BRATTLEBORO — At sundown on Friday, June 30, the Backlot Cinema at Epsilon Spires will present the fabled combination of Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of the Moon played at the same time as the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz - producing unexpected synchronicities that have spurred decades of conspiracy theories about whether Pink Floyd intentionally created their album as a soundtrack to the film.
To enhance the experience even further, the version of The Wizard of Oz that will be shown during the event will become three-dimensional when viewed through anaglyph glasses provided to audience members.
“Half the fun of exploring this marvel is watching with a group of friends and shouting out the correlations as you make connections,” writes journalist Charlie Savage in a 1995 article in The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette that is believed to be the first mainstream media piece about the astonishing coincidences. Savage, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006, titled his article “Dark Side of the Rainbow,” which is now frequently used as a name for the pairing of the album and film.
Many years before the term “mash-up” entered the pop culture lexicon, the combination of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz began delighting viewers with its bizarre concurrences.
These include moments such as the words “home, home again” from the song “Breathe” being sung as the fortune teller tells Dorothy to go home, and the lyrics “the lunatic is on the grass” and “got to keep the loonies on the path” from the song “Brain Damage” coinciding with shots of the Scarecrow on the grass and the yellow brick road, among many others.
The tendency for humans to derive meaning from perceived patterns is called “apophenia,” a term first coined by the German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in 1958 when he was studying schizophrenia. While extreme versions of this phenomenon are associated with mental illness, it is believed to have developed naturally as an evolutionary advantage that helped our ancestors recognize patterns associated with threats.
When reached for comment, members of Pink Floyd have categorically denied any relationship between the album and the film. In a 2009 Rolling Stone article, Dark Side of the Moon audio engineer Alan Parsons calls the theory that the synchronicity was intentional “a complete load of eyewash.”
Tickets for Dark Side of the Rainbow are available on a sliding scale of $5 to $15 and can be purchased in advance at epsilonspires.org. The event is being sponsored by the local recreational cannabis dispensary Vermont Bud Barn; if ticket holders visit the Bud Barn the day of the event and show their ticket confirmation, they will receive free surprises and 20% off of one item.
Doors open at 8 p.m., with the screening beginning at approximately 8:30 p.m. Audience members are encouraged to bring their own blankets, cushions, or folding chairs. Restrooms and refreshments will be available. In the case of rain or low temperature, this event will be moved indoors to the Sanctuary of Epsilon Spires.