Doin' it for Hours: MOVIE MARATHONS

It's hour 11 of a 12-hour movie night. Your eyes hurt. Your legs went numb two hours ago. You're out of popcorn. \nDoes it get any better than this?\nSummer is the best time to throw a marathon movie night. With a little help from the IDS Weekend, your party can be perfect.\nThere are two types of marathon movie nights: sequence movie nights and theme movie nights. Sequence movie nights involve long stretches of movies in a series: think "Lord of the Rings," "Indiana Jones" or "Back to the Future." Theme movie nights involve several movies under the same general theme, such as zombie movies, romantic comedies or adaptations of Shakespeare plays.\nAmy Karr, a clerk at Plan 9 Video Emporium, said video clerks can be a hidden resource when trying to put together a movie night. Most of the clerks in her store are horror movie fans, but Karr herself prefers documentaries. \n"For a party, themes are good," Karr said. "We get a lot of people watching horror movies. Nothing too deep, a lot of people will be talking. A lot of people don't like horror movies, but people who come in here tend to like them because we have a good selection. 'Night of the Living Dead,' 'Dawn of the Dead,' 'Day of the Dead,' that's a good movie night."\nThe divisions and subsections in Plan 9's collection are also helpful. Films are divided by actor, producer, genre and country of production.\n"We have a lot of subsections, we have a nunsploitation section," Karr said. "Sometimes someone will rent out all the movies in a section. A good way to set up a movie night would be to rent three or four movies from one section, and you can tell everyone hey, we're having Zombie Night, or Non-malevolent Satanic Children Night."\nAre you screaming for Scorsese or awed by Almodóvar? Throw a film night in honor of your favorite director. Other fun options include movies that all star the same actor, movies from the same country or movies in the same genre. Pick a topic and do a little research. The best themes lend themselves to themed snacks or even costumes. \n"Themes are always fun," IU alumna Peggy Larkin said. "A friend of mine had a pirate party, and we watched 'Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas,' 'Pirates of the Caribbean' and some other pirate movie. We all dressed up and drank rum. Themes make anything fun. It's very silly."\nLarkin said it takes a careful balance between film, food and fun in order to have a successful movie night. Her "Lord of the Rings" marathon movie night took place three days after the extended version of the third film came out. \n"I held a party in which 18 people watched the "Lord of the Ring" movies -- the extended versions -- in one night. It took us about 13, 13 and a half hours. It was an end-of-the-semester sort of thing. We had stretch breaks and food breaks between the movies."\nThe key to movie chow is portability, Larkin said.\n"We had tacos and fajitas between the second and third (films), so it was really modular. We put out bowls and everybody made their own. You want stuff that's easy to eat because you're watching the movie. Finger food, dippable stuff works well."\nMarathon movie nights can be simple or complicated. For the true aficionado, the test comes when it's time to hook up the equipment. IU senior Matthew Laird recently acquired a projector that he can hook up to watch movies on a wall in his apartment. \n"I work at the classroom tech services, where we handle digital projections for classes in Ballantine," Laird said. "I was working with those, and after a while, I said 'I must have this.'"\nIt took six months of saving and some help from his parents, but Laird got his projector.\n"I traded birthday and Christmas presents for the next two years. They're pretty expensive," he said.\nThe projector is now hooked into his sound system, and Laird is planning a viewing of the original "Star Wars" trilogy next week. While movies are good, Laird is also a fan of marathon TV on DVD sessions.\n"'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' is great, I have the entire run," Laird said. \nLarkin also used a projector for her "Lord of the Rings" movie night. Because of the number of people in the room, a normal television would have been too small. Larkin borrowed the projector from a friend.\n"We're clearly too poor to rent out a movie theater, so this was the next best thing," she said. "This way, everyone could see."\nAnd while the technical wizardry and theater-like atmosphere of a tricked-out system is pretty cool, that's not why Laird likes to get his friends together for movie nights.\n"It's mostly been just because the people I'm enjoying the movie marathon with have a shared appreciation of what we're watching," Laird said. "We can enjoy it for all that time. If you've got a good group that can appreciate 6 hours of movies, that's the tricky part. It's more about the company than anything else"