This reminded me to check the TCM schedule to see if they’re doing anything. Nothing listed yet. It seems to take a bit. They’re doing a 3-movie tribute for Neil Simon on Sept. 14th and he passed away Aug. 26th.
Some of the retro channels switched stuff around so that a Burt Reynolds episode/movie was aired. E.g., the one doing the old Carson shows swapped in a Reynolds one two nights ago.
The problem is that it’s hard to know about such quick changes in advance and set up a recording. Esp. since the program guides aren’t updated that quickly.
I remember when Elvis died, cinemas practically everywhere were doing all-nighters of his movies. Mind you, this was in 1977, long before cable TV was in every home.
My local car club changed our outdoor movie for last night, to Smokey and the Bandit. Even had someone show up in a properly painted Trans-Am. 60 people sitting in lawn chairs in a parking lot, watching a movie projected on the side of a bank. It was rather fun.
Captain EO, the Coppola-Lucas-Jackson sci-fi film attraction, re-opened at various Disney theme parks in 2010 following Michael Jackson’s death. This was years after the attraction had already been closed.
It certainly would be easier now where (assuming it exists) the theater can download the projection file rather than shipping a bunch of cans from a depository in who-knows-where. In a pinch you can even use a Blu-Ray disk (with permissions in place, of course).
Fans of the movie Serenity hit upon the idea of showing the movie as a charitable event every year in September, the movie’s release month and also when Joss Whedon was born. Universal said they would keep 30 copies in the vault but someone didn’t get the memo and we wound up with 10. It took some co-ordination between the shippers, the central organization, and the various venues to make sure the prints were available when they were needed, especially since weekends were preferred.
Nowadays we just do Blu Ray. Most of the indie houses we use are 4K anyway, and we’ve all seen the film before.
My local Marcus Cinema movie theater had a couple showing of Smokey and the Bandit this past weekend. The tend to do some throwback movie series, so I didn’t really think anything of it… but it’s quite possible it was due to Burt Reynolds’ passing.