Unabashedly foolish, spontaneous and uninhibited in his pre-show performance, Gur Arye sang, made balloon creatures and donned a false mustache saying, \u201cIf anyone has been injured at this event, we are not responsible and you will never find us because we are in disguise.\u201d Inviting everyone in to see the movie, he entered the cinematheque followed by a respectably large procession. Once in the theatre, he took the stage and instructed everyone to stand up, asking, \u201cWho is seeing the movie for the first time?\u201d As he began the ritual discovery of which audience member has seen the movie the most times (that night\u2019s record was 29), a group of people in costume entered the room. Not missing a beat, he called out to them, \u201cHey, Rocky is playing in the other theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking cult-filmdom into a new age of social networking and technology, there is also facebook group for the movie. That night Gur Arye tracked down internet etiquette offenders, projecting images of those who clicked \u201cattending\u201d for the event, and checking to see if they were indeed in the audience. This was followed by a rousing group sing-along of \u201ctelephone songs\u201d. Using the various tones of \u201cbusy signals,\u201d \u201ccall waiting,\u201d and the beloved \u201cFAX\u201d as the different melodies, Gur Arye got the entire audience singing the accompanying descriptive lyrics. Crazy competitions, sing-alongs, story-telling, skits and video clips from the \u201cHipopotam\u201d comedy series (where the makers of the movie first flexed their comedic muscles) are a traditional part of the pre-show routine. That night, however, even Gur Arye was in for a surprise as the group in costumes got up onstage to dance with the Hipopotam clip \u00e0 la \u201cRocky.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet Gur Arye is serious about comedy and devoted to developing Israeli comedy as a genre. “When I was in second grade I saw “Airplane” \u2013 I was amazed,” he says, smiling, “It’s probably a movie I’ve seen too many times. Israeli audiences watch American movies, we love the Simpsons, and we know how to read this genre culturally. Somehow, Israeli movies are always either about the army or families in crisis. We don’t have wild parodies.”<\/p>\n In that spirit, Gur Arye set out to create an Israeli movie in the “Naked Gun” genre: Israeli Intelligence (the Hebrew title, HaMossad HaSagur is a double entendre, referring both to the intelligence agency and the term for closed psychiatric ward). It is truly an organic Israeli creation, growing out of the creative “Hipopotam” group, which in turn, Gur Arye tells me is composed of the alumni of his scout troop cultural committee from Rishon LeZion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Scene](\"http:\/\/www.midnighteast.com\/mag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/Lana-Ettinger-Larry-Butchins-Ron-Shahar-300x169.jpg\" "\\"Lana")
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