Anyway, Estes Park is about an hour and 45 minutes from my house, and I got a late start heading there since my wife was unable to go at the last minute due to babysitter issues. It was too late to get anyone else to go so I had to fly solo.
I really wanted to get one of these:
But of course, they were sold out, so I decided I also wanted this one:
And they were sold out of that one as well. They only had 40 or so Shining posters to begin with (nice planning!). Even though I arrived only 20 minutes late for the pre-movie stuff, there were already several hundred people filling up the empty field in front of the Stanley. One brave couple decided to dress up as the two girls that were murdered in the Overlook and that Danny keeps seeing in the film. "Come and play with us Danny, forever and ever and ever ..."
The pre-movie festivities included 13 people participating in a 10 minute horror story contest, where they had 10 minutes to write a story, and it had to include words specified by the Netflix people, including Stanley, plumber, green, finger, and a few others. The audio wasn't that great so it was difficult to hear a lot of the stories, and they tended to be more humorous than scary anyway.
I hadn't had time to eat in my rush to get to Estes Park so I hit the makeshift snackbar, and grabbed some popcorn and one of these:
Yes, it is Redrum Ale! Brewed in Estes Park in honor of The Shining. It was a pretty good brew that reminded me a lot of Killian's Irish Red, one of my favorite beers.
At this point it was starting to get dark and the head organizer came out on stage to introduce the movie. I was expecting Lisa Loeb, since she is the official host of the Rolling Roadshow, but for whatever reason, we got this guy instead. His words: "I came here to see The Shining. If you came here to have a conversation, get the hell out of here." This brought some cheers from the audience, and shortly thereafter they began rolling some trailers. First up was Creepshow, based on a Stephen King graphic novel or comic or something. I had read it when I was a kid and seen the movie, which was pretty cheesy. The fact that Leslie Nielson of Naked Gun fame was in the trailer brought a few chuckles from the crowd. Next up was the trailer for Motel Hell, and then came Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (which, I have amazingly not seen), and finally another Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange. And then... THE SHINING:
All in all I had a pretty good time and I highly recommend going to these Rolling Roadshow screenings, but there's only a few left, so you'll have to hurry.
More info here:
