Now that it is September another summer movie season has come and largely gone. Traditionally this is when the big “have to see this in theatres” movies tended to get released. Well most of them anyway, they would often save a few for Christmas as well. Ever since I was a kid I loved going to the theater, I would often see mediocre movies just for the theatre experience (that and my home town only had one screen, so you didn’t have much choice). The big screen (well comparatively big if you are counting the one in my hometown), big sound and a packed theatre of like minded movie fans having a shared experience is one of my happy places.

In late spring/early summer of 2002 I was just about finished university and a pretty great job opportunity came up so I applied for it and was granted an interview which was pretty sweet for someone not even technically finished schooling yet. The problem was the only time I could get an interview was 9 in the morning and the job was in a city 4 hours away. I called a friend who lived in the city and lined up crashing at their place for the night so I could be near by and get ready for the interview without having to wake up at like 3 in the morning and drive for 4 hours just before an interview. I arrived at his work end of day and we planned out evening he asked what did I want to do while in the city. Since I had an interview in the morning I didnt want too much and suggested a movie. “You are the only one I can think of who would want to see this with me but I have been dying to go see Jason X!” “Oh my god YES! I will call my roommate and get him in too.” To round things out we also talked one of the computer programmers at his work into coming out with us (a guy from Quebec, not really relevant).

We made it to the theatre and were shocked (not shocked) to find out that we were the only audience for this evening’s showing, so we got to be loud, raucous and have a great time cheering, booing and giving Jason X a MST3K-lite treatment. We held nothing back for one of the best kills in the entire franchise (the sleeping bag one) and at the end of it the co-worker kept repeating how much he hated us for subjecting him to Jason X (well, I assume he kept repeating it since about half of what he was saying was in French, but it sounded low key angry and my high school level French knowledge could fill in a few blanks). That freedom to have fun and not worry about upsetting others in a terrible but super terribly fun movie was possibly my favourite ever theatre experience, which leads to today’s prompt: What was your favourite theatre experience(s)? Not every theatre experience has to be over the top fun, maybe I just want to be sad after seeing a sad movie, or after I left the first Spiderman movie I was thwip thwipping the whole way home (in my mid-20s no less).

Epilogue: The next day I got up and prepared for my interview. The interview itself took over 3 hours (my second longest interview ever, longest at the time). I nailed pretty much all the questions, technical and personal. I got passed to 4 different department heads who all seemed impressed by me, then I went back to finish my schooling and got a call one week later to offer me a chance to apply again in the future since they would be going with the other candidate who had several years experience.