Wednesday, December 20, 2006

If this is about you, stay out of my theater.


Well, ring my chimes and hang my stockings, I look around and it is the holiday. As part of God’s temporal joke he has been playing on me, this year has flown by and I am hardly ready for Halloween, and it is already Christmas. I only hope He keeps the joke going when I hit Babylon and the year there goes by quickly as well.

Otherwise, there isn’t much else to report. I am completely enamored with the TV show “Heroes.” If you aren’t watching it, you are wrong. TV is my primary entertainment these days because I have decided to never go to the movie theater again. Why, do you ask? Because of the “Oh Shit” guy.

You know who he is- anytime something happens in a film that is daring, a surprise, this guy has to interject at the top of his lungs, “OH SHIT!” It’s not a quick interjection, it is a drawn out sing-song of an exclamation that pulls you completely out of the moment and grounds you back in the sticky-floored mass of humanity you paid 12 dollars to share a movie with. Case in point, the (spoilers ahead if you’ve not seen Superman Returns) in the best movie I saw this year, we learn that Lois’ young son is not the son of handsome go getter Richard White, but rather of a Kryptonian Demi-god who goes by Clark. The biggest moment of this reveal is the boy defending his mother from a violent psychotic thug by… well, hitting him with a piano. Singer gives us a moment of silence for realization purposes after the instrument plays its last chord against the thug. A moment to grasp all this moment means; the parentage, the fact that this boy’s first use of power has killed another (admittedly deserving) human being, the end of his mother’s reign of hypochondria. Instead for me, not once but twice, this moment was filled with the hearty peal of “Oh SHIT!” How this man managed to be seated within 10 feet of me twice, I cannot say. My assumption is the movie theater management was hoping I would kill him and spare other movie goers this man’s cries of wonder in the future.

My biggest fear is that there is more than one “Oh Shit” guy. That no matter what theater I go to, there will be a member of this secret cabal plotting to eviscerate my fantasy and unceremoniously drop me firmly back in reality regardless of the magic movie moment. A bullet bounces off Superman’s exposed eyeball- “Oh Shit!” Aliens blow up a famous building in Los Angeles as the first strike against humanity- “Oh SHIT!” Colossus appears to defend the vulnerable students at Xavier’s academy from Striker’s troops- “OH SHIT!”

You win, “Oh Shit” guy. I have not seen a myriad of interesting movies this year because of you. No James Bond, no Borat, no Tenacious D. You and your accomplices “Giggly Teenage Girl Group” and “Watch This, This is Great” guy have kept me out of theater and in front of my big screen. I may not see the movies quick, but when a fellow viewer turns out to be the “Oh Shit!” guy, I can send him to his room.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dan ~ I TOTALLY know exactly what you are talking about! I thought I was the only one who gets FURIOUS with these stoopid idiots. :-)

Another thing I HATE about movie theaters is - (well, I have a list),

#1 Late comers!!! Jeesh! Get a watch!

#2 Paper rustlers

#3 Seat bumpers/kickers!!! For God's sake! Get your filthy feet off my shoulder! I paid for this seat!!!

#4 little kids that are allowed to wiggle around, talk, whine and KICK MY SEAT during the entire movie!

and

#5 People with hacking coughs that are too rude to stay home with a throat losenge instead of coming to an enclosed room to cough their germs down my neck!

I remember telling my daughters when they were in high school that I would NEVER go to a movie theater and pay my hard-earned $3 bucks to see a movie. Can you believe the prices were just raised again?!?!

Yep, give me a DVD or give me death. No more theaters for me either.

Deborah