Gigantic was great fun, as was seeing unsupervised and her sister (as always). The movie was all very satisfactorily shiny and happy, but I was disappointed that almost all the concert footage was of Linnell songs. (Not that I don't think those are great songs, but it just didn't seem very balanced in that respect between the two Johns, though I thought the movie gave them pretty much equal time in all other respects.) One of my favorite bits: Danny Weinkauf talking about how thoughtful Flans is, how he'll stop the bus and go out in the middle of the night to buy Mountain Dew for somebody if that's what he wants to drink. And Dan Miller interrupts to say, "People don't realize that he's actually out scoring drugs." That totally cracked me up, I don't know why.

Afterwards Ira Glass interviewed the director (A.J. Schnack), which was a nice surprise. I mean, I knew those two were going to be there (that's why we chose that showing), but for some reason I'd assumed it would be a straight Q & A with the audience. The funniest thing about it was that the Music Box Theatre has a live organist during the downtime before the movie starts. He came back when the movie ended, and Ira asked him to stay during the interview. Then periodically during the interview, Ira would point to the organist and request music. So it was, in a really bizarre way, like one of Ira's segments on This American Life, with the musical bits interspersed with the spoken bits, and Ira beginning his next question as the music faded out.

The interview was fairly interesting (I thought it was great that Ira was doing it, because he's both experienced at interviewing and a fan of the band, so he asked questions that would be of interest to a fan), but now I don't remember most of the questions. I do recall Ira asking, "what was the deal with that guy with the puppet?" and A.J. explaining that John & John used to play backup band for that guy's ventriloquist act, and that that was the actual puppet head that inspired the song "Put Your Hand inside the Puppet Head." And A.J. describing how Syd Straw came in for her interview and seemed normal for the first two or three minutes, but then when he asked her how she'd first met TMBG, she went into this long story about how "when she was 9 years old and Flans was 25, she was living in Hell's Kitchen, and one day she heard this cacophony all around her..." and he was thinking that he knew she and They were near the same age, and then he had a moment of terror, realizing that she was going to tell nothing but lies throughout her entire interview. He also talked about how reviewing the hours and hours of footage of the Johns made him feel like he was super-close to them (because it was like spending so many hours in their company), and so he'd call one of them up and be all friendly, like, "hey, John, what's up?" and get a response like, "what is it, A.J.? We're kinda busy."

There were quite a few people there; quite a few of them wearing TMBG shirts, and then the people behind us in line, who asked us, "Do you know what this movie is about?" That made me wonder why they had bothered getting in the line. Maybe to see Ira, or maybe they thought it was a porn flick.

And seeing the movie has gotten me extra excited about seeing Them in St Louis on Friday. Every time I hear somebody say "St Louis" on the radio, or I see the name of that city in the paper or somewhere, I think, "St Louis! I'm going to be there this Friday!"

Pretty damn exciting.