Dust On The VCR Presents: Tape Night at the Sidewalk Cinema!

It’s another Promo Tuesday here at Dust On The VCR! I appreciate all of you non-Alabamians for bearing with me as I try to rally the troops in my hometown.

After our inaugural Tapesgiving played to a packed house in November and the first edition of our quarterly Tape Night series did quite well in February, we’re running it back—or rewinding and replaying, if you will. That’s right: Tape Night returns to the Sidewalk Cinema in Birmingham on Thursday, May 8th! (And it’s still free! It’ll always be free! [For legal reasons!])

This will be an even more special edition than February’s series kickoff, though. That’s because I’ll be joined on stage by none other than my editor John Hammontree! If you thought John was an imaginary scapegoat I created to blame for typos and other linguistic shortcomings, well, you thought wrong! He’s real, and he’s spectacular. And he’s chosen a very special (and delightful) movie for y’all to enjoy.

If this’ll be your first time joining us for one of these events, you really only need to know a couple things. Firstly, it’d be mighty helpful if you reserved a (free!) ticket through the Sidewalk Cinema website. This helps their staff keep track of how many people to expect and guarantees you’ll have a seat.¹ Then all you have to do is show up and enjoy a classic film on everybody’s favorite outdated format: warm, fuzzy VHS!² And just like last time, you’ll be treated to a newsletter the following morning about the film we just screened. Doesn’t get much better than that, folks.

As always, the film we’ll be watching is a mystery! But we’ve once again included some clues in the promo graphic (made by guest writer and friend of the newsletter Courtney LeSueur) so you can have an idea of what to expect. If you’ve read John’s guest pieces in the past, you might be able to at least guess some of the characters involved.

I’m also very excited to reveal this totally rad new Tape Night promo video (made by guest writer and friend of the newsletter Chance Shirley)! He even created an original song to go with it. I love it so much and can’t wait to see what clips Chance selects for future editions of this event.³ Check it out:

Isn’t that so good? Chance understood the assignment, and I didn’t even assign this task to him.⁴

Anyway, I should note that I accidentally scheduled February’s Tape Night the same night as my buddy Guy Bannister’s Magic Hour Film Club, and I was filled with regret when I realized that it was too late to avoid this scheduling conflict. But as George W. Bush said, you can’t get fooled again, so I planned accordingly this time. If you’re in Birmingham and you love seeing free movies on the big screen with courteous audiences—and I bet you do—go see Girlfight on May 22nd at the Homewood Public Library! Hopefully I’ll see y’all there myself.

As always, I truly appreciate all of you who come through for our screenings. And this time my editor John appreciates you too. Thank you for supporting our friends at the Sidewalk Cinema. Thank you for helping us keep the dream of the 20th century alive. See y’all on Tape Night!

1. Will this Tape Night sell out? Probably not. But Tapesgiving did, so you never know.

2. As the header graphic iterates, yes, we will actually be playing an actual VHS tape in an actual VCR. Technology is beautiful.

3. If you’ve already referenced the promo graphic to see what kind of genres to expect this time around, you’ll notice that Chance carefully selected these clips to fit that vibe. One clip in particular is a pretty big hint!

4. He assigned it to himself because he’s a true believer in cinema. He’s made feature films, you know.