The Man with the Hat

On my walking commute through downtown Santa Cruz, I pass a local theater. It's an old art-deco style building and a really enjoyable place to catch a movie. During the school year, they do midnight movies on Friday and Saturday nights. Steve and I hadn't actually been to such a showing until last Saturday, when we knew we had no choice but to attend because...

Raiders came out two years before I was born, so although I became a rabid Indy fan sometime in middle school, I'd never actually seen any of the movies on the big screen.  

It was a glorious, though also slightly odd, experience. Other than me, Steve and one other guy, the audience was full of college kids, probably a dozen years younger than we are. We had unknowingly stumbled into a gathering of young 'uns who all seemed to know each other. The man running the showing (after the raffle, which was a surprise) asked who in the audience had never seen Raiders before and a good half dozen kids raised their hands. I was dumbfounded.

It became clear as the movie rolled that the whippersnappers thought the film was really campy. There was a lot of laughter, which was actually really fun. Raiders is intended to be a lighthearted action adventure film, and I admit the visual effects haven't aged spectacularly making some scenes come off a bit silly. But all in all, it was great to just be in a room full of other people enjoying one of my very favorite movies.