A Remake Chronicles Extra by Adam-Troy Castro
Not the Ziegfeld. Please not the Ziegfeld. I saw the reissue of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA there. My first exposure to the film.
*Sigh*
The Ziegfeld Theatre is the last capital-G great movie house in Manhattan. An auditorium more like a stadium, with a seventy foot screen, plush seats, state of the art sound and those curtains that part at the beginning of the show. The Ziegfeld is movie-going majesty, *the* place to see epic, event films.
The Ziegfeld theatre was also the site of my all-time favorite moviegoing experience that had nothing to do with what was on screen. (It’s a near thing, though; second place goes to an encounter with perennial Ed Wood player Conrad Brooks.)
JURASSIC PARK was having its first s…how there, and D Edward Bungert agreed to take the day off stand on line starting early in the morning, so his sons and friends could get show up much much later and get tickets. I was the first to show up to relieve him, well after 5 PM, for a show starting at seven. By then the line to get into the Ziegfeld was four blocks long. Hundreds and hundreds of people, with Ed first in line. His kidneys were swimming.
So I agree to hold his place while he dashes across the street.
No sooner does he disappear, I mean, thirty seconds later, than a TV news van arrives, and a pretty blonde news hen runs up to me, the first guy on line, to ask me to come on the air with how long I’d been waiting.
I said sure. And then told her, “About a minute ago.”
But back to the Ziegfeld: Seriously, that place is grandeur, and the very experience of going to the movies will lose something if it goes.
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