Winds Howling

Three days ago, I watched my favorite movie, “Jurassic Park,” with live musical accompaniment from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

Yesterday, Sam Neill died. Rest in peace.

It was my first time seeing something like this. It was pretty great to see a big orchestra perform the music along with the movie, but maybe not as great as I assumed it would be. It was difficult to appreciate both the movie and the music at the same time. Once the lights dimmed on the orchestra and the movie got going, I quickly forgot the score was actually being performed live. Even when I tried to examine the activity on stage, it was mostly too dark to see, and the screen blocked a lot of players in the back. Occasionally there’d be a music-less, dialogue-heavy part, and when I knew the music was about to kick back in, I’d watch as the musicians primed their instruments and the conductor raised his baton.

I was mostly locked in on the movie. The orchestra hall acoustics frequently drowned out the dialogue, but subtitles made that problem easy to ignore. The audience intermittently clapped for the orchestra, which helped to remind me it was there. There was also much hooting at the big shot of sweaty Jeff Goldblum reclining with his shirt unbuttoned. A ten-minute intermission came just before Dennis Nedry was killed by a dilophosaurus.

It was a fairly normal watching experience for the most part. There weren’t even any opening or closing speeches. Nobody other than characters in the movie said anything for the entire show. But it was still a much cooler than average viewing of “Jurassic Park.”

I’ve seen this movie many times but this time noticed two things I hadn’t before:

• Between Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler being invited to the island and them seeing a dinosaur for the first time, no one actually mentions the fact that the park involves dinosaurs. Hammond initially tells them that the park is “right up your alley,” and, if you listen closely, just before she sees the first brachiosaurus, Dr. Sattler mentions a leaf from a plant that’s “been extinct since the Cretaceous period,” but that’s it. The nature of the park is supposed to be a secret, sure, but nobody even seems to have any questions popping into their heads as they’re being loaded into “Jurassic Park”-branded Jeeps.
• Dr. Grant loses his hat during the initial T-Rex attack. It’s blown off his head by breath from the rex’s nose and never recovered.