Amber and I went to see the 9:30 of Ghostbusters at The Jefferson Theater last night, on this, their final week. (Our other three options were Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Fargo, and Groundhog Day. Good movies all, but, really, how could I have seen anything else?) I’m too young to have seen Ghostbusters in the theater in the first place, so this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Though I’ve seen it a half dozen times, I probably hadn’t seen it for at least a decade.
Tickets at the Jeff are a buck a shot between now and Thursday. Small popcorn? $1. Small drink? $1. Large popcorn? $1. Large drink? Also $1. Sensing an opportunity for a little lesson is economics and sociology, I asked a girl behind the counter what sizes people were getting when everything is the same price. Turns out they’re getting large everything. Disappointing, I guess, but obvious.
There was a brief sing-along with the opening theme song (“Ghostbusters!”), but that was about the extent of the audience involvement. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man was significantly more impressive on a ginormous screen. There were jokes that I never got before, and I was happy to hear my two favorite lines: “Back off man — I’m a scientist,” and “yes, it’s true — this man has no dick.”
Come Friday there will be no more second-run theater in town. I guess I’ll need to start driving down to the drive-in at Fork Union, like I’ve been meaning to do for the past decade.
Waldo,
How do feel about DMB’s manager buying the place? And I’m confused; what excatly is going to happen to it? The articles I read weren’t very clear on that.
I’m glad that somebody’s buying it who can fix it up. It’s a beautiful old theater, and it’ll take somebody with deep pockets to restore it.
Coran intends to take about a year to restore it, and then reopen it as a movie theater and musical venue. But it won’t be a second-run theater any more. As it seems increasingly likely that Vinegar Hill won’t find a buyer who will maintain it as is, I expect that a niche will open up, only to be promptly filled by the Jeff.
Ghostbusters is my pick for next movie to be remade poorly by Hollywood.
They’ve already done the Poseidon Adventure, The Omen and plenty of other lousy remakes, so really, it can only be a matter of time before we get Jimmy Fallon and Tracy Morgan in “Ghostbusters 2007”.