Street is all about helping out the local movie house peddling cheap liquor on a Monday night. So recently, we sat down with a purveyor of the madness and overall fun guy, Ned Gaudette of the Trocadero theater to get the low down on Monday Movie Nights.
"Fun is our general theme," says Ned Gaudette, the Director of Marketing at The Trocadero, as he discusses the club's Monday Movie Night. The weekly movie night shows all different types of films, from the small-scale releases of local filmmakers, to larger, second-run films like Sideways and Amelie, in the run-down club, an ex-burlesque house built in 1872. Gone are the drunken sailors and whores -- what remains is a dim, gothic atmosphere. The club is two-tiered with a balcony and blood red walls. The movie screen, which is full-sized, is flanked by two large, white mantels, complete with coats of arms and gargoyle faces.
Movie Night at the Trocadero is hardly one's ordinary movie experience. For one, admission is only $3, and this money is returned to the entrant in the form of a voucher which can be spent at one of the snack bars. In addition, the Trocadero comes equipped with a full bar (a valid ID is required for entry), so one can begin drinking away his memory of the movie before it even ends. Gaudette encourages local filmmakers and students to submit their works to the club, so that they can be shown either as features, or in the case of shorter films, before the feature. Attendance, according to Gaudette, can range from anywhere between 100 and 600 viewers.
Tonight, it is quieter. Banished to the first floor by my young age (the bar is on the second floor), I count only 17 lonely heads, but more can be heard chatting and laughing from above. The feature is Punk Rock Holocaust. Dancing Nazis? Guitar-jamming Hitler? Thankfully, the director, local filmmaker Doug Sakmann, has more taste than that, but just barely: this self-proclaimed "slasher comedy" is exaggeratedly violent in its attempt to parody B-movies. Set on scene at the 2003 Vans Warped Tour, the film is composed of both scripted footage and recorded footage of the tour's live performances. Many of the bands on tour, including Less than Jake, Dropkick Murphys and Andrew W.K., voluntarily act in the movies and allow themselves to be slaughtered by the various masked ninjas who maraud the tour. The movie's attempts at parody are stale, and it is hopelessly sloppy and makes practically no sense. The victims, regardless of how they are killed, seem inevitably to bleed neon pink blood out of their mouths. The actors sometimes smile while trying to deliver their lines. And the same various methods of murder are repeated ad nauseum. But faulting a movie like this for being poorly made is like pointing out that Michael Jackson is odd. Fans of punk rock might enjoy it; otherwise, I'd encourage you to stay away.
Punk-rock, burlesque ghosts and snacks. That's Monday Movie Night at the Troc.
