Movie Night

The other night my guy and I decided to get out and see a movie. We live only 10 minutes from a mall that has a complex of at least 8 theaters. Unfortunately, everything playing there was either for kids, already seen, or just plain bad.

The only theater offering a movie new to us is a ramshackle affair in another town.
We’re fond of this place because while it does require a sense of adventure, it’s less expensive than anything else around: $15 will buy you two tickets, a good-sized popcorn and a soda. How do they do it, you ask?

Their secret is that the movies offered have already made the rounds at the other venues in town and are on the verge of going to DVD. But most noticeably, the owner hasn’t frittered his money away on silly frills like upkeep or staff.

We arrived and joined the line to buy tickets. This was a little delayed since the young man bagging the popcorn across the lobby was also the young man who would soon sell us our tickets and he was also the young man who would disappear through a door to start the movie. That’s right. One person to run the entire theater. 

Tickets and popcorn bought, we went into the theater, pleasantly surprised that it was air-conditioned. On our first winter visit I luckily remembered the other time we’d been there in the summer, and it had been quite muggy inside.  Now, mid-January, it was a brisk 25 degrees out and I wasn’t too confident the theater would be heated. I took a small fleece blanket from my car and tucked it discreetly under my arm, hoping it would go undetected. Once in the lobby, I saw people wrestling with afghans, comforters, and what I swear was a sleeping bag.

We chose our seats, not a simple task. It was threatening to rain when we went in, so we made sure to avoid the areas with gaping holes where the ceiling tiles were missing. We’ve also learned to check whether the seats will collapse before we lower ourselves into them. We sat, but then had to relocate. Being the high maintenance patrons that we are, we wanted chairs that had complete armrests. Our first choices were missing the wooden portion, leaving us with only an uncomfortable strip of iron for our elbows.

As we settled in, two women chose seats nearby in the row in front of us. One of the ladies was extremely heavy and  I had to wonder if she’d be able to wedge herself in between those unyielding arms of steel.

The movie was great – a blockbuster that we’d missed on its first pass through our area. But the highlight for me was the conversation between these women before the movie began:

Woman 1: “Have you seen the new Great Gatsby? I saw that one with Robert Redford.”

Extremely Heavy Woman 2: “I didn’t like it. It’s the excess that bothers me.”