Friday night at the Mahoning was a double feature of two of the greatest comedies of all time, both of which feature the great Chevy Chase in a starring role.
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Both of the Heavy On Chevy movies were comedies from the 80's: Three Amigos (1986) and Caddyshack (1980). I've watched both of these movies countless times before, but this was my first opportunity to see them screened from a 35mm print on the big screen.
Three Amigos premiered in theaters during the 1986 holiday season. I didn't discover it until about ten years later when I rented it on VHS and watched it in the living room of my grandparents house with my grandfather. The two of us laughed our heads off like a couple of maniacs for pretty much its entire runtime. It's not a movie that I've seen too many times over the years, so a lot of the jokes still land with me as hard as they did the first time, and judging by the laughs that echoed around the lot, I am not alone.
The 35mm print that the Mahoning received for Three Amigos had Spanish subtitles. This sort of thing doesn't happen too often. The last time it happened at a screening that I was in attendance for was three years ago when the Death Race 2000 print that was shown during Drive-In Apocalypse Weekend had Swedish subtitles.
Whereas I've only watched Three Amigos maybe a half dozen times before, it would be impossible to count the number of times that I've watched Caddyshack. It's got to be in the hundreds at this point. Caddyshack is not only among my favorite comedy films of all time, but it's become kind of a lullaby that helps me get to sleep. We have a recording from when it was broadcast as the CBS Tuesday Night Movie on February 8th, 1983 (with the commercials), and there have been many nights over the years when we'll throw it on the television when we just kind of want to lay back and zone out, but we're not quite tired enough to fall asleep right away.
The lines from this movie are burned into my brain so deeply that some of them have just become a part of my speech. I made so many references to it when I trained my first new hire class at Nestle that a few of them chipped in and gave me this t-shirt as a present when the training was over. I've put on some weight since then so it doesn't fit as well as it once did, but I still have it, and damn it, I'll fit into it again one day!
Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to have had the opportunity to see a 35mm print of Caddyshack on the big screen at my favorite place in the world to watch movies. Despite the fact that I've seen this movie a frankly unbelievable number of times, I saw things happening in the background of certain shots that I've never noticed before. I don't care how big your television is or how much you spent on your surround sound speakers, there is no substitute for seeing a movie in a theatrical setting. It's a difference on par with listening to your favorite band in the car to seeing them live in concert. I can't even begin to quantify how much joy this drive-in has brought into my life for giving us the opportunity to see these movies in a way that I never thought that I'd get to experience them.
