Can We Say 'Opppss?'

In Holtsville, NY, movie-goers, with young children accompanying them, sat down in a darkened theatre expecting to watch the science fiction family oriented movie 'The Last Mimzy.' Instead they were treated to the first few minutes of the R-rated horror movie 'The Hills Have Eyes 2.'

The theatre management are expressing deep regret over this accident. The theatre needs to see if the people who put the films together and mounted them on the projectors have enough common sense to check things before starting the projector. I say this from experience, from friends who let me up in the projector room as they mounted films at a local cinema. Usually a film is built the night before opening and a test screening is run to make sure there are no mistakes. Each reel comes in a metal container that is marked with the film's name. Once a film's run is done, those reels are put back in the containers for return to the owners of the film. Of course there is always a way to mess things up. Both these films are not first release movies, both with March 23 release dates, so they probably got shuffled off to one of the smaller screens with 'Last Mimzy' as the early evening lead. And it seems no one in the projector booth checked the metal containers to ensure the proper film was loaded on the projectors after the previous night's showing.

Of couse it could have been worse, the movie-goers could have been forced to watch for three minutes 'The Hill Has Pelosi Eyes.' Just think of the mental anguish then.

To end this post I will take another swipe at the entertainment industry. On April 15, 1971 actor George C. Scott refused his Academy Ward Oscar for the movie 'Patton.' Scott's reason for refusing the award? He called it "a two hour meat-parade, a public display with contrived suspense with economic reasons." To quote President Bush, "those were the good old days."