My projector died 10 minutes into The Room at a watch party

I hosted a bad movie night at my apartment in Austin last Friday, about 15 people showed up ready to laugh. I had my old projector set up and the Blu-ray of The Room cued up, everyone was hyped for the football scene. But 10 minutes in, the projector just went dark and started flashing a red light like it was having a seizure. I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in twice, nothing changed. So I grabbed my roommate's 24 inch monitor from his desk and set it on the coffee table, everyone had to crowd around it like we were watching a tiny TV from the 90s. Honestly it made the movie funnier, people were passing popcorn over each other's heads and someone spilled ranch dressing on my carpet. Has anyone else had their whole setup fall apart mid-screening and just had to wing it?

3 comments

3 Comments

craig.mila26d ago

Oh come on, the tiny screen scramble is half the fun of a watch party. You got a better story out of it than if the projector worked perfectly, plus the ranch dressing incident just adds character to the carpet. Sometimes the tech fails make the whole night more memorable than the movie itself.

hannah_perry26d ago

Have you ever thought about how a bad tech setup actually forces people to talk to each other more? Like at my friend's place, the projector kept cutting out during The Thing, and we ended up having a whole debate about practical effects vs CGI while huddled around a laptop. Nobody checked their phones once. That tiny scramble kind of killed the usual "quietly watching in the dark" vibe and turned it into a group hang... maybe the ranch dressing stain is a weird badge of honor now too.

clairen8526d ago

Three times actually. Once at a BBQ where the speaker died and my buddy's dad pulled out an old 90s boombox from the garage. Everyone started picking songs off their phones and passing it around like a mixtape. Then at a dinner party where the oven broke halfway through cooking, so we all ended up ordering pizza and sitting on the floor telling stories about our worst kitchen fails. @hannah_perry you're totally right that the forced hiccup becomes the main event. It's like we need a little chaos to stop treating every hangout like a perfectly produced show.