Andrew's Rants.

AT THE MOVIES

When I was a child our mother divested us of the evil influence of the television at an early age. As a result, when I was old enough to do things on my own I became an avid movie goer. There was something about going into a cool dark theatre and watching these glorious images larger than life up on the silver screen. I began to keep a notebook with all the movies I had seen with my own ranking system and notes. As I got into college, I had filled 5 notebooks with only 2 or 3 lines devoted to each movie. I found the Kentucky Theatre one evening with my roommate Paul in our sophomore year at EKU. It was on Main Street Lexington and was a step back into the past. We saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time and were hooked.

As soon as we walked in you knew you were in someplace special. Old movie posters were on the wall and the carpet was worn and faded as was everything else in the place but its beauty still showed through giving you a view of what movies and stage entertainment were like in decades past. It was two dollars to get in when everyplace else in town was at least 7. The concessions were reasonably priced with free refills on the drinks. Lighting was dramatic and low and every inch of space on the walls was covered with scroll woodwork and filigree with gold highlights. It was very Baroque or even dare I say Rococo. The ceilings all had stained glass and the auditorium seated well over seven hundred people. There were red velvet curtains drawn in front of the stage that covered what seemed like an acre of screen and an actual performance stage. Sometimes the KY was still used for plays and performances. What used to be the old Orchestra Pit was now bare and was often used as a dance floor as it was on that first night we showed up.

We were greeted by the crowd of people inside with Water Guns as they squirted us and all yelled, "Virgin Virgin Virgin". It was a baptism, so to speak, into the cult like fan base that surrounded The Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS). We threw rice and tissue paper, screamed out our lines with prompting from our new found friends and danced the glorious Time Warp just mere feet away from a 20 foot tall Dr. Frankenfurter up on the screen dressed in drag, finally falling down on the dance floor to strain our necks upwards and watch the rest of the movie and usually passing different bottles of various recreational liquids around between ourselves. Afterwards we would all pitch in and help clean the theatre. With several hundred humans involved in a task it went quite quickly and within 10 minutes the entire theater would be spotless and ready for the regular shows the next day. Paul and I made this a normal part of our Friday night entertainment for over a year until the beautiful Kentucky Theatre burned. A fire spread from the Gay Biker Bar next door called "Juice's Showroom". I was heartbroken. Now there would be no more RHPS at Midnight on Fridays, no more first run movies in my favorite theatre on the big screen. I had to hie myself back to the regular theaters. At this point, I began to notice things I didn’t like about the modern movie going experience. Over the years I have written several essays about the movies and in the following weeks I will post a few of them. I hope they make you think and question not only the movies but life in general, and our perception of it.