Sometimes you're stuck at home for months on end and yearn for a getaway. Sometimes you're bored beyond belief and jump at the chance to do anything. Sometimes you make your life seem so unpleasant by writing about how "blah" things can be when you spend your day staring at a computer screen, trying to write the next great American screenplay. And sometimes the stars align and the greatest thing known to mankind swoops in and metaphorically kicks you in the nads. I'm talking about the magnificence of leaving the confines of your dog hair infested apartment and venturing to the local cineplex to catch, not one, but two movies. It's double feature day and it is glorious.
I love movies. I always have. As a child, there was nothing I'd look forward to more than after school on a Friday because that was when I would get home, see the Weekend Guide in the Dallas Morning News and see what movies would be playing at one of the 3 Prestonwood theatres close to my house. There was the AMC 5-plex where I would see "Three Amigos," "Beetlejuice" and "Die Hard." There was the UA 6-plex where I would see "Return of the Jedi," "Short Circuit" and "Batman." And there was the General Cinema Sakowitz Village 4-plex where I would see "Mannequin," "Big" and the movie that spawned one million Cary boners, "Career Opportunities," starring the very first love of my life, Jennifer Connelly. I only remember 2 things about that movie...
1) I remember not liking all but 5 minutes of the film.
2) I remember the 5 minutes I did like was the scene of Miss Connelly riding a coin operated horse in a white tank top.
Come to think of it, I remember three things from that movie - two of them are in the horse riding scene.
I always looked forward to Saturdays as a kid. That was the day that my brothers and our friends would be able to see a movie. Sometimes, if we were lucky, we'd be able to see TWO movies in one day! By "lucky," I mean that there would have to be two movies we wanted to see that happened to time up back to back at the Promenade $1 theatre. There was no way my dad was going to give us more than $2 to see movies. To his credit, sometimes he would give us 3 crisp dollar bills to spend our Saturday away from him. $1 for a movie, $1 for another movie and $1 to spend on a pickle the size of Godzilla's penis. That's why the '80's were so spectactualar! For 3 bucks, we could see "Back to the Future" followed by "Teen Wolf" and in between grab the largest pickle you'd ever seen to munch on during Michael J. Fox's pre-shakes werewolf movie.
You might think that as an adult, I've grown tired of sitting in a dark movie theater for 4 hours furiously biting down on a phallic snack, but you'd be dead wrong. Nowadays, the greatest days of my life are the opportunities to see 2 movies in the same day. Most people might be too busy, too tired or too un-nerdy to spend half the day in the middle row of a soda stained blackbox theatre but I'm not most people. When the opportunity came to venture alone out of my sun drenched apartment and sit in the dark amongst strangers, I jumped at that chance faster than Michael J. Fox making a martini.
When I was a child, the double feature was more difficult to come by. For starters, most movie houses had a max of 5 screens so it was trickier to sneak into one theater after exiting a different one. Plus the timing might not always work out. You had to time it out just right so you can leave theater 2 as the credits started rolling in order to make it to theater 3 as the lights were going down. You didn't want to endure the embarrassment of Edward, the usher, catching you and (gasp) making you PAY for your second movie! Nowadays, every movie palace has 15-20 screens so after one movie ends, there are 7 others that are starting. It's very easy to leave theater 4 that was showing a movie where Samuel L. Jackson is playing a stressed out and angry man with a proclivity for biting one-liners and immediately enter theater 11 that is showing a movie where Samuel L. Jackson is playing a stressed out and angry man with a proclivity for biting one-liners except in this film, he's wearing an eye patch.
Double Features prove that all good things come in pairs. Whether it's movies, shoes or butt cheeks - two will always be better than one.
