In less than a week, I’ll be heading out to Hollywood for the annual TCM Classic Film Festival. It’s hard to believe I’ve already been going to the festival for over ten years, but I still always look forward to the full schedule to be announced so that I can have fun trying to plan my schedule out. As a rule, I always head into the festival with my plans somewhat flexible. Sometimes, there are late-in-the-game guest announcements or schedule changes, other times I might wake up and just not be in the mood for what I’d originally planned to see. As it stands now, here’s what my top choices for the festival are:
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Directed by Irvin Kershner
Shown: David Prowse (as Darth Vader; voice: James Earl Jones)
Thursday, April 24
This year, I’m attending the festival with an Essential pass, which means I’ll be starting things off at the big opening night screening of my favorite Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back. I haven’t seen that movie in a theater since the original trilogy was re-released in 1997, so I am very much looking forward to being able to see it in the Chinese theater. Once that lets out, I’ll skip the second block of movies so that I can get some rest.
Friday, April 25
For the first full day of movies, I’ll be starting the day off at the Egyptian for The Divorcee. Since I’ve written about The Divorcee many times over, it’s definitely one of my favorite movies and I was very excited to see that it would be playing at the festival this year. Even though there’s a lot of other cool things going on during that first block of the day (like Mrs. Miniver, Thunderball, and Michelle Pfeiffer’s hand and footprint ceremony), nothing tops The Divorcee for me.
After The Divorcee, I’ll likely hang around the Egyptian for Servants’ Entrance since I haven’t seen that one before and I generally like Janet Gaynor. However, this is a block where I could potentially change my mind when the time comes. It’s up against Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, which is another one I haven’t seen before and I’m a bit intrigued by. I could also end up deciding to head over to Club TCM for the History of VistaVision presentation since I don’t really know much about the finer points of VistaVision, but I’m hoping to check out at least one of the movies being presented in VistaVision during the festival.
For the third block of the day, I’ll head over to the Chinese theater for a screening of The Fabulous Baker Boys with Michelle Pfeiffer as a guest. It’s been a long time since I last saw that one so I can’t imagine a better way to revisit it.
After that is a block of movies where there are no bad choices to be made. There’s Misery with Kathy Bates and Rob Reiner as guests, a screening of George Stevens: A Filmmaker’s Journey, The Lady Eve introduced by Bill Hader, The Mark of Zorro and Me and My Gal introduced by Bruce Goldstein — whose presentations are always worth seeing. However, I’m going to sit this round out and go get something to eat instead.
Up next is another block where there’s a whole lot of tough choices to be made. One of the biggest conflicts of the entire festival for me is Now, Voyager (my favorite Bette Davis movie), up against a screening of All That Jazz (with Ben Vereen as a guest) and a poolside screening of Clueless (another one of my favorite movies.) After lots of going back and forth, I’ve decided to go with the fun poolside atmosphere for Clueless.
If I’m feeling ambitious (and I do hope I am), I’ll be at the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’m not very good at staying up late anymore, but with Barry Bostwick and the Happy to Be Here Shadow Cast as guests, I’m sure this will be a fun screening.
Saturday, April 26
For Saturday, I’m probably just going to end up making final choices based on my mood the day of. For the first block, there’s a screening of Carefree in multiplex theater 4 up against a nitrate print screening of Daisy Kenyon. I haven’t seen Daisy Kenyon in ages so it’d be great to see it again, but Carefree is one of my favorite Astaire/Rogers movies. At the moment, I’m leaning toward Carefree. Regardless of which one I end up choosing, I plan to follow it up with Mildred Pierce, also on nitrate.
As fun as it would be to see either Back to the Future or To Be or Not To Be on the big screen, I think the third block of the day will be a meal break for me. The 4th block of the day has another very hard conflict for me: We’re No Angels against Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman. Everyone who does the festival has their own ways of prioritizing screenings. Some people prioritize seeing special guests, others try to see things that involve a unique experience, like a live musical accompaniment or a nitrate print screening. We’re No Angels and The Freshman both have unique experiences involved, with We’re No Angels being presented in VistaVision and The Freshman having live music. As much as I hate to miss screenings of silent movies, I think We’re No Angels is going to win out for me because of how rare it is to see any movie presented in VistaVision.
After We’re No Angels, I could easily go either way between a screening of Blade Runner (with Sean Young as a guest) or Animal Crackers (one of my favorite Marx Brothers movies). If were making the choice today, I’d go with Blade Runner, but if I end up being more in the mood for a comedy that day, the Marx Brothers could get me to change my mind.
Tonight’s midnight movie is David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. Even though I’m a big David Lynch fan, I somehow haven’t seen Wild at Heart before and would absolutely love to see it for the first time at the festival.
Sunday, April 27
I generally try to keep my Sunday plans pretty flexible. Not only are there a bunch of TBA slots for repeat screenings of movies that had been popular during the festival, I often end up skipping the first block of movies to rest. This year, all my Sunday plans will revolve around the Sunday afternoon screening of Blue Velvet with Kyle MacLachlan as a guest. Like I said, I’m a big David Lynch fan so nothing is going to pull me away from that one — and that includes the screening of Sunset Boulevard at the Chinese Theater which conflicts with Blue Velvet. Aside from that, I’m thinking I might close out the festival with Heat, but I’ll have to wait to see what some of the TBA blocks end up being.
