Field Notes: Hunting a Good Time.

Ward 16 Theatre—Honolulu, HI

It’s about 7:55 pm and my stomach is like a pile of smoldering embers. Currently it’s working on a whole big pile of NY steak cutlet that was doused in a spicy sauce that, incidentally, made for a very painful exit later in the evening. But the inside of the auditorium 7 is cool and so is the weather. At least as cool as things can get in the muggy tropic hemisphere.

I’m with my cousin and my Dad, who thanks to a hike up Cougar Mountain won’t be walking normally for the next couple of weeks, and the movie we’re about to enjoy is running about 11 minutes late startinggg…now. I twist around and I can finally see a pair of hands making love to the projector, trying to get it to work, the fingers dancing gracefully through the light. A new song starts up. The third to do so in the last few moments. Some easily forgettable pop ballad that’s as familiar here as it was back home.

Altogether, though, the experience is a pleasant one. Homey even. From the outside, up a flight of escalators and an imposing but standard facade frosted in stucco, Ward 16 Theatre, at 1044 Auahi Street in the middle of downtown Honolulu, you wouldn’t think that it was any sort of prize. For those of us who value the experience of witnessing a movie as opposed to simply “seeing” a movie, we tend to embrace those quirky little art houses. The ones that only screen movies you’ve never heard of. The ones where you find people who use words like ‘tomfoolery’ or ‘sycophantic’. And they’re not using them in a joke. You know the ones I mean. Well, Ward certainly might not have been that, but every time I’m in town it’s always a pleasant little surprise when I jump in.

Just two nights ago I was here with my family looking to edge in on “Despicable Me” opening night. 2-D of course. Sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Packed to the gills, we were sped off to another venue further away because the 8:15 was sold out and I was forced to gaze longingly back into a lobby packed with costume actors who were, to my gleeful astonishment, donning full-on Predator costumes as they prodded the audience with their animatronic claws.

Okay, that doesn’t sound too fun but for someone as nerdy as me that’s as close to cool as I cut it.

Promotional gimmicks aside, there is definitely more to Ward than meets the eye. Now, coming back two nights later, I’m greeted with the standard multiplex format. Auditoriums 1 through 7 to the left, 9 through 13 to the right. There was even an upper level if my memory serves (which it usually doesn’t) and short of the obvious fact that there are---understandably—more Asians here than there are in Bellevue or Federal Way combined. But even the groups of tweens and teens cloistered beside cut-outs of Michael Cera jamming on a Les Paul can’t make the place seem crowded. If you’ve ever been to East Valley 13 along 167 then you start to get the yawning impression of the interior. And still, though the atmosphere might scream it, the execution only treats you to the standardized kick-you-in-the-wallet-instead-of-your-balls arrangement in the lobby.

Now, I might just be another tourist but I still feel there must be a little something there. I know it. You start to get this idea once you’re sitting there in the dark with your cousin, who’s pinging and ponging with a copy of "Castlevania” for his DS, and your Dad dipping into a cup of ice cream “Dots”. As opposed to Regal Entertainment’s “The Twenty”, you get a more…local approach to advertising.

This isn’t something I noticed just in the theater either. You start to familiarize yourself with words like “bradda” and “cock-a-roach” and “yah” first. Then you have to grasp the kind of humor that comes with the Islands, to which I can only ascribe the description: “strange but fun”. Ads for restaurants and local auto parts stores where the employees turn into butterflies aside, Ward greeted me with an odd-ball collection of ad-hoc insurance infomercials shot on Ma-and-Pa budgets with a DV camcorder and drum-beating ads for 6-year-old fundraisers that don’t exist any more. To compound my joy there were still reels that were actual FILM. Honest-to-God film. No digital projectors; which means the fuzzy little spots flitting in and out of the screen—an experience which has always told me that I’m sitting in the dark with people I love enjoying the things I love most. Junk food. Cushy seats (surprisingly free of gum). Air-conditioning. Laziness.

So while the employees of Ward are probably only being lax in a way that I could only find here in Hawaii, methodically fiddling with the reel, I come to the realization once more that I’m on vacation more than just a couple times every few years. I do it almost every other day.

--A.H.