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Big Screen, Big Adventure Posting Date: Aug 12 2007 11:35PM Most of the time, it’s sticky. Then, when you least expect it, it’s slippery. The carpet on the stairs is so saturated with old root beer that it feels like walking on toffee. The seat folds down, but never at exactly the angle anticipated by its designer. There are popcorn nubbins embedded in the upholstery and the black splodge you test reluctantly with your finger before you sit down is always hard and smooth which leaves you feeling both repulsed and comforted.
Welcome to your local movie theatre.
Arriving early gets you a parking spot near the police bait car and a clear walk-up to the electronic ticket kiosk. The former is important because you want your car to be there after the movie and the latter is important because the line behind you at the kiosk can turn angry after the ninth unsuccessful swipe of your credit card.
The concession counter features service from teenagers with genetic modifications that allow them to move glacially while simultaneously becoming confused by shiny objects – like money and candy wrappers. To pass the minutes as they layer golden topping into your popcorn, you can read their nametags, each featuring a name – like Pennee, Antwann or Ashlay – that looks like a phonetic pronunciation guide or something from a text message. The nametag also lets you know that The Princess Diaries is Genipher’s favourite movie … in case you care.
Now hustle into the theatre so you can conduct an inventory of your fellow patrons.
Here comes the pre-teen gaggle. Watching the gaggle rearrange itself constantly from seat to seat is exhausting. It makes you wonder how you ever survived your first whiff of adulthood, when your life seemed to depend on who you sat farthest from and who you sat closest to during Harry Potter and the Terrible Onset of Puberty.
Not far behind the gaggle is the body builder. Normally, I can go weeks without encountering someone wearing a skin tight, v-neck T-shirt that stretches to cover shoulders the size of hams, but go to the movies and big boys are everywhere. Usually, these large gentlemen are wearing flip-flops and enjoying the company of either another large-chested amigo or a wafer thin girl in low-rise jeans.
Following them into the theatre is the senior citizen double date. The men enter first and find seats, always one row back from me. Perched there, the four lifelong friends can discuss the unfolding cinematic happenings as if we were all watching a rerun of Walker: Texas Ranger in a living room. One of the men is always a plot predictor (letting everyone know during the climax of Titanic that “The ship’s gonna sink!”) and one of the women is always a dialogue checker (“What did she say?”).
Then the expert commentators arrive. These are same-sex groups of two or more people who want the theatre to know that the filmmakers are clueless about the inner workings of Buckingham Palace, an Apollo space mission, forensic police work or Russian battlefield strategy during the Napoleonic Wars. These people are just there to provide a service.
When the final credits crawl up the screen and you jostle your way to the line-up in the washroom with the one working hand dryer, your movie-going experience has been about so much more than a movie. It has been about planning your life around inconvenient show times, about competing with your fellow late-arrivers for the last few seats above the dreaded front section, about the excitement of the lights dimming and about the mad sprint to your car when it’s over so you can get out before an armada of mini-vans clogs your path.
Movie-going is a life experience of a modest sort, one that forces us to interact for better or worse with people like and unlike us in every way. It’s about trading a relatively small amount of money to be part of the giant first rank of people to see Pirates of the Caribbean: The Death of a Franchise or part of the select elite who actually paid to see Passionate Sunshine: A Swedish Film Without Subtitles. It’s about sharing in the common experience of sticky floors and toffee-like carpet. It’s about the magic of movies. |
