Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Before I review Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in the interest of full disclosure, there's something you need to know about me. In junior high and high school, when my friends were talking about the homecoming dance or the big game, I was probably somewhere deeply involved in a debate over the differences between the Uncanny X-Men and its teenage spin off, The New Mutants. When my peers were busily studying for an important exam, I was busily arranging my comic collection into alphabetical and numerical order. In other words, my friends, I was a gigantic comic book nerd. I still am actually, and this means I am kind of already in the tank when it comes to comic book movies.

This is not to say that I love every film featuring superheroes. We all know there have been some terrible cinematic atrocities committed in the name of Stan Lee over the last few years. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner as Daredevil and Elektra? The two nightmarish, borderline fever dreams of badness that were the Fantastic Four movies? No, I haven't taken leave of my senses enough to approve of garbage water like that.

But I root for superhero movies, for them to be good, for them to succeed. I want to be swept up and exhilarated by them the way I was by the comics when I was a kid. So I'm less likely to analyze a comic book movie for its thematic unity or aesthetic accomplishment and am more likely to rate it on a fourteen year old teen age boy's scale of Awesome-osity.

So how does the new Captain America film rate? Quite well, actually.

It's a sequel to 2011's The First Avenger which was purposefully and gloriously square in its narrative and aesthetics. The movie was intended to echo the "Go get 'em, boys!" films of the World War II period in which most of the film is set.

Winter Solider finds Captain America reawakened in the 21st century and trying to adjust to life as the world's fittest 94 year old man. He works as an agent of SHIELD, the shadowy super-spy organization that makes the CIA and FBI look like the Keystone Cops, and he is generally the fastest, strongest, most moral guy in town. All of those characteristics make him stick out but some more than others.

This film hearkens to the past, but not the patriotic, up-by-your-bootstraps days of the 40s and 50. Instead, the film evokes the paranoid, corruption-behind-every-door-of-power vibe of the 1970s. The film cinematically name-drops All the President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, and The Conversation. The Washington D.C. setting, unexpected double crosses from trusted friends, lean economical visual storytelling, and the clever casting of Robert Redford as an important government figure are all meant to make us feel as though we're meeting in a shadowy parking garage and a dark figure in the corner is telling us to "follow the money."

The film uses a not terribly veiled allegory to address ongoing questions we face as post-911 Americans. I don't think I'm giving anything away to say that SHIELD has developed a super weapon - new helicarriers (the flying battleships seen in the Avengers movie) that can target and kill literally millions at a time. Steve Rogers, Cap's civilian alter ego, questions the wisdom of having a weapon that powerful and far reaching. Who gets to decide who is an acceptable target? Who determines who is so great a risk that they warrant high tech death from above with no warning? The helicarriers could easily be read as superhero-sized versions of the drones we have patrolling the skies in war zones and who knows where else across the world. The characters are storyline are fantastic and spectacular in the truest sense of both of those words, but some of the concerns raised by the film are surprisingly real world.  It's a little on-the-nose at times, but any comic book movie that asks its audience to weigh the value of freedom versus safety is doing something interesting in my opinion.

For all that, it's still a superhero movie, and we are treated some pretty great action sequences. One of the opening scenes takes place on a hijacked ship, and the fluid camera movement follows Captain America as he almost single-handedly shuts down a small army of pirate-terrorists. The action is crisp, exciting, and importantly, comprehensible. Some directors in this genre, Christopher Nolan among them, seem to think that filming a fight sequence as though you're the one getting beaten up is a good way to go. Thankfully, the directing duo of brothers Anthony and Joe Russo are more of the "let's let the audience know what in the world is going on" school of thought when it comes to action. Cap's battles with Batroc the French mercenary, the Winter Solider, and an elevator packed with a dozen trained fighters all rate high on my scale of Awesome-tude.

The movie is a bit of a rarity - an exciting, well-made superhero movie that takes itself somewhat seriously and manages to pull off more than just snark and spectacle. Captain America is the most sincere and self-serious of contemporary heroes, and this movie manages to create a nice, fizzy friction between his "old fashioned" ethics and morals and the 21st century's cynicism and distrust. Scarlett Johnanson returns to the Marvel comic book movie world with her signature brand of unexpected violence and very expected sex appeal as the Black Widow, and Anthony Mackie makes an auspicious debut as the Falcon with one of the coolest movie jet packs I've ever seen.

So, in this case, the fourteen year old comic book nerd in me is satisfied and the forty year old movie critic is pretty pleased too. Lucky for me, even though both those guys are happy, I only had to pay admission once.

 

Austenland

I have followed the careers of Jared and Jerusha Hess for a decade now. In 2004, they released their first film, Napoleon Dynamite, and at the time, I was teaching English in a small rural town in southern Idaho. So the movie's depiction of the weird yet mundane goings-on of a small, rural southern Idaho town seemed a lot more like a documentary to me than the silly fictional film it was.The film was co-written by the husband and wife team and directed by Jared. It was filmed in Hess's hometown of Preston, Idaho and was a poster child for early 21 century light-hearted cinematic quirk. You may remember the "Vote for Pedro" t shirts hipsters sported for a few years after the movie.  You may also remember that Napoleon himself, the actor Jon Heder, briefly had a career playing various versions of Dynamite's clueless savant character in movies such as Blades of Glory, The Benchwarmers, and Just Like Heaven.

Napoleon Dynamite was a small independent production Hess made shortly after graduating film school at Brigham Young University. The film was made for about 400, 000 dollars but ended up grossing over 46 million.

After a profit success like that, the Hess team could pretty much write their own ticket. Unfortunately, they suffered something of a sophomore slump with the Jack Black vehicle, the 2006 film Nacho Libre. Like Napoleon, Nacho Libre centered on an outsider who is simultaneously enthusiastic and clueless. In this case, it was Jack Black as Nacho, the hapless monk-in-training at a Mexican monastery who secretly wants to be a luchador, an over-the-top masked professional wrestler. The film had a bigger budget, a smaller profit margin, and not nearly the charm or critical success the Hess's first film earned.

I have to admit that, though Nacho Libre was uneven and hamstrung by Jack Black being Jack Black, I kind of love it. It's a happily absurd movie with unexpectedly lovely cinematography that you wouldn't expect from a Mexican wrestler movie that features fart jokes.

If Nacho Libre was a sophomore slump, the Hess's third film, 2009's Gentlemen Broncos, was a junior catastrophe. Airless, bleak, profoundly unfunny, and pointlessly surreal, it disappeared from theaters faster than you can say M. Night Shyamalan and ended up in the five dollar bin at Wal-Mart. The film has a few champions who argue it's a misunderstood classic about the dangers involved in pursuing the artistic life. But those champions are wrong. It's a bad movie. The Hess's not only owe me the five bucks I shelled out, but for the 89 minutes of my life I can never have back.

Following that failure, the Hess team regrouped and headed back to familiar territory, producing an animated t.v. series version of Napoleon Dynamite. This was another project that failed to find an audience and was canceled after one season. But, like Nacho Libre, I loved it. My kids still quote lines from certain episodes and we wish futilely that it would come back.

All this history brings me to Austenland, the 2013 film that was co-written and, for the first time, directed by Jerusha Hess. It was adapted from the Shannon Hale novel of the same name and produced by Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame. The film stars Keri Russel as Jane Hayes, a sad, lonely 30-something who is obsessed by the characters and world of Jane Austen. Feeling her life is empty as it is, Jane sinks her life savings into a trip to Austenland, the titular British resort where enthusiasts can live in the Regency-era world of Jane Austen for two weeks. Naturally, fish-out-of-water hijinks ensue.

Unfortunately, Austenland isn't any good. It leans more toward Gentlemen Broncos' annoying surrealism and away from the idiosyncratic but still very present warmth of Napoleon Dynamite or even Nacho Libre. The film's problem is that it can't decide what it wants to be. At one moment, it seems to be ruthlessly mocking the type of person who might actually pay money to attend the Jane Austen equivalent of fantasy camp, but in the very next moment the movie asks us to take Jane Hayes' emotional journey seriously. In poetry, it's called a tonal fault - when some line or reference suddenly takes the reader far away from the original tone of the poem. Think of the Normandy Beach sequence in Saving Private Ryan culminating in a dance number or Ron Burgundy showing up as Sandra Bullock's space-induced hallucination in Gravity. It just wouldn't work, right? Well, so it is with Austenland, except it seems to want to be both Unforgiven and Blazing Saddles. It wants to be a self-aware but serious example of genre while simultaneously mocking that genre.

It points out the ridiculousness of the cliched tropes of romantic comedies but then turns around and leans on them like a crutch. Wallflower protagonist discovering her own power and beauty while transforming from plain jane to attractive and powerful center of attention? Check. Dramatic confession of love just as someone's about to board a plane? Check. Girl ends up with the guy who seemed totally wrong but only turns out to be so totally right?! Check!The movie's treatment of these cliches doesn't really do anything with them. It seems to say, "Isn't it funny that movies and Jane Austen novels always use stuff like that? We thought we'd try it."

The film never congeals into anything that makes sense. There are a few moments of laughter, but they're mostly stunned, confused, "what in the world is this movie trying to do to me" laughs. Jennifer Coolidge seems to be in an entirely different movie and her jarring performance is good for a couple of laughs, but it's more like she's the drunk person who wandered onstage in the middle of a performance.

One other disappointment is the cinematography. For all the sumptuous scenery around Austenland's stately property, the whole thing looks as though it was filmed on one hazy day at noon. Everything looks washed out and pedestrian instead of rich and lovely like it's supposed to.

Jared and Jerusha Hess have yet to make anything that's as original and fun as their first film. Hollywood keeps giving them chances, but despite their different approaches, nothing has really been as successful. I'll keep watching their careers and rooting for their success, but another movie like Austenland will make me a lot more hesitant about spending my time watching their work - even if it is in the five dollar bin at Wal Mart.

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

 I realize I'm coming late to this party. After all, this was an early summer blockbuster (it was released in the spring, actually) and I'm only just watching it now in mid-September. What can I say? It's been a busy summer.

Anyway, as you have probably figured out by now, I'm a bit of a sci fi geek from way back. Space ships, ray guns, jet packs, aliens, UFOs, etc. I love it all. Growing up, people were either Star Wars fans or Star Trek fans, and there wasn't much middle ground. I was always squarely in the Star Wars camp but was fine with the other brand if that's all there was. I watched my share of the original Trek episodes as reruns when I was middle school and saw all the Trek movies in the theater until they transitioned from the original cast to the Next Generation bunch.

My gripe with Star Trek was that it was always too high minded. I appreciate that it tried to address Big Ideas like racism and individualism versus collectivism and all of that stuff. But holy crap, when you compare Spock and Kirk agonizing over the relative morality of influencing a new civilization versus Han Solo blasting Greedo's alien guts all over the wall of the cantina, there isn't much question of which is cooler, you know? Star Trek was interesting whereas Star Wars was just awesome. Light sabers and X-wings versus the Prime Directive and Starfleet? No competition.

All of this is to say that when J.J. Abrams directed the 2009 Star Trek reboot, I thought it was the best thing to happen to the franchise in decades. Abrams specializes is genre spectacle with a very human edge of sentiment. He managed to make Sydney Bristow a hardcore superspy in Alias while simultaneously making us care about her daddy issues. His take on Mission: Impossible was one of the strongest of that franchise because of the emotional component he successfully mustered between Tom Cruise and his on-screen wife played by Michelle Monaghan. Lost, one of his co-creations, was as much about the relationships between Sawyer, Jack, and Kate as it was about time travel and conspiracies.

So Abrams was able to work in the brainy, emotional world of Star Trek while still making it rock, you know? The action sequences were exciting, the effects were terrific, and the aliens were scary. More importantly, audiences cared about the people and the relationships in the midst of the action and effects. I bought into Spock's troubled backstory and conflicted relationships with his parents, and at the same time, I loved watching young Jim Kirk launch his step-dad's vintage Mustang off a cliff while being chased by a cop on a hover bike.

(This turning out to be a very long post considering it's a movie review and I haven't even talked about the movie I'm reviewing yet.)

So my hopes were high when I heard about the sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness. Abrams was back along with the cast from the first film, and the villain was going to be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, a favorite of mine from the BBC tv series Sherlock. The trailers, the posters, all the hype made it look like a sure thing.

Sadly, it doesn't live up. The film is a step down from the first one, and the problem is easy to identify. It's a question of earning the payoff. In order for an audience to care about what happens to characters, they have to care about the characters themselves. What happens to them matters because we find them believable people who are worthy of some level of empathy. Events in and of themselves don't mean much if we don't care about the people they're happening to. Earthquake? Scary. Earthquake happening to a small family we've learned about for a few chapters? Horrifying.

This is a problem my Intro to Creative Writing students often struggle with. They give their readers flimsy, cliched characters for a few scenes and then expect them to care when something tragic happens to them.

So Star Trek Into Darkness is a weaker film because it doesn't spend enough time making the characters real or relevant to the audience. It makes the mistake of trying to echo Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, the best of all the original movies. The final scenes of Into Darkness are an alternative version of the final scenes of Kahn. The problem is that in Kahn, the characters had been established for close to thirty years. Their relationships mattered. When Spock died trying to save everyone, we cared because we cared about him. When Kirk almost dies at the end of Darkness and Spock gets all weepy, who cares? We haven't seen these two do anything other than bicker like sitcom buddies. There's no investment for us  Death, near death, massive tragedy, etc. doesn't matter if we don't care who they are happening to.

So when Star Trek Into Darkness was over, my overall thought was, "Meh." Good looking but empty. Like a Kardashian, you know?

Trilogies seem to be pretty standard these days, and this one made enough money to justify a third film. Maybe when that comes around, Abrams will have recaptured his mojo or passed the franchise off to someone who's still got it. (Abrams' next project is directing the new Star Wars film due in 2015. My brain kind of collapsed in on itself when I heard he was taking that gig after this one. My thoughts about Hollywood's total lack of imagination is a post for another day.)

Anyway, the film isn't bad, it just isn't particularly good. It falls short of what was best about the first one, and just sort of leaves the viewer cold in the end. For 190 million dollars and with Abrams at the helm, I expected a little more.

"What'd You Think?"

Movies were one thing my dad and I could agree on. We both thought that an evening at the movies was one well spent. This was significant because, for as much as my mom loved the arts (plays, music, art galleries), she really didn't like going to the movies. I can only think of two or three times in my life that she ever went to the theater or drive-in with us. I'd ask her about it and her only reason was just that she didn't enjoy the experience of going to the movies. So my dad and I were movie buddies. He had someone to go with and I had someone to pay for everything.

The first movie I remember that was a kind of a father/son thing was Rambo: First Blood II. Crazy, right? I was eleven, my brother Jason with thirteen, and ol' Dennis took the two of us to see Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo shoot, stab, incinerate, and explode a wide variety of Vietnamese people. Dad had been in the military and liked books, movies, and tv shows about soldiers and war. He wanted to see it, but even if Mom did go to movies, she sure as heck wouldn't pay to see an evil Vietnamese officer slicing a bloody leech off Rambo's body with a knife. Leech-slicing and Stallone's naked, tortured body just weren't her cup of tea. Anyway, the three of us saw it together, and Jason and I thought it was the coolest thing ever that Dad took us to a movie that we were clearly too young to see. (For the record, as a military man, Dad laughed through a lot of First Blood II. I particularly remember him laughing when Rambo fires a bazooka from inside a helicopter filled with P.O.W.s and no one inside the chopper dies.)

Anyway, Dad and I would go to the movies together now and then. Sometimes one or some of my brothers would be there, and sometimes it would just be Dennis and me. Generally, we'd see manly sorts of movies - action flicks, bio pics, and stuff like that. Whatever we'd go see, it always ended the same. The credits would roll, we'd walk out the back door of the theater, we'd make it halfway to the car, and Dad would say, "So what'd you think?" We'd spend the drive home discussing the relative merits of Schwarzenegger in The Running Man or Tommy Lee Jones in U.S. Marshals.

The last movie I remember seeing in the theater with Dad was Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, a stark portrait of ambition, greed, and the acidic effects of loving power more than people. It's about a man who makes a fortune and amasses power as he builds an oil drilling empire in California, and Dad was fascinated by the depictions of early oil drilling technology. I still find it funny that, of everything in this dark,  emotionally complex movie, Dad was most interested in how they drilled for oil at the turn of the century. It's not a warm, happy film by any stretch of the imagination. It ends with the main character alone and friendless in his giant mansion after he clubs his adversary to death with a bowling pin. Cheerful? I think not. Nevertheless, I have a lot of affection for the film because it was the last time that, halfway across the parking lot, Dad looked over and said, "So what'd you think?"

My dad passed away a couple of years ago, and I miss him a lot. One reason why I love movies is because they are opportunities to get together with people you love. Even when I was a teenager and didn't have much to say to say to my parents, Dad and I could always agree on a movie.      

Pacific Rim

It's a delicate coming of age story that celebrates the beauty and mystery of young love.

Not really.

It's actually a sleek, technically accomplished, big budget tribute to Godzilla movies. It features geeky awesomeness like a 25 story tall robot using an oil supertanker like a baseball bat to club an equally giant monster from beneath the sea.

Needless to say, it's not a romantic comedy, kids.

 

Nope, it's a big, loud movie with plenty of 'splosions, rousing speeches, cool monsters, and the guy getting the girl in the end. There isn't anything terribly original about the movie, but that's sort of the point. It's meant to be an homage to everything from Godzilla to Voltron to Henry V to  Armageddon - it's like a fanboy's dreamland. So rather than making something new, the director and co-writer, Guillermo Del Toro, took a whole bunch of old stuff and redid it in a huge, fun, sometimes winking fashion.

I never enjoy it when a movie hands me a cliche and expects me to just say, "Gosh, thanks. I've never seen an innocent man who's accused of a crime he didn't commit. I've never seen a tough, streetwise woman who secretly has a heart of gold. I've never listened to a big, rally-the-troops speech just before going into battle. I've never seen a nerd long for the blonde cheerleader." Stuff like that is a little insulting because it means the creators of that show think that you are either very dumb, very forgetful, or just have low standards for what you expect out of your stories.

On the other hand, I almost always enjoy it when someone takes a cliche and uses it knowingly with some cleverness or with a twist of originality. While certainly not earth-shattering, Pacific Rim manages to take on some of the cliches of a big budget sci fi pic and use them in a way that is, at least, entertaining rather than insulting.

I think what I appreciated about the movie most is simply that it was fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it seems to be created by someone with an eye for the visceral pleasure of movies rather than an eye for just making money. It's pretty rare to get quality and fun all in the same package, so I try to enjoy it whenever it comes along.Yes, movies have the capacity to teach and edify and all of that. And I love it when they do. But I love it just as much when a movie is all about the color, sound, motion, production design, performance, and story. And 'splosions. And giant robots.

Hmmmm. I wonder if there are any Pacific Rim actions figures...

The Worst

Let's see --

Taking a sweet, innocent date to see The Island of Dr. Moreau. We had only been out on a couple of dates, mostly stuff she enjoyed, and I wanted to take her to a movie. The problem was that there was nothing good playing. There were a few movies I knew she wouldn't like and a few I knew I wouldn't like - but then there was the mystery choice: The Island of Dr. Moreau. I hadn't heard or read or seen anything about it. This is unusual because my movie radar is always up. I always watch movie trailers when they come on TV, I always read the entertainment section of the paper, and I just always have my ear to the ground when movies are involved. So for me to not know anything about a movie at all was strange. I figured it could either mean disaster or a pleasant surprise.

What I did know is that it had Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. To me, I thought this was probably a sign of quality. Brando, of course, even though he was in his giant-old-man-weirdo phase, was still one of Hollywood's great actors, and Kilmer was still a semi-leading man. (This was 1996). So I figure, hey, how bad can it be?

Sadly, the answer, my friends, is bad. It can be very, very bad.

Brando was clearly just there for a paycheck. His performance was phoned in and essentially empty. Almost nothing about his character made any sense, and the director was clearly just happy to have a big name in the film. I'm confident Brando dictated his wardrobe of giant, loose fitting mumus just because they would be comfortable to wear. What I didn't know at the time is that Brando was infamously lazy and would do his best to not work if he could at all avoid it. He did some movies purely for the money, and in some cases, negotiated contracts that said he would only be on set for a certain number of days and then he would stall and try not to work while those days ticked away so he could paid without actually doing anything. I didn't know at the time that Brando's name on a movie did not necessarily guarantee anything.

Kilmer had a tiny cameo that he probably spent two days filming. The real leading man was David Thewlis, the guy who played Lupin in the Harry Potter movies. So, not exactly a real leading man type, you know?

The story is based on a novel by H.G. Wells and is about a guy who becomes shipwrecked on an island populated by half-man half-animal people who were created by, of course, the brilliant but crazy Dr. Moreau. So the acting is nothing special, the script is pretty terrible, and the special effects are lame.

But an overall lameness was at least palatable. It was the gigantic animal-person orgy scene toward the end of the film that took the movie from just sort of stupid to the top of my bad-movie-experience list. My date was horrified, I was embarrassed, and we both left feeling like we needed to take a shower.

I didn't go on too many more dates with that girl. We weren't that compatible to begin with, but I think Dr. Moreau and the animal people helped put the nail in the coffin of that relationship even faster than normal. So let this be a lesson to you: bad movies can kill relationships. Choose wisely.

Runners Up for Bad Movie Going Experiences:

Falling asleep in the campus movie theater at Idaho State University while watching slow moving, independent films (Ulee's Gold, Copland, Kundun.) I'm all for slow, meditative movies, but holy crap, those movies were boring.

Sitting in a theater in Pocatello, Idaho with my wife, and it was so hot in the room that a guy down in the front row stood up, tore off his shirt, and yelled, "It's so f-ing hot in here!!"

Trying to watch Bram Stoker's Dracula on a date. To this day, it remains the only movie I've ever walked out on. My date was offended by some of the racier elements in it. After she broke up with me and shattered my heart into a billion little pieces, I rented it and watched it all the way through as my way of telling the universe I no longer cared about her.

Seeing any movie at the Roxy in Ottawa, Illinois.

Movie Heist

Blogger Eric D. Snider once wrote about going to the movies and watching a crime take place. A lame, gross, petty crime -- but a crime nevertheless. He saw a group of teenage boys sneakily root through a trashcan outside one of the theaters, dig out three large drink cups, rinse out the cups in the bathroom, and then take them up to the concession stand for free refills - as though these were large drinks they had paid for and already emptied while waiting for the movie to start.

When I read his story, I was simultaneously grossed out and fascinated.

Grossed out because, uh, those cups were garbage. Garbage. Plus, who knows who drank out of it the first time before it even went in the trash? Some crusty guy with no teeth and only smelly gum-holes could have been licking the inside of that cup trying to get the last drops of his Sprite while watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 for the third time. I don't think rinsing it out with tepid water in the theater bathroom would take care of that kind of skeeve, you know?

But I was also fascinated. I mean, who does that? Who thinks that way? Movie theater prices are obscene, and there's no debate about that. I'm pretty sure that when evil oil company executives retire from poisoning the world and dumping chemicals into oceans, they shift careers and take over movie theater chains. They have the same morals and make the same profit margins. Popcorn costs literally next to nothing to make. Same with soda. They charge three bucks for eighty cents worth of candy and think because they put it in a bulky cardboard box that we won't notice. The profit margin on a six dollar bucket of popcorn is astronomical.

Because theater concession prices are practically criminal and because I feel like they're taking advantage of a captive audience, I've never had a problem with bringing in my own candy, soda, popcorn, and occasionally sandwiches. (In winter, you can easily tuck a footlong sub into your coat and not be detected.) But bringing in your own stuff is very different than scavenging cups out of the trash and bilking the theater out of pop, you know? Not giving the theater unfair amounts of money is not the same as just flat-out stealing from them in my mind.

So I think poorly of these random teenagers I've never met. I judge them - that's right, judge them.

But wait! As I busily judge these little weasels, I am suddenly reminded of myself in junior high. A couple of my friends, Rusty and James, had a whole scheme to sneak into the movies and they wanted me in on their plan. There were two theaters in Rexburg, Idaho when I was growing up there - the Westwood, a cavernous single-screen on Main Street, and the Holiday, a low-slung, triplex just a block off Main. Both of them had two exit doors at the back of each theater that opened up onto empty parking lots, and the plan was for one of us to pay to get in and then sneak to the back exit, pop it open, and let the other two in.

Now, I was a good kid in junior high and high school - afraid to get in trouble, not interested in making waves, and seriously scared of my dad's white hot wrath. I stalled, tried to blow it off, tried to hedge - but eventually caved. I agreed to sneak them into a late show of Beetlejuice at the Westwood. 

My justification, the only thing that allowed me to do it, I think, was that I was the one who actually paid to get in. I figured as long as I was paying my own admission, I was close enough to blameless. (I conveniently overlooked the fact that I was instrumental in helping two other people not pay.) James and Rusty each gave me two bucks - that was my cut, I guess -- and I used it for admission. Timing was crucial. If I went too early, it would look suspicious to the theater workers. If I went too late, there would be other people there who would see what I was doing and report it to the Man.

I remember my heart pounding and cold nerve sweat under my arms. I was terrified I was going to get caught and that it would be the end for me. The theater manager, a pompous little man with a pencil 'stache, knew my dad and knew who I was. If he caught me, it was a sure bet my parents would hear about it. In the Westwood, there was a short, dark hallway between the theater and the actual exit door and it would shrouded by a curtain. I slipped behind the curtain, tapped quietly on the door, got the signal tap in return, and pushed open the door. Rusty and James hustled in, and we rushed back out to the theater before anyone else came in.

I don't remember if I was plagued by guilt or how long I felt bad, but I'm pretty sure I never helped anyone sneak in to the movie again. Once was enough for me. I managed to grow up and not be a felon. James and Rusty both grew up to be good guys, each of them married with a bunch of kids. Rusty got a degree in psychology and then took over his dad's cabinetry business. James is a computer engineer and spends his weekends fishing rather than sneaking into theaters.

So maybe there's hope for the three little weasels Eric Snider saw. Maybe drinking trash soda isn't the end of the line for them as human beings. More likely than not, twenty years from now, they'll be grown men with lives and responsibilities, and they'll laugh about the days back when they were willing to drink garbage pop in order to sucker the theater out of free refills.