Striking While the Iron is Hot

Midnight premieres are mostly a thing of the past for me. Living in Temecula doesn't exactly engender the same excitement when you have to deal with legions of screaming teenagers and a general irreverence for film, even if the movie is just a popcorn summer blockbuster. Despite the enormous payoff, it's also extremely difficult to coordinate dozens of friends from work, school, old school and a lot of different arenas. If there's no awesome payoff, there's no reason to shoulder all that stress. Besides, I'm getting older, and if I'm going to stay up until three in the morning (plus however long it takes to drive back from the theater) to watch a movie, it damned well better be worthwhile.

Luckily, last night was just that.

One of the original midnight premieres I did was at the ArcLight Hollywood, for Iron Man. For those of you that don't know about the ArcLight, it's one of the best things about Los Angeles - a theater with a restaurant/bar where you reserve your seats (so you don't have to stand in line) and they have things like paninis at the concession counter. It's where movie lovers go to watch movies. So, it was a natural thing to want to return there for the much-awaited follow up from Jon Favreau, Iron Man 2.

After some coordination, I found quite a few takers for tickets, despite the price and the distance. Some of my coworkers from The Edge, my brother and some of his friends, my girl Becki and a few randoms comprised our party, flakers notwithstanding. For the original Iron Man, we saw a showing at around 12.15, and later discovered that Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau had shown up at the 12.01 screening just down the hall to introduce the movie. If that was going to happen this time, I wasn't going to miss it. Like I said - if I'm going to drive a hundred miles to watch a movie, it had better be worth it. So, I was calling the ArcLight two months ago, letting the manager know that I had been bringing big groups of people and wanted to make sure I didn't miss out on such promising event programming. He hooked me up and got us awesome seats in the Dome, a theater with a geodesic roof for better sound quality and a screen that partially wraps around, for a completely immersive cinematic experience (I know, I sound like I should work there).

But once the director and star of the movie walked in to introduce their labor of love, none of that mattered.

Yes, for the second time, because they're superstitious about these sorts of things and the first one was such a booming success, director Jon Favreau (he did Elf and Swingers, in case you don't know him) and actor Robert Downey Jr. (who needs no introduction) came out to roaring applause and talked to us for a few minutes, telling us how much they enjoyed making this movie, and expressing their hope that we enjoyed watching it just as much.

After that, we watched the movie, and it was just what you'd expect - lots of winks to the fans, pithy dialogue, gorgeous cinematography and effects, set to the music of AC/DC. It was fun, exhilirating, and everything that a comic book movie should be. But what mattered most was the experience - sitting there, in one of the best theaters in the world, surrounded not only by the woman I love and the people I care about, but by those select few that care about art as much as I do. If you haven't done it, I highly recommend it.