Movie Night: Ten Weeks In

Some time ago I wrote a post announcing the first meeting of my Movie Night group. The post properly reflects the group's nascent nature at that time:

I had my first movie night tonight, which I would say was a success. We had a good group of people, there were plenty of snacks, and after the film we had a nice, intelligent talk about the film. Picking the movie took a little time. We had a series of votes, and came up with "Son Of Rambow". It's a good movie, and seemed to be well received, albeit with reasonable criticisms. I look forward to future meetings.

A number of changes and refinements have occurred since then, and I thought I would revisit the event at length.

Initially, I simply brought a pile of DVDs for attendees to choose from upon arrival in a series of votes. That did yield a satisfactory film as noted above, but left us bogged down in deliberation for an interminable period of time before the business at hand could be gotten to. This was the first thing to change.

Currently, the day of the event is preceded by a solicitation of nominations and a club-wide vote on the final slate of nominations. The exception has been for weeks when such interest in a film mounts that I suspend the vote for the week and simply announce that film. This has only happened three times if one counts the joint meeting with the Monkey Butler bible study group as well as next week's selection of Tropic Thunder.

Movie selection leads to some frustration for me. People don't seem especially interested in providing input on the movie to be watched. I prefer a democratic method, but often it seems to take strong-arm tactics to spur on the business of the club. When too few nominees are put forward, I supply the balance of them (the standard is ten nominees), and try to ensure a bare minimum of four or five votes within a voting period of a day or two.

The vote itself is kind of interesting. As I said, there are ten nominees. Rather than having people pick a single favorite, I ask that they rank the entire ten from first to last. This is something I picked up from some government class I took in school. It has the effect of contributing to the chances of a voter's second or third favorite (and so on) if their number one favorite has a low points total. Apathy can be an issue at this part too, though.

Once a movie is chosen, it must be acquired, as it has seldom been the case that someone owns the movie in question. The favored method is to get it from the public library, as the LAPL has a fairly good selection of movies across the whole system. It's not often the case that the nearest branch has it, but one can coax the librarians to send to to you from a remote branch (contradicting stated LAPL policy regarding dvds).

If it can't be gotten from the library, such as last week when Observe And Report was too new to have been purchased by the lumbering bureaucracy of the library, the second means is to seek it out from the Red Box dvd vending machines that have sprouted up all around. There are several around here outside of convenience stores. One can search for a title, reserve it from a certain box, and then go pick it up. It works fairly well, and the price of a dollar a day is reasonable. So far, we have not failed to get the movie by one of these methods.

Not quite as indispensable as the movie itself (but nonetheless invariably provided) are snacks and drinks. If someone wants a meal, they bring that for themselves., but the rest is generously and spontaneously brought by good Samaritans. Popcorn is usually there, with other snacks of a varying nature being available as well. Beverages include soft drinks, juices and alcohol (wine being predominant in that group)

Now, as for the program once Movie Night has begun: It tends to take fifteen minutes to half an hour to get to the movie. People arrive, perhaps a bit late, settle in and socialize. We then watch the movie largely in quiet. At the conclusion of the movie, I check to see if people need the restroom. If so, then we take a quick break. If not, we get right into the trivia game.

I started the trivia game at about the third week, I think. I just take notes throughout the movie for the purpose of composing the questions for a trivia round. The nature of the questions vary. It really could be anything I observe, from a key plot point to something which is heard or seen fleetingly (such as one particular question last week pertaining to the identity of the tv station which interviews the protagonist). I buy the prizes at a dollar store on the way to the event. They can be either practical or whimsical. I had been going to a low-end dollar store, but have switched to the vaunted 99 Cents Only chain. They have good stuff.

Upon the conclusion of the trivia game and distribution of the prizes, we begin the discussion of the film. I like to start it just by going around and getting initial impressions, and then allowing that to develop into unstructured discussion. Sometimes the talk can get pretty far afield, but it makes for stimulating discourse however it goes. The discussion takes up the rest of the time, and just goes on until the event organically breaks up.

The event is quite fun. Perhaps I take its administration too seriously and impose too much structure, but it's a pleasure to make it happen, bring people together and then spend the evening with them.