Spider-Man premiere goodies

“They’re giving away tickets to the Amazing Spider-Man premiere and all you gotta do is answer geek questions!  You know, about comics and crap.  You’re a geek, so pick up the phone.”

This is all I heard from my wife for days, urging me to call her favorite LA-based morning radio show.  On a whim I did, and to my surprise I got through.  “What’s the answer?” asked the no-nonsense intern on the other end of the line.  “Crusher Hogan,” I said.  “Hold on for your tickets.”  I thought to myself, “Self, it can’t be that easy, can it?”  It can.

The premiere was in trendy Westwood Village, near the UCLA campus, on a 90-degree evening.  After picking up tickets at the radio station’s will-call booth where my wife got to match faces to voices (“He looks like that?  Eww.”), we made our way to the theater.  We tried to anyway.  First we had to cleave through the ever-thickening crowds.

Paparazzi, police, screaming fans, eBayers hustling autographs to pay the rent.  Local businesses boom whenever there’s a premiere in the Village and it’s easy to see why with throngs of people lining velvet ropes on the closed street.  Also present was the wall-crawler himself who actually crawled walls.  Granted, they were ten feet high, but it was still an impressive display of Parkour (Peter Parkour?).  This guy had the agility, muscles, and movie costume to boot.  Take THAT, scrawny, sneaker-wearing, Hollywood Boulevard Spidey in Electric Company-era threads!

While waiting on the red carpet to enter the theater (it’s an actual carpet), teenage girls on the other side of the ropes asked us who we were.  “You’re dressed up,” they reasoned, “so you must be famous.”  I told them we were Stan Lee’s niece and nephew.  They stared blankly and said, “Stanley who?”

Secret service-like security guards (most likely supplied by Columbia Pictures) directed us into the historic Regency Village Theater, a beautiful Art Deco movie palace that’s hosted motion picture premieres for the past 60 years — everything from A Star is Born to Harry Potter.

Upon entering the lobby with the other trivia winners, we immediately regretted obeying the no-nonsense intern who told me that, “absolutely no cameras or cell phones are allowed.”  We regretted it because we were the only ones who obeyed.  Everyone else was snapping pics with smartphones and nobody cared.  One woman not only brought her camera, but had a guard take a photo of her on the red carpet.  Damn you, no-nonsense intern!

We considered retrieving our phones from the limo (AKA my Honda Civic), but next thing we knew ushers were handing out free popcorn and soda and ushering everyone into the one-screen auditorium.

Spider-Man premiere goodies

While looking for section C, row A, I wondered if A meant the first row.  It did.  Our designated seats were at the very front of the auditorium, a mere 20 feet from the closed curtains.  We hoped another 20 feet separated the screen from the curtains, but they didn’t.

Seated to our right was a couple dressed to the nines (trivia answer: Amazing Fantasy #15).  He was a bigger comics fan than me, though you wouldn’t know it from looking at him.  She, like my wife, was more interested in the spectacle than the movie itself.

To our left were two college-aged pals dressed like college-aged pals (trivia answer: Betty Brant).  They were veterans of radio contest premieres, having last attended the one for Kick-Ass, and they knew how to work the event.  At one point, I passed them in the lobby taking photos of each other with Martin Sheen.  However, their main goal was to have Stan Lee sign a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #33, which they bought for $50 knowing it’s his favorite issue.  I suspected if I said Stan was my uncle, that they wouldn’t believe me, so instead I wished them luck.

We all wondered if the reason we were in the front row was to minimize our stargazing.  If so, it didn’t work.  Our necks were going to ache anyway from staring straight up at a silver screen for two hours, so why not ache them all the way by spinning around Linda Blair-style in order to gawk?

Lingering in the corner was Peter Fonda, who’s no stranger to Marvel properties (he played Mephisto in Ghost Rider).  Nathan Fillion was up in the balcony, perpetually talking on his cell until the lights dimmed.  Also in attendance were various tanned, leggy women wearing short skirts and trout pouts who sort of looked familiar.  They were dressed up so they must be famous, right?  And then there was the dude from Criminal Minds.

My wife loves the TV series and he’s her favorite actor in it, not that you’d know since she couldn’t remember his name (it’s Matthew Gray Gubler, honey).  After urgings from me, the dressed-to-the-nines couple, and a random guard, she finally got up the courage to stalk him talk to him.  He seems like he would be nice regardless, but I think he was extra nice since she, unlike the obnoxious fans demanding pictures and signatures, didn’t want anything other than to thank him for entertaining her.

Yes, this is the cast of The Amazing Spider-Man.  No, they’re not action figures.

The real stars of the evening were the cast of the movie.  Despite starting 40 minutes late (rumor has it Emma Stone was tardy), the producers introduced them along with Marc Webb, the film’s director with the fortuitous last name.  For the actual screening, we had the worst seats in the house, but for the cast introductions, we had the best.

Emma, Andrew Garfield, Sally Field, Denis Leary — they and more stood right in front of the curtains, a mere 20 feet away.  Luckily the guy a few seats down (trivia answer: Kraven) ignored the no-nonsense intern and brought a phone, which is how the photo accompanying this article came to be.  After much applause, everyone donned their spider-inscribed 3D glasses and watched the film.

By the time the end credits rolled, I realized that a 3D movie shot on the Red camera and viewed from the front row is not the most flattering for actors.  Did the film live up to its amazing moniker?  Click —> [ HERE ] <— for my review.  The premiere, on the other hand, definitely did, and that’s without getting into the after party.  We tried, but the You’re-dressed-up-so-you-must-be-famous theory didn’t fool the doorman.