Thoughts From the Front Row
I went to see Licorice Pizza last night at Music Box. It was the first time I’ve been to the theaters since seeing Spencer a few months back. Some friends and I had originally decided on seeing Spider-Man in 3D, only to have our hopes come crashing down when the nearest show was somewhere in Michigan City.
It was my idea to see Licorice Pizza. I’d heard the good, the bad and the ugly. Truth is, I didn’t even know what the movie was about, only that Alana Haim is not an actor and apparently her whole family would be starring in the movie.
We arrived at the theater five minutes before showtime. A line of twenty-somethings waited under the Marquee, some double-masked, some smoking cigarettes. When we entered, a bright red light illuminated a portrait of Marlene Dietrich, and somehow I knew I was in the right place.
“ID and vax card,” said a woman. I snapped back to reality and presented my battered vax card. She stamped my hand and I returned to my other reality—a dimly lit lobby, with all types of people, mostly young. There was an air of excitement in the building. My favorite discovery was the type of people who see movies on a Thursday night. I’d never seen anything like it. Groups of people dressed up, not in costumes, but simply looking fashionable. The mood of the room matched the theater-goers.
I even ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. He was standing in a long line of people waiting on popcorn and obscure IPA’s. One look at the line and I figured my best bet was to stand in line with him, which greatly improved my odds of getting a drink before the show started.
We walked into the theater and the movie was running. I was wrong in my notion that movies never start on time. What’s more, the theater was small, which forced us to sit in the very first row with our heads tilted upward for over two hours.
Beyond the film itself, I had an abundance of thoughts on this experience. For one, I felt like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, when he goes into that pornography theater and it’s small and seedy. I also felt like Antoine in François Truffault’s Antoine and Colette, where he keeps looking over at her. Only I was in the front row, and I wasn’t about to turn around to meet the eyes of some Roscoe Village couple spooning in non-reclining seats.
I also thought of how much I want to make a movie someday. Being in the front row, I noticed a stage under the screen and thought of a future me presenting a film of mine alongside the cast. I thought of how nice it’d be to put something together and have a screening in a place like Music Box. I imagined the sort of people who would show up, whether or not they’d enjoy it.
The movie ended and we stepped into the lobby which had turned into a sea of people, all swimming downstream. Out of all the conversations, I was able to decipher one, which was about Licorice Pizza.
“It was rad.”