Every Sunday around 7:30 p.m., I strap on my mask and cross the street to my favorite bodega to buy Pabst Blue Ribbon, some sour gummy worms, and a box of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. A year ago, I would have picked all these snacks up in the movie theater lobby, but now the plan is to head right back up to my apartment, plop down on the couch, cue up a movie on Netflix (last time it was “Lady Bird”) and log into a familiar GroupMe Chatroom where between 10-15 of my friends are waiting. I know that at 8 o’clock, with a few perfectly synchronized taps of the “play” button, the same movie will suddenly stream simultaneously across TVs, laptops and cell phones all around the country in a ceremony we’ve somewhat chokingly dubbed “CoVideo Club.”
The puns, you see, are pretty important.
While some folks have used the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to increase their personal wealth by several billion dollars, I’ve focussed more on my hobbies, you know? I’ve gotten back into writing poetry (it’s bad), I’ve started learning to play the keyboard (also bad), and I’ve gotten back into “Overwatch” on Playstation 4 (that I’m actually good at). Most of these pastimes are best enjoyed alone, but during a pandemic, the last thing any of us needs is more alone time. The opportunity to socialize in groups of any size are rare, but a virtual space can be a great substitute – provided it’s managed properly.
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Since March, on the first weekend of the pandemic, this weird little movie club has been that for me. And, after talking it over with a few other members, I found out I wasn’t alone: "The group has been a huge source of positivity in an otherwise difficult period of time,” said Mike Petzinger, an original member. “It's especially great to have a bit of daily dialogue with friends while stuck working from home daily.”
Other members feel the same. “I joined mid-pandemic,” said Peggy Nelling, who shares an apartment with three other CoVideo regulars. “I have enjoyed having something to look forward to and a supportive group that ends up being about so much more than movies.”
“The pandemic hit at a weird point personally,” said Natasha Jokic, one of Peggy’s roommates and an active member, “so it’s been a great way to meet new people and get a feeling of community.”
I agree that the movie club is something special. The past year has fluctuated between frightening, exhausting, mind-numbing and boring, and it’s been invaluable to have both routine and a safe place to chat about whatever is on your mind. And it turns out this sort of thing doesn’t just happen: There’s a lot of thought, not to mention weekly effort, that goes into keeping something like this running smoothly.
First, you have to make sure everyone involved adheres to the system. Each week, as soon as the movie ends, nominations for next week’s event officially open. Participants can nominate any movie available on Netflix, though there’s been recent talk of expanding our options to HBO Max, Hulu or Disney+— it all depends on what streaming services every member has. The first eight nominations received are in the running, and that’s where the voting system comes in.
“I made a simple 8-seed bracket on Illustrator when we started the tournament system back in March,” says Covideo Club founder and graphic designer Gabe Smoller. “I shuffle the list of nominations that I’ve received to randomize the matchups, then I throw everything onto the bracket template."
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“To cap things off, I do a quick image search for a frame of the last movie we watched that is most representative of the watch experience – usually something really funny or really divisive. This week, it’s the shot of the girl’s Chuck Taylors under her ballroom dress in a scene from ‘Christmas Prince’ (a shot that I 100% predicted would happen a few moments before it happened).”
Each participant then has a couple days to vote on four movie match-ups: This week I’ve voted for “Catch Me if You Can” against “Swiss Army Man,” and “Quigley Down Under” against “A Clockwork Orange,” “17 Again” against “Death to 2020” and “Can’t Hardly Wait” against “Double Jeopardy,” but only because I just recently watched “Double Jeopardy.” On Wednesday, half the nominees will be eliminated and two new brackets will be created. Friday it’ll be whittled down to the final two, which won’t be decided until an hour before the movie actually begins (in the case of a tie, the winner is decided with a dice roll, broadcast live on Instagram).
You can’t overstate the importance of sticking to the rules with something like this. Much like the U.S. Government, Covideo Club only works if everyone agrees to respect the system. If you, like me, really don’t want to watch “Clueless” but “Clueless” wins, you bite the bullet and watch “Clueless,” both because that respects the rules, and because it might turn out that you'll like “Clueless” (it’s based on Jane Austen’s “Emma”! I didn’t even realize).
When it comes to watching the movie itself, there are plenty of pre-pandemic equivalents. Different corners of the internet regularly organize “remote watches,” where strangers sync up their favorite mode of viewing to watch a movie together and comment on it with jokes, analysis, and hastily assembled meme-images. In the 30-something years since the launch of Mystery Science Theater 3000, movies have only become a more routinely interactive experience, and everyone in chat is familiar with rowdy screenings of everything from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to, more recently, “Cats.” It’s that, only virtual.
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Looking back over the chat from the middle of a Sunday night is like reading half a conversation. Every message is a reference or response to something happening on a virtually shared screen, so most jokes (because it’s mostly jokes) read like surreal nonsense. “I like how [Timothée Chalamet] spreads his arms,” someone wrote last weekend. “Like he’s California Jesus.”
Similarly, Covideo Club mainstays The Coen Brothers, whose films “Fargo” and “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” have both won Sunday night spots, are exclusively referred to as “The Corn Bros” – not because anyone thinks they’re corny, but because somebody made a typo once back in August and it just sort of caught on.
Ironically, the chat is most valuable when we’re not even watching a movie. Sure, you can drop in, leave your vote for the movie, and go about your day, but most members end up checking in with each other. Members have celebrated finishing grad school, announced promotions, and even shared photos of their socially distanced wedding in chat. One member has started chronicling his favorite jokes in collages he posts on Instagram. Back in the summer, we even used to meet in the park, to chat and drink beers out of brown paper bags while sitting 6 feet apart.
It's important to note at this point that weekly movie nights were already a thing before the pandemic. But once the members were isolated, they reached out to other friends who were struggling with loneliness and now, with our one year anniversary around the corner, we've had people join in from all across the country. As it exists now, CoVideo Club is a unique blend of different social groups: Some of whom have known each other for decades, others have never, even now, met in person.
“Movie club has been great during the pandemic,” said Joey Schwartzman, another active member “because it connects me with friends that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see.”
“Covideo Club is really special,” Smoller said. “It’s one of a very small number of reliable, scheduled activities that I can look forward to each week during the pandemic. I worry that when IRL (“in real life”) movie club returns, our living room will not be able to accommodate all of the amazing people who have come to be regular fixtures every Sunday.”
"I don't even know these people,” said Robin Cheung, “but the club has helped keep me sane by providing me with sufficiently entertaining memes and jokes."
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January 07, 2021 at 07:22PM
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How a virtual movie club has helped me survive the pandemic - SFGate
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