Serenity: The Experience (Safe for all)
So the Zombie King and I just returned from viewing the rough cut of Serenity. I'll do the long, spoileriffic stuff in another post, but just a bit on the mood and experience.
So this whole evening is really brought to you by a grant from the Zombie King employer. There's no fucking way that ZK would normally have been awake before my 8:30 class to see that the tickets were on sale, let alone ring in soon enough to get two. However, on that day of days, the Zombie Overlord did, in fact, call a three-hour, all-IT meeting held on fucking gymnasium bleachers, starting at 8 AM. That's 6 AM PST, where the rest of ZK's group is.
We had dinner reservations at 6:30. On the way, the ZK expressed fear that there would be costumes in the crowd. I pointed out my stylish brown coat and he rolled his eyes. Had I been thinking ahead, I'd have totally done Shepherd Book hair. And you know I could.
We finished up dinner around 8:30 and made our way back to the theatre. A handful of desperate souls were holding up signs begging "one ticket" "two tickets" and so on. We printed our tickets out at the kiosk and got in the back of a pretty substantial line, inadvertantly stepping in front of a lone dork on a cell phone who clearly had had a ticket foisted on him on the premise that he represented a "normal" "nonfan" or something. You can see why we were confused.
There were a fair number of brown coats, of course, and good representation on the Wash Hawaiian shirt front. A group of three guys had black suits and blue gloves, which sparked questions from the concession staff, it seems:
Employee:Are you here for a preview or something?
Hands o' Blue Guy: Uh . . . yeah?
ZK: No, he's just REALLY germ phobic.
One enterprising soul behind us had a great Mal face on a stick (uh, like one of those Baptist Lady fans, not like a pike). Ahead of us were two great full-color, full-size stand ups of Mal and (I think) Zoe. An extremely geeky guy a few people ahead of is in line wandered around taking photos of the crowd, blinding people with his flash.
Two incredibly ancient ladies wandered on down the line and handed out surveys. One side was basic demographic information and expectations/level of fandom. The other was meant to be filled out after the movie.
When we got there, I needed to use the bathrooms, all of which were above on the theatre level. The ticket taker assured me that they were letting people in "in about 5 minutes." This was perfectly true; however, they were only letting in about 25 at a time. They're lucky I don't have my father's bladder.
As we made it upstairs, private security folk asked us to turn off cell phones and checked our bags. They had confiscated at least one video camera along the way. Some other nice folk handed us pretty card stock with the title logo and checked our tickets again. Nearer the door, they marked our stubs and gave us logo keychain.
There were two seats in the last row before the break (stadium seating), near the end, and we snapped them up. Others seemed to be avoiding the front section, but thy were more or less where we would've sat given our druthers anyway. I spotted about 4 or 5 Inaras in the crowd, ranging from a vague brocade tank, long skirt and shawl to an obviously hand-sequinned get up, and a third individual with a nasty blonde poodle wig that Michael Landon would've turned his nose up at. Two of the Inaras were also with someone in a very creditable Simon get up, as we saw walking out at the end.
Someone, possibly a high-level Browncoat, announced that she had thank you cards going around for someone at Miramax (?) and another for the owners of the theatre. Those never happened to make their way around to us, so I hope no one embarassed themselves in print.
Before the movie itself, there was a short intro by The Man himself. Schlumpy as ever, he thanked the fans for their commitment and joked about how crazy it is that the film got made at all. It was funny. It was touching. It was Joss, and oh how I've missed him.
So this whole evening is really brought to you by a grant from the Zombie King employer. There's no fucking way that ZK would normally have been awake before my 8:30 class to see that the tickets were on sale, let alone ring in soon enough to get two. However, on that day of days, the Zombie Overlord did, in fact, call a three-hour, all-IT meeting held on fucking gymnasium bleachers, starting at 8 AM. That's 6 AM PST, where the rest of ZK's group is.
We had dinner reservations at 6:30. On the way, the ZK expressed fear that there would be costumes in the crowd. I pointed out my stylish brown coat and he rolled his eyes. Had I been thinking ahead, I'd have totally done Shepherd Book hair. And you know I could.
We finished up dinner around 8:30 and made our way back to the theatre. A handful of desperate souls were holding up signs begging "one ticket" "two tickets" and so on. We printed our tickets out at the kiosk and got in the back of a pretty substantial line, inadvertantly stepping in front of a lone dork on a cell phone who clearly had had a ticket foisted on him on the premise that he represented a "normal" "nonfan" or something. You can see why we were confused.
There were a fair number of brown coats, of course, and good representation on the Wash Hawaiian shirt front. A group of three guys had black suits and blue gloves, which sparked questions from the concession staff, it seems:
Employee:Are you here for a preview or something?
Hands o' Blue Guy: Uh . . . yeah?
ZK: No, he's just REALLY germ phobic.
One enterprising soul behind us had a great Mal face on a stick (uh, like one of those Baptist Lady fans, not like a pike). Ahead of us were two great full-color, full-size stand ups of Mal and (I think) Zoe. An extremely geeky guy a few people ahead of is in line wandered around taking photos of the crowd, blinding people with his flash.
Two incredibly ancient ladies wandered on down the line and handed out surveys. One side was basic demographic information and expectations/level of fandom. The other was meant to be filled out after the movie.
When we got there, I needed to use the bathrooms, all of which were above on the theatre level. The ticket taker assured me that they were letting people in "in about 5 minutes." This was perfectly true; however, they were only letting in about 25 at a time. They're lucky I don't have my father's bladder.
As we made it upstairs, private security folk asked us to turn off cell phones and checked our bags. They had confiscated at least one video camera along the way. Some other nice folk handed us pretty card stock with the title logo and checked our tickets again. Nearer the door, they marked our stubs and gave us logo keychain.
There were two seats in the last row before the break (stadium seating), near the end, and we snapped them up. Others seemed to be avoiding the front section, but thy were more or less where we would've sat given our druthers anyway. I spotted about 4 or 5 Inaras in the crowd, ranging from a vague brocade tank, long skirt and shawl to an obviously hand-sequinned get up, and a third individual with a nasty blonde poodle wig that Michael Landon would've turned his nose up at. Two of the Inaras were also with someone in a very creditable Simon get up, as we saw walking out at the end.
Someone, possibly a high-level Browncoat, announced that she had thank you cards going around for someone at Miramax (?) and another for the owners of the theatre. Those never happened to make their way around to us, so I hope no one embarassed themselves in print.
Before the movie itself, there was a short intro by The Man himself. Schlumpy as ever, he thanked the fans for their commitment and joked about how crazy it is that the film got made at all. It was funny. It was touching. It was Joss, and oh how I've missed him.