Thought I'd share a personal memory. Back in the spring of 2009 on a Monday night, the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar here in Austin was doing a special free showing of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, probably inspired by the new Star Trek film coming out that summer.
Here's an email I wrote to somebody about it shortly thereafter:
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So this was a free screening of Wrath of Khan, 9:50 on a Monday night. I was able to get there about an hour early, which turned out to be good enough to get a seat. I was definitely looking forward to Khan on the big screen, but if I didn't get in it wouldn't be too big a deal. I'm not a Fantastic Fest member, (they got in first), so I ended up in the front, second row. Not wonderful seats for movie-watching, but they turned out to be pretty great overall...
They were supposedly showing 10 minutes of never-before-seen footage from the new movie, which was ostensibly why they were serious about no cameras and no phones in the theater.
They had the two screenwriters and the producer of the new film there. The world premiere was to be in Australia about 3 hours after the start of our movie, so they apologized for the director not being able to come watch Khan with us tonight. Anyway, they introduced Khan, glowingly, and described it as their inspiration for their movie.
Okay, so the lights go down, everybody's watching the credits on this great new print of Khan while listening to the title theme. The action starts; we're in the Kobiyashi Maru scenario, and there start to be a bunch of green vertical lines on the picture. Oh geez... the print's no good. It gets a bit worse, then it starts to wrap, so that the top of the frame is on the bottom and the bottom on the top. Then the thing melts completely. The lights come up, there's great disappointment.
Tim League, the owner of the Drafthouse who had introduced the three guys earlier, gets up and says "I'm going up to the projection room, er, you guys stall for time!"
So the two writers and the producer get up there, and ask for questions, and they had just called on somebody when a lanky gentleman in a trench coat and ball cap appeared on stage. Didn't see where he came from. Anyway, the hat came off, and there, RIGHT THERE, maybe 20 feet from me, was Leonard Nimoy!!
The producer must have at least said his name at that point to introduce him, but I don't think anybody heard him. I didn't. We were all too busy jumping to our feet and screaming.
"Why would you only show 10 minutes of the new film? JJ made a great film, why don't we show the whole thing?" I thought he was jerking us around until I noticed he was carrying a big film canister.
"Do you think it's fair they get to be the first to see it over in Australia?"
"NO!!!"
"Should we premiere it right now? Would you like to see the whole thing right now?"
*crowd goes wild*
What an unbelievable, electric atmosphere to watch a movie in. The whole experience was just phenomenal. For a while there, I was one of only 200 people outside of Paramount who had seen the film!
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Fortunately somebody did record most of the event (apart from the film itself, of course).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LLFMmNquNE (pre-Nimoy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZddhJTYOAWw (the arrival of Nimoy)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScDgaZRR7i8 (after the film)
