Casual
barnett, dean
Casual MEN ARE FROM THE MULTIPLEX When my wife and I began courting some ten years ago, she knew I loved the movies. I loved every bit of the cinema experience. I had favorite seats (fourth...
...Little did I know that in that instant our cinematic relationship had been transformed...
...I pointed to the glowing reviews, and insisted that as sophisticated people we really ought to see it...
...Once we had enjoyed The Sopranos together...
...My wife-to-be graciously indulged this interest, no matter how execrable my taste...
...Even after that, I was able to con her into seeing Scorsese’s Gangs of New York...
...She said that she found such movies “too disturbing” to endure...
...Then my wife fl oated a trial balloon...
...After all, I had pressured her into seeing a movie that anyone allergic to disturbing imagery had no business seeing...
...She wisely milked the moment for all it was worth...
...As far as going out to the movies is concerned, fi nding a mutually agreeable fi lm has become an almost insoluble puzzle...
...I suppose I could agree to fare like The Devil Wears Prada, but I still have some pride...
...I had favorite seats (fourth row, dead center), a favorite snack (Twizzlers), and even a favorite suburban googaplex located several miles from our urban homes...
...At home, I have to take care to make sure disturbing images don’t inadvertently harass her...
...A friend had told us it was hilarious...
...But I know that if she hears the Dropkick Murphys shouting “Shipping up to Boston” and sees Matt Damon’s smooshed matinee idol looks on our TV, then a real disturbance will ensue...
...As we walked out of the cinema with tears running down our faces, we both angrily noted the incompleteness of our friend’s description...
...I insisted that we go to this particular theater because it had the biggest screens and best sound systems of any cinema within a 30-mile radius...
...A new addition to Martin Scor sese’s or Michael Mann’s oeuvre immediately made the top of my must-see list...
...About two hours into the movie, just at the end of Act II when Daniel Day-Lewis was beating poor Leonardo DiCaprio to a pulp, my wife whispered that she couldn’t watch any more, and that she would wait outside the theater for the movie to end...
...I’ve long since meekly surrendered to my wife’s cinema ban on all things disturbing...
...And I tried to repay her kindness...
...For home viewing, I had a 60-inch TV, which back then was quite exotic, not to mention bigger than a Buick...
...Even on the regrettable occasions when these masters eschewed violence, their movies were still satisfyingly intense...
...The moral high ground was hers...
...I’ll notice that The Departed is on HBO and try to sneak a few minutes of viewing even though my wife is in the next room...
...DEAN BARNETT...
...We used to watch Deadwood together...
...No more...
...Besides, I have to reckon with the reality that her list of entertainment that disturbs is everexpanding...
...Anything more intense than a Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas special has the potential to disturb, and therefore to put me in the doghouse...
...I favored a particular genre of movie—violent, exciting, well made...
...Then she added The Sopranos to her blacklist of the disturbing...
...We’ve moved well beyond a ban on mere violence...
...She even refused to watch The Wire, perhaps the most brilliant television series ever...
...As our courtship turned into marriage, the rules began subtly to change...
...I agreed, assuming she was speaking metaphorically...
...She even endured Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace with nary a complaint, other than the repeated comment that Liam Neeson’s hair looked silly...
...Same thing for Rome...
...In this kind of marital struggle, the man doesn’t have a chance...
...Then I thank God for Netfl ix and my wife’s book club...
...Knowing a threat to domestic tranquility when I see one, I followed her up the aisle and immediately began begging forgiveness for dragging her to such a gory epic...
...So this is what it’s come to—I’m a mayhem-starved junkie, recklessly hitting up whenever the chance presents itself...
...Oddly, the fi lm most responsible for upending our comfortable movie arrangement was Roberto Benigni’s nonviolent Holocaust tragicomedy Life Is Beautiful...
...Unfortunately, the power inversion carried over to our happy home...
...Every now and then, I’ll weaken...
...When an epic like the recent American Gangster hits the theaters, I wistfully recall the days when as a matter of course I would see such a fi lm on opening night...
...She, realizing that the power structure of our movie going was now inverted, was slow to grant a pardon...
...I accompanied her to see Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic train wreck Eyes Wide Shut and only chattered on for a week or so about how unendurable it was...
Vol. 13 • December 2007 • No. 13
