I was lucky enough to get to go to high school with Lon Lopez. He's a great guy, and a good eye for filmmaking. He's also a helluva musician, and his band Stantueman was one of my faves in high school, when more weekends than not, I'd be at The Edge or The Cactus Club, watching bands.
He came up with the idea of making a Cactus Club documentary that focused not only on the music, but on the scene, the city, and the personalities. In short, it was about the stories that inhabited the sphere of the old place. Along with Aaron Carnes we worked on this for a long time, and life being what it is, it often puched back and back. Luckily, Lon persisted and the resulting film is something that he really should be proud of, as it tells the story of the Cactus in a way that is critical, loving, slightly biting, and perhaps most importantly, really entertaining. In a way, it was the experience of helping Lon make it that helped to inform what SiliGone Valley would become. The interview styles were smart, and they attempted not only to pull information, but stories. The Cactus Club had a million stories, and Lon worked to get 'em out. I'm proud to have worked on this one, and it tries to ask and answer the same basic question I'm trying to ask in a wider sense now - What did Silicon Valley mean before, and what does that say about today?
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Here is something you may not know - San Jose is the home of the greatest professional wrestling journalist who has ever lived. His name is Dave Meltzer, and his newsletter, the Wrestling Observer, is the gold standard in all wrestling reporting. His Twitter feed is a lot of fun, he often beats-down bozos, but is also one of the most informative Twitter history handles, as he answers questions from folks like me. Well, not from me, I'm still waiting for an answer to my question about whether Tor Johnson was a big star befor ehe hooked up with Ed Wood's film and if the movies made him a bigger star, but either way, he's an incredible human.
What, you may ask, does this have to do with SiliGone Valley? The Camera 12, and specifically, the wonderful documentary The Great Sasuke that showed there in 2016. The Great Sasuke is an amazing lucha-inspired Japanese wrestler, and an Oakland filmmaker, Mikiko Sasaki, made an exceptional documentary about him and his political career. Sasuke came on the final day of Cinequest to do the Q+A afterwards, and since Dave lives not too far down the road, I was estatic to see him show up, and even happier to see that he and Sasuke had a lovely little chat, and were even willing to take pics with me! This was the last time I was in the Camera 12. In late 2016, it closed. A victim of so many things, not the least of which being the rent, Netflix, and on and on. In it's first incarnation, as a United Artists theatre in the 1990s, I only saw a single film there, Drop Dead Gorgeous, but when it re-opened under the Camera Cinemas management (having lost the Camera 1, another episode that will have to happen) Cinequest began to use it, and it became the home of all the shorts programs for Cinequest. The same theatre, every year, and I would be there, watching them, announcing them, leading Q+As, and basically loving it. I saw so many other movies there as well. My favorite Documentary, Accordion Tribe, my favorite horror film, Blood Car, and one of the truly greatest cinema experiences of my life, a rowdy late night showing of Love in the Time of Monsters that was just incredible. My son Benji has only seen one thing in a theatre, the short Cows by the illustrator/author Sandra Boynton. It was at the Camera 12. The last time I talked to my friend Rick was at the Camera 12. My short films played there. There I met directors like Thomas Meadmoree, Kurt Kuenne, Jadrien Steele, and on and on and on. It was such a part of what made Cinequest amazing, and I am so glad we had it as long as we did. This year, the first without it, it was a festival without a center, more than a little adrift, but at the same time, the theatre was still there, empty, but not gone. I will always remember the Camera 12, I will always think of it as a home. Only now, it's a home that I have to walk by on my way to the Hammer theatre after I get myself a Boba drink. I do love that the last time I was there, it was to see an amazing movie, to meet one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, and to get to say hey to the greatest of all the wrestling journalists. If I had known it was the end, I'd have stuck around longer... Come with me. We're going to Siligone Valley.
When I was in high school, I met a guy named Walt Von Hofe. Walt worked for a company called Ls Strange and Associates. He, witnessing me hanging off of a light post in San Jose in front of The Flames, asked if I wanted to do some work for him, helping to do demographics captures. How could I not? I was 15. I loved movies passionately. I would go two times a week at least, usually more. So I started going to preview screenings and taking down attendance, breaking them into age groups, listening to their commentary. This is how I saw some of my favorite films. The Doors, that's the one that always sticks out to me, The Doors. A lot of Schwarzenegger pics, Terminator Two for example. It's how I saw Jurassic Park. At least one, probably two Batman films. Return to the Blue Lagoon. Between 1989 and 1993, I literally saw dozens, possibly hundreds, of these films at previews. They were great. Almost of all of them, at least two thirds, were done at the Century 22 in San Jose 'cause it was home. As a kid, it was not infrequent that my Dad would pack us into the car, me and my Mom, sometimes my uncle. We'd go to Bob's Big Boy. I'd have the Fisherman's Platter ... Still, if I had to choose my favorite meal on earth ... With a hot fudge cake for dessert. We'd walk across the parking lot to the Century 22 and see any number of films, the Goonies, Dune, I saw Dune there the first time. So many movies in this wonderful theater. The experience of the 22 was incredible. This giant three domed building. You go and you buy your ticket to one of two glass box offices that are angled but sort of facing one another. You walk through those front doors and in front of you, in the old days, pretty far back but later moved up, that was the concession stand. At that point when you were in the lobby, movie theater poster cases on either side, you were surrounded by the movies. There was a sense of the going to the movies. Since the 22 is really the highlight theater in all of San Jose, a lot of people would say 21, but I disagree. It was the 22. Because of the sense of not only bigness, but it encapsulated the experience. You had three theaters, which I believe is what's keeping it off of the local landmark status because it's been altered too much from its original single dome. But it defines the multiplex for me, not the megs, but the multiplex where you have two or three screens, each with its own dome. You would go into the big theater, in particular A House, and there was a sense of wonder not only at the space, this giant dome and these amphitheater seats. Terrible seats when I was a kid, I remember. The sound, once the movie started. When you sat down, there was a screen in front of you. It looked so different. It was like just a wall. This will sound strange 'cause it's this curved sort of screen in the day. Then the movie would start. The theater lights would go down, and they would start projecting, and you were captured. Particularly since I like to sit kind of close, it felt like you were surrounded by the film. I think when they took out these arced screen and put in a more or less flat one, it still had that sense that you were inside of movies. My big problem with multiplexes nowadays, or megaplexes or whatever you want to call them, is it always feels that there's a distance. That they come up with gimmicks to try and draw you in. Yes, the 22 originally was a Cinerama screen. I think the 21 one. I don't know if the 22 was, but ... That was a gimmick too. IMAX and dome screenings and so forth, that's the attempt to bring you in. But this did it. For 50 years, the 22 drew you in. It provided an emotional experience ... Maybe it's not even emotional. Maybe it's just visceral experience ... to go along with whatever the film was bringing to you. What happens when you're in an experience like that, when the movie is over, when you go out particularly into the bright daylight ... But when you leave that theater, you are leaving a world that you have dove into. Some of the films that were there for the longest time, I can never experience in any other way and have it feel anywhere near as satisfying. The way you can tell is when it's over and you leave. You go somewhere else. When you are immersed in the world of the Lion King. Then you go back out to the bright sunlight as I did many times. I was working there at that point. It doesn't feel the same. You have to readjust to the real world. From all the great films I saw there, to all the really terrible films I saw there, I never had a bad experience watching a movie there. The experience of the film was always amazing, was always immersive, was always important. At the megaplex today, it feels like a distance. That when you leave the theater, you're leaving having experienced a ... How do you experience it? Just having accepted a content. But here, at Century 22, you experience a deep dive into something else, somewhere else, and it meant the world to kids like me to have a place like that. The last night that the Century's were open, I was going through a tough time. It always happens. It was my own damn fault. I walked through the line taking pictures took them of the 21. I took a couple of the 22. There was a tremendous sadness, so sad. The reason for that is simple. I didn't know it at the time, but about a year later I did when I was holding my kids. I was sad that this wasn't for the fact that I couldn't go to Century's anymore and dive into that world. It was that my kids can't. It's that the kids who are in school today don't understand that feeling, the sensation. That still hurts. It really does. We are all as human beings tied to places. We associate feelings with buildings, with chairs, with the smells, with the tastes. Forever, forever for me, joy will taste like that Fisherman's Platter, and wonder will smell like popcorn wafting into the theater. |
Chris GarciaCurator at the Computer History Museum, Born and Raised in Santa Clara, and a Massive History Geek! Archives
February 2019
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