Posted by Bezerker at ls9.internode.on.net.au on February 13, 2000 at 21:47:21:
In Adelaide, Australia, 02/02/00, I called up the local Wallis cinema and asked when DOGMA opened. To my surprise, it wasn’t. Apparently no cinema in Adelaide (the capital of South Australia) was showing DOGMA! (That was really weird, because when Chasing Amy was out, almost all cinemas were showing it. Apparently Pokemon was (in its second month?) was of more importance. God that’s scary.
Anyhow, luckily, one cinema was showing DOGMA. A BIG cinema owned by Greater Union called “Marion Megaplex” was showing DOGMA in one of its thirty cinemas. I asked when it was being released. (assuming Sunday the sixth was the premiere, according to my friend.)
Thursday the third said the voice in the phone! Tomorrow! One day to scrape money together and see the film I had waited four years for! (I became a fan after seeing Chasing Amy and then finding out about Clerks and Mallrats.)
Then I overslept waking on the Thursday later than planned! Missing the first session, I rushed to organise seeing the first day’s showing, the next session at 1:45pm. (I don’t know if it’s just me, but doesn’t it seem like at the first showing everyone is happy, the mood in the room great, but repeat showings feel like rooms full of people who go to see the film again and know what happens, but the mood is a stale “Oh. I remember that bit.” with people wanting the same happy atmosphere and surprises again.)
Rushing to the bus in Maslin Beach to Noarlunga (12:00 to 12:35pm) (at a guess, the same distance Red Bank is from Leonardo in New Jersey, and quite a guess, I’ve never seen a US map.) With five minutes to get to a nearby mall to grab supermarket movie snacks !(who is still stupid enough to NOT sneak their own food into a movie? A$4.50 for a large popcorn?! Put it this way, the ticket is A$7.00, and that’s a special discount from A$12.50!) and back again for another bus which takes until 1:45 to reach the mall!
As the bus pulled in late at the Marion shopping centre, for once glad for the thirty minutes of adverts before films, I ran up flights of stairs like superman, rushed to the bathroom, which turned out to be closed.(Why are they always shut during the day?! Anywhere you go?) Luckily, I found another one close by.
Buying a drink and ticket, I headed into the cinema and sat just in time for the “Disclaimer”.
Everything went fine for about fifteen minutes.
Just as Jay grinded up the car (Bethany: What gear are you in? Jay: Gear?), he must have screwed up the projector too! The projector stopped, and lights flicked on.
Assuming that an idiot in the booth hit the wrong switch, I waited for DOGMA to start up again.
Then came an announcement came from a pair of small, tinny-sounding speakers at the back of the room.
“Attention customers, please evacuate the building.”
Evacuate? Maybe a fire started. Maybe God didn’t find DOGMA amusing and zapped the projector from orbit.
It turned out to be nothing more amazing than a power outage.
But what a HUGE blackout! The suburbs of Marion, Happy Valley and Reynella were all down. Every bulb. (well, with the exception of emergency lights…think of an area the size of New York city going dead except the lampposts. That’s BIG.)
After spending an hour in a crowd of about two hundred people to grab a refund and head home, I wondered with bemusement.
Coincidence, or did we get the almighty annoyed? :)