Currently Reading Die Trying By Lee Child see related

Solitary Movie Man

I suppose there had to be a time when I was much more concerned about going to the movies alone. The fear is still there in the back of my mind, the cautionary tone that warns of a future as a Man Who Goes to the Movies By Himself. With the label being capitalized and all, you’d think that it would indicate a problem with the action it describes, but you’d be wrong. Much as a woman owning cats is not necessarily a Cat Lady, I hope that slipping into a theater all by my lonesome does not transform me into Solitary Movie Man, guaranteeing me a future full of dinners for one and nights spent wondering how so many satellite television stations can yield such a paltry harvest of worthwhile programming. No man should always take in the cinema by himself, you understand. Still, I’m finding there are advantages to traveling solo.

The freedom of it is a big incentive, for one thing. I don’t want you confusing this with spontaneity, because to do so would be to credit me with a very big and very false character transformation. I just mean that checking the movie listings on Thursday night affords me some options on Friday. Ever since I started employment with the federal government way back in February of 2007, I take it as a personal point of pride that I have never had to put in a full eight-hour Friday. How I’ve managed to accomplish this feat is entirely too complicated and brilliant to go into here, so I’ll leave it up to your imagination—the more colorful among you will conjure up a tale of how I bribe or evade the building’s security guards, while the spoilsports will simply assume that I work extra time during the week to put toward the weekend. At any rate, it’s always a wonderful feeling to find myself motoring down the freeway in the early hours of a Friday afternoon. Both my schedule and the roads are clear, and recently it’s occurred to me that there’s no reason I can’t drop by the ol’ theater and see a movie that I know I’ll be in time for. This is only after attending to my lunch needs—a man has simply got to eat—but over the last couple of weeks it’s felt really good to know that there is absolutely nothing stopping me from indulging myself with a couple of hours in one of those really cushy red chairs.

There is really no one to discuss this good feeling with upon walking into the theater, and for someone more extroverted this may be a problem. Personally, I tend to find advantages. There is no one hassling you to get to your seat. There is no one you have to wait for while they insist on getting more popcorn than the Food and Drug Administration could sensibly recommend the both of you consume in one sitting. Also, a lack of conversation means a lack of conversational obligation: instead of trying to find witty tidbits to keep the ball rolling, I can be content with strolling in, finding a seat in silence, and savoring some quiet contemplation. This is the ideal mindset and position for people watching. In the last two weeks, I’ve yet to be completely alone in the theatre. I count that a goal of mine, as there’s something really cool about surveying so many empty seats, but so far, there’ve always been people to slip in at the last minute. Furthermore, for reasons that I can’t fully comprehend, these people always tend to be old. Okay, I can see that going to the movies at 1:30 in the afternoon is not typically a hobby of the young, at least not prior to summer vacation and certainly not for those braving the nine to five. Still, the last three movies I’ve seen were an R-rated comedy aimed at 20-to-30-somethings, an R-rated thriller aimed squarely at anyone who overlooked plot as long as there was sex and violence involved (although I didn’t realize this until afterward), and a PG-13 caper film about a bunch of college kids scamming Vegas. Maybe I’m not giving senior citizens enough credit, or maybe I’d rather not find myself in the same target group with them quite yet, but I’ve always found myself sitting through the previews wondering if these guys know what they’ve paid for. And then there’s the inevitable conversation going on around me, and it’s pretty loud on account of the fact that most of these patrons need a little help hearing. Yet sooner or later, when the previews end and the movie begins, they’re there and I’m there and we’re sharing the experience together, even as we never acknowledge each other’s existence.

It might be precisely the feeling I sometimes loathe that captivates me in those red seats, the sense that I’m completely disconnected from the people nearby, from the room itself, from the theater and the very world around me. I can arrive and not be noticed, I can leave and no one particularly cares, I can go absolutely anywhere I want without altering anyone’s plans in the least. And while sometimes I run from that feeling, sprinting toward significance and clawing desperately for any sense that what I do matters to anyone else, sometimes going unnoticed allows me to sit back and watch the world. Not just the world on the silver screen, but the world I’m still trying to fit into, a world made up of innumerable lives and passions and goals and motives, a world where it seems people can miss each other by inches or miles and never realize it, a world where those same people can just as often stumble into each other’s fields of vision without ever meaning to or planning to or even remotely being prepared for the consequences. In a world like that, sometimes it’s good for me to put on the mantle of Solitary Movie Man – especially when I decide to walk out of one screening room and stroll right down the hall to another.