Midnight Movies and The Room aftermath.

This was an interesting year as far as Midnight movies go. I was able to bring back the series after not doing it for a few years. We stopped doing it because so many movies were no longer available on 35mm film.

With the purchase of a high definition professional video projector I was able to bring the movies back by playing them off Blu-Ray. The new projector made an image about the same size as our flat film picture and almost as good. I wasn't comfortable charging money to see anything with the old projector we had in the room but that's not the case now.

Overall the Midnight series made a good profit. Only a few films lost money, there were some surprises as to what didn't do well ( Office Space, The Notebook) and what did do well ( V For Vendetta, Christmas Vacation).

The biggest surprise was The Room. A movie I had never heard of until students started asking for it. In case you are unfamiliar, it's a very bad movie that people see to laugh at how bad it is as well as some Rocky Horroresqe actions like throwing plastic spoons as certain points. We ended up playing it three times, the first two times we did about 300 people, the last time 150. Considering the last showing was just before exams started I was expecting about that number.

We made quite a bit of money off The Room showings as not only did we sell a lot of tickets but they bought a lot of food. I forgot to bring my camera for the last showing or I would have taken pics of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of plastic spoons all over the theatre.

The midnight series made money even without the money from The Room so it was definitely worth doing, plus everyone had a great time at the movies.

The series will be back next year with some of the same movies and some that haven't shown before. Some of the films after Christmas didn't do as well as I thought they would which I think is purely timing. Students are busier in the spring than fall. As an experiment I'm going to play some of those films earlier next year and see if it make a difference. For example Monty Python's Holy Grail did about 100 people in September but Life of Brian only had about 45 in March. Next year I'll play them in the opposite order and see what happens.

I'll be doing up the Fall schedule in August so feel free to e-mail suggestions to wfilm@uwo.ca

The Room aftermath.

I kicked myself that I forgot to bring my camera to the screening of The Room this previous friday. I wanted to take pics of the mess the theatre was in after the screening. The Room is a very very bad movie that got the Rocky Horror Picture thing going. There's actions done at certain times and lines spoken at certain points. It's not as regimented as Rocky Horror but also not as messy.

When I restarted the Midnight series I had several people ask for this movie The Room that I had never heard of. I decided not to play it and when I e-mailed one of the guys who suggested the film he sent back a link to a newspaper article about how monthly shows at a theatre in Toronto were selling out. I mentioned it at the next couple midnight shows and got quite the audicence reaction.

I decided to book it for Nov 12th and see what happned.

We had 295 people show up, one of the biggest crowds we've had in years. We sold $800 worth of snack foods. Most of the patrons were drunk or stoned so they all had the munchies I guess.

The screening went over okay, the crowd was a bit loud but everyone had a good time, except for the few people who left becuase they were expecting to watch the actual movie.

I booked it again this previous Friday. We had about 30 fewer people but it was bloody cold that night. We sold about the same amount of food. I know this becuase again it took me about 40 minutes just to pick up the garbage?!

One of the elements of the audience participation is the throwing of plastic spoons at certain places. There must have been at least a couple thousand spoons all over the floor.

I didn't have a Midnight film scheduled for April 1, for some reason I thought it was easter weekend when I initially did the schedule. I decided to book The Room in for one more screening this year. It's just before classes end so it will be a good way for the students to blow off some steam.

The image below I found on the net. Imagine a floor with about 20 times as many spoons and you'll see what Western Film looked like.

The clip below gives a good idea about what to expect from the film.