Chapter 238: The Mysterious Veil

After parking his car, Richard Thomas pulled his coat tight against the chilly wind and headed for the most famous independent theater on Long Island. He soon stepped inside. Unlike his past trips to the movies, the crowd here consisted mostly of middle-aged and elderly people just like him. Quite a few were white-haired. Walking among them, Thomas felt much younger.

He stopped to look at a prominent poster in the lobby. It was a massive poster for Chicago. Tom Cruise and the two female leads looked quite good—especially the two actresses in their short dance skirts. Beautiful and sexy, they were far easier on the eyes than the leads in Broadway's newly staged musicals.

A man's body might age, but his heart never does.

Thomas would never voice such thoughts, of course. If anyone asked, he was here purely for art, out of a desire to see what was different about the film adaptation of Chicago, and because it had won the "People's Choice Award" at the Toronto Film Festival!

Over the past few years, the films ultimately selected by the Toronto Film Festival perfectly suited the tastes of North American audiences like him. In contrast, how many people could sit there and comfortably watch whatever won the Golden Lion or the Golden Bear?

With these thoughts in mind, Thomas walked up to the ticket booth. The ticket seller immediately flashed a bright smile.

"How can I help you, sir?"

"One ticket for the next showing of Chicago!" Thomas pulled out his wallet.

"I'm sorry," the female ticket seller said bluntly. "There's a showing in half an hour, but it's already sold out."

"Sold out?" Thomas was a little surprised. "How can it be sold out? Is Chicago that popular?"

The ticket seller quickly explained, "The response to the two morning showings was excellent, so a lot of people called in to reserve tickets for the two afternoon showings. If you want a ticket, you'll have to wait for the evening show. Alternatively, you could wait here for a bit. If someone returns their ticket fifteen minutes before the show..."

"No need." Thomas did not want to wait, waving his hand. "I'll go check somewhere else."

Leaving the theater, Thomas got back into his car and took some time driving to a Regal Cinema further away. This was one of the most famous theaters on Long Island, boasting numerous screening rooms. Since it was Friday during the day, buying a ticket should not be difficult.

Stepping into the theater lobby, Thomas did not hesitate. He went straight to the ticket booth, successfully bought a ticket for the next showing of Chicago, and found an empty spot to wait for them to start checking tickets.

Bored, he looked around and noticed that, just like the previous theater, there were significantly more middle-aged and elderly people here than usual. He could also hear a few people nearby discussing something.

"Tickets for Chicago are tight," a man around fifty said to another man of the same age. "I hit three theaters in Manhattan and couldn't get a ticket at any of them. I had no choice but to come to Long Island."

"Is it really that popular?"

"I have a friend who attended the Toronto Film Festival and watched a screening. He thought the film was more spectacular than any version of the stage musical." The man sounded very confident. "Otherwise, it wouldn't have won the People's Choice Award."

After listening to their conversation for a moment, Thomas noticed some television station personnel shooting a segment. A female reporter from the NBC Television Network walked in front of a camera, interviewing the audience.

"Excuse me, which movie are you planning to watch next?"

The female reporter, Juliet, wore a light smile that easily won people over. "Why did you choose it?"

"I want to see Star Trek..."

Juliet circled the crowd, interviewing over a dozen moviegoers in succession. Most people chose Paramount's latest commercial blockbuster, Star Trek. A smaller number picked Chicago, and only a scarce few chose The English Patient.

Those who chose a commercial flick like Star Trek basically gave the same reasons, but the audience members looking to see Chicago offered all sorts of varied motivations.

The most common answer, mostly from the older audience, was simply because it was Chicago. The remaining reasons included "I want to see Tom Cruise," "It won the People's Choice Award," "It's Duke Rosenberg's new work," and "I want to see the director's collaboration with his new girlfriend"...

To Juliet's surprise, there was even someone who came over simply because they heard people in an online chatroom say the film was good.

However, Juliet also heard a different tune—complaints about Chicago.

"I live in Manhattan. I heard from a friend who watched it this morning that it was amazing, so I wanted to come see it this afternoon. But all the theaters showing Chicago in Manhattan were sold out. I had to drive all the way to Long Island and try two different theaters in a row..."

After questioning several people waiting to see Chicago, Juliet found that this complaint was quite common. Many people reported that tickets were tight, suggesting a massive number of viewers...

After waiting for nearly half an hour, Richard Thomas walked into the screening room. It was a large hall. Out of habit, he picked a seat slightly further back and sat quietly, waiting for the film to start. Before long, he noticed that, matching the ticket shortage outside, the theater's attendance rate was incredibly high. When the movie started playing, he could see from his vantage point that at least ninety percent of the seats were occupied.

'It's only Friday afternoon!' he thought.

Just as this crossed his mind, Thomas shook his head. Most of the people in the theater were around his age. For retirees like them, there really was no difference between day and night, or Friday and the weekend.

The movie soon began. From the very first second, Richard Thomas was thoroughly captivated.

The director did a phenomenal job, using an ostensibly praising tone to thoroughly mock the frivolous mentality of the 1920s, perfectly embodied by Chicago.

Especially for someone with his wealth of life experience, it was not hard to see that the film's content remained highly applicable to the present day, seventy years later.

There was a classic lyric in the film: "Murder can be an art."

This struck a strong chord with Thomas, and he muttered, "It should be said that shamelessness can be an art!"

"Well said!"

The person sitting next to him was the man who had come over from Manhattan. He said, "A very successful adaptation, isn't it?"

"It is." Thomas nodded, keeping his voice down. "The director inherited Bob Fosse's style wonderfully. He boldly handled the film's musical numbers as Roxie's hallucinations, making their insertion much more vivid and natural."

"His casting choices were great, too," the man agreed. "Tom Cruise gave a brilliant performance, and the song and dance routines of the two female leads were also outstanding."

By the time the screening ended, Richard Thomas had already grown familiar with the people sitting around him. The group of them chatted about the movie as they walked out. Being of similar ages, they had all seen different versions of the stage musical and spoke about it with clear expertise.

Thomas said to the group, "Depth isn't usually the strong suit of a musical. For the director to make Chicago's theme such a sharp critique of the times, while fleshing out the characters with such vibrant color—you could say it was a massive success!"

"Even with the cuts and compromises, there were still plenty of musical scenes," another person noted. "The song and dance routines flowed smoothly. Unlike those old musicals that constantly bogged down the plot, they acted like a locomotive, rapidly driving the story forward."

The man from Manhattan chimed in, "Chicago is a stage play that has endured for ages. Adapting it from the stage to the screen comes with massive constraints. For the movie to reach this level, that director, Duke Rosenberg, deserves a lot of credit. I'm actually quite interested in him now. I should go back and find his previous films to watch."

Several people nodded. "I'm planning to hit up a Videotape store later."

Half an hour earlier, Mockley from the TPZZ Research Company had hurried over from another theater. He and a few colleagues perfectly timed the end of Chicago and waited right at the exit.

"Hello, sir..."

As the audience filed out, he didn't stop the older folks. Instead, he sought out the relatively few young people in the crowd. He first introduced himself and handed out small gifts before asking, "Could you share your thoughts on the Chicago movie you just watched?"

"I've watched a few musical Videotapes before, but I could never make it to the end of any of them. They were too slow and boring."

The young man looked at the Roxie action figure he had been gifted and continued, "I only decided to check it out because Chicago is a collaboration between a major director like Duke and a massive star like Tom Cruise, and because it won the People's Choice Award. The movie wasn't what I expected. It was incredibly relaxed and joyful, and the plot was exceptionally brilliant. The Cell Block Tango and the marionette scene in particular were brilliantly conceived."

"If A+ is the highest score, what grade would you give it?" Mockley asked.

"An A+, I suppose. The film is far better than I imagined or what the promos suggested."

Next, Mockley stopped another person, who said, "I came to see this movie purely for Duke. He didn't disappoint. Even though the genre changed, the production is just as stellar. In particular, it has the same strong visual impact as always, and the song and dance routines are well-designed. It fits my aesthetic perfectly."

After about ten minutes of polling, a showing of another movie, The English Patient, let out. Except for a minority, the audience walking out looked mostly drowsy. Representatives from another consulting firm approached them.

"I didn't enjoy it at all. The pacing was way too slow."

"I honestly couldn't figure out how the romance in the movie even happened. Could the director be any less pretentious? It was a simple little thing, yet they insisted on filming it in the most convoluted way possible!"

There were just as many people praising the film, but compared to Chicago earlier, the proportion of viewers who found the movie dull was noticeably higher.

"Why don't theaters have a fast-forward button? I sat there so bored I desperately wanted to hit fast-forward!"

"Even now I'm completely confused. I have no idea what the movie was even about..."

Afterward, the surveyors on both sides acquired the current attendance rates for their respective films at this theater. Chicago had four showings in one screening room, boasting an average attendance rate of seventy-nine percent!

The English Patient similarly had four showings in one screening room, but its average attendance rate was only twenty-seven percent!

The strongest film of the weekend, Star Trek: First Strike, had an attendance rate of less than twenty percent, but that movie was playing across seven different screening rooms!