Midnight With Harry Potter

Friday, July 17, 2009

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Midnight With Harry Potter

By J’AMY PACHECO

There aren’t too many things that interest me enough to make me want to stay up until 3 a.m. Especially since I stepped off the cliff into middle age, and really need my beauty sleep.

But as the mother of a teenager, more and more I’m finding beauty sleep elusive.

Last year, my avid reader-and-moviegoer daughter persuaded me to take her to the midnight release party for the final book in the “Twilight” series. I’m not sure who came up with the bright idea of keeping stores open until midnight so rabid fans could buy books during the first minute of the scheduled release day — and I suspect it had something to do with bookstores adding coffee counters and selling lots of caffeinated beverages to people who needed to be kept awake. But I understood her desire to read the book as soon as possible, so I agreed.

We were attending a convention in Las Vegas when the book was released, so we had to leave a late-night function and drive to a Las Vegas book store to party with strangers. If you’re going to party with strangers, I suppose Las Vegas is the place to do it.

She stayed up all night reading, and woke me at 5 a.m. to ask if she could get into bed with me. She was so sleep-deprived that hours of reading the vampire and werewolf story in a hotel room had freaked her out. Good times.

In November, she begged me to take her to see the midnight showing of the film, “Twilight.” Despite the fact that it was a school night, I eventually agreed. We met some friends, waited in line for three hours, and had a great time seeing the movie in a theater filled with “Twilight” teens, ‘tweens and their moms.

I’m not that good at staying up all night, so we ended up seeing it a few days later when I was fully awake. It was a pretty good film, but the experience wasn’t quite the same as seeing it “fresh” at midnight with a bazillion fans.

So when she asked if we could see the new Harry Potter at midnight a few days ago, I didn’t need a lot of persuading. I’m a big fan of Harry myself, and once waited in the dark in a line that wrapped all the way around our local mall just to get my copy of “Deathly Hallows” at midnight.

I asked some friends to go with us to see the film, and we ended up a group of 10. Although the theater recommended arriving 45 minutes before the movie’s scheduled start, after much discussion we decided to get to the theater two hours ahead.

We were shocked to find only a handful of people in the lobby. We were even more shocked when we were advised the lobby was empty because people had already been seated, and our group would likely be split up.

This was not good news. Six of the people in our party were minor children, and we weren’t about to let them sit alone among strangers – especially strangers out at midnight. We warned the kids we might have to come back during the day.

But when we got inside, we discovered there were plenty of seats. The only place we could find 10 together was in the third row.

We piled in. Several of us went for provisions, and we spent the next two hours munching popcorn and chatting with relatives, and friends from school who happened to be there as well.

It was fun but mildly uncomfortable – since we knew the film was two and a half hours long, none of the mothers wanted to drink anything. We were a mighty thirsty group.

At 12:05, the lights began and 20 minutes of trailers played. I think when a person is devoted enough to attend a movie at midnight, they shouldn’t be subjected to commercials. I think they should just get to the film.

Eventually, they did, and for the next 153 minutes, we hung out with Harry and his pals at Hogwarts.

It was the slowest Harry Potter film I’d seen, and I confess that when the movie ended, I was grateful to get to go home. On the way out, a theater employee shouted that they’d be showing the film again at 3:30 a.m., and asked if we’d like to stay. We declined, and drove home.

Although I had a heck of a time getting up a few hours later and was exhausted all day, I think the experience was worth it. There’s just something very cool about getting to be part of a big crowd sharing a common interest. I wear my Bellatrix Lestrange shirt with pride.

It’s a good thing it takes the Harry Potter people so long to make their films, though. I’m still sluggish from the all-nighter, and think it will be a while before I’m ready for another.

Besides, I really do need that beauty sleep.