15 Questions With Hunter Harris
"Can I come out against the 10pm movie? Is that allowed?"
Name: Hunter Harris
Location: Brooklyn
Occupation: Writer
Links: Hung Up, Lemme Say This, Hunter’s IG
1. What’s your favorite day & time to go to the movies?
I could go on and on about the deep satisfaction of an 11am movie, but I know I’m speaking to my community here. I’d like to defend the the 3pm movie or even the 4pm movie. In the afternoon, around 2:30, my brain simply shuts down. There are just no fresh thoughts. It’s the perfect time of day to slip into a movie theater and into someone else’s consciousness. It makes an otherwise unproductive stretch of my day newly active. And when you get out of the theater it’s time to start thinking about dinner and pick up something on your way home.
Can I come out against the 10pm movie? Is that allowed? In some glamorous cosmopolitan world I’m going to dinner or getting drinks before the 10pm movie but in reality I am tired. I have never stayed awake in a 10pm movie, no matter what I’ve just come from or who I’m with.
2. What’s your favorite movie theater?
I love the Battery Park Regal, positioned perfectly between a bagel place and a Shake Shack, and they don’t care if you bring food in. BAM is for serious cinema-going — the seats are hit or miss but it’s the perfect distance from my apartment to walk home and really think about what I just saw. I used to live walking distance from the Williamsburg Nitehawk, and I have a favorite seat in all three theaters. I know exactly which seat numbers to book. Metrograph, obviously, too.
3. What’s your go-to movie theater snack & drink combo?
When I lived around the corner from the Williamsburg Nitehawk and go once a week, I’d always get a burger (with bacon and side of fries) and a Paloma. It was perfect. I was so set on this meal my palette would be prepared for it as soon as I sat down. It was a perfect late lunch-early dinner meal too. Now, whatever, who cares. I love popcorn but it makes me bloated and feel like shit. I like the chips and queso but it’s too noisy. A movie theater soda does feel pretty fun and naughty. I love a fountain Sprite.
4. What’s your dream movie theater snack & drink combo (if noise and sound weren’t an issue)?
The smashburger agenda has just gotten out of control. The Nitehawk burger, which used to be so good, is now a smashburger like everything else. I think honestly just a glass of wine would be nice at the appropriate hour. Anything I’d have to eat with a knife and fork would be too awful to eat in the dark.
5. First movie you remember seeing in a theater?
I can’t remember! It has only just now occurred to me to ask my parents what the first I ever saw in a theater was. From my Dad:
To be clear I would’ve been about a year old watching a western where Sharon Stone is a mysterious gunslinger and Gene Hackman fires a bullet that leaves a perfect circle in a mans head. Like, just absolutely crazy that my dad would take an infant to a movie theater to see that. But it’s so funny that I watched that movie a few months ago for what I thought for the first time and loved it.
6. Last movie you saw in a theater?
7. Movie you wish you could have seen in a theater?
I’ve always wanted to see Days of Heaven on a big screen. I would love to have seen The Handmaiden on a big screen. I once pitched a double feature with a Nicole Holofcener movie and an episode of Girls, and I still think that would’ve been pretty good.
8. Please describe your ideal movie theater seat!
Soft but not plush — the big Lay-Z-Boys kind of disgust me, but I want a slight recline. Definitely some kind of desk/tray situation. Big round seat rows and numbers because I’m always paranoid I’ve misread them. It would be amazing if the seat/row numbers were slightly illuminated and dimmed when the previews started and turned off completely once the movie starts. If you’re that late, you’re on your own.
The seat really varies by theater. Generally I gravitate towards the corner opposite the door, towards the back. Being dead center in a full row makes me self-conscious.
9. One thing you would change to make movie theaters better?
A screening that starts at 10am would radically change my day. Only unemployed and freelance moviegoers would benefit but that’s most of us anyway.
10. What’s the ideal number/length of previews before a movie?
I have not thought that deeply about this, which is strange because I’m always 10 minutes late. I’d say three or four previews.
11. Do you prefer seeing movies alone or with someone/a group?
Doesn’t it always depend? I really like seeing movies by myself. When I take my friends to see a movie I really love, I get so self-conscious. I took my boyfriend to see a midnight screening of Birth at Metrograph once and it was like my blood and guts are leaking all over the aisles. But sometimes I see a movie alone and I walk out craving connection, wanting to talk to someone, anyone, about what I’ve just witnessed.
I think a lot about this line from East of Eden when it comes to how I behave after seeing a really good movie: “Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.” Sometimes I’m in the mood to share that feeling, sometimes I want to keep it to myself.
12. Movie you’re looking forward to seeing?
Dying to see Emilia Perez and Gladiator II. I kind of want to see Joker: Folie à Deux — will Todd Phillips be ripping off New York, New York with this one or Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore?
13. One movie recommendation (that you think people might not know about or should give another chance to):
I rewatched The Lion in Winter recently and I just totally love that movie. I was going to write about it for Hung Up and pitch it as Succession but medieval, House of the Dragon but good. The cleverness and black humor of the script almost outdoes the performances, but Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole are so capable. That dialogue would suffocate any other actors. Visually it’s not that compelling, but it does make the medieval period look and feel and smell real in a way that I like — all these Machiavellian moves and family betrayals for smelly castles and piles of dirt.
14. What’s your dream combination of director & lead(s)?
Luca Guadagnino and Nicole Kidman, Barry Jenkins and Danielle Deadwyler, Nicole Holofcener and Julianne Moore, Sofia Coppola and Billie Piper, Martin Scorsese and Miley Cyrus (and also Whoopi Goldberg), Todd Haynes and Nicole Beharie, I could go on and on omg…
all my homies hate the 10pm movie
i co-sign all of this aside from being disgusted by La-Z-Boy lounge chairs- i love them 😭