Everything I know I learned from the movies: R. Cunningham
Knowledge is good: Animal House
I’m going to tell you about my secret life.
Speaking of which, here’s one of my favorite moviedom quotes:
“I want to be alone.”
OK, so Greta Garbo herself denied she ever actually said that.
She said (she said) “I want to be left alone.”
Same difference.
But I digress.
I was going to tell you about my secret life.
You know what I was doing last Friday when so many of you were watching or walking in the Homecoming Parade?
I was where I usually am on any given Friday afternoon.
Sitting alone in the dark.
In a really large empty space.
With a lot of empty seats all around me.
Eating popcorn and drinking Pepsi Zero (I prefer Coke Zero, but Regal got hijacked by Pepsi when I wasn’t looking).
And watching a movie.
By myself. As though I had my own private screening room.
And not just because everybody else was at the Homecoming Parade.
No, it’s a fairly common occurrence to find myself sitting alone in a large dark theater watching a first run move. It happens as often as not.
To the Matinee Manic.
And from all outward appearances (all the aforementioned empty seats) I’m a rare breed indeed.
Seriously, I don’t know how theaters stay in business by catering to one or two or three patrons (and sometimes none at all) during any given early daylight performance.
Especially since I’m a Regal Club member and can attend as many showings as many times as I want for a modest flat fee. (I’ll just come out and admit that I saw the newest Indiana Jones and Equalizer flicks twice each.)
Of course, I do have to take out a second mortgage to swing the popcorn and PZ. So there’s that.
Anyway, on this particular Friday I was watching “Dumb Money” all by my lonesome.
It’s a reality (more or less) based flick about a nerdy basement-dwelling video blogger (aka Roaring Kitty) who incites an army of “day traders” (i.e. young people armed with smart phones and just enough spare cash to be dangerous) to invest in Game Stop, a nothing stock.
Which subsequently causes hotshot billionaire investors to lose their shirts for going big short on GS.
Sort of a poor man’s “The Big Short.”
My favorite lines:
Wife: How much did you lose today?
Hotshot Billionaire (gloomy Seth Rogan): A billion.
Wife: And yesterday?
HB: A billion.
I liked “Dumb Money.” It was smart, funny and rather touching.
Was it authentic? Well, a couple of “distinguished economists” did deplore the whole premise behind DM in a piece they wrote for the New York Times.
“As practitioners of the dismal science, we worry that some viewers will continue to be inspired to copy the heroes’ investment strategies, which is about as smart as driving home at 100 miles per hour after seeing ‘The Fast and the Furious,’” they sniffed.
Listen, I’ll bet those eggheads never even saw F&F. Let alone its hundreds of offspring.
But don’t get me wrong.
While it is true that I’m occasionally drawn to such high-brow offerings as “Oppenheimer” and “Golda,” (sorry, Barbie), I’m just as likely to lower my brow considerably when sitting alone in the dark where there’s nobody to see the trash I’m feasting on.
“Expend4bles’? Heck, I’ve been following Sly since he chewed on that toothpick in “Cobra.”
“Renfield” and “Voyage Of The Demeter”? Because vampires.
“Meg2”? Listen, the bigger the fin the better.
“MI” whateverthehell the latest edition is? Tom Cruise must have a Dorian Gray portrait stashed in his attic.
I’ve told friends that I like to judge movies on my AK47 scale. They think I’m kidding. I’m not.
Car chases. Explosions. Aging action heroes. Slashers. Sword and sandal epics. Monsters run amok.
Apropos of noting at all: I thought Jason Long was as haplessly good in “Barbarian” (2022) as he was in “Jeepers Creepers,” (2001). But my all time fav JL performance was “Live Free or Die Hard” where he forced a horrified Bruce Willis to act his age for once. (2007).
That’s just the way I roll.
When I’m sitting in the dark alone.
Eating popcorn and drinking PZ.
Just don’t judge me.
I have feelings too, you know.
FreeGNV 