Harry Potter premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood

Although this piece is centered around the latest Harry Potter flick which opened today, this isn’t a movie review. I’ll continue to leave such things to others who have more grace in that particular area than I do. This is about how my experiences surrounding the latest Harry Potter movie here in Los Angeles were far different than anything I might have encountered back in Florida, both in terms of the premiere and opening night.

The Premiere

For starters, there was the “premiere” of the movie, which took place on Sunday afternoon at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, a full three days before the movie opened to the public. This is the place where the movie stars have left their handprints and footprints in the cement over the years, the place where so many red carpet premieres have taken place. If you see a movie star being interviewed on television while standing in front of a red carpet during the week their latest movie is opening, odds are they’re standing in front of this theater at the time.

Here’s what I learned about going to a premiere: yes, they screen the movie, but unless you know someone who knows someone, you don’t get to see it. In fact, unless you know someone who knows someone, you don’t even get to stand on the same side of the street as the Theater. And I’m still not sure what the criteria might be for securing a seat in the bleachers they erect on the wrong side of the streeet; I absent-mindedly arrived a mere three hours before the premiere and was treated to a spot underneath the bleachers.

So did I have fun standing under the bleachers and trying to peer out at the midget-size teen stars of the movie as they walked down a red carpet across the street while dodging the empty water bottles that were falling from the bleachers above with disturbing regularity? Not really. And was my iPhone’s built-in camera strong enough to take nice pictures of said stars from under a bleacher across the street? Not really. Did said stars pay much attention to the crowds in the bleachers across the street? Not really. They were too busy being mobbed by credentialed media as they walked down the red carpet, leaving their backs turned to the crowd most of the time.

As you can (sort of) see in the photo below, at one point all three of the Harry Potter stars were near a poster depicting the three of them, although my vantage point didn’t allow me to capture them all in one shot. The red arrows connect the faces on the poster with the actual actors in attendance, and while it was clear to me while I was standing there that it was really them, I suppose you’ll just have to take my word for it.

And that, my friends, was the Sunday premiere. Note to self: figure out what you have to do, or who you have to know, to get on the correct side of the street for the next premiere you show up for. And next time, pick a movie that doesn’t have quite so many heavily obsessed fans as the Harry Potter franchise does.

Opening Night

But the salvation came when I found out that the same Grauman’s Chinese Theater which serves as a “you can’t even get on the right side of the street” kind of place during premieres also happens to serve as a regular movie theater the rest of the time. Anyone who knows how to buy a movie ticket before they sell out can attend regular showings of whichever one movie the Theater happens to be showing at the time (there are six adjacent theaters next door which still use the now-retired “Mann’s Chinese” name, but they’re as generic as any plain old movie theater; Grauman’s is the one you want to be in).

So I bought myself a ticket for the “midnight movie” showing of the Harry Potter flick, which starts at 12:01 am on the day the movie is released, meaning that while you’re technically not watching it until release day, you’re really seeing it the night before it goes public.

I’ve been to midnight movie openings before, but nothing quite like this. I get there an hour before the movie starts, and I find that the auditorium is already mostly full with Potter fanatics. I say “auditorium” because I can’t bring myself to lump it in with traditional movie theaters; think of watching a movie in the kind of theater where you’d see a Broadway play. And I say “fanatics” because seemingly half of the audience members were wearing Hogwarts robes, some of them complete with magic wands.

Then the movie threatened to begin. You know what I mean. First the lights go down, then something appears on screen which appears to be a preview but ends up being a soda commercial. Then another commercial. Then another. The audience wasn’t having it, and mercilessly booed every ad that appeared (except for some reason, the one with William Shatner, which was cheered). Then the actual previews started, and unbelievably loud screaming and cheering was awarded to first a phone booth, then Steve Carell, in that order. One corny preview for a movie called 10000 BC was widely laughed at, which was probably disappointing since the movie definitely wasn’t a comedy.

Then the screen went blank and the crowd went berserk. Then approximately four seconds later the spooky version of the Warner Brothers logo appeared on screen. The one which clearly signifies that a Harry Potter movie is about to start, and the crowd went berserk again. This was as good a sign as any as to how the rest of the night would go.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but Harry Potter’s face is just about the first thing you see when the movie starts, and I think the crowd was taken aback a bit by this, as no one made a sound and you could suddenly hear a pin drop. Oh but don’t worry. From then on, anytime a meaningful character made his or her first appearance in the film, the crowd went absolutely nuts. This includes characters who didn’t make their appearance until fairly late in the film.

But it wasn’t just cheers all night. I suppose because nearly everyone in the audience had already read the book and knew the main plotlines, a couple of characters got roundly booed upon their initial appearance, even before the film had made it clear that they were worthy of being booed. But not Snape, though. Despite his endlessly ambiguous status when it comes to the good guy / bad guy categories, Snape’s initial appearance received the loudest cheers of all.

And of course any time a character did something heroic, made a timely reappearance, or did something humorous, the audience responded with the same enthusiasm. Eventually, the movie ended. And almost no one left. Curious as to why, I didn’t either. Everyone, it seems, wanted to stay through the latter part of the credits to cheer the names of certain actors, particularly the ones who don’t appear in the next Harry Potter film (keep in mind that nearly everyone in the audience has also already read the next Harry Potter book), and finally, the name of author J.K. Rowling herself.

By the time the audience finally began to trickle out of the theater, it was close to three in the morning. But that didn’t stop the crowd from gathering around the roped-off and security guarded cement block containing the footprints, handprints, and autographs of the movie’s three young stars. So that’s what they had been doing across the street on Sunday. Not that I could really tell from under the bleachers.

As you can clearly tell from the photo, the iPhone’s camera isn’t meant to be used in low-light situations, either. It’s ten times the camera I had in my crappy Motorola RAZR and SLVR phones, but it’s not necessarily a full replacement for a real digital camera. If I happen to walk past the Theater in daylight (yeah, it’s within walking distance), I’ll try to snap another photo.

The late hour also didn’t stop vendors from hawking Harry Potter posters for five bucks each in front of the theater, or a few film crews (none from major networks) from asking audience members what they thought of the movie. It was nothing like the hoopla surrounding the Sunday premiere, the one that the public couldn’t get into or get near. But it was still the most riveting movie theater experience I’ve ever had.

I don’t know how much of it had to do with the fact that this was opening night at Grauman’s Chinese, and how much was due to the fact that this was opening night of a Harry Potter film. A little of both, I suppose. But after seeing a movie under these circumstances, at the best-known theater on Hollywood Boulevard, in the heart of the movie industry, literally one minute after the movie was released to the public, with all the audience enthusiasm that came along with all of that, going to see a movie on a Thursday afternoon at a generic movie theater will never be the same.

It’s not what I came to Los Angeles for, that’s for sure. I don’t think I even know anyone in the film industry. Come to think of it, I take that back. But in any case, it’s not one of the industries I came out here to be closer to. If movies on an iPod/iPhone ever become a big enough deal that covering the film industry on iProng is justified, I’ll look into finding out what I have to do to be on the correct side of the street and all. In the mean time, I think I’ll just file it under “fringe benefits” for now.

Anyway I’ve got to run; Chris Cornell’s solo tour is coming to the Wiltern tonight. Maybe this time I should take a real camera.