Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Robie knows what's up. Listen to the man with the recently relocated and expanded cathouse, because he'll steer you right, GOONIES fans. Sure, we're not showing it in a cave, like they are in Austin, but anyone who's at the Rialto Saturday night at midnight (tickets go on sale at 6:30) should be in for a treat. Here's Robie to explain why:
The first time I saw THE GOONIES I was seven and living in the south side of Chicago. Oceans and mountains were things that existed for me only in pictures. We had an Atari 2600 and we'd play in the huge - from memory, huge - drain pipes that cut under the neighborhood and led into the algae-ringed retention pond that was behind our home. These toys called Transformers and G.I. Joe had just come out, and a week prior my dad had rented the first video for our new Betamax, "Raiders of the Lost Ark." When I saw THE GOONIES that first time I was roughly the same age as the kids in the movie, and it was perfect.
This was before I knew what the word cynical meant. Years later, after I learned what it meant and had swallowed it and accepted it and made the mistake of equating it with being realistic, I watched the movie again. And I still loved it. And I love it now. It sits up there on the top shelf, right next to the acknowledged classics and the obscure Euro-art titles I throw out to impress people. I feel bad for people that don't have any connection with THE GOONIES. They were born too late.
Last year the great Rialto Theatre in Pasadena had a midnight screening of THE GOONIES. It sold out, the print was perfect, and the crowd response was incredible. People were shouting lines before the movie, literally running up and down the aisles like excited 7 year olds (most were at least 14), and laughing, genuinely laughing, at every joke and cheering the film's big dramatic moments. "There are big dramatic moments in Goonies?" I heard that, asshole, but you really have no idea how loud Pasadena teens and twenty-somethings can be until you've heard them respond in unison to Mikey's bucket speech. It was like what you'd picture as the best possible ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW crowd, only not as idiotic and with a whole lot better film.
They're showing THE GOONIES again this Saturday, March 2nd, at Midnight. That's tomorrow. It will sell out, and when word spreads that Mikey Walsh aka Samwise Gamgee aka Brian Reynolds from TV's "Please Don't Hit Me, Mom"(he got his shit beat by no less than Patty Duke) aka Sean Astin is going to introduce the movie it'll sell out ten times as fast. Let me repeat that part
SEAN ASTIN WILL INTRODUCE THE GOONIES ON SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 2002 AT A MIDNIGHT SCREENING AT THE RIALTO IN PASADENA
So, midnight at the Rialto Theatre in Pasadena. Stay on Fair Oaks and you'll hit it. Don't go because it's a perfect movie because brother, it's not. Don't go because you think you're going to learn something about yourself. You won't. Go because you haven't had an experience with a crowd like this in a movie theater like this in a long, long time. Maybe never. Go because you'll sit there with a couple hundred people who are happy, almost disgustingly happy, and who genuinely love the slice of childhood they're about to watch. That shout lines not because they're mocking but because they've played out the fantasy of being that kid up on screen a thousand times. That love the movie for that basest and maybe purest reason. Sometimes all you want a movie to do is make you happy. Go see THE GOONIES. It'll make you happy
