On Friday December 7, 2018, and Saturday December 8, 2018, The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Ca. had two special Gremlins revival screenings, with star Zach Galligan appearing in person after the showings to do a Q & A session with the audience.
Since I basically eat and sleep these two movies, I didn't hesitate to attend BOTH screenings (people who know me shouldn't be surprised, lol)
This is a video of both of the Q & A sessions. The December 7 Q & A starts at the beginning of the video, and the December 8 Q & A starts around the 55:05 minute mark.
I will NEVER be able to get enough viewings of these films ever! Whenever there is a revival screening, I always try to catch it if my schedule is free. (At the 5:00 minute mark, Zach asked how many times I've seen the films, I couldn't even answer, I've lost count... DEFINITELY more than 500, seriously maybe even 1000, I'm not kidding! I certainly need psychiatric help, lol!)
But in this video, there are two rather memorable moments...one of them a very good moment, and unfortunately one of them a VERY bad moment.
Let's start with the good moment. First of all Zach knows me quite well as to how much of a fanatic I am of these films. I've seen and heard so many of the behind-the scenes stories over the years, and abundant trivia facts about the films. So around the 26:13 minute mark of the video, I raised my hand to ask Zach a (100% joke) question...(I would have been shocked if he actually took me seriously, but he knows me quite well by now! lol).
Apparently Zach has got a special talent that not too many people know about, and I just asked if he could share the talent with everyone...of course he knew I was just kidding, and politely declined, as he didn't want to gross out and disgust the entire audience! But he then went on to explain to the audience to what I meant by my question...and then told an amusing story he's shared every now and then about how his special talent gave an extra special contribution when he was filming Gremlins 2. And then proceeded to tell Seinfeld fans of some interesting trivia they were probably unaware about, lol
Now for the VERY bad moment...Around the 41:10 minute mark of the video, they were giving away a Gremlins mask and the moderator asked Zach to come up with a very difficult Gremlins question. He thought for a moment, and then asked the audience if anyone knew what song was playing during the bar scene. For some reason or another, I thought he was referring to the FIRST bar scene in the beginning of the film, where he was sitting with Judge Reinhold and talking to him. During that scene, a song called "Make It Shine" played rather softly in the background, you couldn't hear it too well. I thought that is what he was referring to, that seemed like a rather difficult question that only true fans of the film would know.
But Zach was actually talking about the SECOND bar scene later in the film where the monsters were trashing the place, where two songs were blasting loudly on the soundtrack..."Out Out" by Peter Gabriel, and "Mega Madness" by Michael Sembello. Those songs were so loud during the scene, you could easily hear the lyrics, so how could that be a very difficult question?! Everyone could hear the songs playing loudly in that scene, so that's not a difficult question at all!
So stupidly before he could even finish the question (where he said Peter Gabriel's name), I got too eager to answer, and lost my brain for a second and answered the song was "Make It Shine", which was totally incorrect! Even Zach couldn't believe that I got the answer wrong, I think he was as surprised as I was! I realized my mistake immediately, and could have easily then corrected myself and said "Out Out"...but the fact of the matter is I already responded with the wrong answer, so I basically blew my chance, so I just let someone else in the audience give the correct answer and win the mask. It was the only fair thing to do, I didn't want to be a bad sport, lol!
I'm one of the biggest, completely obsessed Gremlins encyclopedias----and I answered such a simple question wrong?! For some reason I think I was too eager to answer, and didn't hear Zach say Peter Gabriel...I think it's what the silly term "brain fart" means, lol! It's no big deal that I lost the mask (it was a good one actually, worth $60 dollars), that's not what bothers me at all...just the fact that I pride myself in being one of the film's biggest admirers and such a simple question I got wrong. Some dedicated fan I sure am! lol
Well, it was a truly sucky moment for me...but I take responsibility for the brain fart I got at the time. No one to blame but myself! Next time, let someone finish asking a question COMPLETELY before responding!!!
But my blunder still didn't stop it from being a most enjoyable weekend. Thanks Zach for being such an awesome person, hopefully you can do another one of these showings here again soon!