I’ve refrained from adding pictures to my posts. Not because I don’t think they would help, I do. I get tired of alternating the font sizes, but you never know who really reads and who just looks. But I might, just might, show the screenshots of my AMC Stubs history to show how much I go to the movies.
Here, I want you to know this. Most of the time I don’t go to the movies to see a movie. Most of the time I’m going to try and hide from the sunlight, or the warmth of the sun. Sometimes, going to the movies is the only thing I can do to stop everything from spinning around, slow the rushing repetitive thoughts.
Regularity is great. A regular popcorn at the regular size with a regular drink, the regularity of a scanned ticket, my regular seat that reclines, to right an irregular mind.
I rarely watch anything I actually enjoy, and at this point in my life, I choose to believe that it’s not that good things aren’t being made, but that good is relative and subjective, and what was good to me 20 years ago was because I knew even less about the world than I do now. For those good feelings, I stay home and when my attention span can manage, I rent or pull out an old film I’ve seen a hundred times. For everything else, I get my stale popcorn, my crisp carbonated drink and relish in the darkness. Sometimes I get a good surprise and something actually makes me laugh, or the lighting is particularly good. Not necessary though. As long as I can drift off for a couple hours inside a theatre vs. inside a bar and four or five Jamesons in the middle of the day, I’d say I’m doing a good thing for my health.
It takes a lot for me to leave a movie. Sometimes it’s just nausea or paranoia. Other times it’s just the first five or forty minutes. I walked out of Wuthering Heights after the lynching scene opened the film. I walked out the first five or ten minutes of Regretting You. I was only at that one because it was the least stupid thing screening at the time, and it was a very warm day.
It gave me the creeps, it was like a Hallmark movie but with a bigger budget. All that smiling made me feel like I used to in college, when drank Nyquil on an empty stomach in the daytime for fun.
There were girls in matching sweatpants with fleece blankets who took up one row, and they gave me dirty looks as I left.
I think I walked six blocks to the library. I bet you’re probably wondering why I don’t just sit at the library and write. The last time I sat still at a library, the guy sitting across from me was discreetly taking pictures of me with his phone. There’s women, children and air conditioning at libraries, but there’s everybody else too. I place my books on hold ahead of time, and pick them up after going to the movies.
There’s always a downturn in tone when the ticket-tearer-scanner-whatever person at the front of AMC 7 Santa Monica tells you that the showing is downstairs. It’s their haunted basement, nothing there but two auditoriums, horrid yellow paint, haunted bathrooms and cardboard cutouts. The elevator is heavy and slow. When it doesn’t work, there’ll be a security guard standing at the stairs and he’ll tell you to use the fully functional escalator.
When I got to my seat, the air conditioning was off and everything felt damp. Knowing it wasn’t just for realism,
I went upstairs to let someone know. “Is it off? It’s hot in there?”
“Yeah, I wanted to wait for a little bit to see if it was just because I was walking, but it’s been 20 minutes and it’s still hot.”
“Ok, I’ll let my manager know.”
She pressed button on the cord of her walkie and I went to get a refill. It cooled down about a half an hour later, and I could feel the other five of us start to relax. I’d seen trailers for Die My Love during my summer tenure at the L’aemmle, another theater I frequent.
I’m trying to keep them in business, and I know that everyone there is sick of me, but they’re my go-to for art house or anytime I want to see a blockbuster without that same guy who sits in the middle of every movie on opening night laughing obnoxiously or whistling at the screen.
The L’aemmle is a different crowd, and you can usually find good seats, but you will have to endure someone who is a little on in years, having a fully whispered conversation during the entirety of the film.
The trailers for DML gave me the impression that I would be seeing a post-tumblr, messy, aesthetic feminist video montage of a woman going slowly insane. As the first thirty minutes rolled on, I watched play out onscreen a post-tumblr, messy, aesthetic feminist video montage of a woman going slowly insane. I left when there was a reveal of Lakeith Stanfield as the mystery rider. It was all too mediocre at first, then got gross with a weirdo Southern fetishistic racial fantasy set against too much colorgrading.
There’s only been a handful of times I’ve switched theatres or hit a double feature. Once, with an ex, we finished a documentary and went across the hall to watch 21 Jumpstreet. Another time when I was 17, going on 18 and went to see Kill Bill when it came out in 2003. I thought about seeing what else I could see in place of this crap, but just down the hall was Sydney Sweeney and her face taking up the screen as Christy. The lighting looked okay, but I didn’t want sit in another lukewarm theatre for 2 hours to watch another lukewarm film.
I have no idea what happened after that, I probably went to find somewhere that sold a half a pound of chocolate covered almonds, walked until my feet hurt and then waited at the bus stop until I could go home and sweat in private.
I don’t plan on finishing the film, and all the reviews I’ve heard were that it was just as bad.
I’ve actually been crazy before, and never licked a wall or window,
not for free anyway.
