And the mighty fine print hastens the trip to our epilogue

I just got back from Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008). I love the movie: it is the Gothest, splatterpunkiest imaginable mash-up of Rigoletto and The Revenger's Tragedy with dystopian science fiction and a healthy dose of corporate satire. Some of the music is forgettable, but some of it gets stuck in my head not infrequently. I love Paul Sorvino's classically trained tenor and Alexa Vega briefly metamorphosing into Joan Jett for her adolescent rebellion showstopper, right before the uncredited cameo by actual Joan Jett; I love Terrance Zdunich as the prowling Graverobber and Paris Hilton's face falling off. Grieving, secretive Nathan Wallace is my favorite role by Anthony Stewart Head. The story, the music, and the setting are an obvious case of the creators throwing all the influences they loved into the same piece of art regardless of how they fit together and it works for me: it knows which of its elements to treat seriously, which to send up, and which to play like grand opera, damn the clichés and full coloratura ahead. I genuinely find the central relationship, between a sheltered daughter and a dangerously overprotective father, affecting and painful. Also, the primary visual aesthetic is an assortment of fetish gear and I am fine with that. There's a lot of blood onscreen. I am fine with that as well.

When I saw the film for the first time with greygirlbeast and humglum in 2009, I distinctly remember writing, "If it doesn't become a cult movie with midnight showings and audiences dressed to the gothic nines, there is no justice in this world."

I just saw a midnight showing with a shadowcast, à la Rocky Horror. It did not work for me at all. I am sad.

The company themselves were fine. The costuming was excellent throughout and some of the actors came uncannily close in gesture and attitude to the characters they were shadowing. (I was really impressed by their Luigi.) I had a lot of trouble with the spotlights that consistently washed out and often actually whited out the screen; I had even more trouble with the audience constantly talking through the soundtrack. I'm not complaining about the sing-along component: I like the music, I know most of the lyrics, and under less alienating circumstances, I might have joined in. But the rest of the audience participation came off a lot less like Rocky Horror callbacks and a lot more like the kind of spontaneous MST3K that evolves when a bunch of friends decide to cope with a bad movie by shouting at it, which as anyone who has ever been the one person in the room enjoying the movie knows is extremely irritating and dispiriting, especially if you have been looking forward to a theatrical viewing of Repo! The Genetic Opera since it was announced at the beginning of the summer. I didn't know about the live performance until this evening. Plainly I was not the target audience.

I felt like the only person in the theater who had come to see the movie, not the live show. (derspatchel joined me when he got off work, but I think his tolerance for the live show was higher than mine.) Having the stage lights on while the film was running, spotlights on the screen, and the audience mocking every other line made it very clear that the movie was a secondary part of the experience. I hadn't expected that. None of my college-era showings of Rocky Horror shone lights on the screen. The screen is God. The screen is worth more than you. I hope what I was seeing was affectionate ribbing rather than ironic enjoyment, but I really couldn't tell. It was a disorienting experience and not one I'd had in a theater before. Audience members heckling, yes: it memorably marred my first experience of The Birds (1963). Being so out of sync with an entire moviegoing ritual, I really don't think so.

And as far as I could see, no one in the audience came dressed in their fetish Goth opera best. I might have felt better if they had. I am listening to the soundtrack of Repo! and thinking that I should pick up a DVD when I can, so that I can at least rewatch it with the proper color saturation. I really had been looking forward to the showing tonight.