Author Topic: Approaching Dec. 9th...  (Read 5811 times)

Offline luigival

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Approaching Dec. 9th...
« on: December 01, 2006, 04:37:18 pm »
I know, it's a bit too early, but as I will be travelling next week and unable to connect, I thought it was necessary to remember on these pages that in 8 days it will be one year since BBM hit the screens and the large publlic.
I already wrote my whole - so far - BBM story in the "My passion for BBM thread", but please let me re-tell - at least for those who didn't have a chance to look at it, part of the instalments which refer to my first viewing:

Well, I just happend to be planning a short vacation in NYC and ChiTown at the beginning of December, and by chance BBM was going to be officially released in the Big Apple on Dec. 9.
Great, then: my vacation would have been highlighted by the vision of BBM, right on its first day of going public. That morning it was snowing a lot in NYC, and I remember walking Broadway from the Penn Station all the way up until reaching the Loews Theatre at Lincoln Square. I was there at around 10.15am and yes, BBM was there. All the tickets for the evening viewings had already been sold, but there were still places available for the 11.15am viewing, the first “commercial release”. Even better! I could be among the privileged earlybirds to see it...[I’d say the theatre was almost 70% full, with a good mix of viewers. As soon as the movie began, it was as if I was seeing scenes I had already seen before, only enriched by the magnificence of the landscape, the masterful directing and the beauty of the actors – and I refer not only to the two main characters, but to their wives, children and most other players in the movie as well: I found almost everybody playing in BBM either beautiful or handsome -. Truly, almost every scene on screen had been meticolously recreated according to what Annie Proulx had imagined, and all the added items fit so perfectly that I couldn’t have imagined anything different.
I greatly enjoyed the public reactions along the development of the story: there were laughs at funny events - especially at the scene when Aguirre spots the two guys “fighting” after the second tent scene -, and you could feel the sorrow when things began to go the sad way. After all the titles and both “The Wings”, “He was a friend of mine” and “The Maker makes” had finished, people slowly began leaving the theatre, and you could feel how anybody there had been touched by the movie. You didn’t see tears around, but you felt people had been deeply hit.
I left as well, with a strange sensation in me: I had liked it greatly, though I missed a part of the dialogues - not being a native speaker - but overall I was feeling a strange form of confusion. Was I expecting to be moved as much as to cry? Maybe, but it hadn’t happened. Was what I had seen a faithful reproduction of my own experience? Not really, though there were similarities, as along my life there had been periods when I had been feeling an exceptionally strong attraction - mostly intellectual, but I don’t deny it had been physical too - for a very good friend of mine, in circumstances not too different from those described in BBM. But life makes you review your thoughts, reposition your priorities, decide what can be right or wrong - maybe? -, and that had been a number of years before. So what? In the last few years I had been quietly living my single existence filling it with lots of different interests, so why should I care too much about an old story.
Overall, was I happy with my life in general? Yes, no doubt. Well, ehm, maybe...


And now, I am just wondering. Was there anyone else currently reading these lines at the Loews Theatre in NYC that morning besides me? I clearly remember BBM was shown in the Olympia Up room, and I was sitting in a middle row to the left of the screen. To my right, by the aisle, a lady in her late 50s, drinking a Coke and crunching on some popcorns (but only before BBM began, of course), to my left a male couple. I'm sorry I didn't try to discuss the movie with anybody around me.
Maybe some would-be Brokies were already there... and I'd be happy to know that someone among you were!
Luigi
They were two friends of mine

Offline David In Indy

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2006, 04:42:34 pm »
I wasn't in New York on that particular day. I was in Indianapolis waiting in line to see the movie with several of my friends.

I remember exactly how I felt before, during and after seeing this masterpiece for the first time.  :D

Thanks for posting this!!
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Offline Meryl

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2006, 01:16:43 am »
Thanks for writing up your experience, Luigi.  It's wonderful that you happened to be in New York at just that time.  8)

I saw BBM the very next morning down in Chelsea on 23rd Street with three friends.  Afterwards, we went to the Rodeo Bar & Grille (where we recently had our Brokie Brunch) and talked for hours and hours.  I went to see it again there on Christmas Eve with one of those same friends.

My third viewing of BBM was in the Olympia at Lincoln Square, where you saw it, on December 29.  Overall, I went 11 times.  My last viewing was also at Lincoln Square, the night I met Jenny (newyearsday), on March 31.   The stub says it was the Paradise auditorium.

Here's a link to the post I made after meeting Jenny.  Such a great time!  :)
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Offline luigival

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2006, 07:45:00 am »
Thanks Meryl: I had read your post, and good for you to find a Brokie there. Also nice to know you saw BBM at my same venue, but it's really hard to believe not anybody else among our Brokies community - and we're now standing at 733 - was at the Loews Olympia Lincoln Square that morning.
Just by chance (almost) it was an Italian tourist (me) that happened to be in NYC that day and went seeing it? This is proof that BBM is definitely my lifetime movie ... 
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2006, 11:58:17 am »
Luigi, you are so good at remembering and commemorating our anniversaries. Thank you for posting this even though you will be away on the 9th. Thanks to the rise of Internet cafes, computers in libraries, and free wi-fi in hotels, you could surprise us and join us after all, you know! If not, catch up with us when you get back to Sardinia.

As for myself, last year at this time I was looking at the ads, reading the reviews and saying "No, I'll never see that movie--I'm sure they messed up the story royally!!"

 ::)
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Offline luigival

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2006, 04:59:43 pm »
Grazie Lee! A pleasure reading back from you, and you're right: getting access to Bettermost should not be all that difficult even though I won't be at home in those days.
Will do my best, I swear, in trying to be here on the 9th, remembering that snowy morning (yeah, it was snowing a lot just like in BBM) in NYC last year, but the sun was shining back when I came out of the Loews theatre... BBM had entered my soul!
They were two friends of mine

Offline newyearsday

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #6 on: December 06, 2006, 12:50:36 am »
Hey luigival,

thanks for such a wonderful and thoughtful recounting of your first veiwing. I so appreciate it. I wish I had been there with you--but I saw it that night, at the Chelsea Clearview where Meryl saw it the next day.

Now it's only three or four days till the anniversary, and I've been eyeing my DVD (which I've never watched except for one or two brief scenes) and feeling the pull a little to watch it. It's been 8 months since I've seen it.

I'll think of you on the 9th (and your name came up tonight too when keren and I were talking for her birthday and she mentioned your birthday wishes for her, so sweet!)

Jenny
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Offline luigival

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #7 on: December 06, 2006, 05:52:05 pm »
Thank you Jenny! So you too have been an early bird on BBM, though at a different cinema, that night.
Do really appreciate your gentle words, and be sure, also my thoughts will be for BBM and for you, fellow Brokies, Bettermostians, Tremblayans on the 9th... just two days to go!
But still wonder: no one among all of you at the Loews Lincoln Square that morning?
They were two friends of mine

Offline nakymaton

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #8 on: December 06, 2006, 06:12:54 pm »
BBM also showed at a film festival in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Dec. 9. I found out about it maybe a week beforehand, got all excited, made plans to take the day off and go down there. But there was only one showing, and it was already sold out.

It took another four weeks before it came back to New Mexico. I swear I refreshed the official BBM web site and Fandango every hour, hoping that the list of new showings would be updated. (IMDb and Wranglers and Dave Cullen's blog all had lists of showings, but they were only as good as the information that people sent in... and the information was frustratingly bad, at least for my corner of the world.)

I think I drove my entire livejournal friends list batty, making them listen to my constant updates on the lack of showings in my corner of the world.

Good thing I didn't kill Meryl when she got to see it on Dec. 10. ;D Geez, what would the world be like without the High Priestess?  :o
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Offline Meryl

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #9 on: December 07, 2006, 09:49:28 pm »
I think I drove my entire livejournal friends list batty, making them listen to my constant updates on the lack of showings in my corner of the world.

Don't think you aren't one of the reasons I'm obsessed with Brokeback Mountain, Missy!  :P  ;)

Quote
Good thing I didn't kill Meryl when she got to see it on Dec. 10. ;D Geez, what would the world be like without the High Priestess?  :o

What indeed?  ;)
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Offline Kd5000

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #10 on: December 07, 2006, 10:41:54 pm »
Notice it's next appearance on HBO is Sunday, December 10.  I guess they don't  pay attn to BBM's 1rst "birthday."  Still got my ticket stub from Friday 1/6/06.  Oh, the disadvantages of living in a smaller marker. 

I've never kept a movie ticket before. It's in my scrapbook next to my ticket to the to the top of the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING.  :o 

I'm still making a note my calendar for this Saturday.  It's unfortunate us Brokies can't be all together in person on  12/9.  Ah well,  we shall be interconnected in our own way.

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #11 on: December 08, 2006, 12:54:40 am »
I was very aware that it opened on Dec 9 in some cities, so spent a lot of time on IMDb that day and the next, to read the first reports.  I didn't get to see it til Dec 31.  I feel like I'll never forget the feeling of WWWOOOWWW, THIS IS REALLY IT!!! the first time I saw that big truck drive across the screen and the words "BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN."

Offline Kd5000

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #12 on: December 08, 2006, 02:00:45 pm »
I learned to stay away from IMDB.com once it came out until I saw the film. Ppl were putting all kinds of spoilers.  One of the first posts I read had in the text "why did Jack have to die."  After that, no more. I just looked at BBM's "score" at rottentomatoes.com .

Offline Daniel

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #13 on: December 08, 2006, 02:08:45 pm »
Yeah, you can't go the IMDB boards before you see it... You have to go afterwards... No one explains that in life's manual. :(
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Offline nakymaton

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #14 on: December 08, 2006, 06:01:05 pm »
Yeah, you can't go the IMDB boards before you see it... You have to go afterwards... No one explains that in life's manual. :(

Hmmm. I think I like IMDb better as a source of information about movies that haven't come out yet. And if I really look forward to seeing a movie, sometimes it's one of the few places to get information about it, unless the movie is part of a franchise.

(Or were you talking about IMDb in particular? I didn't go to IMDb after the movie came out, not so much because of the spoilers, but because I didn't like trolls, and didn't like the messageboard software, and didn't have time to read all the threads once I had seen the movie myself.)
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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #15 on: December 08, 2006, 06:59:10 pm »
Just to let folks know, I will almost certainly not be online for the big anniversary tomorrow, December 9, 2006;  I'm usually not online on Saturdays and Sundays. But I'll be mindful of the day's significance, and I send out my love and best wishes to all our family here and those who may not yet, for whatever reason, have become members of this cherished online community.

I'm still crying over Ennis and Jack, almost one year later...and I continue to be amazed and humbled.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2006, 07:05:01 pm by moremojo »

Offline Meryl

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #16 on: December 09, 2006, 01:42:27 pm »
I'm still crying over Ennis and Jack, almost one year later...and I continue to be amazed and humbled.

You speak for us all, Scott.  Happy BBM Anniversary!  :-*

Happy BBM Anniversary to Luigi and to all Brokies everywhere!  8)

If the spirit moves you, HERE'S one place tributes are welcome.   :)
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Offline luigival

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Re: Approaching Dec. 9th...
« Reply #17 on: December 11, 2006, 04:25:40 pm »
You speak for us all, Scott.  Happy BBM Anniversary!  :-*

Happy BBM Anniversary to Luigi and to all Brokies everywhere!  8)

Thank you Meryl! As expected I couldn't be online on the 9th, but that day I swear my thoughts went to BBM and to this community. And maybe one day we'll be able to meet in person somewhere, maybe in that ... vast open space, between what we know and what we try to believe...
They were two friends of mine