The Guy Who Sat Next To Me During Match Point

The first showing of Match Point at the Oriental started at 12:45 pm Saturday afternoon. I arrived around 12:30, bought refreshments, and had 10 minutes to spare as I found my seat. If the theater isn’t full, I like to pick an area to sit with additional space away from others. I found a spot about three rows back from the screen. It was in one of the small auditoriums, so the screen wasn’t big. I’m a sloucher at the movies, so I was happy with my selection.

With ten minutes until showtime, I quietly ate my popcorn and drank my soda. A minute or two passes and some guy sits down one seat away from me. I notice that there are plenty of other spaces to sit around me, but whatever. This guy then turns to me and asks if I’ve seen the live episode of Will and Grace. I said no. He then says, “Well…Woody Allen directed this movie and I’ll bet it’s stupid”.

At this point I realize that this guy isn’t all together.

He then asks me, “have you seen Crash?”. I figure it’s not in my best interest to continue a conversation with Mr. Sitting-to close-to-me, creepy weirdo, so I answer no. He continues…”have you seen blah-blah-blah? It was great’…”have you seen blah-blah-blah? It was so stupid” After answering no a few times, I stopped responding. The movie started and this guy kept talking to me. In the first few minutes of the movie, he started holding his arms out toward the screen to pretend that he was “framing the picture” with his thumbs and index fingers positioned outward.

At this point I had enough of this guy, so I moved to the back of the theater and enjoyed the rest of the movie.

Posted by chuck at January 23, 2006 3:04 PM

Comments

It would have been great if at the end of this story you would have said,

“…….and it turned out the man was the Journal Sentinel’s Duane Dudek”

Posted by: Andy at January 23, 2006 3:26 PM

One time while in college I took a girl to see a Steven Seagal movie. My date agreed to see it with me just for laughs. The theater was empty. We sat right in the middle as you would expect. Right before the opening credits roll, another couple sits directly in front of us. The very row in front of us and the exact seats in front of us. I thought they could have at least picked 2 seats to the left or right but no—they had to try and spoil our fun. I think poor theater seat selection is like driving slow in the fast lane—some people just don’t get it.

Posted by: Dave G. at January 27, 2006 10:49 AM