They Live in Portland

Like a magical birthday surprise last night appeared and exceeded my expectations. I wanted to see a movie and was totally stoked to find that one of my all time favorite movies John Carpenter’s They Live was playing at the Clinton Street Theater.

They Live is a hyper-intelligent commentary on consumption, Hollywood formulaic b.s, and life that plays like a couple of big dumb guys in a completely retarded script. That’s part of what makes it brilliant. My favorite movie quote of all time comes from this film “I’m here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubble gum” and now I should add my second favorite “Life’s a bitch and she’s back in heat”. If you haven’t seen this film, you must. This was the first time I ever got to see it on the big screen and it didn’t disappoint.

The screen it played on was the Clinton Street Theater, one of the oldest movie houses in the United States. It has been in operation since 1915 and has been showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show continuously for 26 years or so. A truly iconic place and I would say, perhaps Portland’s coolest landmark. The theater is connected to the Clinton Street Brewery, the smallest licensed brew pub in the state of Oregon and they encourage you to take your beers into the film. So Stephan, Autumn, Mark and I grabbed some slices of pizza, a couple of crafted porters, and enjoyed the show. It was a great place to see it since there is the whole Rocky Horror vibe there so when police attacked a squatter camp on the screen, a patron ran up and threw cups at the screen, when people applauded in the film, the audience did too, and there were fairly continuous catcalls and commentary throughout as quasi-homo-erotic, mock action, bizarrely framed story progressed.

Totally awesome last night activity followed by some greasy fries across the street at Dot’s.