As a rule, I try not to fall asleep in movies.
Home viewing is one thing. There's a certain satisfaction one derives from bravely refusing to remain conscious through an entire screening of The Sweetest Thing. Some would regard it as a feat of endurance to stay awake for the entire film, I call it faulty prioritizing.
But falling asleep in a theater? That's something else entirely. I suppose one could argue that your moviegoing companions are supposed to watch your back, though those people have obviously never met the fine examples of Homo erectus I like to call "my friends." I'd be better off passing out in a Bourbon Street gutter during Mardi Gras.
Sometimes, just sometimes, I didn't have a choice. Unfortunately, I couldn't even zonk out in the company of my fellow juvenile reprobates. No, I had to choose to fall asleep - all three times it happened - on high school dates.
Regular readers of this weblog know that I probably wasn't the biggest prize in high school. Even after my extended play goofy-looking period, my tendency to drag unsuspecting females to every possible major movie release - from Beastmaster to Krull - made me a risky social prospect at best. Rarely did I commit the unspeakable double whammy of dozing off as well, however. Sadly, it happened not once, but three times. Names are omitted to preserve my ass.
1. Legend (1985) - I blame the film, and the utter lack of anything in common with my date. She was a nice enough girl, whose only mistake was confessing to yours truly that she had a crush on me. I tried to make it work, but let's face it: Legend was designed to put you to sleep. Its dreamlike forest landscapes and nonexistent plot practically dare you to bring a pillow with you to the theater.
2. Children of A Lesser God (1986) - I've heard this is a good movie, and it probably is, but I saw it on a date one night after working all day in a concession stand during a Texas A&M football game (my high school band worked the games to make money for our spring trips...don't act so surprised that I was in band) and probably drinking afterwards, so I suspect I was ill-prepared for a thoughtful drama about deaf people discovering themselves. This relationship was doomed from the start, but at least I got some rest out of it.
3. Top Gun (1986) - I don't really know how to explain this one; maybe the screeching of pubescent teenage girls has a sopofiric effect on me, or maybe I'm so comfortable with my masculinity that thinly veiled paeans to homoeroticism relax me to an extreme degree. Whatever the case, I never actually watched this all the way through until college, and then only to prove to my sophomore girlfriend I didn't know the origins of the expression, "Goose, you big stud...take me to bed or lose me forever."
Maybe my cinematic slumbering was a kind of early warning system away from these women. In retrospect, they were all disastrous partner choices. Perhaps I have some internal alarm that steered me away from romantic catastrophe.
Or maybe I don't like Tom Cruise or William Hurt. None of those movies had zombies in 'em anyway, so I suppose it's no big loss.
Getting even further off-track, I remembered last night that there's one other movie that I've watched three times and never stayed awake through. Oddly, I always fall asleep and wake up in the same place. As far as I'm concerned, the last three things that happen in Return of the Jedi are: (1) C3PO is crowned king of the ewoks, (2) the ewoks sing a really stupid song, (3) the credits roll. To this day, I have no idea why the ewoks don't eat our heroes.
Can't say that I've ever fallen asleep in a movie theatre before. My wife has cornered the narcolepsy market in my family.
I can't say I've ever fallen asleep in a movie theater. I think this is because I have a strange habit: the worse a movie is, the closer I pay attention.
I think this goes hand in hand with my love of strays and rooting for underdogs. When exposed to a really terrible movie, I want to find something -- anything -- to like about it. I sit bolt upright in my seat and scan the movie hoping to find that one brilliant moment that will rescue the enterprise, if only in my mind.
Case in point: Prince of Darkness, John Carpenter's truly annoying voyage into the realm of religious-brimstone-as-horror. This film attempted to reconcile the struggle between good and evil with particle physics, and involved shambling undead shooting acidic goo out of their noses. Alice Cooper got to kill a guy with half a bicycle, which is always a crowd-pleaser. The movie sought to capture the icky dread of the Exorcist but mostly found itself in the neighborhood of Bride of Chucky. It was BAD, all the way from the dialogue to the plot to Jameson Parker's cheesy 70's porn star mustache.
But I found, as I watched the movie, that Carpenter did one thing really incredibly well, and that's lighting. Whether it's Escape from New York or The Thing, nobody does lighting better than Carpenter. An indistinct form at the end of a dimly lit hall becomes something really creepy in Prince of Darkness. Carpenter understands that things are scariest when they are seen just enough to suggest many possible forms, but not enough to reveal their true nature. Once you see the bad things up close in this film, it transitions smoothly from horror to comedy. But in the moments before you see the Ultimate Evil in all its glory, the movie works.
So, I found something to like. Sometimes I never find anything to like (re: Species) but I'm looking, at least, and that keeps me awake.
Yeah, but Carpenter does one thing worse than any other serious moviemaker, and that's music. The $29 Casio keyboard soundtrack to Escape from New York is the dominant contribution to my inability to watch that film.
Whoops. I forgot, once again, about the horror that is Eyes Wide Shut, whose soundtrack exceeds in awfultude Carpenter's Casio cantata.
Plink, plink, plinka plink, (emotional climax) PLINK PLINK.
The emphatic PLINK PLINK is the only way you can tell it's an emotional climax because, of course, Tom Cruise's expression never changes.
It is with no small amount of pride I say that I stayed awake through *all* of "In The Bedroom".
Oh, Prince of Darkness, I got a favorite quote from that film:
"I've got a message for you, and you're not going to like it: Pray for death."
Yyyeahhh!!!!
I kinda liked the cheesy keyboard soundtrack to Escape from NY! I have the casette, no less. But I also have the Legend soundtrack, so I'm no authority by any means ...
When I watched "Eyes Wide Shut" with some friends, we reached the point where we started howling with laughter every time the PLINK PLINK sound happened. It was the only thing about the film that entertained us at all.
The only time I've ever fallen asleep in a theater was, I'm embarrassed to say, when I saw "Return of the King" on an IMAX screen recently. I had stayed up very late the night before finishing some home projects at my mother's house, and then had flown to Houston that morning. Luckily, what I missed during my brief doze was some of the Shelob stuff. Since spiders totally freak me out, it was good to miss some of it. It was my second viewing of the film, so I'm wondering if subconsciously I saw that scene coming and dozed off in self-defense.
I adore Legend. I think, for all its flaws, it's a great movie. I've watched it three times. I've never managed to stay awake all the way through.
I think that's actually part of the fun - I always carry the movie forward in my dreams. I'm sure some of the sound filters through, and when I wake up I'm no less disoriented than when I fell asleep.
Once, I caught the last 20 minutes of the movie on cable. It was awful. I couldn't understand what I ever saw in that movie - how could I have stomached that much Tom Cruise? I cast Legend onto the pile of "movies that no longer enchant me."
They finally released a new, superior cut of the film on DVD, and that was enough to tempt me back; to see if it really was as bad as I thought. I fell asleep four times, and the magic returned.