Movie nights play out in dorms

By Esther Zuckerman

It’s movie night on the third floor of Jones Residential College. Seven girls and one boy sit in front of a laptop watching Hugh Grant in “Love Actually” thrust his pelvis to an eighties pop song.

Next door, three girls sing along to “High School Musical.”

Downstairs, on the second floor, another Hugh Grant film, “Music and Lyrics” plays.

Movies and television shows are an after-hours staple in the cherub dorm rooms.

“It’s a great group activity, especially when you are coming to camp where you don’t know anyone,” said Katherine Driessen, a cherub from Columbia, Md., who offered her laptop to watch “Love Actually.”

“Movies are the best common ground,” she said.  

Residents of the second floor try to watch a movie every night. Their tradition started when the floor’s residents realized Katie Tang, a cherub from East Amherst, N.Y., has a laptop with “really loud speakers,” Tang said. She said the fare is mostly teen movies.

“We do it because they are fun movies that we know everyone is going to like,” she said.

Robert Pino, a cherub from Naperville, Ill., organized a showing of his favorite musical comedy, “Little Shop of Horrors.” Pino said he brought a television set with a built-in DVD player since last year’s web site recommended bringing DVDs. At first he said that he thought he would just watch alone in his room late at night, but that quickly changed.

“When I mentioned that I had it the reaction was like, ‘Okay, now I know this is going to be something that everyone is going to do,’” he said.

For his movie night, Pino put up a poster in the lobby of Jones with an image of the man-eating plant from “Little Shop of Horrors” to advertise for his movie night. It included the time and the place of the showing. He set out drinks and popped popcorn for the viewers.

“It was fun,” he said. “We sang during all of the singing parts.”

Pino also organized a showing of “Snakes on a Plane.” 

Some groups chose to watch entire television series instead of movies. The romantic drama series “Grey’s Anatomy” often played on a laptop. Cherubs Liza Pincus, from Larchmont, N.Y., and Tate Tuckman, from Manhattan Beach, Calif., tried to finish the first and second seasons of the show.

“No one is as dedicated and as hard core as we are,” Tuckman said. “We have a rule that we can’t talk during it.”