Mabuse

I saw Back to the Future for the first time while I was on a trip with my family when I was 7.

We were staying in either Vermont or New Hampshire at a small motel/inn. A movie theater was within walking distance of the inn. My older brother and I walked over to the theater and enjoyed the movie. I’m pretty sure it was opening night. But if it wasn’t it was the first week it was out.

It was a single auditorium, single screen movie theater.

Can we figure out what theater it was?

BTTF opened July 3, 1985, which was a Wednesday.
It was a single screen theater.
In either New Hampshire or Vermont.
It was a not in a big city.

How many single screen theaters had the movie opening weekend in those states? It feels like it can’t be too many.

jpcamb

I saw it in a single screen theater in York ME that summer as well. its a beach town and as best I can recall they played first run movies and had them at the time of release. Plenty of Inns there as well but I doubt that is where you saw it. I do remember being in awe and feeling very optimistic walking out of the theater.

Mabuse

ME is Maine, right?

I found this list of NH movie theaters.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/.../new-hampshire
Some are one screen. Is there any way to cross reference with what they were showing in 1985?

Is there one publication/newspaper that would have had advertising for the whole state?

Here in California, the Los Angeles Times entertainment section from July 3, 1985 would have ads and movie showtime lists for every theater in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and maybe even Ventura County. That’s an area a lot bigger than Vermont and NH. Was there one paper?

Ash Ketchum

I rented it on video around 1991 and watched it at home. First and only time I saw it.

BrewCrew

Don't have an answer regarding you question but Back to the Future takes me back to a different time when some movies would seem to stick around forever. I remember seeing Teen Wolf late summer 1985 at Spring Mall Theater with my Dad and he commented how we would have to come back and see BTTF with Michael J Fox. We fast forward to Christmas break and he takes me to the movies again, this time to Rocky 4, he sees the BTTF poster and remembers he was going to take me to see it in the summer. Finally saw it in theaters in early January 1986.

Obi-Wanma

I've told this story before, but I vividly recall seeing a newspaper advertisement for a preview screening of Disney's "The Black Cauldron" weeks before it's official release and asking my parents to take me. I was 8 years old at the time.

My dad talked me into seeing BTTF instead, and I didn't know anything about it other than it starred Alex P. Keaton. It may have even been BTTF's opening night, but I'm not sure. I looked, and I can't find any information on the net about the date of the Black Cauldron screening.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed BTTF, and still do, and I still haven't seen The Black Cauldron.

Decker

I will have you all beat here (at least as far as timing) : I had a family friend who was a studio musician cellist who lived in L.A.. I was staying with his family in Hollywood in June 1985, the week before leaving for a Summer school at UC Santa Barbara as a HS Junior later that month. He knew I was a big movie fan and a huge fan of Spielberg. One day he offered to take me with him to watch the scoring of a new movie that Spielberg was producing. I jumped at the chance. I sat in the studio, on the other side of the glass from the orchestra and watched as they played the score over key scenes in the movie (mostly the lightning strike at the end and the part where George punches Biff and then take's Lorraine's hand). I was in the same room as Alan Silverstri who kept making changes on the fly as people ran into the studio from the editing room where they were frantically editing the picture. I was really impressed and thought the movie looked awesome.

I made a point of going to see it at the biggest theater in Santa Barbara, the Lobero when it came out on the Fourth of July weekend.

Mabuse

That’s pretty cool.