The Mission

My name is Roger Hobbs, and this is my mission to go to every midnight film showing in the city of Portland, Oregon. Each new showing will be followed immediately, that same night, with a report on my first takes of the flick. In addition, I will also be Twittering whilst I watch, so feel free to follow my running commentary on the filmic experience.

Movies are a changing art form, and the Midnight Premiere is quickly becoming the last vestige of the 20th century theatrical experience. If you ask someone old enough to not know how to use Facebook, they'll tell you that people used to laugh and cry in the isles, throw popcorn at the screen, and talk back to the obvious bullshit. This theatrical experience is why I go to movies in the first place, and it's one of the only things left that makes seeing the film in the theater different from watching it ten minutes later on the monitor of your Mac in your living room while off-handedly mining for gold in WOW. I treasure that old filmic experience almost as much as I treasure my epic mount, and I treasure the surreal experiences I have sitting in my seat and watching the flickering lights. Like where else but a midnight show can you watch a guy with a bucket of fish toss a salmon at the screen every time Mark Walberg does that creepy thing with his eyes?

You know what I'm talking about if you're one of the 6 people who actually paid money to see Max Payne.

Yeah, I am that guy in the back who won't shut up. So what? Am I really ruining your deep, Zen-like personal connection to Street Fighter: The Legend of Chung-Li? If I am, then don't go to midnight movies because you're better off hacking and wanking anyway. However, if you're on the other end of the spectrum and can handle watching the occasional on-screen train wrecks, then by all means, follow me into the flickering darkness and join me in my heavy consumption of artificial butter-like popcorn topping and covertly smuggled bottles of rum and coke.

Who am I, you might ask? I am your typical starving writer in Portland, Oregon, which means I have two things going in my favor as I take on this mission: first, I have plenty of time to watch movies (read: drink heavily), and, second, I live in one of the oddest cities in the continental United States. But I'll get back to that in a later post. Until then, you can call me The Midnight Movie Guy.

Follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/midnitemovieguy