Mucho Take It Easy or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Floor
SKYLER OSBURN
“Are you kidding me?”
“Skyler, you made us pay for that.”
“I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.”
“That’s the last time you choose, dude. The last time.”
But it wasn’t. And, alright, I mean—wait—hold on for just a second. Let me just Scorsese this shit real quick, and maybe I can convince you that my cinematic preferences aren’t simply mechanisms meant to end all of my friendships.
...
So, I was there 45 minutes early, apparently to admire just how much effort it must take to guarantee that absolutely no one so much as kicks a wet mop across the butter/cheese/coke laminated floor. Perhaps management hopes that trying to walk across the floor’s unholy, all-American adhesive will prove so taxing to those attempting to leave that they’ll simply turn around and buy another ticket, probably to Grown Ups 6 or Paul W.S. Anderson 15: Arbitrary Subtitle. Both in 4D with Smell-O-Vision. I’m sure they could just bottle and spray the floor’s fat-and-sugar froth for the accompanying odors ‘cause it’s not like anybody’s busy mopping it or anything.
But anyway, dwelling on that just reminds me that my room is Pig-Pen’s Barbie Dreamhouse and that Punch-Drunk Love exists and that I still would really like to give Event Horizon a shot, so I just return to glaring at my watch.
35 minutes later, my friends-
Okay, actually, no, I need to address this first: why in the hell do people insist on bitching about the problems caused by their own nonexistent time-management skills? They show up without a ticket mere moments before the set starting time—or even, I gasp and shudder to imagine, halfway through the previews, an event I refuse to consider as anything other than the result of some severe internal brain hemorrhaging that leaves its victim in pain, greatly wary, and in search of medicinal cinematic extravagance—expecting adjacent seating for their spouse, their five children, and their eldest child’s two children, but lo and behold, the theater’s packed because we’re seven sequels deep into this series, an actor from the original show might have a surprise five-minute cameo, and word on the street is that this one’s got an extra boob or two in it. Cue the earful that some poor 16-year-old clerk gets from the fat pater familias because of a problem that is actually so not a problem at all that I can’t even put it into words because, try my damndest, I just don’t have it in me to be that much of a self-concerned asshole.
But alright, whatever, because no one besides a film student (or a film student’s shanghaied friends) is going to see this French-Canadian, postmodern reworking of the fatalistic lyricism of the poetic realists of the early twentieth century anyway. My ticket might as well be a collector’s item, hung up next to the entrance sign that says “Starplex, Guaranteeing You the Most Disgusting Movie Theater Floors in the Lower Mid-West, or Half Your Money Back. Maybe.”
Regardless of the nonexistent audience, I have to be there a half hour early at the latest. There’s just an empty feeling that comes with rushing into the theater, a sort of impatient refusal to acknowledge the importance of the movie-going experience. You deal with the lines; you pick your perfect seat; you wait and enjoy the anticipation; you admire the unique art of movie trailer perfection; and once the picture actually begins, you’re already many acts deep into a ritual for only the cinematographically smitten. Wait, did I say before that I wasn’t a self-concerned asshole? Maybe forget about that bit. Because once my first friend arrives, I find that I’m thinking a great deal more about myself and my choice for the evening than I ever would’ve expected.
But hey, screw that, they said I could choose, and I’m not going to just ignore an Essential Viewing tag from The Dissolve, may it rest in everlasting peace.
The first arriving friend, one of my closest, is the most likely to derive some form of entertainment or intrigue from the night’s avant-garde screening. Most of his favorite film list is composed of suggestions I may or may not have force-fed him. The dude may have a bit of an overwhelming adoration for A Walk to Remember but fuck it, I mean, I love Heaven’s Gate, and the two of us can watch Nacho Libre together any day of the week and spend the week’s remainder talking about being the greatest fighters who ever leeeiiived, and he’s got his heart in the right place when it comes to Tarantino and the Coens and television’s new Golden Age. He politely refused an offer to watch Inland Empire (after I showed him Eraserhead) instead of impolitely elbowing my nards, so I gotta give credit where credit is due.
His girlfriend accompanies him, and her cinematic tastes range somewhere between straight-to-DVD films—about cheerleaders learning the meaning of friendship or contemporary country romances so painstakingly schmaltzy that they’d make Nicholas Sparks drown himself like a chicken in the rain—and those YouTube videos where a Siamese sees its reflection for the first time and decides to torpedo the wall headfirst. Her relationship with my friend, meanwhile, ranges somewhere between Lady and the Tramp lovingly sharing spaghetti in an alley, and Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner murdering the hell out of each other in DeVito’s The War of the Roses. And I have to make myself promise that I won’t go full God Bless America on them if they start stirring a shitstorm during this Palme D’Or nominee.
The next two to arrive are another young couple, half sweet and kind, half bombastic and competitive, wholly averse to any piece of entertainment that doesn’t involve Hugh Jackman or Russel Crowe shouting exactly how they feel about things in front of decidedly gaudy sets or entirely unrealistic explosions. I can’t really give much thought to what their reactions might be, because they’re pretty much guaranteed to despise anything that isn’t a Hunger Games prequel at this point.
Two more couples show up—politely ignore the romantic pattern that my single ass is breaking here, s'il vous plaît—one in love with war films, from the excellence of Full Metal Jacket to the almost-absurd forgetfulness of Act of Valor, the other hating most forms of entertainment that involve leaving the living room unless, that is, they involve some sort of loud and blinding adaptation of a popular anime. And alright, I mean, I love Cowboy Bebop as much as the next guy, but c’mon. There’s only so much endless screaming and posturing and monologuing—so many demonic ninjas and fairy sprites and undercooked love triangles—that a sane man can take.
But, anyway, no more couples; the last two friends are girls, one of whose tastes in cinema is confusingly broad, not too easy to get a grip on. She loves Orange is the New Black and Blue Valentine, both worthy candidates, but her primary fascination is the filmography of Tim Burton. So, you know, she’s one of my best friends, but sometimes it’s hard to look her in the eye. At least her favorite of his is Corpse Bride. The final friend, the other girl—I know next to nothing about her preferred films. But maybe I will soon enough. Let’s just say that at this point, I had already payed for her ticket.
All of these people, standing by the concession, blow up my phone at exactly the same time, wondering where I am. Oh, did I mention that I already grabbed a seat? Because--
That’s. How. Smart. People. Do. Things.
Why sit out front, stuck to the floor, when I could ensure that I’ll actually be able to see the film? I don’t plan on watching it like I’m staring upward into the eyes of an evil dentist, and I also don’t own a pair of military-grade binoculars, so the center of the theater it is. I may not be able to save seats for every single person (though I do have my jacket in the seat next to me for a certain someone), but like I said before, no one in Enid, Oklahoma, is coming to see Sous les lumières du Québec, so what’s the problem?
I guess people just have to keep up appearances.
They all make their way in to sit, and I make sure to move my jacket. Facing the screen, from left to right, it goes Otaku Town, the warmongers, the Corpse Bride, her, me, Esqueleto and his soon-to-be axe-murderer, and the Les Misérables back-up cast.
The film begins.
...
Shades of dreamt desire slip amongst one another beneath the suggestive swirls of Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. Forest green gives way to emerald unto viridian before the creeping of wintry cobalt; from which deep indigo swells and then sinks into a whisper of lilac; a sudden surge of violet relents, making way for a hearthside mulberry, the parent of an innocent magenta; and at last, a brilliant gold, the beginning and the end of us all.
I’m trying to scratch out every color, each change of shade, but it becomes increasingly difficult to feel the pen in my hands over the encroaching embarrassment that is undeniably of my own making. I’m certain that I’m surrounded on both sides by sagging smiles and sinking postures. I wonder if they can sense my clenched lower intestine.
Anna paints and wonders, Corinne simply tries to exist, and they both catch themselves eyeing their reflections in the lake under a tender summer evening sun. Commence meetings in bookstores, coffee shops—conversations that can’t help but become stories half-told, half-urged by eyes dancing, glimmering. Chairs that inch closer, shoulders that lean and lure.
The camerawork pulls you into this burgeoning love. The sighs, whispers, and God-I-hope-those-aren’t-snores of my friends pull me back into my half-broken theater seat.
The winds of passion, of adoration, meet the immovable steel of fear—fear of oppression, of rejection, of the end. Whispers in the dark give way to screams in an otherwise silent home. Pictures frames thrown, windows broken, along with promises and futures.
At this point, I realize that, in terms of color palette and set design, we’re moving backward through the colors of the overture. I like that as a unique way to set up the meeting places that can come to define a relationship in one’s memory. What I don’t like is the feeling that my friends are eyeing me with the utmost contempt, daring me to offer a positive opinion on what might be the worst 100 minutes they’ve ever had to put with for a friend.
Weeks become months without a word, and the winter wind is harsh. But all is not lost. It’s hard to stay away when the dreams are so vivid. Let the difference be discounted as two become one under a canopy of newfound peace.
As Corinne and Anna embrace in a new setting, a bright and comfortable wood, everything fades from green to white, another touch I’ve always found effective, more so than the always chosen fade to black at least. I’ve just seen a film that is touching, visually extravagant, but finally less than the sum of its (admittedly gorgeous) parts. I wonder what my friends saw up on the silver screen. My entrails, perhaps?
The credits roll. Cue the houselights.
Half of my friends move with a speed that speaks of desperation for escape, the other half desperately will their numbed skeletons into motion. I am the last out of the theater door, and before it swings shut, I am accosted.
“Are you serious?”
“Skyler, you made us pay for that.”
“I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.”
“You do not get to choose again, dude. That is the last time.”
And I would’ve deserved as much; I would’ve deserved to brave the flypaper floors and the tangled concession lines and the seats that tilt too far forward and the late-and-loud audience members and the endless waiting for an absent satisfaction, alone. Because I know better than anyone, that the best of films can be for everyone. But I chose one for myself. Alone. My time management and my pure cinematic taste and my anal note-taking paid off in the form of a group of cranky friends wondering what in the hell kind of nonsense they just let into their lives. And it was all for a film that honestly, truthfully, frankly . . . escapes from my memory second by second.
But what are friends for if not forgiveness? What does the entertainment industry promise, with its bright lights and boundless reveries, if not another day ahead?
Why not follow a film that falters, with one that shines?
... I turn now to the words of Ignacio, our immortal priest and luchador: Mucho take it easy.
I’m still there a half hour early, and that’s not likely to change. But I’m not greedily hogging a whole theater row with only my jacket as a placeholder. I’m not thinking about my friends’ tastes, judging them. I’m concerning myself with what it means to love the movies and looking at all of the upcoming release posters while I wait.
Satires and romantic comedies. Psychological thrillers, body horrors, ghost stories. Political dramas and biopics. Westerns. Crime epics. A million lifetimes in one multiplex. A million choices to make.
Tonight we see a film for everyone. A never-ending car chase, an ode to female independence and unspoken teamwork. A film for right and now and for the ages. They’re going to love it.
I wait without worry. This is the right choice, and maybe those floors aren’t as dirty as I thought. My friends come, and we smile and laugh and take our seats together.
The film begins.
SKYLER OSBURN
“Are you kidding me?”
“Skyler, you made us pay for that.”
“I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.”
“That’s the last time you choose, dude. The last time.”
But it wasn’t. And, alright, I mean—wait—hold on for just a second. Let me just Scorsese this shit real quick, and maybe I can convince you that my cinematic preferences aren’t simply mechanisms meant to end all of my friendships.
...
So, I was there 45 minutes early, apparently to admire just how much effort it must take to guarantee that absolutely no one so much as kicks a wet mop across the butter/cheese/coke laminated floor. Perhaps management hopes that trying to walk across the floor’s unholy, all-American adhesive will prove so taxing to those attempting to leave that they’ll simply turn around and buy another ticket, probably to Grown Ups 6 or Paul W.S. Anderson 15: Arbitrary Subtitle. Both in 4D with Smell-O-Vision. I’m sure they could just bottle and spray the floor’s fat-and-sugar froth for the accompanying odors ‘cause it’s not like anybody’s busy mopping it or anything.
But anyway, dwelling on that just reminds me that my room is Pig-Pen’s Barbie Dreamhouse and that Punch-Drunk Love exists and that I still would really like to give Event Horizon a shot, so I just return to glaring at my watch.
35 minutes later, my friends-
Okay, actually, no, I need to address this first: why in the hell do people insist on bitching about the problems caused by their own nonexistent time-management skills? They show up without a ticket mere moments before the set starting time—or even, I gasp and shudder to imagine, halfway through the previews, an event I refuse to consider as anything other than the result of some severe internal brain hemorrhaging that leaves its victim in pain, greatly wary, and in search of medicinal cinematic extravagance—expecting adjacent seating for their spouse, their five children, and their eldest child’s two children, but lo and behold, the theater’s packed because we’re seven sequels deep into this series, an actor from the original show might have a surprise five-minute cameo, and word on the street is that this one’s got an extra boob or two in it. Cue the earful that some poor 16-year-old clerk gets from the fat pater familias because of a problem that is actually so not a problem at all that I can’t even put it into words because, try my damndest, I just don’t have it in me to be that much of a self-concerned asshole.
But alright, whatever, because no one besides a film student (or a film student’s shanghaied friends) is going to see this French-Canadian, postmodern reworking of the fatalistic lyricism of the poetic realists of the early twentieth century anyway. My ticket might as well be a collector’s item, hung up next to the entrance sign that says “Starplex, Guaranteeing You the Most Disgusting Movie Theater Floors in the Lower Mid-West, or Half Your Money Back. Maybe.”
Regardless of the nonexistent audience, I have to be there a half hour early at the latest. There’s just an empty feeling that comes with rushing into the theater, a sort of impatient refusal to acknowledge the importance of the movie-going experience. You deal with the lines; you pick your perfect seat; you wait and enjoy the anticipation; you admire the unique art of movie trailer perfection; and once the picture actually begins, you’re already many acts deep into a ritual for only the cinematographically smitten. Wait, did I say before that I wasn’t a self-concerned asshole? Maybe forget about that bit. Because once my first friend arrives, I find that I’m thinking a great deal more about myself and my choice for the evening than I ever would’ve expected.
But hey, screw that, they said I could choose, and I’m not going to just ignore an Essential Viewing tag from The Dissolve, may it rest in everlasting peace.
The first arriving friend, one of my closest, is the most likely to derive some form of entertainment or intrigue from the night’s avant-garde screening. Most of his favorite film list is composed of suggestions I may or may not have force-fed him. The dude may have a bit of an overwhelming adoration for A Walk to Remember but fuck it, I mean, I love Heaven’s Gate, and the two of us can watch Nacho Libre together any day of the week and spend the week’s remainder talking about being the greatest fighters who ever leeeiiived, and he’s got his heart in the right place when it comes to Tarantino and the Coens and television’s new Golden Age. He politely refused an offer to watch Inland Empire (after I showed him Eraserhead) instead of impolitely elbowing my nards, so I gotta give credit where credit is due.
His girlfriend accompanies him, and her cinematic tastes range somewhere between straight-to-DVD films—about cheerleaders learning the meaning of friendship or contemporary country romances so painstakingly schmaltzy that they’d make Nicholas Sparks drown himself like a chicken in the rain—and those YouTube videos where a Siamese sees its reflection for the first time and decides to torpedo the wall headfirst. Her relationship with my friend, meanwhile, ranges somewhere between Lady and the Tramp lovingly sharing spaghetti in an alley, and Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner murdering the hell out of each other in DeVito’s The War of the Roses. And I have to make myself promise that I won’t go full God Bless America on them if they start stirring a shitstorm during this Palme D’Or nominee.
The next two to arrive are another young couple, half sweet and kind, half bombastic and competitive, wholly averse to any piece of entertainment that doesn’t involve Hugh Jackman or Russel Crowe shouting exactly how they feel about things in front of decidedly gaudy sets or entirely unrealistic explosions. I can’t really give much thought to what their reactions might be, because they’re pretty much guaranteed to despise anything that isn’t a Hunger Games prequel at this point.
Two more couples show up—politely ignore the romantic pattern that my single ass is breaking here, s'il vous plaît—one in love with war films, from the excellence of Full Metal Jacket to the almost-absurd forgetfulness of Act of Valor, the other hating most forms of entertainment that involve leaving the living room unless, that is, they involve some sort of loud and blinding adaptation of a popular anime. And alright, I mean, I love Cowboy Bebop as much as the next guy, but c’mon. There’s only so much endless screaming and posturing and monologuing—so many demonic ninjas and fairy sprites and undercooked love triangles—that a sane man can take.
But, anyway, no more couples; the last two friends are girls, one of whose tastes in cinema is confusingly broad, not too easy to get a grip on. She loves Orange is the New Black and Blue Valentine, both worthy candidates, but her primary fascination is the filmography of Tim Burton. So, you know, she’s one of my best friends, but sometimes it’s hard to look her in the eye. At least her favorite of his is Corpse Bride. The final friend, the other girl—I know next to nothing about her preferred films. But maybe I will soon enough. Let’s just say that at this point, I had already payed for her ticket.
All of these people, standing by the concession, blow up my phone at exactly the same time, wondering where I am. Oh, did I mention that I already grabbed a seat? Because--
That’s. How. Smart. People. Do. Things.
Why sit out front, stuck to the floor, when I could ensure that I’ll actually be able to see the film? I don’t plan on watching it like I’m staring upward into the eyes of an evil dentist, and I also don’t own a pair of military-grade binoculars, so the center of the theater it is. I may not be able to save seats for every single person (though I do have my jacket in the seat next to me for a certain someone), but like I said before, no one in Enid, Oklahoma, is coming to see Sous les lumières du Québec, so what’s the problem?
I guess people just have to keep up appearances.
They all make their way in to sit, and I make sure to move my jacket. Facing the screen, from left to right, it goes Otaku Town, the warmongers, the Corpse Bride, her, me, Esqueleto and his soon-to-be axe-murderer, and the Les Misérables back-up cast.
The film begins.
...
Shades of dreamt desire slip amongst one another beneath the suggestive swirls of Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. Forest green gives way to emerald unto viridian before the creeping of wintry cobalt; from which deep indigo swells and then sinks into a whisper of lilac; a sudden surge of violet relents, making way for a hearthside mulberry, the parent of an innocent magenta; and at last, a brilliant gold, the beginning and the end of us all.
I’m trying to scratch out every color, each change of shade, but it becomes increasingly difficult to feel the pen in my hands over the encroaching embarrassment that is undeniably of my own making. I’m certain that I’m surrounded on both sides by sagging smiles and sinking postures. I wonder if they can sense my clenched lower intestine.
Anna paints and wonders, Corinne simply tries to exist, and they both catch themselves eyeing their reflections in the lake under a tender summer evening sun. Commence meetings in bookstores, coffee shops—conversations that can’t help but become stories half-told, half-urged by eyes dancing, glimmering. Chairs that inch closer, shoulders that lean and lure.
The camerawork pulls you into this burgeoning love. The sighs, whispers, and God-I-hope-those-aren’t-snores of my friends pull me back into my half-broken theater seat.
The winds of passion, of adoration, meet the immovable steel of fear—fear of oppression, of rejection, of the end. Whispers in the dark give way to screams in an otherwise silent home. Pictures frames thrown, windows broken, along with promises and futures.
At this point, I realize that, in terms of color palette and set design, we’re moving backward through the colors of the overture. I like that as a unique way to set up the meeting places that can come to define a relationship in one’s memory. What I don’t like is the feeling that my friends are eyeing me with the utmost contempt, daring me to offer a positive opinion on what might be the worst 100 minutes they’ve ever had to put with for a friend.
Weeks become months without a word, and the winter wind is harsh. But all is not lost. It’s hard to stay away when the dreams are so vivid. Let the difference be discounted as two become one under a canopy of newfound peace.
As Corinne and Anna embrace in a new setting, a bright and comfortable wood, everything fades from green to white, another touch I’ve always found effective, more so than the always chosen fade to black at least. I’ve just seen a film that is touching, visually extravagant, but finally less than the sum of its (admittedly gorgeous) parts. I wonder what my friends saw up on the silver screen. My entrails, perhaps?
The credits roll. Cue the houselights.
Half of my friends move with a speed that speaks of desperation for escape, the other half desperately will their numbed skeletons into motion. I am the last out of the theater door, and before it swings shut, I am accosted.
“Are you serious?”
“Skyler, you made us pay for that.”
“I would’ve rather had my seat reversed, facing the door. Truly.”
“You do not get to choose again, dude. That is the last time.”
And I would’ve deserved as much; I would’ve deserved to brave the flypaper floors and the tangled concession lines and the seats that tilt too far forward and the late-and-loud audience members and the endless waiting for an absent satisfaction, alone. Because I know better than anyone, that the best of films can be for everyone. But I chose one for myself. Alone. My time management and my pure cinematic taste and my anal note-taking paid off in the form of a group of cranky friends wondering what in the hell kind of nonsense they just let into their lives. And it was all for a film that honestly, truthfully, frankly . . . escapes from my memory second by second.
But what are friends for if not forgiveness? What does the entertainment industry promise, with its bright lights and boundless reveries, if not another day ahead?
Why not follow a film that falters, with one that shines?
... I turn now to the words of Ignacio, our immortal priest and luchador: Mucho take it easy.
I’m still there a half hour early, and that’s not likely to change. But I’m not greedily hogging a whole theater row with only my jacket as a placeholder. I’m not thinking about my friends’ tastes, judging them. I’m concerning myself with what it means to love the movies and looking at all of the upcoming release posters while I wait.
Satires and romantic comedies. Psychological thrillers, body horrors, ghost stories. Political dramas and biopics. Westerns. Crime epics. A million lifetimes in one multiplex. A million choices to make.
Tonight we see a film for everyone. A never-ending car chase, an ode to female independence and unspoken teamwork. A film for right and now and for the ages. They’re going to love it.
I wait without worry. This is the right choice, and maybe those floors aren’t as dirty as I thought. My friends come, and we smile and laugh and take our seats together.
The film begins.
