I understand that I risk having my Nashvillian unicorn card pulled for this post, but if you’re a longtime reader of SoBros Network, then you already know that I’m willing to put myself out there in transparent fashion even if it means humiliation…like that time I publicly wrote about eating cat food as a kid. Yeah. Anyway, for the better part of my 36 years on this Earth, I had yet to to walk through the vaunted doors of The Belcourt Theatre right here in our very own Nashville, Tennessee.
I’ll let that sink in for a moment before I continue. Hurl your tomatoes if you must.
Okay – on with the show. I’m like the 60-year-old at the bar who is all alone, enjoying a beer. Someone asks, “hey, man – why’d you never get married and settle down?” I reply, “well, I guess I got so busy in my own shit that I never slowed down to make time for it at all. Except I’m not 60 – and in this metaphor, the “get married and settle down” is the Belcourt Theatre. I just never slowed down long enough to make time for it. So, this realization struck me on July 2nd, 2022, as I sat with my wife (I did get married, so I guess this really makes for a complicated use of metaphors) at Scoreboard Bar & Grill, shoveling hot chicken down my gullet. After all these years, and after all of the times my friends have brought it up, I’ve just…never…been. I felt compelled to check their movie times to see what was playing.
I was finally going to do it – I was going to check this off my Nashville bucket list, even if it took me 36 years to do it. Except…like…I couldn’t find anything that my wife wanted to see, too. So, maybe I wasn’t actually going to do it. What a dilemma.
A scheduled midnight screening of Drive caught my eye, and it reminded me that Drive is indeed in my top five official unofficial favorite movies ever. So, I tweeted my top five for the entire internet to see. And in serendipitous fashion, close friend of the brand, President of the Music City Film Critics Association, and the EiC of 615 Film, Sean Atkins, replied to that tweet with a screenshot of the very showing I had just showed my wife (at which she said “hell no”).
Let’s go. pic.twitter.com/KubuVGISUS
— Sean (@SeanJ8) July 2, 2022
I told Sean not to threaten me with a good time. The next day, I got a text from him saying he had bought his ticket. I knew it was serious then, and not to be dramatic, but I knew this might be the best chance I’d ever have in my entire life of visiting the Belcourt. So, we got our resident film critic on the horn, and the next thing I knew, we had a caravan scheduled for the midnight showing of Drive. Sick.
Saturday afternoon brought with it a quick yet furious rain shower – the kind that leaves steam rising from hot pavement. It’s also the kind that makes travel a little more difficult for those of us still driving 2006 Nissan Altimas with slick tires. That’s neither here nor there – the point is that the atmosphere was great…ripe for an adventure. The rain subsided, but it left an overcast hodgepodge of color in the sky – grays and light purples gave way to patches of creamsicle orange as what was left of the sunset tried to pierce the clouds. The sky didn’t know what it wanted to do. It was the quintessential summer time identity crisis. Perfect to take in as we walked a few blocks to fill our bellies with pizza and beer. And, it was a perfect backdrop to kill some time.
It was in this time that I really remembered how old I’ve gotten. One foot in the grave. 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have even blinked from 6PM to midnight. Now, I find myself nursing my whiskey and trying to keep from yawning before I’ve finished my dinner. “Don’t be a bitch, Stoney. You can do this,” I told myself from the comfort of Sean’s living room, where we pregamed for the movie by watching YouTube videos. “It’s the Belcourt, Stoney. You have to stay awake.” If Brandon and/or Sean read this, I’ve just outed myself in case you looked at me and wondered “was he even listening to what I just said?” I was fighting a battle in my own mind.
The clock struck 11:15PM, and thus, it was time to hop in the car and go. I had no idea where the Belcourt even really was. But, as we turned the corner, the street came alive with light strewn about by the summer’s rain. The bright white neon ‘Belcourt’ in the sky welcomed us like a signal from a bygone era. Just slowly driving by, looking in the windows, I felt a deep connection to a longstanding love of the cinema. This is what it’s all about, folks. People were gathering in the lobby, all there to see a classic from 2011…bound by the common thread of an appreciation for film, and the thrill of the experience. In other words, one could say…*ahem* “Drive bros for life.” It felt like traveling back in time – not because the Belcourt was decorated as such, but because what was permeating in the air there was over a hundred years old: a pure love of the game. The filmmaking game, I mean. How something so simple – seeing a favorite film at midnight – could connect so many people blew me away. In taking it in, it made the Belcourt feel like more of a community than a theatre.
So, we made our way inside to our seats. I’m sure I looked like a noob, as I was turning, admiring all angles of the theatre itself…the way the soft light from the screen illuminated happy faces waiting for the show to start. But, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I wanted to feel what my friends had felt for years…what they’d grown to love and appreciate about this institution of entertainment in our city. And, of course, there’s the popcorn. Sean informed me that the popcorn at the Belcourt is the stuff of legend…so, in order to get the full experience (I am a credible journalist, after all), I had to have a handful of my own, and it passed the test. They had a Drive-themed cocktail, as I was told they do at many of these midnight screenings. However, I knew that if I were to partake, I would have been asleep before Kavinsky had even hit. The screening went off without a hitch, and before I knew it, it was back out into the midsummer’s night air, and back to real life.
The Belcourt is the physical embodiment of the appreciation of the art of the cinema. I learned that. I stewed in that for the entirety of my trip back home to Mount Juliet. “A special kind of place,” I thought. A special place indeed. The next midnight screening is going down on Friday, July 22nd – Ready To Rumble…just in time for wrestling fans to gear up for WWE’s SummerSlam going down at Nissan Stadium on the 30th. For more on The Belcourt Theatre, and to peruse movie times, check out their website. And, please – I beg you…go see Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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