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Jewish World Review June 28, 2005 / 21 Sivan, 5765 Movie mayhem By Brad Dickson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
According to a recent survey Americans would rather undergo a proctology exam from an Outer Mongolian medical school drop out (i.e., "an HMO") than walk into a movie theater.
You've seen the reports that nobody's going out to movies. Except, of course, the latest Star Wars film, REVENGE OF THE SITH: GEEKS LINE UP
Apparently we hate going out to the movies so much we're willing to risk being shot on sight when we fail to return the DVD to Blockbuster on time.
In an effort to discern why movie theaters have lost their panache I went to an actual theater in L.A., and actually sat through an actual movie, to uncover the cold truth. The following is the log of that experience.
1:05 P.M. I arrive at a shopping mall multiplex. I haven't seen this few people at one place in an L.A. mall since they closed the mall organ stores.
1:06 PM: I purchase one ticket for THE HONEYMOONERS, intrigued, as I'd never watched the TV series. Also, I realize this was a landmark film, as the one millionth movie based on a TV series made in the past decade.
The ticket costs 10 bucks. The last movie I saw worth 10 bucks? SON OF FLUBBER.
1:08 PM: I purchase a box of concession Milk Duds that's roughly the size of a studio apartment. (Thank goodness they had one small left.) Price: Something like $43.
1:10 PM I drag my Milk Duds into the theater. Despite the 1:15 start time the only people present are a young couple making out in the back row, and a middle aged guy muttering to himself down front.
1:11 PM: My feet are stuck to the floor with a foul substance that appears a combination of anthrax, butter, toxic mold and fossilized corn candy.
1:12 PM: I free myself and take a seat.
1:15 PM: The lights go down and the movie begins. Well, actually, the COMMERCIALS begin. Commercials on a movie screen? I pray I don't see a 20-foot hemorrhoid.
1:30 PM: The movie begins. Whoops, not yet, it's a trailer for a different film. A movie I'd never attend, something about an animated frog from outer space who comes to Earth to win a karate tournament and find the guy who offed his brother.
1:38 PM: The muttering guy in the front row is delivering a soliloquy about how the bus passed him by that morning, even though he was positioned solidly on the curb. I continue eavesdropping, it's more interesting than the trailers.
1:48 PM: The movie finally begins. 4 or 5 writers are credited. How ironic is that? There are more writers on the project than people in the theater!
A couple of stragglers enter the theater, teenage boys who sit fourteen seats apart and shout profanities back and forth.
2:01 PM: The on-screen characters are speaking a foreign language — no, wait; it's the couple in the back row. The man is loudly translating the movie into Farsi for the woman.
2:15 PM: The teenage guys and the couple are arguing like Matt Lauer and Tom Cruise at a Ritalin Convention. I was in the restroom when it started, but I'm surmising the dispute has to do with the water pistol. Between the hostility, bad food, and dirty, squalid conditions we're one naked pile of inmates away from being an Iraqi prison.
2:56 PM: The male half of the couple is now venting about an overcharge for a muffler into his cell phone, the teens are having a passing gas contest and the muttering guy is singing. So this is that "communal movie going experience" I've heard so much about. .
3:27 PM: The movie ends. I believe it had something to do with bus driving. I glance at my watch. If I hurry, I can make it home in time for DANCING WITH THE STARS..
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© 2005, Brad Dickson |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
