Update 7/1/09! In just 12 hours we have received nearly $250! The show of support that we have received from you guys is massive and we’re at a loss for words. We’re still short of our goal by $800. If you have not donated, please consider it. A small contribution will go a long way.
As nice as it was to have the attention from the local papers, it was only a matter of time before it brought us some bad luck. I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Certain words in quote marks that made me uncomfortable made the movie license holders even more uncomfortable. I received an email today from a company that manages the non-theatrical exhibition licenses (i.e. what we’re doing) and they strongly suggest that we play by the rules. Nobody made any threats, no one is shutting this down before it starts rolling, but with our suddenly elevated status and readily accessible details about the shows, we’re operating out in the open. Suddenly, there are some staggering costs associated with putting on these shows and we won’t be able to do it without your help. Non-theatrical licensing is not prohibitively expensive, but when you have as many shows scheduled as we do, costs add up quickly. We may need to trim the schedule to make this more affordable.
This has the potential to shut us down before we even get started. With so many of you just finding us now and emailing us to tell us how excited you are for it, it would suck if we weren’t even able to go much further. Please help us continue by donating what you can. We had a great time and we hope you have a great time. Make sure that we can continue providing the good times to the seacoast.
UPDATE! Chalupa raises a good point in the comments section. I didn’t point out the cost of these movies. It’s a variable price tag from picture to picture. Depending on what it is, and I’m still waiting on the total quote from the company, they range from $100 to $350. Each picture, including Pump Up The Volume from last Friday will cost $100. We need to raise at least $1100.
I’m also being told that the link I had formerly posted to donate is broken. Please use this one and these instructions:
A couple of Friday night’s attendees were a writer/photographer pair from Foster’s Daily Democrat. They came down to talk to Larry and I and take a few photos. The one over there to the left is my particular favorite of the batch. The rest are of Larry and I paired up with some quotes both accurate and inaccurate about the nature of the screenings and so on. Quotes that I’m a little uncomfortable with being in print. A few clarifications.
I didn’t poll the Twitter pool to determine the first movie. I polled my @CinemaSuicide followers for some ideas about what trailers would be appropriate to run with the movie. The idea to show Pump Up The Volume came from Larry and Mike Merrigan.
I am also pretty sure that Larry’s quote about what’s guerilla about licenses is incorrect and that we were talking about getting permission to project at Location X. We had talked about licensing fees and where to get them for non-theatrical exhibitons and that for every MobMov group that licenses their movies, there’s one that doesn’t. But we were discussing permission to project on private property and why we changed the location at the last minute and the philosophy of our group, property reclamation and the whole idea of a flashmob, particularly in this context.
Lastly, the DVDs that we show are DVD-R’s… of movies that we physically own. They’re re-authored discs with custom trailers and bumpers to make the show a little more interesting and fun and maybe introduce you to some hokey flicks you’ve never even heard of.
Join our hidden resistance and celebrate the birth of America with John Milius’ yay-guns-boo-commies flick for the ages, Red Dawn. Produced in 1984, Red Dawn was the first movie to receive the PG-13 rating after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom set off alarms as being too violent for a PG rating but not hard enough for an R. Director, Milius, uses Red Dawn to communicate his strong feelings about communism in the 80’s and the second amendment, It is a favorite of NRA members and gun nuts, the world around.
As the political and economic climate in Eruope crumbles, a starving Soviet Union, aided by Central American and Cuban communist forces, stage a bold invasion of the United States. In Colorado, a small band of teens, armed and supplied by their parents, retreat into the mountains and fight back guerilla-style.
Red Dawn starts at 9:00pm, sharp. Be on the lookout for the inevitable email that will tell you where to find us.
I’d been sweating this show all day. There were so many uncertainties. Would the cops come and tell us to break it up? Would the cops come and take me to jail? Was Christian Slater worthy of jail time? Would the battery last the entire show? Would anyone even come? It would turn out that all but one of those fears would prove to be nothing but anxiety.
Changing the venue at the last minute wasn’t a good idea, but Larry took a minute to run over to the other location to see if anyone had missed the mail and it looked like any of you who might have come either beat it when you saw no one around or got the email in time to know where to go instead. Sorry if you didn’t get it in time. I sincerely apologize, but we would have most certainly been broken up by the po-po and the new location turned out to be an even better spot. Honestly, we couldn’t have picked a better place to screen.
We had a great turn out for our first show and everyone seemed to have a great time. A writer and photographer from Foster’s showed up and interviewed Larry and I and took some photos.
I just wish that the battery hadn’t died.
I made an educated guess about its life span given the power demand we were putting on it and my estimation turned out to be a gross inaccuracy. In short, my guess that the battery and inverter, given the power load, would last 6 hours was off by about 5 hours. We were out of business by the halfway point in the movie. A true bummer. I apologize for that folks. I swear that we’ll have the power situation worked out for this Friday’s screening of Red Dawn. Tell your friends
Tonight’s show has moved, folks. We blew our cover when we tried to get last minute permission and while we turned down, for the moment it was only because it was on such short notice. Next week’s show might be different. For now, however, we are NOT showing at Certified Parts Warehouse. We will be elsewhere. I have sent out an email detailing the new location. It’s still in Dover, right up the street on Central Ave. Check your inboxes.
In spite of weather forecasts warning of thunderstorms tonight, they place the chance of rain at 50% and that’s a percentage that I can live with. Mother nature pulled a rope-a-dope last week, in case you hadn’t noticed and recovered nicely for an evening that would have been perfect for a movie outdoors. So I’m not going to let crappy weather deter us this time.
The show is on at the same location that you’ve all been sent and starts at 9pm. Didn’t get the mail? Hit me up through the contact form and I’ll fill you in. Then sign up for the mailing list. We won’t spam you, I promise.
Like the title says, it’s raining and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop tonight for the show so we’re postponing the screening until next week. Friday the 26th, to be exact. This gives you another week to get on the mailing list as there will be another announcement next week for any newcomes in the meantime. The present location was disclosed already and probably won’t change but for anyone who signs up in the next week, you’ll get to find out.
You know how it goes with weather in New England. I’ll spare you the cliched schtick, but meteorologists are uniformly forecasting rain for Friday. We’re not exactly calling it off, because who knows what the evening will be like, but we will issue an email to everyone on the mailing list with the final word whether or not we postpone the show.
What better way to kick off our Guerilla Drive-In series for summer, 2009 than with Allan Moyle’s 1990 pirate radio drama starring Christian Slater? It just seems appropriate. Since its release, it has been a favorite of mine. The acting is hammy at times but the soundtrack is killer and the story badly made me want to build my own pirate radio station.
Slater plays Mark Hunter, new kid at Hubert Humphrey High School. By night, he disappears into his basement and becomes Happy Harry Hard-On, DJ of a pirate radio station that rants poetically about the ordeals of high school life and plays extremely sweet music. He quickly gains a cult following and becomes the voice of the students when he uncovers a conspiracy perpetrated by the school faculty to remove undesirables among the student body to raise test scores and score more government cash. But The FCC isn’t crazy about him broadcasting without a license.
The show will kick off at 9:00pm, June 19th. The location will be emailed to you if you have signed up for the mailing list. If not, you’re SOL.
Check it out, folks! The schedule for the upcoming Sub Rosa season is complete and posted. The July 3rd show was the only item to be announced and we came to agree on Red Dawn but we also felt the need to add a couple more shows over the series so as to add Barbarella and Danger Diabolik!
We’re still on for the launch on June 19th, which long-range weather forecasts warn of rain. Should it look like this is going to put a damper on our inaugural show, we’ll push the entire series back a week and see what happens the following week.
A couple of Friday night’s attendees were a writer/photographer pair from Foster’s Daily Democrat. They came down to talk to Larry and I and take a few photos. The one over there to the left is my particular favorite of the batch. The rest are of Larry and I paired up with some quotes both accurate and inaccurate about the nature of the screenings and so on. Quotes that I’m a little uncomfortable with being in print. A few clarifications.
Join our hidden resistance and celebrate the birth of America with John Milius’ yay-guns-boo-commies flick for the ages, Red Dawn. Produced in 1984, Red Dawn was the first movie to receive the PG-13 rating after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom set off alarms as being too violent for a PG rating but not hard enough for an R. Director, Milius, uses Red Dawn to communicate his strong feelings about communism in the 80’s and the second amendment, It is a favorite of NRA members and gun nuts, the world around.
What better way to kick off our Guerilla Drive-In series for summer, 2009 than with Allan Moyle’s 1990 pirate radio drama starring Christian Slater? It just seems appropriate. Since its release, it has been a favorite of mine. The acting is hammy at times but the soundtrack is killer and the story badly made me want to build my own pirate radio station.