Too insecure to approach the girl of his dreams, Danny takes a job at his local movie house where she works, only to learn his first day is her last. After his initial efforts to woo her fail, he resorts to drastic measures by enlisting the help of the chief projectionist, a man who no longer knows the difference between the real and the film worlds.
“This movie is like the obverse, funhouse ‘Men are from Mars’ version of Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin, and therefore necessary viewing for the cinemaworker-curious public. An early and essential pillar of the weeaboo canon, fans of self loathing and anime should be first in line.
Bill Heidbreder lives the art life. He is a film writer, scholar and cinephile extraordinaire from New York City. On a given day he’ll see up to 6 or 7 movies, in theaters. You’ve probably crossed his path at the cinema, read his writing in CASHIERS, or borne witness to his electrifying screen presence in one of his many short film appearances. He is known for his intense work ethic and his encyclopedic knowledge of all things FILM, which more than encompasses the object of this screening, Popcorn. Having written nearly two thousand words on the work in our second issue, Bill will give some incisive notes of introduction and moderate a very special Q&A with its director, Doctor Darren Paul Fisher.
from Bill [excerpted from CduC #2]:
‘… Popcorn is smartly self-reflexive, in several ways, of cinema and its (at least, public) sites of exhibition. The Moovie World is both an entertainment complex, offering something between base pornography and exalted art, and a workplace. Economically, film is an industrial art form, an apparatus of producing money through enjoyment. The anxious worry that it’s really shit is a variant of the modern ennui (boredom) that is heightened by great expectations. Theater workers are not alone in being situated between work and pleasure in the world of the god ‘Art’; they share this with most who take it seriously, for it’s both. Art today is the last refuge of deviance that isn’t madness, and dissidence that isn’t crime… It matters to us, even if we wonder how or why, and anxiously…………’”
Dan ‘n’ David, editors
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