STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS: The Screening

Yesterday I saw Dave Filoni's STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS at River East. It was one of those crazy promo-screenings. I was gonna talk about the movie, but screw that. Let me talk about the screening instead.

If you've ever been to one of these promo-screenings, you know how crazy they can get. First, you have to find out about them. That's not the easiest thing in the world to do. There are a lot of these things, but most of them are rather secretive. Sometimes a radio station is giving out passes, or a store might be handing them out to customers. For this one, I got a mysterious text message on Wednesday afternoon telling me to go to some weird website. That site told me to go to another website, which said that all passes were gone, but that some passes were still available for registered users. Then it had a place to register, at which point, it let me print out the passes.

Now usually, these passes are just bad photocopies. No one really cares if people make copies of their own, because the idea is to pack the house. Of course the flip side of this is that not everyone is guaranteed a seat. So you have to get there early. But more on that later.

These passes were much more sophisticated than the usual ones. Each one was personalized. They also had their own unique bar codes. When we went in, they actually scanned each one to verify their authenticity.

Like I was saying earlier, you never know how many people are gonna show up to these things, so you have to get there early. I went to a lot of these screenings back in college, because the student newspaper would give out passes to two or three movies a week. The thing that I love about these lines is that the first five people or so were always the same. I haven't been to one of these in over a year, but nothing has changed. It's still the same five people at the front of the line.

I don't know how they do it, but these guys must read all of the newspapers, all of the movie websites, and go all over the city collecting these passes. Obviously, it takes a certain type of personality to invest that much time and effort into seeing free movies. And that personality comes shining through while standing in that line.

It's kind of cool in a way. This is their social circle. They all know each other, and while it's obvious that they all come from different walks of life, they're all friends. And their conversations are amazing.

"Hey, did you see that movie yesterday? What was is it called? THUNDER something?"

"TROPIC THUNDER? With Ben Stiller?"

"I don't know."

"No I missed it. I went to see PINEAPPLE EXPRESS instead."

"Oh, I saw a thing about that on TV. That guy in there is gonna be the Green Hornet."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. That guy in the front on the poster over there."

"I can't see it from here."

"Yeah, but now what I really want to know is who's gonna play Bruce Lee."

"Yeah."

"Yeah, because there's only three guys I can think of who can do it. But you know who my number one choice is?"

"Jet Li."

"Bingo! You know why? Remember that movie that came out a couple years ago? I don't remember what it was called. But they had that billboard, where he's standing like this? (poses in kung fu stance) And he's got a mask on?"

"Yeah."

"I remember seeing that and thinking, 'He could do it. He could play Bruce Lee.'"

"Yeah."

"But I'll tell you what show I won't watch. KUNG FU."

"Why not?"

"Because you know who came up with that show, right?"

"Who?"

"Bruce Lee."

"Really?"

"Yeah. And that guy, what's his name? Carradine? He stole the idea."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Didn't you see DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY?"

So imagine listening to this for an hour and a half, at which point a security guard comes over and tells us that cell phones will not be allowed into the screening, so we should go back and put them in our cars. Cars? We're right smack dab in the middle of Downtown Chicago! Who the frack drove their car? Not to worry, we can check our phones into security on the way into the movie, and they will be given back to us, one at a time, at the end of the show. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? And don't even think about trying to sneak a phone into the theater, because metal detectors will be used. Of course, in the off-chance that someone is able to successfully smuggle their phone into the theater, security guards will be using night vision goggles to thwart any would-be pirates.

After discovering Star Wars Happy Meal toys under each of our seats followed by the obligatory t-shirt toss, it's time to start the movie. But due to technical difficulties, there's a 30 minute delay.

Finally, the movie does start, and a good time is had by all. But more importantly, justice prevails. No one records the movie on their cell phone, and THE CLONE WARS is safe from the internet for yet another day.

One last thing... why do the critics get the best seats at these screenings? You know they want to sit in the back of the theater. That's how they roll. So why not throw their pretentious asses with their little notepads back there and let us common folk who woke up at the crack of dawn to see this frackin' thing get the good seats? Bitches...