OPENER

OPENER

My earliest memories of movies are those of awe, terror, and a potent mix of disgust and abstract horniness that sustained me well into adulthood.

I remember, in order of emotions, being giddy seeing the first three Star Wars (I was under 10 for all three, the appropriate age to have a strong feeling about Star Wars). I remember seeing An American Werewolf in London when I was 6 and sobbing so uncontrollably that my dad had to take me out of the theater. My dad has had his shortcomings (the first time I saw a stranger’s bare breasts was when he took me to see Nighthawks the same year), but, to his credit, he let me believe—until I was, like, 30—that we left John Landis’ werewolf flick early because he was as scared as I was. And finally, my earliest film memory is another example of parenting judgment that can be seen as either problematic or heroic, depending on one’s values: my dad sitting me and my sister (ages 8 and 11, respectively) down in our small TV room for a VHS screening of John Waters’ 1974 masterpiece Female Trouble. Whether my father was aware of just what he was about to subject his children to is a matter of historical family debate, but the results—empathy for those unfortunates who got no cha-cha heels for Christmas and the ability to drop, in any social setting, quotes like “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls’’—are hard to argue with.

When discussing movies and an ostensible youth culture, it’s tempting to draw from relevant texts. Unfortunately, the two works that spring immediately to mind are Steely Dan’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies” and Frank O’Hara’s “Ave Maria.” And yeah, one of them is a poem, but our 13-year-old niece assures us that poetry and pop music are pretty much the same thing now, and, as any major dad will tell you, any art produced the same year as A Hard Day’s Night is canonical “rock.” Anyway, the bigger problem is—as with Female Trouble’s themes of debauched mass murder—O’Hara and the Dan’s odes to the silver screen as a backdrop for hooking up with older creeps don’t *cough* exactly jibe with contemporary sensibilities. Artistically vibrant as those texts may still be, some hills aren’t worth dying on. But there are fewer lines written about going to the movies in general (as opposed to being about specific movies) than you would think! If it weren’t for the Drifters (“Saturday Night at the Movies”) and Bad Brains (“At the Movies”), we could be in some real trouble here.

Of course, one could argue that nearly every song about going to the movies—whether it be the Bad Brains’ slightly more righteous “A child is influenced by the make-believe/To take advantage of this truth is coldhearted sin/So I say to the youth right now/ Don’t sway to the unjust” or Steely Dan telling the youth that “bobbing for apples can wait”—is saying basically the same thing: The silver screen is nice, but being the star of your own movie is where it’s at.

The whole issue may be moot, though. As made clear in the Decline of Western Civilization movies (discussed, as luck would have it, in this very issue), punk was supposed to destroy the social hierarchy that put the entertainer over the unwashed proles who made up the audience. Hair metal then did its damnedest to claw that separation back, with stage pyrotechnics providing an on-the-nose firewall and a revitalized caste of groupies tilling the fields of KISS’ copious body hair. That push and pull has continued through the decades, with DIY discourse still pipsqueaking for the former, even as popular music has convinced a million billion lunatics that the best way to separate the divide between themselves and the star they stan is to operate in lockstep as their preferred billionaire’s online militia.

Cinema is different. While acknowledging that theater etiquette has largely gone to shit, and with all due respect to all midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the divide between spectator and movies is not only inviolate but inherent to the medium’s appeal. In the dark we’re all equal, second only to what’s up on the screen. Not to mention that bridging that particular gap, in terms of physics, is not easy. You can tweet at James Gunn all you want, but good luck getting Thanos to interact with you, no matter how hard you mosh in the aisles.

I guess there’s still the stalking option. But really, who are you going to shoot who’s as iconic as Reagan? If taking out either of the current frontrunners for geezer-in-chief were enough to impress today’s leading starlets, Sydney Sweeney would be dating a strong breeze.

But I digress (and to be clear: PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE ANY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES IN AN ATTEMPT TO PROVE US WRONG. WE ARE NOT CURRENTLY TAKING ON INTERNS). The point is that we here at CREEM magazine have devoted our lives to celebrating both art and audience. And, as much as we’d sooner die than give up our earbuds and multiple subscriptions to competing media conglomerates, we do think art and audiences work best when they’re in the same room, with the lights out. Also we were raised on trash, with uniformly strange and unknowable parents whom we miss day and night. In Female Trouble, Edith Massey taught us that “the world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.” Later on, we got to John Berryman’s “Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so." Most recently, Karen O taught us that “it’s a dull life.” All true things. Unless looking at trees and air is your kink, you need to make your own fun. Luckily, there’s also a classic song, straight outta Detroit and largely forgotten despite featuring Jack White on guitar, that tells us exactly how to get the kicks that nature won’t. There are no lyrics for the Go’s “Meet Me at the Movies,” available online. Singer Bobby Harlow enunciates like his daddy was a mystery train and his mom was the concept of reverb. But the title is clear enough about what to do, and the song starts with one discernible line: the producer saying, “Okay, you’re rolling." As far as guides for living go, you could do worse.

ZACHARY LIPEZ