[Roderick Usher]

I was watching The Empire Strikes Back last night with the kids and I had an incredibly strong memory of the first time I saw this film and how it changed me.

Spring 1980 - Suburban Northern Virginia
I was 10 years old and already a rabid Star Wars fan. I had known the second film was coming for months, but when the opening weekend grew closer I realized I wasn't going to get to see it on opening day. My folks were planning on taking to visit some friends in Raleigh that weekend - OH NO!!!

As I was panicking I get a birthday invitation. My neighbor John D**** was having an Empire Strikes Back birthday party...on a Thursday night...to see the sneak preview...in Downtown Washington D.C... the night before the film opened wide!!!!

I was in heaven until dad said "you aren't going out late on a school night, and especially not into the city." D.C. was the murder capital of the U.S.A. at that point and my folks were waaay paranoid (and rather racist at that) they claimed it was for my own good.

I was crushed. After many tears and two days of deep depression, my mother finally convinces my dad to let me go.

The night is amazing. I'd been into the city plenty to visit the memorials or the Smithsonian, but never at night, and never without my parents. We get to the theater - six ten year-olds with a divorced mom watching over us - and the ushers hand out Empire Strikes Back programs (I still have mine - even if it is a little ratty.) We're bugging out, it has concept art and character bios...And then the film starts.

It's dark, there's so much more menace than in the previous installment. It's like Star Wars is growing up with me. Degobah is creepy, Han gets frozen - :eek: Totally didn't see that coming. And then the words that broke my brain

I AM YOUR FATHER

no...no way...it's a trick, a lie, anything but the truth...it can't be!

I had never been so deeply enthralled in a film, so completely in awe of a cinematic experience. We walk out of the theater in a daze, like we'd experienced a prepubescent equivilent of a whole body orgasm.

And then Return of the Jedi comes out three years later and the films stopped growing up with me. In fact the've grown more childish and simplistic with each installment. But that moment - amazing.



The next closest approximation was seeing Pulp Fiction on opening night - the needle in the heart...you could feel the entire audience being sucked into the screen.

How about you guys?

Anyone else have a transformative cinema event?