The Parkway's Annual Oscar Bash

Beginning in 1999, The Parkway began broadcasting the Academy Awards on both big screens, throwing our own customized, eccentric and insanely popular annual Oscar Bash.  For the price of a single admission, we offered free passed finger foods, champagne, a goodie bag, and live entertainment during the commericals.  At first it was just me as "Will the Thrill" and my lovely assistant (and eventual bride) Monica, Tiki Goddess hosting the festivities, running up and down the stairs, trying to quickly give away trivia/contest prizes while barely stopping to catch a breath. It was quite a workout. And Monica always wore high heels...

Finally, and fortunately for all concerned, our talented in-house troupe Barely Legal Productions, who presented The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the theater every week, took over the downstairs auditorium during the Oscars with elaborate musical stage shows and themed skits performed during the commercial breaks, while I was upstairs doing my vintage smartass lounge lizard schtick to a far less boisterous crowd. Basically it was like going to a Vegas casino with Cirque du Soleil playing the big room and Louis Prima and Keely Smith swingin' in the lounge. Always nice to have options. Same show on the screen, anyway.

Parkway founders/owners Kyle & Catherine Fischer
greet the sold out house, 2005

The Oscar Bash was one of our popular events, with advance tickets selling out seemingly within minutes of going on sale, year in, year out. Patrons dressed up for the various contests, including Most Glamorous ,Best Celebrity Lookalike, and my personal favorite, Best Cleavage. A grand time was had by all. Except for me. I hate the Oscars. IMO, movies should never be reduced to sporting events. But then I also hate sports and The Parkway also hosted annual Superbowl Parties (which I skipped, but nobody missed me, I'm sure). 

I hosted the Oscar Bash for many years because the audience was having so much fun and I considered the gig an extension of my Thrillville  responsibilities. But don't worry. I won't be showing for the Oscar parties at The New Parkway with my grumpy attitude. I'll be at home, watching movies that would never be remotely considered for any kind of award - none anyone would would be proud of, anyway. But you folks will have a blast! Let me know how it goes...Cheers.

The "Mothra" Chronicles

One of my most popular films in Thrillville was the 1961 Toho classic Mothra. You may have heard of it. It's the one about a giant moth. People loves "the Peanuts" too (the two tiny singing gals that followed Mothra around, serenading him with his/her/its personal theme song.) Over the years I showed this cult classic four different times to packed houses. Three different prints. It took me that many times to get it right. The first time I booked it, for The Midnight Lounge, back in 1998 or so, the studio, Sony, sent me a pretty nice 35m print. In Japanese. With no subtitles. Since we served beer, and you could still follow the basic plot, it didn't matter that much, and the audience was inspired to provide their own drunken dialogue, like Mystery Science Theater 3000. Also odd: after we returned the print, they kept sending it back...

The second time I booked Mothra for a sold-out house in Thrillville, it was a beautiful print in English language, but with "sound slugs," so to speak, meaning certain scenes added to the print from the Japanese version weren't dubbed, so these short sequences contained were completely silent. Only subtiles for some of the dialogue, as I recall. Once again, the largely inebriated audience took it upon themselves to vocally fill in the gaps. It wasn't as annoying as that may seem. That was one of the great things about The Parkway: the collective spirit of shared fun. Eventually I booked an English language print of Mothra with sound all the way through. It just wasn't the same...Kampei. 

The Parkway's Greatest Hits: "American Pimp"

As we count down to the grand opening of The New Parkway on Friday, November 30 (with a pre-opening gala scheduled for Wednesday, November 28, featuring live music by local band Carne Cruda, who performed at the closing of the original theater), I will blog daily about my memories as programmer/publicist/"Will the Thrill"/"white guy in the video." Within these entries will be a sub-series called "Parkway's Greatest Hits," which I'm kicking off today with American Pimp, an entertaining, enlightening documentary about America's oldest profession.

I clearly remember the long, long lines of patrons - and actual local pimps! - lining up for this funky flick, which totally bombed upon initial release.  I think it played for a week at the Grand Lake Theater before we picked it up and it became one of our longest-running smash hits, playing in the late slot, 9:45, in the less spacious (but still cozy) Theater #2 upstairs, for months. This is when we realized that there was something special about the already diverse demographics that made up our community generally and the Parkway audience specifically, which we were still in the process of building when this movie came  out of nowhere in 1999, and paid many, many bills, as well as helping to put our little theater in a forgotten neighborhood on the greater Bay Area map. The colorful cast of characters both on and off the screen - a virtual mirror image - perfectly summed up the unique appeal of the Parkway and its patrons. I look forward to more spectacularly surreal occurrences of random synchronicity at the new place. Cheers.

About Those Notorious Parkway Videos... (29 days until opening)

Ever since the original Parkway suddenly closed its doors on March 22, 2009, the local community has been in mourning, spawning a post-mortem subculture, like Trekkies after the cancellation of Star Trek: TOS. I know this for a fact because hardly a week has gone by since then that someone on the street, in a local store, at Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge here on my island of Alameda, and all around the Bay Area hasn't stopped me and said, "Hey! You're the Parkway Guy! I really miss that place! Is it ever coming back?"

Finally, much to my personal relief, since I'm tired of people bugging me about it ;), the answer is yes, though it's a New Parkway, due to the many failed negotiations with the landlord of the original location at 1834 Park Blvd. The all new "enterprise," with a fresh crew, will take off on November 30 at a strategic location in Uptown Oakland, right in the heart of Art Murmur, at 474 24th St. near Telegraph Ave., easily accessible via BART and bus. But people still identify me as "the Parkway Guy" wherever I go, thanks to those stupid damn preview videos that played for years before movies at the old Parkway, featuring Speakeasy CEO Kyle Fischer and me, babbling about what was coming up, riffing off each other, totally improvising, often making utter fools of ourselves. They were shot and edited by Speakeasy president Catherine Fischer down in the basement of their Berkeley house, with Kyle and me just sitting on an  old couch, filmed totally off-the-cuff and always in one take, very Wayne's World-style. This semi-informative informality suited the Parkway's overall friendly, funky style.

People seemed to either love or hate 'em, but we kept doing 'em, month in, month out, for many years. Me, I just went along for the ride. It was all Kyle's idea, so if you loved 'em, you can thank him, and if you hated them, you can blame him. Ultimately, and objectively speaking, it was an ingenious and successful marketing ploy, since the videos gave the theater a unique personality and further distinction from other cookie cutter venues, literally putting a face - or faces - on the operation for the audience to recognize, and one of those faces was mine.

The videos worked as well as they did, if they did, because Kyle and I had developed a natural rapport honed over the years, ever since we'd first met while working together at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club, back in the 1980s, along with his future wife Catherine, who even then dreamed of someday opening a movie theater that served food, beer and wine, just like the one she frequented while living briefly in Washington DC. In January of 1997, Kyle and Catherine Fischer presented the Parkway Theater to the world, the first "picture, pub, and pizza" movie theater in California. Me, I was just the programmer, publicist, and "Will the Thrill" (host of  my cult movie cabaret "Thrillville"), but to most people, simply "the white guy in the Parkway video." That's okay. I can dig it. Just remember I sometimes write novels too...(this won't be one of them, relax, it's almost over. I know, the videos went on way too long too. I still hear about it...)

Anyway, don't worry. Much of what you loved about the old Parkway will return in the new incarnation, but not these videos. Not with Kyle and me, anyway. Kirk and Spock have left the building. Time for Picard and his crew to take it from here, though I will be making cameos from time to time....Cheers.