Cinco de Mayo in Austin, TX

added - 7 February 2008
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For Cinco de Mayo Jessi and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse downtown for a Jon Gries double-feature. The big draw for us was that Jon Gries (pronounced “GRICE”) was going to be there to meet and talk with fans.

The Features

1) Napoleon Dynamite (Jon Gries IS Uncle Rico)

2) Joysticks (Jon Gries IS King Vidiot)

Napoleon Dynamite is one of our favorite movies, so we knew what we were in for. Joysticks is a film that neither one of us had seen or even heard of.

Now I know why the Drafthouse has been named the “Best Theater in America” for several years running. They do cool stuff like this all the time. Special events and weird movies are their forte’ and we loved every minute of it. I love the fact that you have a table in front of you in the theater and can order appetizers, full meals, beer, wine, or liquor. The place only allows kids under six in the theater like on Saturday mornings and announces that they will “throw your ass out” if you talk on a cell phone during the flick.

When we arrived the lobby had set up a glamour shots area where you could make Uncle Rico-like poses while holding a football. They also had a steak throwing competition which Jessi and I both tried but we didn’t win the free basket of tater tots.

Once in the theater, even the preshow entertainment was fun to watch. We saw a clip from a Bollywood musical, the A-Team dubbed in spanish, and some really cool coming events at the Drafthouse.

Jon Gries came up to the stage and introduced Napoleon Dynamite and said he would do some Q and A afterwards. The Drafthouse then ran three previews of other films that Jon Gries appeared in:

1) Real Genius (Jon Gries IS Lazlow)

2) TerrorVision (Jon Gries IS a metal music freak)

3) The Monster Squad (Jon Gries IS going to turn into a werewolf [with nards])

I can’t tell you how much I loved “The Monster Squad” when I was a kid, so this was a real thrill.

After the movie, the Q and A began. Gries revealed that he is NOT a vegetarian like some people had said. He did spit out all the steak in the movie, but only because it was disgusting. Apparantly, he doesn’t like it all that rare. He also admitted that it was him that threw the steak that hit Napoleon in the face. The character of Uncle Rico was based on a guy that the writer/director saw from the bus to school every morning throwing footballs at a video camera. I got to ask him why Uncle Rico sniffs everything. He said it was a collaborative decision with the director - they both “understand” the need to sniff things.

Intermission was after this and I got to meet Jon Gries and get a picture with him. Jessi was too camera-shy to get in the picture so she took the shot for me. I let him know that he’s been entertaining me for a lot of years to which he responded, “you must stay up late and watch a lot of bad movies.” I admitted that, indeed I do.

More preshow entertainment greeted us before Joysticks (a 1983 sex comedy). Jon introduced Joysticks and admitted that after he finished working on this film, he thought his career was over. Several times he said, “I wanted to kill myself; I wanted to throw myself out a window.” He was in Austin with his girlfriend and he confessed that it was she that was making him sit there and watch the movie again after all these years. She had never seen it and wanted to watch it with him. It would be the first time he’s seen it on a big screen since it was released.

When the lights went down we were treated to three more previews for movies Jon Gries appears in.

1) Sunnyside (Jon Gries IS not in this preview for a horrible-looking, late 70’s JOEY Travolta movie)

2) Fright Night 2 (Jon Gries IS a vampire)

3) Swap Meet (Jon Gries IS at the world’s largest 70’s swap meet doing… something…)

“Swap Meet” was the stand-out of those trailers. It was BAD. Jon confessed later that, as bad as he felt after “Joysticks”, he felt worse after “Swap Meet”. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard a professional actor mention a performance and say “I didn’t even try”.

So, Joysticks begins and it’s obvious that this is pure 80’s. The “crazy 80’s guy” that introduced Jon before “Joysticks” was right when he said that “Joysticks” has more 80’s in it then every year of that entire decade. There were lots of T’s and lots of A’s and lots of fart jokes. People that know Jessi and me know that poop and fart jokes are never wasted on us. Jon Gries performance as King Vidiot was over-the-top hilarious. You could look down at the front row and see Jon Gries ducking down in his seat when his scenes were on, his girlfriend leaning over and laughing at him.

After the movie there was more Q and A and Jon re-iterated how embarrassed he is by this movie. He knows it’s a bad film and yet he’s still able to laugh because he recognizes that it has attained so-bad-it’s-good status. Jon said he worked for three weeks on that film making about $400 a week. His hair had to be spray painted every day. He offered to go ahead and get a dye-job, but they said don’t worry about it. Joe Don Baker (the film’s main villain) was really nice on-set, but he also mentioned that booze may have had a lot to do with that. Jon doesn’t play video games and didn’t play any of the games in the film. He also said that there was quite a bit of off-set debauchery, but that he wasn’t part of that since he was “in a relationship” at the time.

Then, the question of the night was asked by an audience member:

“If approached, would you do a sequel?”

The theater errupted in laughter. Jon dropped the mic and started laughing too. When he regained his composure, he lifted the mic back up and muttered under his breath, “…fuck no…”. There was really nowhere to go with the Q and A after that.

What a great night it was. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.

Be sure to check out the Flickr photobook for more pictures of our night out.

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