Silver Screen Reverie
Art Direction, Photography, + Words: Linnea Bullion
Wardrobe: Kait Lusk
Makeup: Jessie Maranda
Hair: Rachael Angell
Photo Assistant: Mortyvision
HUGE, huge thank you to Vidiots for letting us use their beautiful theater, and to all those who hopped on board to bring this idea to life.
Cinemas are like Starbucks: you always know what you’re going to get. I like this about them. Be they the ritziest or the grungiest, once the lights go down most movie theaters feel the same.
Unfortunately in Los Angeles––and everywhere, really––it’s too damn expensive to frequent the theater. For many, it’s an experience that isn’t missed. It’s far more convenient to sit in your pajamas at home and binge whatever the streaming service you worship has to offer. I must admit, I do love curling up on my couch/bed/floor/anywhere I please to watch a movie. But a part of me yearns for the theater, with its foam seats, sticky floors, and expensive popcorn that I never eat unless someone else is buying. I relish the trip to the dollar store to load up on candy beforehand.
As a kid, my siblings and I weren’t allowed to watch TV during the school week. We didn’t have cable, anyway, so I never felt I was missing much. Instead, on the weekends we turned to movies. In the summers we’d rollerblade to the video rental store and spend what felt like days pouring over the titles. Once I was old enough to be dropped off at the mall with my friends, we’d almost always end up at the theater. Our suburban mothers breathed sighs of relief for a few hours of solitude, and to us it felt like freedom. Going to the movies afforded us a chance for autonomy in a world that, as angsty middle schoolers, felt like it was constantly controlling us. At the theater, we could see what we wanted. We, like so many before us, found an escape. That’s the draw of cinema after all, isn’t it? It allows for a brief pause in a world that always seems to be racing ahead of us.
When I was a freshman in college, I thought adjusting would be easy, but it was much more painful than I expected. One night, some friends and I went to the movies together. I don’t remember what we saw––and it doesn’t really matter. I simply remember sitting in that theater thousands of miles away from all that was familiar, anxious and homesick, and having every worry dim alongside the lights. It was a catharsis unlike anything I’d experienced before. While film had been a large part of my identity and cultural awareness up until that point, it was in that exact moment that I realized how much I loved the entire cinema experience. As I sat in the theater, I felt like when I got up to leave I was going to push through the doors and walk back into my hometown; into my old life. We talk about cinema transporting us to new worlds and different eras onscreen, but forget to acknowledge the portal it provides to other moments in our own lives. Rewatching our favorite movies doesn’t only allow us to see things we missed, it allows us to travel into our pasts––what our lives were like at the time, with whom we were watching, and ultimately, who we were then.
In college, my film professor used to chide us about the perils of missing class screenings. Movies, he argued, are meant to be seen with others, in large format. I’m not here to tell you that (though, as the above anecdote acknowledges, I do love the movie theater as a place of refuge). Watch movies however you like, in whatever format. But maybe, visit your local cinema from time to time.
Marvel in the magic.
