Back in the good ole’ days (in this case being my high school years of 1989 – 1994) a screening of ‘The Killer’ at the Mayfair was far from your run of the mill watching and enjoying of a new action classic. I can’t lay claim to having come up with the idea, but I’m pretty sure I was at least there on the ground floor of it’s inception. The routine would be, any time gun-play erupted on the screen (which in a John Woo movie is well…a ton) a bunch of crazy teenagers would respond by shooting back at the screen with an arsenal of cap-guns.
It was quite the interactive movie-going experience. Way more fun than the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And of course it was before horrors of the Columbine shooting tragedy, so the image of teens with toy guns didn’t have quite the same feel as it does in our current state.

And now…a cautionary tale of teen geekness:

Three friends of mine had bought cap guns at Toys R Us, in preparation for a screening of ‘The Killer’ at the Mayfair that was happening the next day. They (being dumb teenage boys) were wandering around downtown, guns in hand. When one would not stop singing an Elton John song (there’s some controversy as to whether the song was Benny & the Jets or Crocodile Rock) gun-play ensued.
A passing by off-duty cop witnessed the epic battle and called it in. Next thing you know, my friends are all on the ground, tackled with knees in their backs and the whole bit, a number of cops yelling at them. Memory is a funny thing, so there are also conflicting reports on how many cops were there to bust ’em, but it was something along the lines of three or four cars, two guys in uniform, two others with bullet-proof vests, a detective and the off duty officer (and to make it even more scary, many of the officers had guns drawn). When one of my friends was being patted down, he was asked if he had any needles on him. His panicked brain did not help in his reply; “I have an AIDS Awareness pin on my vest”. When the cops realized they were three very non-criminal dumb teenage boys, they were left behind, cap guns confiscated (thankfully this didn’t happen State-side…could’ve had a much more gruesome end to the tale).

The next day they still went to see the Killer, no cap guns, as another guy sat nearby with a big hand-winch operated toy T2 chain-gun and fired thousands of caps towards the screen, leaving a blue-grey plume of smoke hanging in the air.

So, please attempt to avoid stupidity and police interaction when you come out to see The Killer at the Mayfair, Saturday September 12th at midnight.