A Bad Night At The Movies

It was 1998, and my girlfriend had just broken up with me. I was 23, attending Idaho State University, and living in my brother's basement until I could find a cheap apartment. In other words, life was bad. I spent my days half-paying attention to my professors and my evenings feeling sorry for myself because my ex-girlfriend was already engaged to some other guy. It was a sad existence.

 Just a few blocks from my brother's house was a second-run movie theater called the Reel. You know the type of place I'm talking about - a slightly run-down theater in an older part of town that shows movies that came to big theaters six months before. The big summer blockbusters turn up at the Reel around September. You pay two or three bucks for a ticket, two bucks for popcorn and a soda, and you get to watch a movie in the theater that you could probably buy on DVD.

During that first year in Pocatello, I practically lived at the Reel.

Every chance I got, I'd scrape together five bucks and head to the theater. Armed with a cardboard box of popcorn and a waxy, sweating cup of Pepsi, I sat in the janky bucket seats and let the movies make me happy for a couple of hours. When I look at a list of movies released in 1997 and 1998, I'm surprised at how many of them I watched or re-watched at the Reel. Titanic, Gattaca, The Fifth Element, Liar Liar, Men In Black, Air Force One, The Saint, In and Out, My Best Friend's Wedding, and plenty of others. (What strikes me about this list is how many of these movies are now on cable every weekend. It's like that period of my life has entered reruns or something.)

Anyway, my brother still mocks me over the night I went to see Spiceworld. If you don't know what that is, good for you. It came out in early 1998 and was the big screen debut of The Spice Girls, a cruddy, manufactured pop band from England. They were kind of the female One Direction of their day. Someone let them be a movie - a wacky, zany, terrible movie that isn't worth the film stock they shot it on. But I went. It was February in Idaho and I went, fully aware of the fact that it was probably going to be terrible.

To this day, my brother asks, "Why would you pay money, any money at all, to see something that you knew was going to be awful?" At the time, I think I just wanted out of the house and a movie was better than nothing. Looking back now, I realize the answer to why I went has a lot to do with why I love movies in general: for me, a bad night at the movies is better than a good day at work.

I love the act of going to the movies. From really early on, going to the theater was a treat. If Dad was willing to spring for movie tickets, it was a big deal. I loved waiting in line for tickets, the sound of the popcorn machine, examining the posters for all the coming attractions, waiting for the lights to dim, the previews, everything. For me, it is a transportive experience. It's like a mood-enhancing drug that doesn't cost much and doesn't leave a hangover. Going to the theater makes me happy, even if the movie isn't much good.

Movies can take you out of the smallness and banality of your own life. They can shift your focus off your own story and onto another. They can show you great and terrible things. They can lift you when you feel as flat as the gum on the floor of the Reel. They can thrill, provoke, soothe, and teach. While I don't believe it is necessarily their goal or point, movies can occasionally make you want to be a better person. That's powerful stuff.

All that and giant vats of popcorn and diet Pepsi? Sounds like a good way to spend the evening to me.