The Director’s Village has been open for most of the summer. I saw the Odyssey there on opening day, and over 20 years ago, The Bourne Identity. It’s a theatre in Westwood that still looks like a movie theatre. A compendium of filmmakers and producers are keeping it running, and a real projectionist is working the booth.
The bathrooms are frequently out of toilet paper, toilet seat covers, and sometimes even soap. When the movie ends, what feels like hundred of people empty out of the very full auditorium and the entryway feels congested, a mess of dudes in black t-shirts and you hear pieces of conversations. They show mostly old movies, on behalf of The American Cinemateque, though some new ones too. Depending on how popular the film is, the theatre will be at least ¾ empty, meaning you can snag a hot seat in the middle back, or be lucky enough to find a seat in the front two rows, where you’ll be looking at Matt Damon as Jason Bourne or Odysseus, taking down opponents and shouting tersely at someone on-screen.
I’ve only seen Akira under strange circumstances.
Catching it out of the corner of my eye while my father watched it on TV back in the ‘90s (the arm-scene), the first thirty minutes of it just thirty minutes before getting high for the first time in college (it did not go well), and finally in its entirety on March 19, 2020 from the comfort of my bed and Macbook Air (yes, that week in March 2020.)
Watching it that final time during the pandemic shifted something for me, and even though it took several subsequent viewings, it quickly became one of my favorite films. Yes, I know, I am 100% unique in my experience in receiving this film.
At the urging of a friend, I bought and completed reading the 6-volume manga. I read most of it on a train, and the rest in bed in between having anxiety attacks while penning new pages of my memoir. It was the only thing that could shock me out of reliving most of the bad shit. Also, newly sober, it’s one of the few things I can indulge in that let’s me feel safely fucked up.
I’ve heard of other people going to the re-released showings this summer, out with other groups of people who were or were not anime-fans and were mildly impressed with what they saw. I saw it with a bunch of other nerds crammed together in a 100 year old theatre with air conditioning.
I got up once to go pee and squished the toes of my neighbors to the left of me. I hardly ever remember to take pictures of anything besides something that looks like a cavity in my tooth or water damage in my ceiling to show to my landlord. They had one of the original editors at the screening, he was all the way in the front with an interpreter. I squeezed out my phone from my pocket to take one blurry landscape photo of him.
At first, when I arrived 40 minutes early, I thought about sitting as close and as central as possible. I thought it would be cool to be viscerally overwhelmed by an 30ft Tetsuo crowding the screen in surround sound. I sat down and after realizing how close that actually was, and took a seat in the back.
I’ve never heard a theatre so quiet at showtime, it was a religious experience.
Everyone was clapping and laughing when and where it was appropriate, and this was the kind of crowd who would stomp out somebody with an LED screen lit mid-showing. Even I got lucky with the toe-squishing. Old seats.
When Tetsuo’s guts spilled out onto the pavement, a woman behind me gasped.
It’s hard to watch it on the small screen, now having seen it extra large as the creator intended. On the way home, I had a dissociative experience and had to practice walking and talking at the same time for about an hour before it started to feel normal again. I’ve been adding chapters to my seccond draft of my memoir, and with new chapters, there’s always new flashbacks. I’m adding that weekend summer matinee to my list unusual screenings, though there is never a calm enough nor fucked up enough time to watch Neo Tokyo get destroyed.
It screened an additional two weeks at a few AMC theatres. I mostly fought panic attacks in bed until I could finally make it to a screening at Century City. The modern theatre was modified enough that I could sit in the front row and not require a C-collar. The theatre was half-full, and it was a grouping who hadn’t seen it. Four times as many gasps.
When it let out, I thought about going home, but got lost in the mall. Century City is a lot like Ala Moana, it’s sprawling and endless and since this is Los Angeles and not Hawai’i, it’s got an air of misery that makes getting lost inside it less enjoyable. I’ve said before that Ala Moana Shopping Center is like an M.C. Escher drawing come to life, and I will say the same for Century City, but it’s also like an M.C. Escher drawing come to life, but with Salvia.
It was too hot, over 82 degrees with zero humidity, I made too many right turns and started to get lost. Rather than start crying and lock myself in that luxurious golden bathroom, I retraced my steps back up the escalator and back up to AMC to watch another movie until the temperature cooled down. I got another popcorn and water, forgot to use my points, and sat in the dark to watch a different movie that didn’t have guts exploding everywhere.
There’s been talk of having it remade. Everything wants to be remade. There’s a general lust to dilute original material with water, fill it with poor casting choices, bad writing and a terrible soundtrack. I don’t think it requires a remake, but that likely won’t stop producers from sourcing directors, writers and VFX teams from making one.
It won’t stop me from going to see it in theaters for a hate-watch while sober, when I’d rather re-watch the original while high, and alone in my studio apartment.
