at the Chelsea or Village East or wherever the hell New York’s nomad cast is now. I see myself jumping up during one of the lesser tunes (perhaps that godawful Rocky solo number) and screaming “SHUT UP! JUST AAAAAARGH THESE JOKES WEREN’T GOOD TWENTY YEARS AGO!” There’d be a little article in the New York Post about the guy who flipped out and started destroying chairs at a screening. Maybe the promoters would use it to spark interest for a new generation of kitch-seekers. All I know is that I’m too old, too ornery, too boring to stand a full night of it again.

But when I was too young, rambunctious, completely unformed, it was among the most important pieces of the world to me. It was the nineties and no one was watching the door. I was a middle-schooler with no idea of who he was, aside from a geek and fodder for locker-shoving. Somehow I was inside a wholly-inappropriate movie watching people scream and dance and be insane, which made it completely appropriate, and perhaps even necessary. This theater was a place where it was okay to be a freak, even safe to be one. Nobody dressed normally, everyone yelled, and people actually seemed to know what Forbidden Planetwas. I was a geek and a fan of musicals. The only thing I knew about the boys-and-girls thing was that I didn’t understand why boys were boys and girls were girls and that was the end of it. Everything from those big red lips to that lighted globe was a shock to the system, even if I didn’t understand most of it at the time. A mostly-naked man with Charles Atlas’ muscles? Tim Curry in fishnets? Men in makeup? It was the first salvo in my war against normalcy. All I can say is “thank you, Richard O’Brien!”

When’s the right time to see Rocky Horror? Too early. Not way too early, but…too early. Before that R rating would say you should. When you’re not sure where high school is going to take you, before you’re grown and set in your ways. It might just do something to you.