NOT QUITE A MOVIE REVIEW
Why Popcorn?
This is what happens when I write a review of Wes Anderson
I went to see Asteroid City. It was awful. Never mind.
I was alone because my girlfriend is out of town at a bachelor party. Some day I will discover that this is what she told me the first time she cheated on me. Or we’ll live happily ever after. One or the other.
Either way, I was alone, so I didn’t buy any candy or soda. I only purchase concessions at movie theaters to appear normal, and when I’m alone I don’t want to be normal. I want to be weird. Otherwise, what’s the point of being alone?
The point is that I was alone, so I wasn’t chewing when the movie started. When you’re not chewing, the munching sounds of other mouths are lurid. This is especially true when you’re leaning in to hear Tom Hanks’s first line — Why am I leaning in? Do I think the sound comes from the screen? — hoping he’ll save the movie.
He doesn’t, by the way. The movie is awful. Never mind.
Even if he saved the movie, I would never know. All I heard was crunch crunch, rustle rustle, smack smack, crunch crunch. Then comes the obnoxious glop of some glutton licking his buttered fingers. Then another goon futzes about into their paper popcorn bag, and the sonorous cycle begins again.
It’s like a steamroller churning gravel, and then the steamroller’s boyfriend begins slurping that eternal final sip of soda through his straw. The slurping subsides, but once his ice melts, the slurping will start again.
Asteroid City would have been ruined, but it can’t be ruined. It is already awful. Never mind.
Why popcorn? It’s such a pestiferous food. While we’re at it, why not go ahead and sell crisp Golden Delicious apples in the lobby, or encourage movie-goers to bring their own baby carrots? Rice cakes anyone?
Popcorn is loud, sticky, and uncontainable. It peppers the floor of every movie theatre I’ve ever attended.
That’s a lie. I was in a movie theater in Australia once and the floors were immaculate. They didn’t serve popcorn. They served champagne. Go figure.
Why popcorn? According to Natasha Geiling, a writer for Smithsonian Magazine, popcorn was banned in movie theaters until the 1930s. Then they invented sound. Sound in movies, I should say. Jesus invented sound not-in-movies in the year 4.
Sound in movies helped to drown out popcorn smacking. It also meant people who couldn’t read — which was everyone except Ernest Hemingway back then — could finally understand what the tramp said after he slipped on the banana peel. Thus, movies became a common pastime among poor people. Poor people can only afford poor foods, and no food was poorer than popcorn.
Popcorn was still banned, but that didn’t stop movie-goers from sneaking it in beneath those cavernous depression-era overcoats. Thankfully, the phrase ‘If you can’t beat’em, join’em,’ had just been invented, and that’s just what movie theaters did. Soon movie houses were making more money from popcorn sales than they were from ticket sales, and so capitalism demanded the tradition of popcorn in movie theaters continue in perpetuity.
That’s how it started, but how does that help me focus on this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad movie?
There’s only one solution. I must eat popcorn every time I see a movie. Creating my own crunches will overwhelm the crunches of others. Kill or be killed. Irritate or be irritated. Crunch, smack, slurp, and scream whisper mundane irrelevancies to your friends every four minutes.
Then you’ll be happy. Instead of a grouch like me, who goes to see awful movies all by himself.
I hope my girlfriend is done cheating on me soon. I miss her.
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