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i decide on impulse to visit a newly reopened theater on the east side of austin. it feels fake. i’ve been here once before and it felt fake then too. it is in a community center with a skating rink and a bowling alley. you have to walk through a nearly empty arcade to enter the theater. school buses are usually outside of the building. i assume for some low effort after school activities. it doesn’t feel like a space that anyone thought much about when they put it together. i feel strange walking into the building. but i go in anyway. today, they are screening cronenberg's rabid. a director i generally admire, but have been hesitant to dig too far back into his filmography (the earliest i had seen by him was the brood which i generally liked). i feel like, based on the programmers' interests, it seems odd they would choose a relatively art-y director like cronenberg. their preference seems to lean more genre-heavy - this was their second screening as a programming group (the first being carpenter's assualt on precint 13 and the following screening will be a lesser known hong kong action film). the two programmers walk up and begin nervoulsy describing cronenberg's career up to this point. i think to myself that i probably look like this when i speak publicly. frantic and talking too fast, but the information is solid. he continues to talk about the production history and cronenberg's relationship with canadian cinema culture (he was the most successful of director that was funded by the canadian government, both rabid and shivers were some of the highest grossing movies in canada for their respective years, and one of the main producers went on to make ghostbusters). the movie itself is fine. more or less a series of death sequences that mildly hint at the heights cronenberg would reach a handful of years later. i found my mind wandering. watching a director's earlier films can be an enlightening experience. and this was not one of those experiences. i thought more about how, to cronenberg at that time, he must've been happy with the results. i imagine him in the editing room looking at these shots and being proud of what he made. "yes, we need another hugging death scene" "ah when the face hits the water we should slow it down" he was probably proud that he got a weird armpit monster movie made using government money. he probably was still high from the success of shivers. he probably didn't know he would go on to make even bigger and better things. that this film would become a mostly forgotten footnote in a lifelong career. at that moment, editing this film. looking at these relatively dull shots and ideas. he was probably proud. and when the movie was a success, he probably felt justified. and that confidence allowed him to make the brood, scanners, and eventually videodrome. i am not impressed at this movie. but i feel happy for cronenberg. that his career didn't end here. when i was 13-14, i recall watching videodrome on youtube. being scared my mom would walk into the computer room. i remember the ear piercing scene and being confused. but not looking away. the torture channel. the tv mouth that consumes james wood. feeling like i would never be the same after this. and i suppose i wasn't. the movie ends. i walk out of the theater. i thank one of the programmers. i drive home. |
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