Though I was looking forward to playing my new DVD all day, something was decidedly lacking when I finally got the chance.
I felt the same way about Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof."" The DVD version was better - a longer cut that had only been seen at the Cannes Film Festival and around Europe. However, the atmosphere was wrong. The sexiness and excitement that drove me to an 11 p.m. screening despite suffering from what I later found was mono was gone. I missed the Grindhouse.
There aren't many movies in my lifetime that I would consider an experience. I saw ""The Phantom Menace"" opening weekend on the biggest screen in my hometown, and the emotion of even standing in line had most of the theatergoers in awe. Patrons cheered throughout the movie like it was a rollercoaster. That may be one of the defining movie moments of my life; even though ""Episode I"" was a disappointment, you would've never convinced me of that as I walked out of that theater that Friday night.
Beside that, ""Grindhouse,"" Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's double-feature homage to the B-movies of their youth, was probably the only other time I've felt entranced along with the film's entire audience.
If you didn't see it... well, you weren't in the minority. ""Grindhouse"" cost over $50 million to make and grossed less than half of that when it was released. For those of you who don't know about money, that's bad. (I hear it made $8,000 in Estonia, though, on two screens, no less!)
Though the film was a box office flop, it was a critical success and a unique experience for audiences. We laughed at the trailers for movies that would never be made, like ""Don't,"" ""Werewolf Women of the S.S."" and ""Thanksgiving,"" which would have far and away been the scariest/hottest movie ever to feature a homicidal pilgrim were it ever to have been filmed. We sat lost in Rodriguez's ""Planet Terror"" and ""Death Proof."" We marveled that Nicholas Cage could wear a fu manchu mustache so well (aren't you upset that you missed it now?). Everyone at that screening walked out wide-eyed and amazed, a feat in itself considering the time was past 2 a.m.
But now that feeling is gone. Sure, the movies still exist, and film fans everywhere should see them, but there's a reason why imdb.com's list of the top 250 movies ever features ""Grindhouse"" as No. 125, but neither ""Death Proof"" nor ""Planet Terror"" is on the list. People could only see ""Grindhouse"" in the theaters, so that theater experience played a part in the rating. ""Death Proof"" and ""Planet Terror"" are on DVD; ""Grindhouse"" isn't.
There's nothing anyone can do now. Once ""Planet Terror"" comes out on DVD in October, I'll have a double feature in my apartment (and I'll probably make more money per screening than your local theater), but it just won't be the same.
I guess the moral of the story is to never take a great film experience for granted. Otherwise, you may wind up sitting in your apartment, playing a DVD and wishing you had seen the real thing. After all, 'tis better to have seen ""Grindhouse"" and lost than to have never seen it at all.
Will you join Brad in his candlelight vigil, mourning the loss of ""Grindhouse?"" E-mail him at boron@wisc.edu.
