book one redone - Coldbacon

argument. And I’m not reading it again. I think it went something like
“People like The Sound of Music, but it’s a bad film. Chinatown is a good
film. My name is Anthony Lane.” I’m not saying Lane doesn’t know
movies. But I do not think this should be a discussion about film at all. I
think it should be about religion, or cereal, cannibalism, saw palmetto—
anything, but not film. I think it’s just that these people like to come
together and behave badly as a team. Sort of like rugby, or drunk bird
watching. In America, people fill huge arenas to watch people called “The
Rock” whoop up on people called “Tiny Testicles, Me Too!” Meanwhile,
the alt-whack crowd packs in art-house theatres to Rocky Horror Picture
this, which although not in the same category as The Sound of Music, is
clearly not a serious fnilm. It’s all the same. The fact is, as Lane knows
perfectly well, it has nothing to do with the movie itself, nothing nothing
nothing. Or maybe something—
Recently, I was visiting my childhood home, when an old school chum of
mine invited me to a midnight showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Tiny
probing, municipal robots had just discovered an original reel buried deep
within the old City Hall. In a secret chamber in the tomb of former mayorgod
Lanier. He was clutching it. But the robots were tough. And now they
were showing it. In fifteen minutes.
Hurry up please it’s almost time! You know how it is when you only have
fifteen minutes. You suddenly get old and start saying things like, “I say,
but isn’t it too late to be going out” and “Aw, but we have work
tomorrow, wot.” Fortunately, that logic got horse-whipped. I put on my
special Raiders costume consisting of pants and a shirt. And thank God I
did, because damn there were a lot of people there. Let me tell you, it was
an ass a seat. And when Harrison Ford’s face emerged from the shadows
of deep Peruvian jungle, man, the place erupted. I mean “start the engine”
erupted. And is this because we were just a wad of thirty-year-olds who
had seen the film as kids and harbored some pathological reverence for it?
Who you calling thirty? The answer is absolutely not. The crowd spanned
all ages because why? Because the film kicks ass, and real people know it.
But Lane, if that is his real name, may be right about the idea of memory
as you make it and that the SOM crowd is definitely making it. I don’t
know. I wasn’t there (you know, in London). But I can speak about RHPS
crowds. There, it has nothing to do with any reliving of collective memory
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