In the olden days, every Dorm complex at PSU sponsored movies on Friday and Saturday nights to raise money for future chicanery and luxuries otherwise out of reach to the masses huddled together in the Third-World conditions,. These usually cost a $1 or so, if I remember correctly, which no one should ever take for granted. There was usually a good selection of fairly recent films and old classics that would fill whatever Hall was used to host the event. North Halls movies were usually held in The Forum, a pretty good venue for them.
The Electrical Engineers on the floor, of course, lined themselves up as the heads of the North Halls Entertainment Committee. They possibly had been the Audio-Visual Nerds you laughed at and gave wedgies to in high school, and were the harbingers of the computer geeks we all must bow down to today. Payback is a cruel mistress, isn't it?
Movies were delivered every Wednesday like clockwork. The "Committee" chose movies they liked, without regard to how others would regard them. Their goal was to attract other like-minded guys and the stray he-man who would bring a date, ensuring at least a few women would be present. Movies came in the form of several reels to be used on those old projectors that only Audio-Visual Geeks had any chance of using appropriately. It can't possibly be the same experience today, if it exists at all, with movies now in perfect format on thumb drives the size of a pinky nail and projectors the size of a pack of cigarettes.
Every Sunday evening, the "Committee" would meet and decide which scenes in the movie were the best scenes. They would then proceed to cut out those scenes from the movie reels and add them to the previous week's scenes, the new house reel getting ever bigger week after week. They would then splice the film back together, minus the good scene and add the same amount of blank film to the end. The only checking the film company ever did was to rewind the film and make sure it was the same length as the week before. They were never caught. Those wily electrical engineers were sheer geniuses! When the film debuted at Ohio State (or wherever) the week after we had it, it would be without the best scenes, a fact that probably still makes the EEs chuckle to this day. Can you imagine Gone With the Wind without "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"
The collected movie was shown only one time that I know of, and it was the finest movie I've ever seen. It was shown on a bed sheet in a dorm room that had been stripped of everything it could be, to accommodate as many people as possible. There was popcorn and beverages and frivolity beyond belief. The EEs were known to wring every drop of goodness out of life humanly possible.
Here's an actual scene taken from a film shown by the North Halls Entertainment Committee, and the very first film I ever took my future wife to! Content Warning: This scene is gross beyond belief and should never be viewed by those made queasy by gross things. Of course it was targeted by the EEs!
Coming Soon: EEs Build a Wonderful House of Cards...
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