There are five regulars in Keith’s Thursday night film class. Five distinct personalities, five different rhythms of laughter, five overlapping commentaries that somehow turn even the dumbest movie into a communal event. It’s a small enough group that every absence matters—and last week, the math got weird.
Dave and Ethan are both out for a while (reasons respectfully unblogged), which brings us down to three. Bobbo, meanwhile, was on his annual pilgrimage to Battle of the Alamo—because of course he was—so we knew he’d be out. That left Joe and me -- and Keith, of course.
And then Joe didn’t show.
No explanation as far as I know. I showed up expecting to see him, and Keith gave me the news: "No Joe." So for the screening of From Hell It Came, the attendance sheet read: one student, one instructor, and one extremely judgmental tree monster.
I’ll say this: it wasn’t a bad experience. Keith and I leaned into it. There was as much back-and-forth as usual. more running commentary, more room for my particular silliness. At one point I even found myself doing a passable Bobbo impression—snapping my fingers to match the background music, which felt equal parts tribute and séance. The movie itself, as previously documented, was gloriously stooopid, and that helped.
But it was also undeniably strange.
I sat in the middle of the room instead of in my usual spot on the side. There was no one to my left. No one to my right. And no one behind me. Keith, as always, took his usual spot off to the side, watching the screen at that slight angle he seems to prefer, beer in hand, like a projectionist who wandered into his own audience. The physical geometry of the room stayed the same, but the energy was different. Not better. Maybe not worse. But different.
It got me wondering about the logical extreme: what happens if no one shows up?
Would Keith still run the class? Deliver his intro to an empty room? Let the movie play while he sits at his angle, occasionally chuckling, then wrap it up with closing remarks addressed to the void?
I asked him.
The answer: no. No performance for the ghosts of cinema past. He wouldn’t go through the motions. He’d probably still sit there with a beer and watch something—but it wouldn’t be class. No preamble, no postgame analysis, no ritual.
Which raises the next question: what happens to the movie we missed?
Turns out Keith is a completist. If nobody shows, the film doesn’t just vanish into the ether. It gets rescheduled. We’d watch it the following week, even if that throws everything off. The syllabus bends; the canon remains intact.
There’s something oddly reassuring about that. This isn’t a conveyor belt—it’s a shared experience, and if the “shared” part disappears, the experience doesn’t count.
Still, I hope we don’t test that hypothesis.
Because as much as I enjoyed my one-man screening—my brief turn as the entire audience—it drove home something essential: these nights aren’t really about the movies. They’re about the reactions, the interruptions, the running jokes, the accumulated weirdness of a handful of people who have watched far too many obscure films together.
Take that away, and even a killer tree monster starts to feel a little lonely.
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