TheaterFire

Thirty Years Ago Today…

Posted by ladypartsmcgee@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 66 comments

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66 Comments

EvilRufus@reddit

Completely forgotten the newspaper was the primary source for show times..
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KaneOak@reddit

Incredible. Practically all bangers.
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beebee8belle@reddit

This takes me back ❤️
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DiscordianStooge@reddit

I remember riding my bike to the theater to watch Interview with the Vampire at the theater at age 15. They didn't enforce R ratings back then.
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elphaba00@reddit

There was one old lady who sold tickets at our local theater who would enforce it. My boyfriend (now husband) and his best friend wanted to see Speed, but she was working. So they bought tickets to Lion King and planned to theater hop but couldn’t pull it off. Boyfriend and I wanted to see Vampire in Brooklyn with Eddie Murphy. His parents went with us. (Not sure why that happened.) Parents were there before us. Same old lady decides to shut us down. My now father in law had to come out of the theater to say we were with him.
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NoShlepZone@reddit

At all!
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___wiz___@reddit

Haha I forgot all about DeNiro Frankenstein
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SurlySuz@reddit

I loved that movie. Somewhere I have a vhs copy of it
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TechnicalEntry@reddit

Any given random week in the 90’s had more new releases worth watching than what comes out in a year now 😢
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red286@reddit

Well that's because back in the 90s, you didn't have to watch the 16 prequels to know what the fuck is going on in the latest movie shat out by Disney. These days everything is either a sequel, a prequel, or a reboot of a franchise.
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NoAnnual3259@reddit

Yeah and while there were sequels and ongoing movie franchises back in the 90s almost all the movies listed in that paper (with the exception of Star Trek: Generations) were either original screenplays like Pulp Fiction or the Lion King or maybe a new movie based on a book like Forest Gump or Interview With A Vampire that hadn’t been done before. I feel like the energy put into new original movies back then just went into new TV shows on cable.
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Raff102@reddit

Good movies also stayed in the theater for a long time.
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TechnicalEntry@reddit

And it was at least a year before they became available to rent on VHS.
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GeetarEnthusiast85@reddit

I remember waiting what felt like 2 years before The Lion King was released on VHS. I saw it three times in theaters. Twice at the regular theater and once at a discount theater before it was completely gone.
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irate_alien@reddit

“And we liked it!”
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NoAnnual3259@reddit

Yes, very true. Lion King came out in June and Forrest Gump came out in July and they were still I first run theaters by Thanksgiving. Pulp Fiction came out in October and was a slow burn hit and was still in theaters by the spring of 1995 (I remember seeing it in a fairly packed theater then). These days everyone expects movies on streaming within a month or so.
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darkofnight916@reddit

Lion King was a strange case that year, it came out in June played through August then got pulled entirely from theaters, it was then rereleased for Thanksgiving. I know this cause I worked at a movie theater and got cussed out by parents since I was obviously the person responsible for Disneys decision.
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irate_alien@reddit

I just zoomed in and damn, there were a lot of good movies out! I also loved second-run movie theaters where a show was like a dollar. I used to go see so many movies, I easily spent more total in a year on going to the movies when I was in college (a dollar or two at a time) as I do now.
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DiscordianStooge@reddit

TV shows now are better, though.
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NoEfficiency9@reddit

I distinctly remember watching the Lion King in the summer of 94. Was it really in theaters that long or was this an encore release?
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darkofnight916@reddit

It was a rerelease. Probably Disney’s first serious run at an animated holiday release. We were one year away from Toy Story as a holiday release.
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Hi-Scan-Pro@reddit

Pulp Fiction, True Lies, Natural Born Killers, ST Generations, Stargate, Forest Gump, Clear and Present Danger. I would give anything to watch any of those for the first time again. 
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anOvenofWitches@reddit

Sigh. This makes me sad.
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Atmp@reddit

I’d have been hitting up in the army now at the dollar theater
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Wild_Manufacturer555@reddit

Geeze $3 for a movie.
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sandglider@reddit

Turns out, The Pagemaster was not the Wizard of Oz for our generation
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CatsEqualLife@reddit

I loved The Pagemaster and the video game, too. As a book nerd, it was the best thing ever.
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mystiqueallie@reddit

I forgot about having to look in the newspaper for movie show times and what was playing
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jharrisimages@reddit

I remember going to see Star Trek Generations in theaters in ‘94 with my uncle and cousins. My uncle introduced me to comic books, Star Trek, Star Wars and D&D. I still tell him to this day I blame him for me being a total nerd 😆
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jeffreyan12@reddit

I see 8 good movies right off the bat on that page. Today I see maybe two or three (if I am really bored) to give a chance ( and I mean “your telling there is a chance “ level. I mean Star Trek, 34th street and Santa clause ( classics and now we have red one a Christmas movie) and Stargate, forest gump, lion king(og not lion king 50 or jaws 19(shark looks even more fake))
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Ltimbo@reddit

Damn, that was a good week for movies. Half of those are classics.
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ryhoyarbie@reddit

Lots of good choices. A guilty pleasure movie that was listed is In the Army Now with Pauly Shore.
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B0b_a_feet@reddit

It wasn’t terrible. Had a few laughs and a few stars. One of my favorite movies about the Army and not all that far off from the experience of deploying as a Reservist
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MortgageRegular2509@reddit

The fact that Forrest Gump was still in theaters is pretty amazing
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B0b_a_feet@reddit

I remember Forrest Gump was in theaters for almost a year.
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DrJJStroganoff@reddit

my wife had a bootleg vhs of the lionking. The old camcorder in a theater trick. It must have been opening weekend or something because the place was packed. When that Mufasa scene came on, you heard all the kids start yelling no and crying.... oh my... as wrong as it is,.... it was funny as heck.
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Otherwise_Coyote4885@reddit

Interview with the Vampire is still one of my favorites.
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ladypartsmcgee@reddit (OP)

Have you watched the series on AMC+? So good. Camp and dramatic and gloriously gay.
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handmemyknitting@reddit

So pleasantly surprised with the new series. The casting is sooo good, especially Lestat. I laughed when I read reviews that it was "super gay"......um yeah? are you familiar with the source material?
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All-Sorts@reddit

Thankful AMC gave us something to sink our teeth into with that "Behind the music" Lestat interview, I mean how could they not? It's the Brat Prince himself.
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Otherwise_Coyote4885@reddit

I have and I love it. Growing up and living about 45 minutes southwest of New Orleans adds to the allure for me.
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Traditional_Cat_60@reddit

Everyone was upset with Tom Cruise being cast as Lestat but he knocks it out of the park. Easily my favorite vampire movie.
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HollyCalamity@reddit

I definitely had that on DVD, and my boyfriend and I used to love quoting Lestat’s over-the-top lines. Cruise was fantastic.
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bgva@reddit

Four out of five of that year’s Best Picture nominees were in theaters on that day. Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption, and Quiz Show. Only one not playing at that point was Four Weddings and a Funeral. I miss this era of movies. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m kinda over all the comic book movies and sequels. I know that it’s keeping Hollywood going because they all make a billion dollars, but I miss the variety.
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New-Bass-1685@reddit

Gosh movies suck now.
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EntroperZero@reddit

Quiz Show has got to be in my top 5 of all time. The 90s were an incredible decade for movies, capped off by The Matrix.
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Tony_Tanna78@reddit

Plenty of good choices, although I would've likely went to see Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers again.
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Maximum-Aardvark9467@reddit

Who would have that that Junior would go on to be such a culturally impactful movie.
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Kgby13@reddit

The War was such a great movie
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JimMcRae@reddit

Oh!!! I honestly thought that said the WAP and was about to post about how whatever that meant then it means something way different now hahaha
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PhoneJazz@reddit

Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction released the same month
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NoAnnual3259@reddit

Actually Forest Gump came out in July that year and Pulp Fiction came out in October. It was just that Gump was such a massive hit it stayed in theaters forever. And Pulp Fiction was a slow burn hit so it stayed around well into 1995 also.
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TheWolf_NorCal@reddit

I think one of the underrepresented answers to the question, "what would you do if you had a time machine?" would be to see some ("classic" to us in 2024) movies, in the theaters, with an audience who is seeing them for the first time.
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espexporerguy@reddit

That's the way we'd see our options and decide the movie we'd see at theater back in the day... Feels like it was a thousand years ago...
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handsomeape95@reddit

You've selected... Agent Zero? If that's correct, press one.
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PhoneJazz@reddit

“Why don’t you just TELL me the name of the movie?”
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des1gnbot@reddit

Omg I’d completely forgotten that this is how we used to look up movie times. This takes me back.
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tallicafu1@reddit

I remember cutting out the images for the movies I’d seen and putting them on a bulletin board in my room. No idea why, just was fun.
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mmxxvisual@reddit

Man, opening this page in the newspaper was such a delight for me!
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TushyLawlips@reddit

1994. The best year for cinema. So many killer movies.
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HollyCalamity@reddit

I’m sneaking in to Pulp Fiction.
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TausMelek@reddit

True Lies was the gem here
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LordWesleyAgain@reddit

Did anyone else ever snip the theater times and carry it around so you could be Johnny on the spot if you or your friends wanted to go see something?
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Nadathug@reddit

Used to love on weekends when my family would have breakfast and then my Dad would say “ok kids, find a movie” and throw us the paper. Me and my sister would scour the listings and yell out suggestions. Stop at the supermarket to pick out a candy to hide in my mom’s purse, then he’d drop us off with our Mom to find seats while he parked and got popcorn and soda (we’d usually be running late lol). I know it sounds inconvenient, but it made seeing a movie way more rewarding than just buying your ticket and reserving seats online.
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Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit

Used to be fun to grab the Village Voice or Weekly local paper
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Zorpfield@reddit

Low down dirty shame is awesome 👏 never got the love it deserved
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