Summer, the Season of Free Outdoor Movies

The city where I live, Portland, Oregon, is known for being rainy. Like, ten months out of the year. So when July and August arrive the town goes a little crazy.

It's as if no one's ever seen sun before. The citizens madly scurry about like hyperkinetic beavers, painting their houses, filling potholes, constructing new buildings, and generally creating noise and congestion everywhere. Not a weekend goes by without some major thoroughfare being shut down for a parade, a walk to benefit a popular disease, a "fun run" (two words that just don't go together in my mind), a street fair, or a multicultural hoe-down featuring local blues bands and patchouli-scented hippies on bicycles.

In other words, summer here sucks.

There's one shining exception, though: Summer means free movies. It's become quite the vogue, in Portland and elsewhere, to project films out-of-doors, and each year my city is awash in free open-air screenings. Theater attendance may be down, but it would seem that people still love to watch a free movie with their butt crammed into a lawn chair.

Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are the most popular nights for outdoor flicks. This can lead to scheduling conflicts, especially if you have a fetish for family-friendly fare. Last year, for example, Bee Movie was shown at Holly Farm Park on the same night that The Goonies -- a perennial local favorite, because it was shot here in Oregon -- was playing downtown in Pioneer Courthouse Square, with the suburbs offering (oh dear lord, no) Daddy Day Camp. If you're scouting out free flicks to take in with your kids, the best way to choose one is to simply figure out what's closest to your house. Unless it's Daddy Day Camp, in which case you'd have more fun staying home, locked in your dark basement, smacking yourself in the head with a rock.

Other nights, the choices are a little tougher. The Wizard of Oz or Shane? Hairspray or The Princess Bride? Dirty Dancing or Enchanted?

As I'm both a lover of movies and perpetually broke, the idea of gratis outdoor films delights me. But just because you don't have to buy a ticket, that doesn't mean they don't come with a cost. Hell, even free, some aren't worth the price -- you couldn't pay me to watch The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep again under any circumstances, much less while swatting mosquitoes.

Then there's the production of getting to the park/square/plaza/arts center with your folding chair, snacks and other accoutrements, and staking out a decent place to sit. By "decent," I mean "not in the direct line of jackholes who'll talk, wrestle with potato-chip bags, jabber on their cellphone, or otherwise ruin my movie." Nine times out of ten, I find myself smack in the exact geographic center of several overlapping circles of unsupervised children, all of them bouncing off the back of my chair like sugar-fueled pinballs. I find squirt guns come in handy when this happens.

And while you'd think that being in the the Great Outdoors would allow one to, say, enjoy a smoke while watching the film -- something that's no longer an option in indoor venues -- you'd be wrong. God forbid you should light a cigarette within 20 yards of an entitlement-queen soccer mom's lil' Honor Student. Apparently there isn't enough fresh air in the world to stave off an immediate asthma attack of epic proportions, followed by the onset of early-stage tuberculosis. (And yes, I'm aware of the probable hypocrisy of my outrage over cellophane and cell phones while insisting that other people tolerate my cigarette smoke. Like most folks, I believe that my habits are benign, while others' are an offense to God and man. Let's just call it an adorable quirk.)

But the inconveniences are sometimes more than worth it. The suburb where I live just released their summer movie schedule, and among the offerings are Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Kung Fu Panda, and Wall-E. I may even head to the park for Journey to the Center of the Earth. I've never seen a 30-foot-tall Brendan Fraser in a city park in 3-D before. Now that's worth the price of admission.

Last year, we had nine parks and other outdoor venues offering free movies. Is it the same in other cities? And are the movies offered where you live any good?