Dr. Calamari / Baron Mardi Interview
For those of you who have been to Atomic Age Cinema (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), you'll certainly not dis-enjoy this...lengthy interview with hosts Dr. Calamari and Baron Mardi. For those of you who have NOT been to Atomic Age Cinema (I MUST ASSUME YOU ALSO KNOW WHO YOU ARE), then you might have questions about this. Questions, I assure you, that have no answers.
14 comments:
Awesome.
I wants to go back.
We should totally go back. This weekend's no good, but some other weekend and soon.
Kyle doesn't have a job so maybe some weekend thing could be created in which we do that thing where I drive to his house and he drives to your house while I sit in his car and push buttons.
Cept there is a foreigner concert sometime soon that we're totally going to. And it's going to rock.
Last week the show was invaded by people from the Indiana Daily Student (the campus newspaper) who pushed attendance to nearly 40 people! That's about double the number that normally show.
They did a write-up about the event in the paper. I'm not sure if I was the one they quoted with the "you gonna eat that" joke, but I think it might have been.
To explain: I think that not only because of my rampant narcissism, but because the people who attended last week didn't seem to know what to expect, and when they found out that "Atomic Age Cinema" = making fun of bad movies with strangers, I think it shocked them into silence, leaving just a few "regulars" with the requisite audacity to riff the flick. In other words, there were so few people making jokes that anything quoted has about a 50/50 chance of being me.
So what you're saying is that the people who write for IU's campus newspaper suck?
Exactly.
Shocking.
I hates you all. That's some good stuffs.
The interview or the IU newspaper?
The three hosts narrated the film with cheesy jokes and lewd comments about the plotline. Many audience members also chimed in with sexually-charged comments, filling in dialogue for the actors in the movie, making for an atmosphere similar to Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings.
On the whole I don't think the article very well captures the essence of what AAC is. In fact, I don't know that it really captures ANYTHING aside from some technical details. The show DOES cost $3, for example.
The hosts narrated the film with cheesy jokes and lewd comments? First, they're not narrating, they're mocking and deriding. Secondly the jokes are not cheese. The movie is cheese, the jokes are wine. And thirdly, not all the comments are lewd, and there is no reason to categorize audience participation as "sexually-charged". I mean, sure, there are jokes about sex, and the hosts miss no opportunity to point out and sometimes replay nude scenes, but this accounts for what I will conservatively estimate to be 2% of the experience. Yet anyone reading this article might well assume that AAC is a night of orgy as held by eunuchs, with all the ribaldry and filth and none of the potency.
I do concede, however, that his mentioning of Rocky Horror Picture Show does at least hint at the fact that the author might actually tangentially understand the appeal. The hosts, film, and overall, as he says, atmosphere might well suggest RHPS to the casual visitor, but it needs to be stated that RHPS is quite scripted and mostly involves an audience full of people who are encouraged to participate, but are not expected to bring anything new to the event. AAC, however is almost entirely improvisational and at times most of the entertainment is coming from the wit of the audience in response to the movie that they likely have never seen before. In other words, AAC is very largely driven by the audience reacting to a wide variety of movies, and thus provides a different experience each week, and RHPS is mostly about the hosts ragging on just one ad infinitum.
That is to say, the article should have mentioned MST3K, too.
Also, either that's the guy who plays Dr. Calamari's real voice, or the guy never ever breaks character, even when in a back room talking to other staff and might not know that he can be overheard.
"There's nothing better you can do on a Saturday night at midnight."
All too true.
I wouldn't say that anything about watching a movie in the basement of a cinema store at midnight on a Saturday is sexually charged.
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