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I had an unusual experience last night, in a kind of multilayered way.
Laney and I had plans to see a movie at the AMC 10 in the U District, but we pushed that to tonight, because Shobhit got an invite to an advanced screening of another movie, at the AMC Pacific Place, via his SAG-AFTRA membership. He booked us both for the screening before asking if I had other plans, but thankfully my other plans were easy to reschedule. Still, seeing an advanced screening this way was unusual.
I used to attend a lot more advanced screenings, via all manner of different means. I still get regular invites as a SIFF member, but I rarely go. Firstly, they are often on too short of notice and I already have other plans. Secondly, my monthly AMC membership now largely precludes any financial incentive to attend free advanced screenings: I pay the same amount to AMC every month no matter how many movies I see (up to three per week).
The only incentive, anymore, to attend advanced screenings is the advanced nature of it: the idea of getting to see it before most other people. This no longer means much to me, especially considering how often I manage to get into Thursday night showings the night before published release dates, in which case I am still seeing the movie before most other people anyway—just not as
long before other people, and honestly, who cares?
What made last night's screening different from the standard type of advanced screening I used to attend is that it was clearly more of a press screening. We were surprised to discover no line to get in, and there couldn't have been more than 10 people total. At an advanced screening!
We wound up getting chatty with multiple other people there, which is also not something that usually happens to me at this screening. One couple about four rows ahead of us revealed themselves to be journalists, and the guy was there to see the movie for review, though he didn't know yet for which publication. We got to talking about how I used to write reviews for publication, and Shobhit took the initiative to share with him the domain name for this website (fruitcakeenterprises.com) and the fact that I post movie reviews. In fact, as of this year, I have been doing this for 20 years.
Just a quick rundown: in 1999 I got the job at the
Seattle Gay News. I did mostly regular news stories, but over time got to write reviews to shows, both live theater and movies but in the end more movies than anything. I didn't get to focus on Arts & Entertainment until Mike and I left the
Seattle Gay News in August 2000 and then launched the
Seattle Gay Standard in September 2000, where for the first several months I worked as the Arts & Entertainment editor, both wrangling volunteer writers we were in no position to pay, and writing lots of reviews of my own. Soon enough though, due to the struggling nature of our business, Mike pivoted to focusing on finding potential business partners and/or investors and made me the Managing Editor of the entire paper. This was how that job wound up permeating every aspect of my life and is why I have never missed it, even though when that paper folded in November 2001, I grieved as though a loved one had died.
I got the job at PCC in August 2002. For a brief period around 2007, maybe for a year and a half or something, I actually got paid for published movie reviews in a local magazine called
'mo Magazine (and I remain Facebook friends with both the publisher and his husband; they long ago moved to Phoenix). But that's been the extent of my published content in all this time, and I've been totally fine with leaving it at that, keeping the job at PCC and watching movies and writing reviews as a hobby for my blog in a way that has long left me very artistically fulfilled.
Anyway, in the midst of our chatting with the journalists four rows ahead of us, another woman came in and sat in the row ahead of us, just a couple of seats over, next to a guy who was already seated. She probaly would have zeroed in on the couple four rows ahead first had she known to begin with that they were working journalists, but she caught wind of a hint of my background first, and so she asked me if I was a journalist.
"I used to be, sort of," I said. "A long time ago." I told her that I used to have movie reviews published, and Shobhit also told her this website URL.
That was when she told me she's part of a new publication, "soft launched" early this year, called
The Evergreen Echo, and they are looking for writers—including
reviewers. I didn't say this to her, but I'm honestly a little reticent to get involved in another new publication, but it certainly can't hurt to learn more about it. She did tell me it's a "writer's co-op," which makes me wonder if there is a fee to become a "writer-owner," an idea I totally understand as a concept but am still ambivalent about. I still need to dig deeper into the whole thing.
Then, when Shobhit told her he's not a journalist but was there as a SAG-AGTRA member, she was like, "So am I!" And then they figured out they are
both on the local SAG-AFTRA board. At first I was a little baffled as to how they did not recognize each other if that's the case, but then I learned that a) that board has something like 14 people on it, which seems like a lot; b) only some of them have been attending board meetings in-person, the rest over Zoom; and c) the woman and Shobhit had met each other before, but as she said, "You were wearing a suit the last time I saw you." This would have been at the
MLK Labor Oscars 2024 event in May, where SAG-AFTRA was a nominee in one of the categories.
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— पांच हजार छह सौ चौसठ —
Okay, so, I haven't even mentioned the movie! It was called
His Three Daughters, starring Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen, and it was
pretty good: solid B as far as I'm concerned.
At least two people at that screening last night had noted this webiste address after Shobhit shared it with them. And they probably did not rush home to look at it, but I will admit to having a very slight kind of self-consciousness writing that review, knowing an actual journalist and publisher (or whatever the woman does specifically at
The Evergreen Echo; I don't recall the specifics) had just been given the web address. I've had a few other reviews recently that I wrote that I was very pleased with, and while I was not exactly
dissatisfied with this one, I felt it was kind of just . . . fine. Just like the movie itself, really.
Shobhit has a long history of accurately predicting what grade I will give a movie, so as we walked out last night, I said, "So what grade am I going to give it?"
He said: "B-plus?" That was slightly more generous than I was willing to go for. The delivery was too much like a stage play in feeling for me to go quite that high, although as I said in the review, in the end the movie genuinely moved me. But that alone does not make a movie great. The movie was good. Not great.
Oh, and one more thing: having looked at this blog with a bit more of a critical eye than usual, I finally did some updates to the links that are listed at the top of each page. I added a link to my Letterboxd account, which certainly seems appropriate; removed the Twitter link and replaced it with my Threads account (because seriously fuck Twitter); and removed the "Kitty Kam" link because a) we have no kitties currently, and b) Dropcam finally stopped working a few months ago anyway, after many years of it providing a free live feed of the cats' food bowls. I have no idea whether I'll ever invest in another live cam once we get another cat, I'll have to look into that maybe sometime next year.
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[posted 12:29 pm]
