Ok, this ain't really news. Let me explain something I do here in Austin for my friends. We get together about every two weeks or so, get away from our computers, our homes and set up in my backyard. We place theater seats, lawn chairs, oak chairs, tree stumps and tables in my backyard. We cook some food, buy some beer, set up the screen and 16mm projector and pick the films and shorts. You see this is the purpose of owning films on 16mm, it's not about yourself, but the fact you can have a FILM experience with an audience. That you can show 'your babies' to an audience. When you own 16, it's like the coolest thing. You have film, something you can hold up to a light and see sequential images, something that moves at 24 frames per second, something that can be projected with perfect clarity with a cool droning clacking of the Kodak Pageant in the background. It's a joy. We (Dad and I) show these in the backyard, with an open sky above us, with half metal barrel fires, reminiscient of an old Boy Scout campfire, yet our stories are on a screen instead of being up in smoke. We roast marshmellows, we eat smoked chicken, we have a great time. So what follows is Tom Joad's perspective on the evening. There are no great revelations of news, no breaking stories, but rather... there is a love of film. And that is something this site is about. About how tangible an experience film is, how film is not always best to see in a vacuum. How big of a fan is Tom? Well he drives in all the way from Oklahoma for these showings and... well... that's a bit psychotic, but heck, he's got company sometimes and food too. He loves dozing in the jalopy and spreading the word of film from state to state. I hope you enjoy his reports from these events, and from time to time I'll write up these events on my review page for your perusal. Enjoy....
The Joadster here agin – writin a letter fer let’n ya’ll know how cool a weekend I had…
The wife wuz in Kansas City, taking our crop to market, so’s I slipped south to the land of awesome, to the land of Austin, where the beer flows like wine, where it’s warm, where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capi- sorry… tangent. I apologize. I’m talkin’ about a little place called Austin. My jalopy rolled into town in the wee hours o’ Saturday mornin’, I rolled her to a stop in an unoccupied alley of downtown, and I allowed the nervous, uneasy, slumber to ensue.
As the earliest rays of sunlight beamed me conscious, I buzzed my buddy Harry, participant in all things cool and awoke him from NeverNeverLand slumber to be briefed on our day Oh, and what a DAY!!! The sun shone so bright I couldn’t keep myself from smilin’ as the perfect breeze kept my cool.
I went ta tha local brewhouse and snagged some icy beverages for the smoky cookout that was to follow. Finding my way through the forest and fog and around the craggy cliffs, I became drowsy…
…and I awakened to sights of severed hands, ceremonial necklaces and a gorgeous MULAN poster all around me as I was being looked down on by Harry and his dad – yup – I was safely inside the secret headquarters of cool… Awesome…
ASIDE: Has everyone seen the trailer for PLEASANTVILLE? If not, seek it out. One word: Utter magic.
We shot tha shit and caught up on all that was goin’ on in our fun and wild, little worlds until Johnny Wad materialized a litter later, and the smoked feast ensued! Jay had prepped and been smoking sausages and tons of chicken for all of us, and let me tell ya, you ain’t experienced the best there is until ya’ve eaten Jay’s cookin’ – perfect seasoning and excellent marination – and plenty of it!
Also, Jay had the yard pimped out. He had brought in some new, HUGE stumps fer sittin’, he had piles of wood stacked up as high as my throat – perfectly cut the same length and then meticulously stacked by size and ready fer burnin’! When I asked, I was told the story of the eighty-year old woman wielding a chainsaw like a demon possessed in her front yard one afternoon. She was just goin’ to town on this tree and stump and he asked what she planned to do with it. As she groaned about having to call and pay someone to take it away, he told her he’d take it all… IF she would cut ‘em just so long, and just such sizes. Returning the next day, he saw the perfectly stacked and organized piles at curbside, awaiting his arrival. As he began to load them he was intercepted by the Energizer wielding chainsaw woman who offered to load it all for him!!! I asked him fer her address, but he wouldn’t give it to me… selfish shellfish
Upon gorging ourselves, dusk approached, darkness fell and Jay’s red light bulb began to glow…
These trips to Austin are such a treat- pure anticipation alone of times like this make the six hour trip seem like nothin’ – I can’t wait to be an Austinite…
We were treated to a smorgasbord of fun: trailer reels with 2001, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and the ORIGINAL STAR WARS trailer!! You remember, the one without John Williams’ score blasting away, but with action shots interspersed with blurbs like:
“Somewhere in space this may all be happening right now.”
“Adventure unlike anything on your planet.”
“The story of a boy, a girl, and a universe.” (my fave)
“Big sprawling space saga of rebellion and romance.”
“A spectacle light years ahead of it’s time.” and,
“It’s an epic of heroes and villains and aliens from a thousand worlds. A billion years in the making: STAR WARS.”
Coooooooooooool!!!!!!
Needless to say, these all really got the salivary glands flowing. Just as Jay kicks in with old Casper cartoons and a kickass short featuring Ray Harryhausen as he works behind the scenes on some of his classics such as JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, and THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD… before the first of THREE features began ta roll…
We kicked off this marathon with SATAN’S SATELLITES, a 70 minute feature from the old television series: ZOMBIES FROM THE STRATOSPHERE (& I thought SATAN’S SATELLITES was a cool title!) featuring Leonard Nimoy in his first real role – a pointy-eared, green Martian named Narab who saves the earth, no less!!! Here we also saw where Disney (er, Dave Stevens) got the design for their ROCKETEER costume – really. Leather jacket, same helmet, etc. In SS, we see the costume used to the max via a flyhappy cop who had awesome take offs and landings! A campy and very fun story of Martian takeover gone awry. Awfully fun stuff. Seeing as our numbers had increased during the picture, we roasted (scorched) marshmallows and began yapping all around… including one Geneva Fowler (of SANITY fame) who earned many cool points as she endured through it all, flick after flick, way into the wee hours…
Next up was one of my all time favorites: THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!!! During which each of us would go on rants on how incredibly awesome the creature costume was, I mean, the guy can maneuver and twist and swim all quickly with apparent ease. Convincing me time and time again that the Creature continues… Bud Westmore did a truly brilliant job and is the main key to this film working the magic that it does. With the glorious Julie Adams in the grip of the Gill Man? Coooooool… Someone deny me this basis for a great many men’s heterosexuality, she and Lynda Carter, of course. This film is excellent, but with the additional ideal environment: watching films under the stars on a perfectly clear night, with the best of friends, fun, & conversations aboud, this film achieved perfection!
The third feature of the eve: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was next on our film platter. One of the all time sci-fi flix ever committed to celluloid. We were each sucked into the first film to portray extra terrestrial life as advanced life forms as opposed to those whose main intentions were destruction and obliteration. Harry and I marveled at how many of the party had not seen this film, and I cannot place higher emphasis on fewer things, if you do happen two be one of those uninitiated in the way of Klaatu’s mission, do yourself the favor and go check this one out! Patricia Neal makes for pleasing eye candy as well.
We simply could not get enough! It was about four in the a.m. (we all forgot to Spring Forward for Daylight Savings) and Jay strung up A HARD DAY’ S NIGHT. I don’t know about you, but you cannot just up and go during AHDN, to do so would be an injustice to oneself, because it is undeniably one of the purest examples of FUNfilmmaking that exists. It’s infectious, one cannot help but smile, and we all did as we sang along, “…yeah, yeah, yeah…”
The cleanup began following our hard day’s night with the Beatles, and most departed. This basically left Jay, Harry & myself… being on an expresso bean high, we decided to keep on going, so we retreated to the interior for a little TRUE STORIES OF THE DONUT MEN, a very cool, very fun picture. For those of you who know what I mean, my feelings exactly! Eventually though, one by one, we dropped off into LaLaLand only to be awakened for a noon showing of the already a festival circuit legend, SIX STRING SAMURAI!!!
I had to beat the wife home, so I knew I had ta leave early on in the day, ‘fore the dust settled. I could think of no finer way to end such a glorious trip than with SSS. So back to the land of Buddy, his six-string Fender Stratocaster and his katana, as I was again blown away– I’m so pumped that this film has not diminished between viewings, that my rants and ravings to my friends (& to anyone who’d listen) about how cool this flick is, were not an exaggeration. The film hadn’t diminished, but had only gotten cooler! We all howled with unabashed glee as we kept close eyes on Copernicus, the only uninitiated soul of the bunch, as he fell in love with the same gem that we all had. Afterward, we went on and on about how lucky we were to be seeing this, and how it’s to be released in September and how we all have plans to drag every cool living soul we know to the theater in a few months… DON’T MISS THIS FLICK!!! I can guarantee that your cool points will quadruple when you see this one! Be there!
With farewells around, I took my XTC and gifts with me as I climbed up onta the jalopy. Once I got her jumpin’, I promised to make the trip again very soon (with a fishbowl under my arm!) and the old girl, she rumbled and tumbled and yup, she got me home… one more time…
