Over the past month or so, Matthew Caprio has anxiously turned a Moleskine notebook into a countdown. Each entry signifies one less day between now and May 26, when he will take his post behind a giant projector screen in Baton Rouge Gallery’s backyard to score all153 minutes of the sci-fi film classic, Metropolis.

Caprio, otherwise known as DJ Matt Cee, has been pretty nervous about it. He’s never scored a movie before, much less in front of a live audience, but he didn’t get this far being chicken.

“I was so excited,” he said. “They had heard I do marathon sessions, and it’s a long freaking movie. I’ve been watching the movie – actually, I found out that the movie I’d watched was about 45 minutes shorter than the one they were using.”

It’s easy to think of a DJ with a laptop as ready-to-go; in actuality, Caprio has been working on this since Baton Rouge Gallery director Jason Andreasen asked him to do this several months ago.

“I have this Moleskine notebook, and I write down times in the movie and what feel a certain scene had,” he said. “It’s like nervousness is motivating me. I don’t wanna go in there cold thinking ‘Yeah I can do this!’ and have it sound awful.”

Part of the nervousness stems from the notoriety of the film itself. Metropolis is considered one of the greatest dystopian movies of all time, and Roger Ebert once noted that it was “one of the great achievements of the silent era, a work so audacious in its vision and so angry in its message that it is, if anything, more powerful today than when it was made.”

Showing a few scenes from the film, Caprio pointed out a handful of modern-day films and TV shows use the imagery first built by director Fritz Lang. “Futurama totally uses this machinery.”

We aren’t going to spoil the first outdoor movie showing of the summer, but we can promise the awesomeness of what we were allowed to hear – he uses tracks by Squarepusher and Basement Jaxx, to name only a few.

Black (and White) to the Future
Metropolis is only the first of six Movies & Music on the Lawn events hosted by Baton Rouge Gallery this summer. The unique screenings happen once a month until October. Look for these timeless flicks in the near future:

May 26: Metropolis, scored by Matt Cee

June 30: A series of short films by pioneer director George Melies, scored by Captain Green and Stage Coach Bandits

July 28: Aelita: The Queen of Mars, scored by The Incense Merchants

August 25: The Man From Beyond (starring Harry Houdini), scored by The (New) Zealanders

September 29: A Trip to Mars, scored by England in 1819

October 27: The Lost World, scored by DJ OttO

Baton Rouge Gallery’s popular summer series, Movies & Music on the Lawn, premieres on Saturday, May 26, featuring DJ Matt.Cee’s live score of Metropolis. The big screen powers on at 8 p.m., and admission is $5 with all the popcorn you can handle.