So a couple of weeks back, we were politely asked by the Rollinsford Police to pack up and project elsewhere, which left us in a strange position. While the thrill of hiding out and watching a movie on the sly is good stuff, the likelihood that we would be shut down again mid-movie was pretty high. So rather than get together to watch half a movie that we’re paying out the nose for, the decision was made to go to great lengths to find a place to project with permission. And let me tell you something about that: It’s extremely hard to find someone willing to let us. It was extremely frustrating being told no time and time again. But we got lucky and rather than keep the location secret like we were doing all along, I’m just going to post it up front here.
Simply Green Biofuels, a company that provides cleaner, sustainable alternatives to heating and diesel fuels has generously made their station and “congreenience store” available to us tomorrow night for our screening of The Warriors. To find us come to this address, we will be out back:
547 Central Ave.
Dover, NH
9:00pm
What this means to you:
The police will not break this up.
We will be able to watch the entire movie.
They’re also allowing us to use their electricity, which means no dead batteries and no generator to cause an obnoxious hum under the audio track.
I’ll be bringing a different DVD player, as well. One that will let us resume the movie should there be an interruption.
With this special version of The Warriors that we will be screening, I feel like I need to set everyone’s expectations appropriately. This is not an official release. This is what is called a Fanedit. It was assembled by some dude in his bedroom with a cracked copy of Final Cut Pro, no doubt. The regular feature is sourced from a DVD and looks outstanding, but the footage source for the scenes only available on TV are from a dodgy source, most likely a VHS bootleg and there is a noticeable difference in picture quality. Many of you will have, no doubt, seen The Warriors a bunch of times however I am almost certain that few of you have seen this version. It’s pretty cool.
The weather forecast for tomorrow is holding steady with clouds at night but no rain at this point. So we’ll keep you up to date. If there is a change and it looks like it’ll rain, we’ll let you know here and in the newsletter and the show will be postponed until next Friday, but everything is go at this point.
UPDATE! I have managed to track down a very special, very rare version of The Warriors for the show on the 17th. We will be screening an extended cut of the movie that combines all footage from the theatrical cut, the director’s cut and the rarely seen TV cut. This will be a unique opportunity. Don’t miss it!
Join us on Friday the 17th, 9:00pm sharp for a screening of one of the greatest cult movies of all time! I absolutely love The Warriors. It’s an original through and through. Andrew Laszlo’s night time photography of New York City is unrivalled and the brutal action is shot like dime store Peckinpah. What’s more, it’s packed to the rafters with outstanding characters and dialog. Sampled extensively by hardcore bands and just about everyone on Bad Boy Records. Based loosely on a novel by Sol Yurick which is, in turn, based on Xenophon’s Anabasis.
Cyrus, leader of the Grammercy Riffs, the biggest gang in New York City, is assassinated during a speech about uniting the city’s gangs and taking over. Small time gangbangers, The Warriors, from Coney Island get the blame even though they didn’t do it and they’ll spend the rest of the night running frantically from every colorful crew in the city just to make it back to their home turf.
Show starts at 9:00pm. Be on the lookout for the email that tells you where we’ll be screening.
Hey, gang. We had a great turn out tonight! Around 8:30, the convoy of Sub Rosa supporters, ready for a night of commie smashing action rolled in and a little after 9, we kicked off the show. Everything was going alright until the dramatic turn in the second act as the Wolverines start to fight back. Then I went out to move the generator and all hell broke loose.
I assure you, folks, we’ll get to watch an entire movie at the next show.
We’re clearly still working the bugs out of the process. The trailer reel went on a little too long and the proximity of the generator to the FM transmitter was to blame for that awful hum under the audio. The fact that it was foggy accounted for the picture being obscured by nearby lights. Had there been no moisture in the air to reflect off of, the picture would have been great. Had I not knocked the cable out of the generator, the whole system wouldn’t have come down. The problem, for those of you wondering, is that the DVD player is an antiquated cheap-o with no buttons other than play, stop and eject on the face of the machine. The remote was long gone. Starting over would have meant watching the movie from beginning to end. We were about to break for an intermission while Cheyenne, who lives right nearby, ran home to get a backup player.
That’s when the cops showed up. So you choose. It was either my own ineptitude or the inevitability of the po-po dropping by that closed us down. Just as the movie was getting good. Since we won’t be going back there, I can now tell you all where we were: behind the Bed, Bath and Beyond building (formerly Service Merchandise) on Central Avenue in Dover. I don’t know who called the cops but it could have been any of the cars that drove through while we were watching the movie. Regardless, Rollinsford’s finest couldn’t have been cooler about it. We were trespassing, they asked us nicely to leave. You all beat it in an orderly fashion. Thanks for your cooperation.
I hope no one feels let down. We were having a grand old time and the next show is still on in two weeks. We have a couple of spots that are interested in actually hosting us so the police won’t be an issue next time. We also pulled down enough in donations to afford They Live in a month. Thank you guys so, so much. We’ll see you at the next show in two weeks. The Warriors. A very special, very rare version of The Warriors.
Hey, gang. I just want to make it really clear that if you use our contact form to email us and ask where the show is, PLEASE include your email address in the email field so I know who to reply to. I’ve been getting a lot of messages from people asking for details but no one ever provides an email address to respond to.
You may have an idea of what’s been going on lately but in the interest of full disclosure here’s the deal in a nutshell:
Foster’s Daily Democrat ran a front page article about us back on Monday, which was awesome. It made so many of you aware of us and your excitement and support was so unexpected and thrilling. However, Dan Jacobitz of Somersworth business, Video Under The Stars, took great exception to what we’re doing and wrote to the paper calling us a bunch of names. He also called Swank Motion Pictures to rat us out.
Swank, whom I’ve had a relationship with in the past, emailed me to ask what I thought I was doing. Suddenly, flying under the radar was no longer an option, Larry and I were way out in the open. Our backs to the wall, we had no choice but to work out a deal with Swank to license our movies.
Last week’s showing of Pump Up The Volume is now officially licensed. We paid the fee for that. We also paid the fee for tomorrow’s Red Dawn show and The Warriors in two weeks. License fees for us are $100 a piece. Many of you came to our aid to help us out with donations and we cannot possibly thank you enough. For that we’re going to bring you the best possible guerilla drive-in that we can. We’re still accepting donations for future shows so please give what you can, whatever you think that we’re worth and we’ll keep this rolling for as long as the money lasts or as long as the city of Dover will tolerate us. Whichever comes first.
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.
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.