12/20/07: Hope this helps

This is a post I made to another forum a month before Serenity opened in theaters.

Does anyone remember a movie called The Paper Chase with Timothy Bottoms, John Houseman, and Lindsay Wagner (TV's Bionic Woman)? In the film, Bottoms is a first-year law student facing the make-or-break course in Contract Law taught by John Houseman.

About a third of the way into the movie, Bottoms is talking to his study group and confides in them that he is preparing to make the leap from being one of the quiet, frightened students who say nothing during the lecture but sit furiously taking notes to that elite group of uber-students who ask and answer questions during the lecture, i.e., have the temerity to participate in their education. Although most of the students just wanted to pass the course, Bottoms character seemed to take it as a personal challenge to not just pass, but to get a high grade and achieve notoriety through the class.

Taking this bold step forward from lurking with the occassional post to actually starting a thread reminded me of that scene. I hope my CH persona fares as well as Bottoms' character.

I'd like to recommend a movie. It's called Serenity and it's a space Western based on a cancelled televison show called Firefly, which aired on Fox in Fall 2002. The movie opens on September 30 and I strongly urge all you minions to make plans not to miss it.

Firefly was created and produced by Joss Whedon, of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel fame. According to Jeff Jensen's article in Entertainment Weekly, Whedon came up with the concept for Firefly after reading Michael Shaara's Civil War novel The Killer Angels. The series explored the lives of the captain and crew of a small transport Melanie Griffith smuggling ship struggling to survive on the frontier edges of space following a system-wide civil war (their side lost). There are no aliens and very little mention of advanced technology, such as faster-than-light space travel. But on the plus side, the series agreed that there is no noise in space and contains gunfights, battle scenes, explosions, spaceship chases, half-naked women, completely naked men, and some cross-dressing. Most of the characters swear regularly in Mandarin Chinese (a long story) and most of the only 14 episodes produced contain at least one scene in which a central character displays an alarming disdain for the value of human life. In other words, the series was a rollicking good time and I enjoyed it immensely.

To make a long story even longer and less interesting, the series was cancelled due to apparent lack of viewer support. Interest in the show after its cancellation helped spur the production of the DVD set of the complete series. Sales of the DVD set exceeded all expectations and helped spur talk of a feature-length movie. Excitement and anticipation of the movie's release resulted in a preview screening of the unfinished product at 10 theaters in 10 cities at 10:00 p.m. on Friday, May 6. That preview screening sold out within several hours of the tickets' availability. The success of the first screening brought about a second preview screening of the same unfinished movie at 20 theaters in 20 cities at 10:00 p.m. on May 26. Tickets for this screening went on sale on Monday, May 9 and sold out all 20 theaters within an hour. A third screening was set for Thursday, June 23. This screening included 35 theaters in 35 cities in the United States and Canada and all theaters were sold out within about 10 minutes of tickets' availability. Tickets for the last two screenings have sold on Ebay for several hundred dollars.

I used to think that the whole "sold-out preview screenings" thing was pretty impressive until I spent a little time thinking about the numbers. If we generously assume that the average rocking-chair auditorium contains about 350 seats, then the first screening sold 3,500 tickets, the second 7,000, and the third 12,250. Tickets' availability was advertised via e-mail and postings to the message boards of various Whedon and Firefly websites, including the official Serenity fan site, which boasts almost 50,000 registered members. When you consider this pool to draw from and the rabid excitement exhibited by the fans for this movie, selling 12,000 tickets in 10 minuntes at 11 o'clock on a Monday morning doesn't seem quite as impressive, but I think it still bodes well for the quality of the movie.

One of my straight gigs when I was going to college was working as a movie usher at the Eric's Place Theater in downtown Philadelphia during the Summer of 1977. Along with the dubious honor of being one of the five people in North America to see Tom Selleck in Daughters of Satan, I was one of the first people in Philadelphia to see Star Wars in a wide screen theater at the 10:15 a.m. showing on July 15, 1977. There was almost no promotion for this film and I knew nothing about it until that morning. Experiencing this movie for the first time that morning and participating in the excitement generated by it over the next several weeks was intoxicating.

I'm sure you all remember the scene when Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, and Chewbacca are escaping from Tatooine and it is the first time the audience sees a spaceship making the jump into hyperspace as seen from the bridge of the Millennium Falcon. The effect of the light from all the stars coalescing to a single point in the center of the screen may seem fairly pedestrian to today's audience, but in that theater on that morning I and 400 of my closest strangers leant forward at the beginning of that effect only to be shoved back into our seats with a loud exhalation of breath, several shouts of "WHOOOAAA!!", and lots of nervous and appreciative giggles and outright laughter, all in unison. This same scene went on at every showing for several weeks until most of the people who were going to see the movie had already seen it and were prepared for it. But that first visceral experience was so singular that I remember it today as though it happened yesterday.

I bring this up because I had the good fortune of seeing Serenity at two of the preview screenings. I don't think anything is ever going to equal seeing Star Wars for the first time, but Serenity came very close. I admit that I was a fan of the T.V. show and that I was upset at its cancellation and that this may have had something to do with my appreciation for the movie. Even so, it has been a long time since I've been this excited about the release of a movie and I felt I needed to share that with you minions.

But you don't have to rely merely on my word for this. The Sci-Fi Channel is airing the 14 Firefly episodes in their correct order on Friday nights at 7:00 p.m. (EST) from now until Serenity opens on September 30. They are currently up to about episode 5. I suggest that you try to catch an episode of Firefly over the next several weeks. If you like it (and I'm sure you will; remember the half-naked women and cross-dressing mentioned above?) borrow a copy of the complete series on DVD from a friend or check for the DVD set at your local library. A little over a year ago, there was a drive among the more well-heeled Firefly fans to purchase copies of the complete series on DVD and donate them to their local libraries. So there's a good chance that your library will have a copy that you can borrow.

The Star Wars franchise is all but over and some say the Star Trek franchise has been over for many years. Can Firefly fill in that gap? I'd like to think so, but I hope you minions will give it and Serenity a chance and let me know what you think.

Best regards, Wallee

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