Kevin Murphy, of whom I became a big fan while watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, didn’t
just focus on movies in the year 2001. He experienced the full-blooded
phenomenon of viewing publicly-presented films every single day in that year.
That’s the story of A Year at the Movies.
While Murphy knows plenty about film itself and does comment
on particular films, this memoir is almost entirely about the venues of
viewing. He experienced the multiplex in all its magnificent glassy-eyed
dullness and concluded, “It’s a shame that the country’s best screens are being
used for the country’s stupidest films.” He viewed films all over the world in
some of the largest theaters and in the very smallest. He watched art films
with snobs and dumb movies with everyone else. He experienced some of the most
interesting movie houses and met some of the most interesting movie people. I wanted to know more about the films he watched, whether this film or that film was good, whether he liked the same films I did, but I got caught up in his real theme, filmgoing, and enjoyed the ride all the way.
Murphy is cynical and funny, intelligent and open-minded.
His year-long journey/experiment, took some good planning, a fair bit of
optimism, and plenty of guts. Yes, he pulled a few stunts while experiencing
the movies, like dressing in full nun drag for a sing-along The Sound of Music, sneaking an entire
turkey dinner with all the trimmings into a theater on Thanksgiving, and dating
several women in one week (he’s married) just to re-discover the concept of the
date movie. He also found wonderful venues, like the Midnight Sun Film Festival
in Finland and a tiny, well-run theater in Australia, and found along with them
a renewed hope in culture of the cinema.
I’m not someone who likes to brave the movie theater very
often. The big screen and huge sound system aren’t often worth the extra cash
to me, even with the bonus feature of sharing a dark room with big strangers
over whom I have to step to get to a good seat. I have had some great
experiences in movie theaters, however, and it was the feelings invoked by
these experiences that allowed me to share some of the hope for the cinema
along with Kevin Murphy. Going to the movies should be fun, and the best
showings, sometimes independent of the quality of the film itself, are those
during which every audience member is having a good time.
I like Murphy’s attitude and the care he has for quality
entertainment. I also admire the energy with which he tackled this project,
especially through setbacks and obstacles ranging from jet lag to a kidney
stone to Corky Romano. A Year
at the Movies makes me wish I loved the movies as much as he does. (Maybe
in my own little way, my love of stories well-told, I do.) His passion is inspirational
and contagious. I can’t help but get excited by such enthusiasm: “The cinema is
a miracle. Great drama, humor, sound, and spectacle, image and motion, all
malleable, all portable, seen in a crowd, the world shown to the world, our
modern circus, our timeless stage. It can be crudely assembled or finely
polished, but it all has the potential to thrill me.”
This is a highly entertaining memoir of a monumental
adventure and it makes me excited about movies again, like I was as a kid and they
were a big event. Murphy suggests that we demand better from film-providers, and
perhaps if we did, the movies could be big events for all of us each time we go
out to a theater.
A Year of Books I've Read Before
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