George Eastman House Blog

Office Space (1999), writer-director Mike Judge’s trenchantly funny look at the contemporary white-collar world, was overlooked by most audiences on its theatrical release, but nevertheless became a bona-fide cult comedy classic after a DVD release and screenings on cable television.

Judge, provided with a larger budget for his live action follow-up (he had also previously brought his animated MTV creations to the big screen in 1996’s Beavis and Butt-Head Do America), began production on a satire with a science-fiction spin that remained officially untitled during its filming and for several months after shooting wrapped in 2004. Idiocracy, as it was eventually called, was finally released in September 2006, but only in a handful of cities (not Rochester, or even New York City!), and without any advertising at all, save for a movie poster that said absolutely nothing about the movie.

 

The story revolves around an underachieving military careerist (Luke Wilson) and a prostitute (Maya Rudolph) who are cryogenically frozen in the present day and meant to be awoken in a year’s time. Things naturally go awry, and when our heroes are unfrozen 500 years later, they find they are the smartest people in the United States of Uhhh-merica, a nation overpopulated with illiterate, slack-jawed citizens who make the Three Stooges look like downright geniuses. Judge envisions the future of our country as an ugly, garbage-strewn, and corporate-controlled hell on earth where the president is a former wrestler and porn star, and the most popular television show is called Ow! My Balls!

Idiocracy is, like Office Space, another clever blend of knee-slapping jokes and social satire that recalls Woody Allen’s Sleeper and bears more than a few resemblances to this summer’s Pixar smash Wall-E, particularly its depiction of a laid-to-waste-by-consumerism future Earth. The film’s token theatrical release remains a mystery. Some have suggested that Judge’s hilarious but angry vision of a dumbed-down world was unappealing to test audiences and prompted the distributors, 20th Century Fox, to shelve the movie for so long that only a contractual obligation brought the film, however haphazardly, into cinemas. The Dryden’s screening of Idiocracy on September 7 will be the first 35mm theatrical showing of the film in New York state. Don’t miss your chance to see it on the big screen.

Click here to watch the Idiocracy trailer!

Hello Movie Lovers,

Nearly 20 years ago, during July, 1989, I had a seminal moviegoing experience in Chicago’s Lincoln Park: a screening of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven projected on a giant screen with six-channel Dolby Stereo sound. The screening was part of a weekend called “Cinema Borealis,” three nights of free movies shown outdoors near Chicago’s lakefront that also included 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kurosawa’s Ran. The whole project was the brainchild of a Chicago projectionist/movie guru named (no kidding) James Bond, and it was Bond’s innovation to show these movies on film, as opposed to video, which allowed for a brightness and clarity and massiveness of image that was positively hypnotic for me and the thousands that gathered to watch Malick’s masterpiece when the sun went down.

While there have been huge advancements in video and digital projection in the decades since the days of Cinema Borealis, there still is nothing to match the purity and beauty of 35mm film. Inspired by Bond’s gift to Chicago and with the initiative of Chris Jones and the Business Association of the South Wedge Area, George Eastman House will present five nights of free screenings under the stars on a 45 foot screen in the Highland Park Bowl, with state-of-the-art 35mm projection and stereo sound provided by the talented folks at Boston Light & Sound.

 

The films selected for screening are all acknowledged classics of American cinema and they were chosen primarily for their ability to transfix and entertain an audience, but also for their visual splendor, qualities which will be enhanced by the enormity of this cinema-under-the-stars. There are no other films that have captured the awe-inspiring element of space travel like Kubrick’s 2001 (screening Tuesday, Aug. 26), and are there images of New York City more iconic than the ones captured in black-and-white widescreen by cinematographer Gordon Willis in Woody Allen’s Manhattan (Wednesday, Aug. 27)? Even if you’ve seen the films before, you won’t want to miss the spectacle of Cary Grant clinging to Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock’s North By Northwest (Thursday, Aug. 28) or the glistening cars cruising Modesto, California in American Graffiti (Friday, Aug. 29) when they’re projected like this. The double dose of Boris Karloff horror (Saturday, Aug. 30) that closes the series will reveal that Karloff truly was a talent to be reckoned with and the set designers of the 30s at Universal Pictures were no slouches either!

The tradition of the open-air screening is a common one outside of North America, unless we consider the legacy of the Drive-in, and it’s a special experience that I think you will treasure.

See you in the Highland Park Bowl!

Click here to visit the Dryden Theatre website for more information.