A Night at the Opera
8:40pm, November 17, 2008
“THE LATE NIGHT, DOUBLE-FEATURE, PICTURE SHOW”
I still remember what it was like when the lights went down and those red velvet lips parted on the 30-foot screen in front of me…
I have no shame in telling you that I was a drama geek. A few too many years ago, when I was in high school, I was co-president of the Drama club. Hell, I even won best actor my Senior year despite forgetting entire stanzas of perfect iambic prose when I graced the stage.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I might have been a Robin Hood in tights, but I was a geek with an edge, after all for a Valentine’s Day show I dressed all in black and recited Annabel Lee to horrified dinner theater patrons. Once I donned a suit, a pair of horned-rim glasses, and orated a fiery Malcolm X speech despite being a suburban white kid in a suburban private school.
So...story time...when we finished our Junior year Christmas production of A Christmas Carol, the drama gang headed out for a night on the town—a night that ended up at The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I too danced the time warp and stared in naïve amazement at the men and women in garter belts and fishnet stockings, bras and silken slips, tighty whities and feather boas, all parading around me in anarchic abandon. It felt like coming home….if home were a halfway house of transvestites with squirt guns and boxes of Uncle Ben’s. Still, who was I to judge! It was quite a moment.
I guess I’ve been chasing that moment for the better part of 16-years. Looking for something that even remotely approximated a theatrical experience that perhaps now only exists in some glorified state, trapped in my brain, and no longer resembling any form of reality whatsoever.
Or…maybe it just took reality a decade and a half to catch back up to me…
Before I continue on, I should like to take this opportunity to make a blanket declaration that most “legitimate” scholars of the cinema would never state. I hate movie musicals!
I know. How very close-minded of me. But in my defense, the movie musical is so terribly unnatural. People just wandering though life suddenly bursting into song? What kind of acid-trip-ass-crack-existence did that little nugget of entertainment pop out of? You didn’t find me bouncing off the walls of my Film Theory courses when we hit Bubsy Berkley week. I was the one screaming “Screw this fairy tale crap…Can’t we watch some Cassavetes or De Sica shit! I want realism, I want pain, I what nihilism. Where is my Bertolucci, my Bergman?” It just never flew with me.
Don’t get me wrong, I kinda dug Grease and Tommy but those were more like rock shows than musicals. And of course there was always Rocky Horror.
About a year ago now, it caught wind of this new film that was coming out. REPO: The Genetic Opera. It was about to be helmed by Saw II and III director Darren Lynn Bousman. To be honest, as a fan I was apprehensive.
“I'LL KEEP THOSE VULTURES GUESSING”
I’ve been very cautious to disassociate myself from the growing cult surrounding this movie. I haven’t read many of the articles; I didn’t get the soundtrack until a week ago. I only saw the trailer 2 weeks ago and I’ve avoided message boards about the film—including those on our website as well as the official website—like the proverbial plague.
I’m acutely aware that “internet hype” surrounding films is a fickle bitch. At times able to catapult a film like The Blair Witch Project to unimaginable heights, its misconception can also send a film spinning headfirst into a box office abyss of muthafuckin’ snakes on muthafuckin’ planes. Leaving marketing execs, hopeful directors, and studio brass wondering just where all the muthafuckin’ butts went after opening night.
The concept of Repo interested me, as did the casting. I knew it was going to be an opera and in the mode of Evita—or to some degree Sweeney Todd—the film would be almost all singing. I also knew the film was set in a dystopian future and that Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer was gonna be reclaiming organs from recipients who feel behind on their payment plan.
I knew Anthony Stewart Head could sing because of that episode of Buffy where the Scooby gang pops over to his casa and catches him mid-verse in The Who’s classic ballad “Behind Blue Eyes”. I also knew the film cast Paul Sovino (who has a powerful voice), Paris Hilton and most surprisingly Sarah Brightman. It was the last choice that shocked and awed me. Sarah Brightman! Are you serious?
Turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought soprano extraordinaire, and former Mrs. Andrew Lloyd Webber, was a shocking casting decision. Turns out that Bousman didn’t even consider Brightman for the roll of Opera singer Blind Mag and when her name was floated by him as a possible replacement for the originally cast performer who later dropped out, the director simple laughed it off….until Sarah Brightman was on the other end of his cell phone saying yes!
At this point, even I was finding it difficult to keep the hype in check. Having said I’m no fan of musicals doesn’t mean I’m not keenly aware of who the players are, and their level of genius. And baby…in that Chess world…Sarah Brightman and Andrew Lloyd Webber are the Queen and King.
“ALL DEBTS ARE PAID…AT THE OPERA TONIGHT”
When word came out that Lionsgate was dumping Repo into fewer theaters than I have toes, I assumed (as is always the case) that a lesser theatrical market like Orlando, Florida would never have to opportunity to see Bousman’s film on the big screen.
I was right and I was wrong.
Since Lionsgate didn’t deem O-town marketable enough to warrant a few decibels of rock opera and one less of the 2002 theaters screening Saw V this weekend, it was nice that the director and former resident (Bousman graduated from Full Sail University back before they were a “University”) decided to drop in a give a peek. So, with Repo rolling into town, all I needed now was a ticket.
Let me tell you something, gaining entry to the Repo Roadshow was tantamount to getting a seat on stage at the freaking presidential inauguration. It was easier getting into college than it was beating 250 other bastards out for a ticket to this fucker. And, if you saw my grades back in high school, you’d know college admission was no walk in the park!
First I called the theater who simply told me they were sold out. Strike one. A week later my Podcast cohort David Harley was on the phone with Bousman and a glimmer of hope resurfaced. The demand was so high; the theater was putting in an additional showing. Once again, I e-mailed the lovely lady that handles special events at the theater. The reply: Nope, not gonna have a midnight screening. That my friends was Strike two.
Strike 3 almost comes when I e-mail the PR Exec that is repping the film and she’s on vacation. At this point the last two people I want to bug about this fiasco are Darren and my editor Brad.
I’ve always been pretty good at accessing entry into impossible events but this seemingly innocuous screening was about to be the death of me. Finally I succumbed and forwarded the last e-mail to Darren and Brad.
Now, I don’t know the turn of events that transpired after that day, but I do know that 24 hours later I had an e-mail from the PR Exec—back from vacation—that provided me one comp ticket to the screening and a reserved seat inside. Fan-fucking-tastic. Now, let’s schedule an interview.
David decided that he wanted to work out schedules to get Darren and writer Terrance Zdunich lined up to come on the podcast. After the mental exhaustion that I was suffering just trying to get a freaking ticket, this was one phone call I was glad to not be making.
When David and I arrived at the theater 2 hours prior to the screening, I was somewhat surprised that only a handful of revelers were outside. Fearing the worst, that lame-ass Orlandoians were not going to show up (despite having been told The Enzian has been inundated with nearly a thousand phone calls desperate for tickets to the woefully small theater) I hunkered down and stuck my head inside the box office doors where Darren and Terrance were holding court.
A few personal haha’s later we sat down for a half an hour and discussed the thing I most wanted to talk about: What life was like on the Roadshow. It was full of some fun stories and surprisingly touching moments along with shocking tales of that people were flying in from as far away as Paris and Puerto Rico to check this flick out on the semi-big screen. Fans with tattoos, fans who make videos (ahem Spooky Dan) and crazy individualistic lunatics that knew every word to every song and dressed up in characters—all celebrating a film that not a single one of the had even seen!
I’ve got to admit that last part made me beam with joy out of pure unadulterated geekdom all the while I was welling up with utter terror that Repo couldn’t possible deliver the goods. No way what was going up on that screen could rival the spectacle that was taking place in the courtyard below.
Except it fucking well did!
Once the lights dimmed and Darren and Terrance intro’d the film, the audience cheered, some sang along, and the experience was damn near perfect (but for a minor glitch that stopped the film for about 3 minutes at the height of the 3rd act!). Still, Repo accomplished what so many other films fail to do. It’s not a flawless feature by any means but it creates the kind of communal viewing experience that great cinema and absolutely great theater creates. For those 90-minutes you’re one great big fucked up family, just like the one that graces the screen in front of you.
I don’t want to define Repo in this blog. I don’t want to dissect the set design and the costuming. I don’t want, or need, to justify this film as a critic, or give you a laundry list of adjectives and pop culture references to illuminate the experience for you. What I want to do is to tell you that it IS an experience. In the same way that Grindhouse was an experience that too few people got to live out. Repo is going to be seen by even fewer friends. In some way that makes the film more special.
I have no doubt that when this film hits DVD the cult of Repo will explode. It already exists. It existed before the film ever arrived in theaters. A lot of critics out there have taken aim at Bousman and Zdunich claiming that the pair are trying to manufacture a cult film. I’ve seen filmmakers try that over the years and I’m here to tell you that you can’t fucking do it. No one can. A cult film is made by the fans.
Sitting in the theater, a sold out show, while dozens—if not a hundred—people stood outside in the cold hoping like hell they’d get into to see this film I couldn’t help but wonder if I wasn’t sitting side by side with my fellow freaks bearing witness to a cultural revolution the likes of which the cinematic world hasn’t seen since a late September night in 1975 when a different set of jaws first flickered into the history books.
So with that in mind, I want to thank all the lunatics that came out and stood there with me and David and J. LaRose and Darren Bousman and Terrance Zdunich. I know you made those last 3 guys nights just a little bit brighter, but for me, someone who lives here in Orlando and bemoans the dearth of anything resembling community, you beautiful bastards made my fucking year!!!
I hope I see you all at another Repo screening sometime real soon!
User Comments
 | Keeperofthedead 10:23pm, November 17, 2008
I was sitting right next to your table. Spot on with everything you said in your blog. |
 | HorrorMaven 10:36pm, November 17, 2008
I've seen "Repo!" three times now in L.A. and am in the process of trying to organize an official "singalong" since L.A. hasn't had a roadshow stop as the boys are busy spreading the word across the country.
The film speaks to so many groups all across the board (I'm a 33 year old sci-fi/horror fan, but met up with many late teen, early 20 year olds and we were all exhuberant about Repo!) and it's just such a FUN movie. There's just something magical about watching it.
I'm hoping to see it with a "fan" crowd, as two out of my three viewings, the audience has been pretty mellow. Pasadena crowds are WAY more lively than the Hollywood crowds, though! If B-D wants to set something up for an unofficial/official singalong, I would love to help out any way I can. :) |
| laymness 10:56pm, November 17, 2008
bastards need to come to buffalo! |
 | KidAbyssmal 12:31am, November 18, 2008
Oh yes what a night! Special thanks to J, Darren and the Enzian staff for sneaking me in. |
 | spookydan 7:37am, November 18, 2008
fucking amazing blog!!!
I am so happy that you got to see it in the theater with a crowd!!! |
 | gordongirl_18 10:10pm, November 18, 2008
I live way the hell out in Nowhereville, NC so the odds are not good of me seeing this until it comes out on DVD. Glad that you liked it though. I can't wait to see it! |
 | Tex Massacre 10:30pm, November 18, 2008
Hey Keeperofthedead...you shoulda said hi! |
 | Scalpel Slut 6:19pm, November 19, 2008
I was at the Enzian for Repo! as well, and I was thoroughly impressed! That part where the film cut was a major bitch!! (I was the girl who lost her ID and had to go and get it from Terrance haha) |
 | DJ_Frenchy666 10:14pm, November 26, 2008
I need to see it. I would like Repo to be release in Washington, DC. I listen to the soundtrack every day. |
You have to be logged in to comment!
If you don't have a Zombie Army account register now for free! Your account allows you to post comments, upload videos and images, access or our forums, write personal blogs, and maintain your zombie army profile.
|
