No pithy movie-related pun possible

My friend Colleen called me last night to ask me to tag along to a free advance screening of Blades of Glory tonight. I weighed the pros and cons for a moment:

Cons:
Will Ferrell as a (insert wacky occupation here).
The last time I tagged along to a free screening with her, my car got totalled afterward.
These free screenings tend to attract the kind of people I absolutely hate to be in a dark room in with for two hours. Handing out free passes to loud, obnoxious people is like throwing a Twinkie into a Weight Watchers meeting...they just go fucking nuts!

Pros:
I can't resist Will Ferrell no matter how much I may hate myself afterwards.
I could really use a couple hours of brainless fun.
It's free!

So, I said yes, and I had a fun time. The movie was pretty damned good. Very funny, not too predictable, and didn't over-stay its welcome. However, the real entertainment had nothing to do with the movie.

I've been to a few advance screenings in my time...enough that I know the drill. I don't bring any cameras, I turn off my cell phone, and I don't save seats for twenty people in a prime location. This time, however, there was studio rep there. He was a skinny, twenty-something little pipsqueak who for the purposes of this story, we'll call him Skippy.

Skippy got a little power-hungry with the microphone. He tried his best commanding voice to address the crowd about his policies regarding video cameras, vulgarities being shouted, cell phones, etc. Unfortunately for him, the microphone kept cutting out, so he had to address the crowd directly. His little speech gave me the impression that this was his outlet for repressed anger over every wedgie he got back in grade school. I particularly liked his stuff about cameras, saying, "If we see any red lights come on during the movie. You. Are. Outta. Here! No exceptions!"

Here's what I don't get about movie pirating: If some people are willing to pay to see a crappy videotaped in the theater version of the latest blockbuster, complete with the background noise of everyone in the theater talking, laughing and munching on popcorn...wouldn't it be easier to just target the marketing campaigns towards people who actually want to see the film in a theater? Personally, I blame the anti-piracy policies for the fact that Wild Hogs topped the box office for three weeks. If you give idiots no other choice but to go to the theater, then this is the kind of thing that gonna happen. Let these people sit at home and watch it in glorious RealPlayer quality, and leave a little elbow room for the people willing to pay to see it on the big screen.

Anyway, there was apparently one casualty of Skippy's zero tolerance policy. As we all left the theater, there was a guy sitting on the bench outside who told us how he got thrown out by Skippy because he got a phone call from his grandmother. Five minutes into the flick, Skippy saw him on the phone and the power-trip kicked into gear. The guy went on to say that he had driven in from Wagoner to hang out with his "friend"...who stayed in the theater while he was being thrown out. So, he sat outside on the bench until the movie let out.

No sooner than we all declared, "Gee, man, that sucks." He saw his "friend" in the distance.

He called out to her, "Traci! (or Brittany or Courtney or whatever her name was)"

Her response? In a irritated tone, "WHAT?!?"

So, he drives in from out of town to spend time with her, she ditches him, and to top it all off, she's being combative about it! Granted, it was a free movie, but that's as far as I'll be able to go in defending her position. They exchange a few words, he storms off, and they start fighting again by her car. She takes off, he stomps back to his car and drives off, too.

If the brief time talking to this guy before the confrontation, I got the feeling that his use of the word "friend" indicated that he was kinda hoping it would be more. Believe me, I know the feeling. That one girl in high school who agreed to go to a movie with me and brought her boyfriend...the girl I went to a party with in college and talked my ear off about coming out to her family a few weeks earlier...Yeah, I've been in that guy's shoes before. My heart goes out to the guy.

Driving home, I got to thinking that in all of the wacky observations I've made of total strangers, this was one of the few that I didn't experience alone. Yes, this time, I had witnesses with me!