If I could go back and see one movie

Recently on Twitter, and then again on his own blog, the esteemed sportswriter Joe Posnanski threw out a question: “If you could go back and see one baseball game, anytime in history, what would you watch.” What sports fan doesn’t love these kinds of exercises, since it’s an opportunity to mine through the past, particularly of games near and dear to our respective hearts, which Posnanski noted was how most fans took it, as a dreamy possibility of re-living the greatest sports moment of their lives. But then, my favorite sport is college football, and if I could go back and see one college football game, anytime in history, I would not choose, say, my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers winning the national championship in the 1995 Orange Bowl, or even the sleet-ridden 1991 game against Oklahoma that sealed a Big 8 title (though I’d take the latter over the former, I swear). No, I’d probably say something like….Red Grange’s game against Michigan in 1924, or the 1902 Rose Bowl, or the 1926 Rose Bowl, or SMU/TCU in 1935, the list goes on, just so long as it’s anything pre-WWII, or at least long before the modern era. So, if I could go back and see one baseball game, anytime in history, I’d say: a Josh Gibson game, any Josh Gibson game, whenever, wherever. Lord, just let me see four Josh Gibson at bats.

That, as it absolutely had to, got me to thinking about movies. If I could go back and see one movie in the theater, anytime in history, what would I watch? Would I re-live one of the greatest movie theater experiences of my life? Would I go back and see “Million Dollar Baby”, or “Titanic”, or “Boogie Nights”? Would I go back and re-live that employees-only screening of “There’s Something About Mary” at the Wynnsong 16? No, these are not the movies I would choose, just as I would not choose “Last of the Mohicans”, my all-time favorite movie, even though I have never seen it on the big screen. You might say I’m simply being contrary. And while I will admit that simply choosing my all-time favorite movie is too easy an answer, preventing a whole blog post, I’d counter with this: I can go back to anytime in HISTORY. Why would I want to go back to 1992?

I could go back to 1895 and see the premiere of “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station” to see if the urban legend of audiences overwhelmed by the image of a steam locomotive coming right at them on the big screen sent them running was really true. I could go back to 1927 and see the premiere of “The Jazz Singer” and feel flabbergasted right alongside everyone else when a person up there on the movie screen actually speaks.

I could go back to Atlanta in 1939 for the lavish “Gone With the Wind” premiere, or go back to the same year and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for “The Wizard of Oz” premiere, feeling the true blue effect of that legendary switch from monochrome to color.

I could go back to see the premiere of “2001: A Space Odyssey” to get a true sense of the collective WTF?, or I could go back to the premiere of “The Heiress” at Cathay Circle in Hollywood and let the majesty of Olivia de Havilland wash over me in real time

I could go back to see the “The Blair Witch Project” premiere at Sundance and luxuriate in living through the lie of thinking this whole thing might, just might, be real, or I could go back to see “Marie Antoinette” at Cannes and then pick fights with all the snot-noses booing it.

That all sounds good, but that’s not what I’d want to do. No, if I could go back and see one movie in the theater, anytime in history, I’d go back to 1932 New York, grab a pre-movie highball at the Algonquin, and then go catch the late show of “Red Dust” at the Roxy.