Film Trivia Night

Fresh on the heels of GreenCine's second Film Trivia Night we bring you a gossipy summary of the evening as well as a sampling of groovy photos (courtesy of Joe Fletcher and Dennis Woo) to give those of you who missed it some flavor. The night was a blast for everyone, and even though the questions were TOUGH people seemed to enjoy themselves. We gave out a DVD player to a lucky random winner (the odds were certainly better than in the California Lotto), as well as a bunch of free DVDs. The Make-Out Room, a very fun large, square-shaped bar right smack in the heart of San Francisco's Mission district. They have great music performances there, too. But on this one night, they were held captive by a band of film geeks.

Our very own Underdog (Craig) MC'd the trivia contest and did his best Alex Trebek imitation, but with his own kindly sarcastic bent. He capably handled the occasional good-natured heckler (when a participant wondered if the film True Lies would count as an answer in a Jamie Lee Curtis question, he wondered aloud if True Lies was the name of the documentary about Schwarzenegger's Gubernatorial campaign; at least seven people laughed).

We had about 70 people in attendance and most of them seemed to want to be there. (A few of them were barred from leaving because... they knew too much. Sort of like The Firm, except with trivia.)

Hey, is that one of our GreenCine "shipping angels" helping a struggling player with the picture round? We're just too nice sometimes.

The categories were:

• General Film Trivia (sample question: "Carol Reed's justly celebrated film noir The Third Man is based on a book by this author and is set in this European city. Name the author and the city in which it was set." Answers below);


• Scary DVD Chapters, in which we took a few sample DVD chapters from scary movies and the contestants had to guess the movie they came from (sample question: The Frog brothers; Behind the sunglasses; Hunting the undead);


• The Music round (one sample answer was Tenacious D and Jack Black) -- that round was admittedly rather difficult


• The Picture Round (we chose 6 semi-challenging celebrity photos and people had to guess the person, and among the answers were Vivica Fox, whom most people guessed, and Pedro Almodovar, whom many people did not)


• Oscars Trivia, always a favorite (sample question: "This director with the most Best Director Oscars won his final statuette in the 1950s. Name this prolific filmmaker");


• And lastly, Horror Movie Trivia (sample question: "Theater-goers who attended the first run of a certain William Castle movie got their butts buzzed by motors attached to their seats. Name the flick.")

We've had two film trivia nights now, and for some reason, both have ended up in ties. Oh, God no, not the dreaded tiebreaker! And not just one tiebreaker, but two, in a sudden death round of film trivia the likes of which haven't been seen since Napoleon battled Czar Nicholas in a scintillating round of movie trivia in 1809. (For the record, Napoleon won in triple overtime on a music question.) And for those keeping score at home, it was a tie between the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers and Band of Outsiders (man, our players are hip!). They both got two out of three on the Name All Three Films in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy question; and then Band of Outsiders took it with our ultra-tough (and, impressively improvised) final question: Name the Only Two Actors to Play Both Fu Manchu and Frankenstein's monster. Woo, that was a toughie.

But pretty much everyone who came, from the second place team on down to the, uh, teams way down there, got a prize, from free DVDs to t-shirts. We also gave out prizes for Favorite Team Name (Winners: tie, between HoboCop and Ralph Wiggums Eats P***y) and Loudest (HiKitty!). There was quite a free-for-all for prizes at the end, and even GreenCine employees got some free stuff. That's GreenCine's Jonathan Marlow on the right handing out goodies, and two of GC's finest, whose initials start with G and M but I won't say more, helping out.

We'll do this all over again within two or three months so you better start studying now. Our questions are challenging but fun, and everyone goes away happy, or at least sufficiently drunk.

(Pretend this part is upside down) Answers: Third Man Question -- Graham Greene and Vienna; Sample DVD Chapters question -- The Lost Boys; Oscar Trivia question -- John Ford; Horror Movie question: The Tingler. Tie-breaker answer: Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff.

Thanks to everyone who came and to all the GCers who helped out -- you know who you are.